“Hmm,” she hums before wetting her bottom lip. “What happened with your last girlfriend?”
My eyebrows rise. I never thought she’d ask about a past relationship. For a minute there, I watched her fight with herself over doing so. “It was a toxic relationship. She was pretty on the outside, but I quickly learned that looks weren’t everything. She was ugly on the inside. She spent a lot of time getting close to my parents, but my mother saw right through her. She knew she was after their money, especially when she started talking about marriage.”
“Oh,” is her only answer. She glances down at her hands cupping her drink. And I don’t know if it was perfect timing or bad timing because Ivy comes with our pancakes and sets them in front of us, along with a tiny pitcher of syrup.
“Need anything else, guys?” she asks, hands on her hips. We both shake our heads. “Well, enjoy.”
She walks away without another word, and I watch her go, but when I look back at Avery, she’s staring a little too hard.
“What?” I ask tentatively as I begin to dig into my food.
“You know I don’t care about your family’s money, right?”
I pause with the fork halfway to my mouth. “Of course I know that.”
“Good,” she says, breathing a sigh of relief.
“I know you’re a genuine person. And I know that you don’t really like that my family has a lot of money. You’re good, baby girl.”
At the nickname, she smiles a little and starts to cut up her pancakes. “Let’s talk about something else.”
And we do. We spend the next hour talking about random things from our childhoods, just getting to know one another on a deeper level. And when it’s time to go home, I pay the check and kiss her at the apartment building’s entrance before we part ways for the night.
CHAPTER 22
AVERY MOORE
“What movie are we watching anyway?”I ask Ivy as I slip on a pair of my fuzzy socks. My toes are freezing, and the colder weather isn’t helping. I mean, my toes are usually cold, but lately, as night falls, they turn into toesicles.
Reid and Dustin are coming over for a movie night. It was their idea since we all have class tomorrow. Ivy’s already expressed her doubts about Reid and me being able to hide our dating status throughout an entire movie, but I want to see Reid, so I’m the one who agreed for both of us.
Reid and I have been dating for a full three weeks now, sneaking around and going on secret dates throughout the weeks. Dustin often asks where he’s been but then shoos it off, thinking that he’s got a girlfriend in the building. When he said that, I blanched, but Reid later told me that Dustin has thought that all along and had no idea that it was me.
I’ve never been in a relationship that’s been so romantic before. I’m truly falling for this guy, and I can’t stop it from happening. Not that I want to. What we’re doing is the stuff of fairytales, and I almost—almost—forget that we’re hiding the entire thing from Dustin the whole time. That’s what Reid does.He makes me forget. He makes me feel like me, the truest me. And he worships me, both in bed and figuratively.
“Some horror movie of some kind,” she grumps.
“Whose idea was that?” I squeak. I’ve never been a horror fan. They leave me unable to sleep for days afterward, thinking the shadows of my bedroom are hiding ghosts inside them.
“Theirs,” she grumbles as she heads to the front door when knuckles rap against it.
I follow her out and laugh when the knocking becomes a tune. “We’re coming!”
Ivy unlocks the door and swings it open, huffing as she does so. Reid and Dustin are wearing huge grins and come inside as if they own the place. Reid is carrying a couple of two-liter bottles of soda in his hands, and he passes them off to Ivy.
“Avery,” Reid greets, his eyes sweeping my body, taking in my pajamas and ridiculous socks. When his gaze flicks back to mine, there’s heat in them, and it makes me blush hardcore. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I murmur, taking note of how Dustin is watching our exchange. “How about you?”
Dustin slaps Reid on the shoulder. “Dude bench pressed a new self-record today. You should have seen it. It was badass.”
Reid wears a lazy grin at the praise. “Hard work pays off.”
“That it does,” Dustin says.
“Dustin, come help me pour the drinks!” Ivy calls from the kitchen. I hear the ice maker on the fridge whirring and knocking the ice around.
Dustin immediately takes off, and I turn to Reid. “You can’t look at me like that tonight.”
