Convalescence

XXVI.

~ song of the chapter!

~~ this is a bit of a long one guys, buckle up

Lili's POV

If there was only word Lili could possibly use to describe the way she had been feeling over the last couple of weeks, it would be amazed.

Amazed at the way her life had changed. Amazed at how happy she'd been. There was truly no other way to express her thoughts.

Maybe grateful would be the other word, and that would be quite a strong one to use.

She was just in awe of Niall and what had transpired in their life and relationship since that first night he came over.

To put it simply, Lili had witnessed firsthand the most beautiful display of growth and admiration that she could never have expected to experience, even in her wildest dreams.

Just under three weeks had passed since Niall had first gone to Lili's house and officially met her family.

Only 19 days had gone by since Lili's two worlds – the one with her family, the other with her boyfriend – had finally collided. And yes, she was keeping track.

19 days since her life fell into place.

Now, almost every day of those 19 days, Niall was at her house, basically appearing whenever he had an ounce of free time.

If he had an early morning session, he swung by the house to share a bottle of red wine with her father at dinner.

Whenever his training took place later in the day, he was passing by in the morning with coffee and donuts, ready to talk to her mom about whatever she'd heard on the news the night before.

Sometimes, he wouldn't check if Lili would even be home before heading over, but she didn't mind at all.

Because of how rare it was for him to have downtime, Niall tried to cherish it as best he could, never taking those moments for granted.

And the fact that he wanted to use what very little time he had to spend time with her and her family was truly special.

It was like living in a fairytale.

There were a lot of little moments that made her smile, but one of her favourites so far had happened when she was coming home from work in the middle of the afternoon about a week ago.

Morning shifts at the club were always the best, because they were short and never demanded very much of the employees. She would be in and out in six hours.

Pulling into the driveway, the last thing Lili expected to see was Niall's shiny black Range Rover parked behind her mom's car.

She knew he'd had the day off, but figured he would just spend it at home relaxing. He was very vague about his plans for the day when they'd spoken on the phone earlier that morning.

And besides, he'd been at the house two days in a row, so she really thought he would want to finally have some time to himself.

But she really shouldn't have been surprised that that wasn't the case anymore.

Just the sight of his car shining in the driveway sent the best kinds of shivers down her spine. No matter how many times she saw him or how many hours they spent together, nothing exhilarated Lili more than seeing her lover.