He was a little too eager to change the subject. “How are you feeling about LA?”
Her trip was less than a week away at this point, but she hadn’t brought it up much, so he hadn’t pushed.
“Actually…” She shut the door to the dishwasher and pressed the button to start it, then turned to face him. “I was thinking. Would you want to come with me?”
His hands stilled on the dish towel. “Really?”
“Yeah. They’re having someone drive me out, but I figured it would probably be a lot more fun doing it with you. And they rented me this cool house in the Hills. You could explore the city while I’m working, if you want. There’s tons of great food, and places to hike. Have you ever been?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t. But I’d love to. To go with you, I mean.”
Her face creased into a grin. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He leaned in to brush a kiss over her lips. She lookedso damn pretty, her hair pulled back from her face and piled on top of her head, he couldn’t help it. When he pulled away, she grabbed his wrist, tugging him back, kissing him deeper.
“Thank you,” she murmured against his lips.
“I should probably be thankingyou,” he said with a laugh. “Especially since you’d be gone for a whole week, when we…”
He trailed off, the smiles fading from both their faces.When we don’t have much time left.
Luckily, they were saved by his phone buzzing loudly on the countertop: his grandmother.
“Mind if I take this?” he asked, and she shook her head, retreating to the living room to give him some privacy.
Yiayia had called to nail down a few logistics for his own upcoming trip, which, of course, segued into a description of everything currently growing in her garden, plus a detailed rundown of the menu at the cafe one of his uncles had just opened in Athens.
Twenty minutes later, he found Merritt on the back porch, stretched out on one of the lounge chairs, looking up at the stars. He was hit with an intense, unexpected longing to return the favor and ask her to come with him to Greece. It was a gut reflex, the most basic survival instinct. He wanted to be wherever she was, and he wanted her to be wherever he was. Simple as breathing.
Which was a feeling he needed to snap right the hell out of, because they would already be out of each other’s lives by then. Plus, he hadn’t had much luck with his other invitation, his mother leaving him hanging in an all-but-no.
She glanced back, meeting his eyes with an expression so impossibly soft it was hard to believe he’d ever thought of her as anything else. She shifted in her seat, widening her legs so he could sit between them, and he settled back against her chest, her arms around him.
They sat there for a while in thoughtful silence, the uncertainties of the next few weeks hanging heavy over them. It was hard to feel too worried, though, with her body wrapped around him like this, the endless blanket of stars above them reminding him how little any of this mattered. It didn’t scare him anymore, the way it had when he would look up at the same sky as a little kid on the other side of the world. He just felt calm. Like he was part of a plan bigger than he could ever comprehend.
He closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of Merritt’s skin, savoring the soft press of her breasts into his back, her fingers massaging his scalp as she played with his hair, humming softly under her breath. He felt her gather up the top layer in her fist, then smiled at the soft pull of her hair tie wrapping around it, making it stick straight up.
“Is this my LA makeover?”
He opened his eyes in time to see her craning her head to look at her handiwork from the front, then laughing. “Mm-hmm. Man bun is out, tiny fountain ponytail is in.” She glanced down at her own thick, wavy mane, now tumbling over her shoulder, the amusement fading from her face, turning vulnerable. “Should I get my grays covered before we go? I feel like they make me look older than I am.”
This was the first time he’d ever heard her express any dissatisfaction with the way she looked, and the idea that she might be comparing herself to the version of her he’d seen in that music video—the emaciated, haunted-eyed teenager—made his stomach hurt.
He shook his head emphatically, running his fingers through her soft strands, admiring the way they caught the light. “No way. I love them. They make you so…shimmery.”
Her smile crept back, her cheeks going pink. “Well, I earned every last one of them, so I might as well wear them with pride.Like, sorry if you guys don’t like them, because you literally gave them to me.”
He leaned his head back far enough to capture her lips in a kiss. “Even if you were bald, you’d still be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he murmured in Greek, only half on purpose, the language wires in his brain still a little scrambled from talking to his grandmother. As inseparable as they’d become, he still felt shy about saying that kind of thing to her, like maybe it crossed some line they were pretending still existed.
She laughed, her breath gusting against his lips, pulling the hair tie out and running her fingers through his curls. “Have I ever mentioned how hot you are when you speak Greek? Your voice gets so deep and rumbly. It’s really sexy.”
He sat up with a grin, turning around to face her so he was kneeling between her legs. “Oh yeah?”
She nodded slowly, heat flaring behind her eyes.
Jo and Simon were both working late, so he knew he could take his time with no worry of being discovered. He ran his hands up her thighs and beneath her sundress, her stomach contracting under his hands when he met her bare skin. He leaned down to bite her softly above her hip bone.
“I don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to you,” he murmured into her skin, and her hips lifted even before he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her underwear, tugging them down.
