ONC 2024 SHORTLISTER || After two opposites find comfort in each other and have an instant connection but can't be together, they collide again months later and get a second chance at love || August Walker and Jasmine Kelly are complete opposites...
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A Year Later
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Midnight is my current favourite time of day, and has been since August and I got together over a year ago now. But somehow, in this weird turn of events, midnight isn't my only favourite time of day anymore.
Cliché as it may seem, every moment of my day at the moment is my favourite; I wake up beside August, and I spend the day working how and where I like with clients I like. When I finish work, I get to spend the rest of the day in August's house – which is also mine – where I feel safe and comfortable. Then when I go to bed, it's beside August – unless he works nights, but even then, I spend the night in the bed I know he'll be in when he gets home.
My life is pretty damn good, which is pretty crazy when I think back to a year and a half ago when everything felt bleak. I may have been free from Josh's abusive hands in the physical sense, but in actuality, I wasn't actually free at all. He was still out there, following me, threatening me, trying to get me back. When he got arrested and eventually sent to prison, that was when I became free.
And now he gets even more prison time thanks to Levi, who pressed charges after I submitted evidence against Josh for attacking him all those years ago.
"I'm so proud of you," August announces as we sit down in his dad's pub.
I giggle before sipping my wine. "Why?"
"For putting in that evidence. Because you did that, Levi pressed charges. Because of that, Josh admitted what he did and got an extra twenty years on his sentence. He's away for a fucking long time, Sunshine, and it's mainly because of you."
I glance away, watching the diamond of my new engagement ring shine in the sun. Four months ago, August – with the help of his dad and a few hired handymen – finished the newly converted shed in our back garden that's now my home salon for work. It took them six months to do in the end. I managed to get a full client list from working in the salons I was in, so I'm now in there mainly full time.
At the little opening party August planned to open it, he got down on one knee and proposed in front of his dad, my mum, his mum and our friends and the rest of the family.
I scoff. "Wasn't all me, silly. Levi did it all. He seemed well when I met with him in court earlier today at the sentencing. The first time we actually saw each other since it happened. He's got himself a job and a wife now."
August sips his drink. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for it. Fucking work. The sentencing, I mean. Not Levi. Though I'd kinda like to meet him."
"Why?"
"Don't know, he seemed to be a big part of your life. Sort of."
