Page 3 of Forever More

“Women don’t say no to me. It’s easier to just realize that now and save us the time.”

“Save us what time?” The man may be gorgeous but he talks like I already know what he is talking about.

That and he’s arrogant. A usual turn off for me, but there is something about him—a playfulness mixed with that boyish grin—that has my complete attention.

“The time it’ll take for you to argue with me, pretend you’re not interested, and then grovel as a means of making up when you realize you really are.”

“You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Always.” Another blistering grin that has me smiling in response. “So what do you say we make our own tradition? Whiskey and rolled tacos from the taco shop down the street and no mention of how somewhere along the way we lost our family in some way or another.” He taps the neck of the whiskey bottle against the edge of my glass. “Sound like a plan?”

I smile as I hold on to Lyric a little longer and think about that first Thanksgiving four years ago. How I told him about how I was fumbling blindly through my first year of law school and how he talked about his plight as a struggling artist, bumming the couch of a friend to sleep on, while he tried to get his demo tapes listened to. We talked about our nonexistent families, our likes, our dislikes, and when the weekend was over and our friends returned, how we made a promise to one another to meet again next year regardless of where life had taken us by then.

TWO

Lyric

God, she smells good.

I hold onto Annie a little bit longer and just breathe her in. A small piece of normal in my crazy, chaotic world of touring and groupies and everything in between. A world I fucking love but that I need a break from every now and again.

And she is the perfect kind of break.

Someone who has no problem putting me in my place, who doesn’t lap up my every word because of who I am, and who knew the poor, pitiful Lyric Evermore before the world did.

“You look good. Great.” Beautiful. With her dark hair, the flash of freckles across her cheeks (I know she hates them), and her light eyes, Annie McIntyre is anything but ordinary as she so often claims.

“So do you,” she says and pulls up one of the cuffs on my black t-shirt to look at my biceps. “New ink, huh?” There’s disapproval in her tone and I love that it’s there. She wouldn’t be Annie without it.

“Yep. I got it when the guys and I were in Tokyo.” I shrug at the Japanese letters and think of that night. Way too much saki, a little homesickness, and an odd urge to call her when typically, we don’t talk for weeks at a time.

“Let me guess . . . you had too much to drink? Does that imply you don’t remember what it means?”

I give her half grin. “Something like that.”

But I know exactly what they mean and who I was thinking about as I had the word love tattooed on my arm. It was generic enough that the internet sleuths could decipher it and not think anything of it, while deep down I could keep its meaning to myself.

My own whiskey is slid across the bar top toward me. I let the burn of the first sip hit me before I speak again. “So tell me what’s new? Any intriguing cases you’re working on? Any guilty clients who are actually innocent? Is the legal world still thrilling you? Fill me in.”

3 Years ago

“Cheers to our second annual Annie-Lyric-Thanksgiving taco fest.” I hold my whiskey up and tap it against hers. “This time without the discounted tacos that made us get a little bit sick.”

“Cheers,” she says through a laugh. Her smile is shy, but her eyes are warm as she meets mine again. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to show.”

“What do you mean you weren’t sure if I was going to show? Of course, I’d be here. Isn’t that the promise we’d made each other?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean . . .”

Annie averts those gorgeous eyes of hers down to her glass and hides them behind her thick lashes. Why the sudden shyness?

“It’s only been two months since I moved away. Are you going to tell me you thought I’d forgotten about this tradition? About you?”

“It’s technically not a tradition until it’s been done a few times so . . .”

“You and your technicalities, Annie.” I scoot my chair next to hers, grab her into a bear hug, and press a kiss to the top of her head. “Of course, I’d be here. This is our thing. This. Us. Remember?”

When she looks up at me, I swear there are tears welling in her eyes and as much as I hate the sight of them—the understanding that she thought I’d flake on her—I also love seeing them there too.