She visibly shivers but doesn’t say anything.
So I pick up where she left off with boxing her chocolate samples. “Hear your grandma says she saw the flames of hell.”
Tavi nods.
“I saw every last person I’d hurt. It was this massive kaleidoscope of my fuckups. Last thing I remember before I lost consciousness. Woke up in the hospital, eighteen years old, couldn’t stop crying. Mom was there. Told her everything. And she held my hand and said,Family forgives. Whole damn town—they’re my family. She was right. They forgave me. So now—now, I do my best to not fuck up anymore. And I don’t take them for granted. And I don’t judge when I see other people fucking up, because I’ve been there. Know what it’s like. And I know you don’t get through it with people yelling at you. You get through it with people supporting you.”
“That’s why you’re so kind to me,” she whispers.
I shake my head. “You’re not a fuckup. Even when you’re not beingyou, you’re doing it with kindness. You know what you want to do in your life. You know why. You know how it helps the world. You’re in the middle of a hiccup with making it happen, but you’re still doing it.”
“I’m not nice to my family.”
“Definefamily.”
She blinks twice, and then she flings herself at me, pressing kisses to my jaw, wrapping her legs around my hips, and then grabbing my face and holding it to hers. “You should come to Costa Rica with me.”
I get a better grip on her ass—God, she has the best ass—and nuzzle her nose with mine, even though there’s a chill spreading through my veins at the reminder that she won’t stay. “Booty calls in Costa Rica? Sounds fun.”
“I’m the best me there.” She presses a kiss to my lips, and it doesn’t matter how softly she kisses me—it always makes me hard in an instant. “I see the best you. I want you to see the best me.”
“Your grandmother shouldn’t have made you come here.”
Her legs tighten around me. “I’m glad she did.”
And then she’s kissing me, long and slow and thorough, and it doesn’t matter that she’ll leave eventually.
It matters that she’s here now.
That she makes me feel like I’m the king of the whole damn world.
And that she believes in me.
Chapter 25
Tavi
I have finally found something I hate more than I hate mornings.
I hate falling in love.
Hateit.
It’s the worst. The absolute worst.
Why, you ask?
Because right now, I’m sitting in Café Nirvana with Dylan, who’s spent every free minute of the last week with me, helping me plan Shiloh’s birthday party, or helping me experiment with different truffle flavors, or taking my boxes of truffles to the post office for me “because I’ll be in Deer Drop anyway,” or very thoroughly servicing my lady bits with his hands, mouth, and wonder penis, and I’m smiling at Lola Minelli across from us and saying, “Oh, no, we’re just friends.”
I am head over heels in love with the man who I knew better than to let myself have a little crush on, and I have to tell the world thatwe’re just friends.
“But you’re socutetogether,” Lola says.
Her fake enthusiasm makes me want to gag, and I half suspect either she’s reveling in the fact that after theTickled Pink Paperspublished an edition featuring Dylan and me laughing in front of thehalf-finished Ferris wheel, there are rumors in the rest of the tabloids worldwide thatTavi Lightly, internationally famous brand ambassador, is dating aplumber, or she’s mentally rubbing her hands in glee at the idea that we’ll have a messy breakup that’ll give the press something more terrible to say about me.
Maybe she’s not.
Maybe she’s honestly here to improve her soul.
