Page 65 of A Favor Owed

“I want to do normal stuff with you, Pines. I want my hundred dates, then I want to have sex for three days in a row, then I want another hundred dates. Movies, dinners, studying, whatever you want. If you can put up with football on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday, then that, too. Or even just Sunday, unless the Giants are playing on one of the other days. What do you say?”

“You want me to be your girlfriend.” She says it drily, matter-of-factly.

I swallow, not quite believing I’m doing this. This is suicidal. Like, literally. If Angie doesn’t kill me herself, someone in her family very well might. But I’ve run into the burning building, and that’s where I’m staying until it burns down around me and takes me with it.

“Yeah, Ange. I want you to be my girlfriend.”

“Who was the girl with you in the pictures?” she asks. The slight hint of vulnerability in her voice makes my heart smile and break at the same time.

“Were you trolling my Instagram, Pines?” I tease her, earning myself an elbow to the ribs. “That was my sister Siobhan. She has an open position for a girlfriend for me, and your resume’s at the top of her pile. If you take the gig, she’s willing to offer a full benefits package, including unlimited eighties movies and nonstop talking shit about me. So, what do you think?”

She lies there for a couple of minutes, making me sweat it out. I mean, I really didn’t expect anything less, you know? But it’s still excruciating. “Yeah, okay,” she finally says, shrugging her tattooed shoulder.

Yeah, okay.Eh, I’ll take it. I roll on top of her and look down into her fake blue eyes. They don’t look very “Yeah, okay” to me. They look more like “Hell, yeah.”

“You’re looking pretty happy there,” I observe.

“Just make sure you don’t kill my buzz, McDaniels.”

“I won’t. I promise.” It’s an easy promise to make now that the damage is already done. I have no more dirt to dig up on her, no more debts to pay. One day she’s going to find out, but not today. Today she’s mine.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Angela

We end up having to spend three days at the Cataluña Hills Hotel until the fire is under control and the air is clean enough for classes to resume. All our professors email us reminding us to keep up with assignments. The message is clear:This is law school, folks, and we don’t stop for natural disasters.Brady and I study on the beach. He turns out to be a lot more effective study partner than my official study group, always having answers to my hypos or coming up with his own.

“You’re really good at this law stuff,” I tell him as we lie out on our hotel towels on the beach, books and highlighters open.

“It’s growing on me,” he says.

“I’ll bet whoever you marry will appreciate it,” I say. “It’s not like people worry about their lawyer spouses when they go off to work.”

He throws me one of his shit-eating grins. “I’m marrying you, Pines.”

I throw one back at him. “Then stick with firefighting, McDaniels.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “Consider my balls officially busted.”

At night we sleep together in one of the beds. Brady’s body, otherwise known as the Last Temptation of Angela, is getting more and more difficult to resist. I don’t really want to resist. I’m pretty much dying to have sex with him. But he noticed my initial hesitation and isn’t pushing it.

“You bought condoms,” I say as his mouth makes its mind-blowing way down my body on our last night in the hotel. I saw him buy them at Target when we picked up a few things I hadn’t brought with me.

“Yeah,” he says, pausing, bringing his mouth back to mine. “Just, you know, in case.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s cool.”

“Technically we’ve had like fifteen dates, Pines,” he says, smiling.

“You’ve shown heroic restraint.”

He laughs. “I actually like the whole taking-it-slow thing.”

“I take it that’s a novel concept for you.”

“A body I want to spend every second of every day getting to know is a novel concept for me,” he says, but then he decides to use that chatty mouth for other things.

When it’s time to leave the next morning, Brady checks us out and has his car brought around. It still has a coating of dust. Black ash is caked around the windshield and side mirrors, and the interior still smells slightly of smoke.

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