Page 98 of Yours, Unexpectedly

“How… how was she…”

Bex points her chopsticks at me. “That is exactly how I felt after running into her in the bathroom at my final lunch with Claudette and the staff! She totally threw me!” She hesitates. “But she also made it seem as if she was on my side. Well, your side, more specifically, but—I’m not sure how to describe it…” Her eyes grow sad. “There was almost a—a solidarity in her actions? As if, this isn’t the first time your dad has crossed a line.”

“This is definitely not the first time Erik has crossed a line,” I scowl. My blood still boils when I think about that man getting anywhere near Bex. “I should have been there.”

She pushes back from the table, rounding it before motioning for me to push my chair back as well. Her leg comes over my lap so she’s straddling me, her forehead meeting mine so she’s all I see. My hands skate up her thighs and around to her ass, giving a playful squeeze. I can finally breathe for the first time in two weeks now that she’s here.

“There is nothing you could have done to prevent it. And maybe… maybe we can do a restraining order or something. I’m still processing through all of that, but I know that it’s not your fault.” Her hands come up to bracket my face. “Do you hear me? It was not your fault.”

I nod against her forehead as relief sweeps through me. I can work with this. We can move forward together, finally.

“I got a job too,” I say, sensing Bex’s need to be done with this for now.

She pulls back so she can look me in the eye. “Of course you did. You’re Anders fucking Olsson—who wouldn’t want you?!”

I squeeze her ass again because I can’t help it. “But only you get to have me.”

“Of course I do. I’m your Baby Bardot.” She winks. “What’s the job?”

“Funnily enough, I’ll be doing a Shakespeare festival in upstate New York for the summer, but I also have several interested agents that I’ve been too distracted to sift through.”

“Don’t worry, I can help you run lines now. I took an acting class in college once and had an excellent teacher.”

“Ugh,” I groan. “I was your TA! You can’t go around telling people that that’s how we met. And that’s not even how we met!” I’m riled up now.

“Whatever you say, teach.”

“Dear God. You’re going to make this a thing, aren’t you?”

“For your information, I was talking about Professor Callahan. He’s an excellent acting teacher!”

Now her ass gets a slap. “You are such a brat!”

“You love it,” she leans in for a kiss.

“I love you,” I retort, slotting my mouth back over hers.

The push and pull of her tongue is extremely distracting. As is the way she’s grinding down on my lap. So much so that I almost forget the last part of my surprise. “Wait,” I say, pulling her face away from mine.

“I don’t want to wait,” she murmurs, kissing up and down my throat and across my jaw. “Waited long enough,” she mumbles.

“I have a present for you, though.” That gets her attention.

“I love presents.” She does a little clap-shimmy move that has me distracted again. I lift her off of my lap before I decide to throw her over my shoulder and haul her back to the bedroom.

Grabbing the bag from the backpack I abandoned by the door, I walk back over to her and place it on the table. She doesn’t wait for permission before tearing into it and pulling out the ceramic fortune cookie she gave me the night of my showcase.

“I don’t think you even realized, but when you ran from Erik you dropped the bag with this in it. He gave it back to me before I—well, before I came to find you but by that point it had cracked, and when I pulled it out after you left, it completely split in two. It took lots of glue and some patience but… I loved what it symbolized. And I wanted us to have it. So I guess I’m kind of re-gifting it, but it seemed romantic and now I’m rambling and you’re just staring at it.”

When she looks up at me, tears are in her eyes. I immediately kneel down beside her. “No, baby. Don’t cry. Is it terrible? Here, just put it back—”

She yanks it out of my reach. “I love it. I thought I had lost it and now it’s here. I thought I had lost you and now you’re here. I—I love it.”

I nuzzle into her neck, needing to be near her. “There’s a fortune inside for you,” I mutter, unreasonably nervous about this part.

“An unexpected relationship will become permanent,” she reads, slight confusion crossing her face.

“I actually… uh, well, I’ve had this fortune since the day we ran into each other again—that first day of class.”

---