Her expression softens and she’s quiet for a beat. “Well, now you know.”
“There has to be a way,” I say, getting back on track. There always is.
Irie lifts a bare shoulder to her ear. “I don’t do long-distance relationships. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Then give me the rest of the semester with you. I’d rather have that than nothing at all.”
“What part of let’s just have fun and not make this complicated did you not catch earlier?” she asks.
“We can have fun without making things complicated,” I say. Our hands rest on the table and my fingers forage for hers until they become intertwined. “I don’t care what comes next. I only care about right here, right now. You and me. I want to cram four years’ worth of what might have been into this last semester. It’s going to be challenging as hell, but there’s nothing I love more than a good challenge.”
Her full lips part, still slicked with their candy-apple shine. “You don’t think you’re rushing this a bit?”
“Oh, I know I am,” I say. What choice do I have when it’s the last quarter and the clock is ticking? “Be mine for the rest of the semester, Irie. And I’ll be yours.”
Her gaze drifts to the half-empty cocktail before her as she loses herself in thought for a moment, and I take the opportunity to pluck a napkin off the table and swipe it across her full lips until all traces of red are gone and it’s nothing but her full lips in all of their bare glory.
Leaning in, I taste her mouth, sweet like the hibiscus flower in her drink, electric like the peppermint gum she popped in her mouth when she thought I wasn’t looking earlier.
“What do you say?” I ask, voice low against her ear.
Her body rises and falls with the deepest of breaths. “Yes.”
Chapter 23
Irie
Talon’s childhood home makes the Vanderbilt Estate look like a backwoods vacation cabin. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but good Lord. The ornate pillars and manicured boxwoods and alabaster fountain in the driveway make simply pulling up an experience to remember. And the windows. This thing has windows for days.
He parks the BMW along the circle drive before leaning across the center console, cupping my cheek in his hand and depositing a kiss on my mouth. It’s been exactly one week since he asked me to be his exclusive.
I still can’t believe I said yes.
“Fair warning,” he says. “They’re assholes, but they’re going to love you.”
I was taken aback when he asked me to join him this weekend in Laguna Cove for his mom’s birthday. He said she was having a small family gathering at his house and he thought it’d be a good opportunity for me to meet everyone. If you ask me, this isn’t my definition of just having fun—this is taking things to the next level. But I managed to talk myself into it by realizing I had nothing to lose by coming … not to mention I thought it’d be neat to meet the woman who was once married to an architectural legend.
A moment later, Talon leads me to the front doors, which must stand at least thirteen or fourteen feet in height. A woman in a gray uniform-style dress greets us, letting us know everyone’s outside in the rose garden.
“You grew up here?” I ask, making sure I whisper so my voice doesn’t echo and bounce off the golf-leafed walls.
He slips his hand in mine. “Technically I grew up in Maritime Valley, but we moved here when I was in junior high … after Mark had his record nine-figure year.”
I pick up on a hint of contempt in his voice, but I don’t pry. Not here. Not when we’re five steps from a wall of sliding glass doors and a small gathering of Talon’s family members on the other side of it.
“Look who’s here!” A lithe woman with coffee-brown hair and a colorful Pucci dress rises from an iron patio chair and ambles toward us, arms stretched wide toward Talon. She wraps him in her arms like she hasn’t seen him in a hundred years, and then she kisses the side of his cheek. He fights a boyish smile that disappears in under two seconds.
“Mom, this is Irie,” he says. “My girlfriend. Irie, this is my mother … Camilla.”
His mom does a doubletake, giving me an obvious once over but not in any kind of rude way, more of a genuinely surprised sort of way. She takes my hand in hers, patting the top of mine as she speaks. “You said you were bringing a friend. I had no idea you were bringing this pretty little thing. When did you two start dating?”
“Just last week, actually,” I answer.
“Well, I’ll be,” Camilla says, her overfilled lips arching up at the corners. “You know you’re the first girl he’s ever brought home.”