Danny....Twenty Months Later

I have learned that sometimes, you have to experience being at the bottom of life, to fully appreciate being at the top of it.

I have also learned that you can find happiness, in a world that is full of so much unhappiness. It's all about taking chances, seizing opportunities and grabbing luck if it happens to cross your path.

I think we all tend to get so caught up with the negatives and the depressing circumstances that we can often fall right into, we don't notice those chances, those opportunities and the luck that crosses our paths in life. I often think about where I would be now, if I had decided to look the other way when Henna was being mugged. Where would I be now if I had chosen to ignore her attempts to talk to me? At the time, I was so emotionally lost, I honestly didn't think I would ever be emotionally found again.

I had lost faith in people.

I had lost faith in society.

I had lost faith in myself.

Then Henna fell into my despair, into my homelessness, and restored all of that faith I had so bitterly lost. And she didn't only restore it, she also had me believing in good things happening during really bad times. My homelessness was my really bad times, and Henna was the good happening during all of those bad times.

She made me feel important.

She made me feel like I mattered.

Henna has such a beautiful and giving soul, I was drawn to her from the moment I first looked into those hazel eyes of hers. They say that the eyes are the window to the soul, and Henna's window was one that held a pure and captivating view. In those eyes, there was wholesome openness and innocent compassion. Henna hadn't been tainted by money and possessions, she was defined by genuine feelings and unfeigned experiences.

Before Louisa, my father and my time living on the streets of Bristol, I think I had lived a very shallow and superficial existence. Materialistically, I had everything—the respected job, the gorgeous girlfriend, the designer clothes, the flash car, the swanky family home—but none of it made me happy.

Behind it all, was a grown man who was missing his dead mother and who was missing his living father. I was existing in a world where the beautiful got noticed and the loudest got heard. Then when my life got turned completely on its head, I realised that I no longer fitted that shallow mould. Living in doorways, made me look deeply inside of myself. It made me ask myself questions that I never would have asked before. If you're not seen as beautiful and you're not the loudest, that somehow made you less important to a lot of people in this very fickle world.

And I began to believe that I was no longer important.

I was homeless.

I had made huge mistakes.

So I deserved to feel unimportant.

I deserved the depressing hand that life had dealt to me.

I believed in all of that, until Henna.

Until her, I was nothing.

I was a nothing, with nothing, who felt nothing.

Which is why I am here now, with my hands held gently over her eyes, about to repay her for all that she has given to me; for all that she continues to give to me.  "Okay, just a few more steps." I encouragingly tell Henna.

Slowly and carefully, Henna puts one foot in front of the other, giggling as she does. "The ground is a little uneven, Danny...maybe wearing my kitten heels wasn't such a good idea?"

Laughing, I decide that we are now close enough. "When I say when, you can open your eyes, okay?" My nervous hands are taken away from Henna's eyes, because I now want to cuddle her from behind.

As I cuddle her, Henna starts rambling with excitement. "Whatever you're about to show me, I hope it doesn't make me pee my pants, you know that my bladder is pretty compromised these days."

Laughing loudly, I briefly kiss her neck. "If you do, I'll completely understand." I joke, nuzzling against the warmth of her exquisitely soft skin.

Henna holds my arms, groaning a little. "Oh god, I really think there's no hope for my knickers now that you've said that."

Assuring her with yet another brief little kiss, I then say. "Okay, you can now open your eyes." Henna is still. She's also quiet. I'm so excited, I am waiting for her to feel it as well. But Henna being Henna, she will be soaking up this moment. She will soak it up and then pleasurably process it. So, I say nothing but hold her from where I am standing behind her. I want her to absorb this moment. I want her to forever cherish it.

After a few stunned seconds, I hear Henna's quiet and mellow voice. "It's beautiful, Danny." Her hands stroke my arms that are still lovingly wrapped right around her body. "But why are we here?" She asks, resting her head back on my chest, needing me to explain why we are standing outside of this detached stone property, aptly named Charmwood Cottage.

Squeezing her just that little bit tighter, I am really keen to reveal all to my very beautiful fiancée. "We are here, because if you want it, you can have it."

Henna turns in my hold, needing to now see me face to face. "What do you mean?" She asks, blinking at me with those bright and beguiling hazel eyes of hers.

Smiling, I keep my reply smugly simple. "If you want Charmwood, Henna, then Charmwood is yours."

It takes a while for Henna to smile, she's so overwhelmed with what I have just said. "But can we afford it? We have our wedding to pay for in eight months, remember?"

Again, my reply is smugly simple. "Don't worry, you can have Charmwood and our wedding." My hand reaches up to stroke her soft curls, the soft curls I adore more and more each and every day.

Henna smiles at me and the way that my hand softly caresses her hair. "I don't know what to say?" She then quickly turns back around, wanting to stare some more at the charmingly presented cottage. "It really is so beautiful." Comes her gushing but quiet affirmation as she looks at Charmwood's fairytale-like frontage and it's very pretty country garden.

I know she is just itching to look around. I know its ivy-lined entrance is beckoning Henna to come on inside. "Shall we?" I say with a broad smirk, retrieving the keys from my pocket and dangling them in front of her in a playful and enticing way.

Henna's eyes girlishly widen. "Really?" She excitedly asks, almost bouncing on her feet.

Taking hold of her hand, we both make our way towards what will soon be our beautiful home. Since moving out of Martin's, we have been renting a ground floor flat in Clifton. It's nice, but it's not ours. And both Henna and I have been searching for a home to finally call ours, for quite some time now. Henna first saw Charmwood Cottage online, and instantly fell in love with it. But thought it was out of our price range. But unbeknown to my tender-hearted fiancée, with the money that her father has given her, and with the money that my own father has given me, combined with how well the new Avonmouth shipping branch is doing—we can most certainly afford to now make it ours.

"What do you think?" My hand squeezes Henna's, wanting to hear what she thinks now that we are inside of the cottage.

Her eyes are still girlishly wide and bright as she takes in all that Charmwood has to offer. "And we really can afford it?" She quietly asks again.

Chuckling, I just need to embrace Henna. To embrace her and to love her. "I promise you, we can afford it." Are my soft and honest words. "Business is booming, as they say." My smile rests on Henna's excited expression. I have been waiting for this moment. Waiting to repay Henna for falling in love with me, and for letting me fall in love with her. "My father wants to contribute towards our future, just like yours does, Henna...so please just say yes to this place?"

Her smile starts spreading right across her face, and from nowhere, a squeal soon exits her mouth. "I can't believe it, Danny! This is a pee pants moment!" She's cuddling me, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "I just can't believe that this place is really going to be ours."

Laughing, I am now stroking Henna's stomach. "All of ours." I lovingly and proudly say, caressing the place that keeps our babies safe and secure until their precious arrival in four months time.

Henna looks down where my hands protectively lay on her pregnant belly, smiling because she loves how infatuated I am with our beautiful growing babies bump. "Our girls are going to love living here." She then looks up, leaning in to kiss me. "Thank you." She whispers, blessing my mouth with a succession of small and very grateful little kisses.

I am so happy. Proud and so completely happy. "How's the bladder holding up?" I ask with a cheeky small smirk.

Henna cutely wrinkles up her nose and humorously rolls her eyes. "Like an overfilled water bomb that has two tiny bums sitting on it." She tells me with a growing grin.

Being pregnant with our twin girls suits Henna. Motherhood is something that Henna is going to seamlessly slip right into. She's such a natural with Fi and Jimmy's baby son, I can already see what a wonderful mother she is going to be. She is just so patient and so gentle. Even when we found out that we were expecting twins, Henna wasn't fazed or freaked out by the news, she just excitedly embraced it and calmly welcomed it into our lives. Together, we are now preparing ourselves for parenthood. Together, we are ready.

We were initially planning on getting married this year, but when we found out that Henna was pregnant, we decided to wait until next summer. With our little girls preciously present, I will marry their amazing mother. They won't be old enough to remember it, but one day they will look at all of the wedding photographs and see for themselves the love that they were fatefully born into.

I love Henna, and Henna loves me.

Love is such an amazing thing, isn't it?

It heals.

It doesn't judge.

It's indiscriminate.

It's fearless.

It's harmonising.

It's unconditional.

And it's sacred.

Love happens when you least expect it. It can happen with the unlikeliest of people in the unlikeliest of places, during the unlikeliest of times. But when it happens, you won't stop it. I've said it before, and I'll now say it again—there really is a someone out there for us all.

Henna is forever my someone, and I am forever her someone.

Both of us...someone's someone.

                                                      The End