“I do,” Remy squeals, joining in. “I need to know everything so that I can tell our children what they’re getting themselves into when we meet them.”
“Dirty Dancing,” I answer for my brother and study the image on the monitor as he tries to justify his movie pick.
Our babies.
25
CASH
Remy agreesto having a bodyguard with her outside of college. She refuses to budge on being followed into lectures by a man who looks as if he catches aliens from outer space for a living.
“He can wear a hoodie and baggy-assed jeans if it will make you feel better,” I suggest to snickers from Bash.
“No.” Remy is wearing faded jeans and a patchwork waistcoat over a thrift store long-sleeved man’s shirt. She hoists her tote higher onto her shoulder. “Look at me. I can do without attracting more attention than I’m already getting.”
I look at her from the breakfast stool and smile, pulling her between my legs and cupping her face gently in both hands. “Tell the students that you’re off limits. They can’t have you because you’re mine.” I kiss her lips.
“Ahem,” Bash clears his throat. “Yours?”
I wink at Remy. “Okay, mine and occasionally his.”
Remy bats my arm playfully. “You know that isn’t what I mean, Cash.”
She’s right. The swelling on her lower face has gone down, but the bruises linger, fading too slowly to greenish gray. She has tried to cover them with concealer, but all that seems to do is throw a kind of eerie shadow across one side of her face.
“You’re still the most beautiful woman in the world to me.”
She smiles and chews the corner of her lip that didn’t get busted by her ex-boyfriend. “You’ve been practicing your cheesy chat-up lines again.”
“There is no bottom to the barrel he’s scraping,” Bash joins in.
I lock eyes with him. “Tell me you don’t agree.”
“Oh, I do agree. I would maybe just find a less corny way to say it.”
“Such as.” I prompt.
“Such as… Tá mé faoi gheasa do áilleacht.”
I feel Remy’s heart racing through her clothes. “Damn. This is because I was born five minutes before he was. He has to outshine me at every opportunity.”
Bash shrugs. He powered up his tablet when he sat down at the breakfast bar in my apartment earlier but barely glanced at the screen. “Youngestandcoolest. What can I say?”
My cell jumps to life in my pocket and Remy reverses out from between my legs so that I can answer it. It’s the call I’ve been waiting for.
“Sorry, gotta take this. But don’t move.” I raise a warning finger to Remy and stand by the living room window to take the call.
I watch Remy take the stool I just vacated. She leans across the counter, takes a slice of toast from the rack, and spreads it thickly with butter and marmalade.
Turning away from the cozy scene, I murmur into the phone, “We’ll be there,” and end the call.
Bash nods once as I rejoin them and slip my arms around Remy’s waist from behind. Maybe someday I’ll be able to spend time in the same room without touching her, but it’s like she has a magnet in her core that I’m unable to resist.
“That was quick,” she says, her face immediately filling with heat. She stares at the half-eaten slice of toast in her hand. “Sorry. It’s none of my business.”
She keeps doing this, a lot, since she suggested that we consider working closely with Isabella Leone. It’s as though she has been slowly shedding the armor she wore that night and slipping back into her comfort zone of remaining as silent and invisible as possible. I wish she could see that there’s room for both versions of her.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” I nibble her ear. “It is your business, but you’ll have to wait a little longer to find out what it is.”
