Page 59 of Merrily Ever After
I sigh and unbuckle myself before joining her.
“Thank you,” she says, pecking me on the lips. “Now change your clothes. You look ridiculous.”
“I knew it,” I mutter, looking down at my mud-stained self. “What are you doing?”
Daniela leans over to her small suitcase and produces a pair of flannel pajama bottoms. “Wow. You’re welcome.”
“You don’t have to—”
She pushes my shoulder until I’m lying back. “Change,” she orders, so I do.
I take the bottoms from her, and lift my hips to shrug off my jeans, but I’ve barely kicked them from my ankles when Daniela suddenly straddles me, pinning my arms to either side of my head.
“Can’t change like this,” I inform her.
She grins. “It was all a ploy, you see. You fell for it.”
“If you want me to strip all you need to do is ask.”
“I know.” She shrugs. “I just wanted to— do you seriously have Christmas-themed underwear on?”
“It’s not like I can wear them in the summer,” I say, defensive as she slides off to sit by my side. She presses a finger into one of the boughs of holly decorating the cotton, then hooks her finger lightly under the waistband.
“This is so you,” she mutters before lifting her eyes back to mine. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on? You’ve been acting weird since we left the airport.”
“I’m always weird.”
“Weirder,” she allows. “And I tried to be patient because I’m amazing like that, but you’re starting to freak me out so—”
“I want you to stay,” I blurt, and she stills. When her smile starts to fade, the nerves take over and everything I’ve been worried about comes tumbling out.
“I know I have no right to ask, but also, I kind of do. Because I love you. I love you so much and I want you to stay here with me and it’s not that I don’t think we can do long distance because obviously we can, but it would beterribleand—”
The roll of her eyes is all the warning I get before she kisses me.
My hands shoot to her face as she grasps my waist, our lips meeting in a way that makes my heart beat so hard I’m worried something is actually wrong with it. It’s a hungry kiss. A heated one. A kiss that speaks to weeks apart and words unsaid and feeling upon feeling upon feeling. Relief floods through my body as every inch of me begs for more, but before I can have it, she pulls away, smiling at my noise of protest.
“You’re an idiot,” she says. Another kiss. This one over much too soon. “Now. Do you want your Christmas present?”
For a moment, I can only stare up at her, confused and horny and completely distracted. “Do I … what?”
“Do you,” she repeats, dragging her bag over to rummage through, “want your Christmas present?”
“Is it a tow truck?”
“No. And it’s also not youractualpresent. That you don’t get until Christmas Day, but I wanted to surprise you. I would have done so last week if I’d known you were going to get all dramatic on me.” She produces a torn brown envelope and holds it out. “Voilà.”
“What is it?”
She takes a deep breath. “Hannah Fitzpatrick. Please do not make me explain the concept of a letter to you.”
She throws it on my lap, and I take out a sheet of paper, skimming the neatly printed words before focusing on three of them at the top.Business graduate program.
I look up. “This is an offer.”
“Yeah,” she says, lifting one shoulder in a careless shrug.
“For a graduate program here.”
