“Nice to meet you,” Moreau said, extending a hand. “You must be the infamous Loretta.”
“Breathe,” Geo called to her.
Loretta took a choppy breath. “I, um, yes. That’s me. I’m Loretta.”
“I’m disappointed,” Moreau said. “Geo promised me that you would be proposing marriage within moments of meeting me.”
Loretta laughed and her cheeks went pink. “Actually, I just got back together with my husband so no can do.”
“Loretta, really?” Geo tugged the older woman into her arms. “That’s such good news.”
“Wouldn’t say no to a selfie though,” Loretta said, batting her eyes at Moreau.
He laughed, and then, glancing back at Atlas and knowing what he was supposed to say, he agreed. “But only if you wait a few days to post it. So that my location isn’t known to fans, yes?”
“Post it?” Loretta asked in confusion. “Honey, a photo of you and me is not for public consumption. I’m going to print it out for my fridge.”
Geo took the picture, with Loretta cheesing hard and Moreau giving his movie star smile. At the last moment, Geo raised her eyebrow at him and it made that plastic smile crack into a genuine one. Loretta didn’t even know how lucky she was to capture that smile on camera.
Geo took a deep breath as they left Loretta behind. That had been the easy part. She lingered outside her dad’s closed door, looking at it in chagrin.
“I’m sorry in advance if he says something rude. Or tries to fleece you out of your life savings. Or—”
Moreau stopped her worried list with a kiss. “Savannah, I won’t care about any of that. I have become very good at putting on internal ear muffs. You know how many lunches I’ve had to sit through with production company execs who think they can say whatever they want to me? I am very good at smiling and ignoring.”
She took a deep breath again. “Okay.”
“We’ll stay for an hour, go back to the bunker, eat lunch, and I’ll beat Atlas at ping pong.”
Though Atlas was doing his best to give them privacy, apparently he couldn’t fight the scoff that worked its way up out of him. They all grinned, but Geo turned back to Moreau.
“You’re trying to tell me that the world is just going to keep on turning, aren’t you, Cookie?”
Moreau grinned, full and bright and filled with genuine happiness. “Yes, Kitty.”
Geo turned then and stepped through the door to her father’s room, but in her mind, that door was the door to her entire life. She wasn’t going to keep doors locked for Moreau anymore. She knew that letting someone into her heart wasn’t going to be something she did once and then it would magically stick forever. Nope, she was going to have to let Moreau in over and over again.
As he squeezed her hand and cracked his face open with a genuine smile, Geo realized just how easy it was going to be.
PART FIVE
CHAPTER ONE
Sophomore year of high school
“What’s goin’ on, playa?”
Javier Rook winced as his best friend plunked himself down in the seat next to him. James Lake didn’t usually feel the need to attend fourth period American history and even though the two boys had been been friends for a long time, Rook never really minded that. Because when James didn’t make it to fourth period American history that meant Rook had an empty seat next to him. And when he had an empty seat next to him, occasionally the hottest girl in his entire world would sit in it.
“You know I hate it when you call me that,” Rook grumbled in his low voice.
“Why?” James asked, in his naturally loud tone. “Calling someone a playa is a compliment.”
James’s loud voice was drawing the attention of the other kids in the class, much to Rook’s chagrin. Including the hottest girl in the entire world, who’d just walked into the classroom and caught the end of the playa comment. Her expression thinned.
“No, dude,” Rook corrected his misguided friend. “It’s really not a compliment. Calling someone loyal is a compliment. Calling someone a player should be an insult.”
Rook didn’t look up to see how she’d taken his comment, or if she’d even still been listening. Everyone knew that her father cheated on her mother with any piece of tail that happened to walk into his car dealership.
For as long as he could remember, people had talked about her family. And for as long as he could remember, she’d held her head high in spite of it.
He chanced a glance at her to see that she was sitting in a seat two rows up, her back to them. He would have preferred to have her sit in the seat next to him. But sitting in front of him was good too. That way he had a nice view during class.
He couldn’t have designed a more gorgeous girl if God himself had given Rook some sort of mystical wand and a few hours of free time.
May Jones was perfect.
She had black hair that was sometimes long and sometimes fashionably short. It was the end of the school year, so she’d just gotten it sheared off into a cut that swung around her chin and made Rook want to tuck it behind her ears. At first, he’d missed her long hair, but then he’d quickly realized that having it short showed off her graceful neck. And it framed her pretty face. May’s face was shaped like an oval. She had round, dark eyes, proud cheekbones, and the fullest mouth Rook had ever seen. Her mouth literally made him sweat when they were talking to one another.
Tabby, Rook’s older sister, had once explained to him that a man should never look at a woman’s mouth or chest when he was talking to her, because the woman could always tell. So whenever May decided she wanted to strike up a conversation with Rook, he kept his eyes glued to May’s. Luckily, he had incredible peripheral vision.
The class straightened up with curiosity when a youngish man in glasses and a button-down shirt entered the classroom. Rook groaned internally. This day was not his day. First, James had taken May’s seat. And now, the infamously hot substitute was going to be teaching their class.
All the girls in the class started whispering to one another and all the boys rolled their eyes. This particular sub was either loved or hated by everyone in the school, depending on whether you wanted to make out with him or you envied the fact that everyone wanted to make out with him. Either way, he was the subject of great discussion whenever he was taking over one of the classrooms.
Rook watched while May ran her fingers through her hair and quickly put on some chapstick before slipping it back into her bag.
He bit back another groan. He’d had the misfortune of hearing May whisper to her friends about the hot substitute the last time he’d led their classroom. “He’s got to be the most good-looking man on the planet,” she’d whispered. “I wonder if he has a girlfriend.”
Rook eyed the sub, Mr. Grieves. But only for a disheartening minute. Mr. Grieves had curly blonde hair that he kept styled back off his face, pale skin and bright blue eyes. He also had the features of a Ken Doll. Apparently, that was May’s type.
He couldn’t have looked any different from Rook if he’d tried. Rook had brown hair that was chestnut in the summer and almost black in the winter. His eyes, if you shown a light on them, were a clear blue, but his brow was naturally low over them and they always looked boring and dark in pictures. He also had a face like a Neanderthal. Well, in comparison to pretty boy Grieves, he did. Rook had the blunt features of his Irish father, full brow, flattish nose, frowning mouth. The only thing he’d gotten from his Cuban mother was her pretty, tan skin. Rook found his looks to be incongruous. His coloring was strange when you put it all together. In the summer, his skin was a dark tan and his hair was lightened by the sun. In the winter, his skin was paler, but his hair was darker. Not to mention his beard, which had practically grown in overnight last summer. Even at sixteen, he had more of a beard than the pretty boy who was currently doing the roll call at the front of the classroom. Of course, his beard just had to be auburn. Yet another way to throw his coloring off. What was one more way to make him
look weird? Why not throw a red beard on there.
Either way, he’d had to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t May’s type. Though she’d never dated anyone in the school, she’d already agreed to go to prom this weekend with Travis McKinnon. A senior who was just as blonde as Mr. Grieves.
As a sophomore, Rook wasn’t even allowed to go to the prom. Unless a senior girl had asked him.
“May Jones.”
“Present!” she called, twiddling two fingers at Mr. Grieves when her name was called.
Rook sighed and started flipping through his notes for class. He tuned out the rest of the roll call, knowing that alphabetically he’d be last and knowing, for sure, that Mr. white bread was going to butcher his name anyways.
And sure enough. “Jay-Vee-Air Rook?”
Unwilling to go through the embarrassing ordeal of correcting the substitute’s pronunciation of a name he barely went by anyways, Rook just stuck two fingers in the air and caught the sub’s eye to let him know he was there.
“Actually, it’s pronounced Ha-Vee-Air,” May unexpectedly piped up.
Rook’s eyebrows jumped up in surprise. He hadn’t expected her to speak up for him. Maybe she was just using any excuse to get Mr. Grieves’s attention again.
But then, May turned in her seat to catch Rook’s eye.
“Or,” she continued. “You can call him Javi if you’re friends with him.” She unleashed that deadly smile on Rook for a hot second before she turned back around in her seat.
May Jones and his mother were the only two people on Earth who ever shortened his name to Javi. Everyone else just called him Rook.
The sub had everyone get their textbooks out and James leaned across the aisle to whisper to Rook. “Dude, she’s totally hot for you.”
“Who? May?” Rook whispered back. His stomach was in knots.
“Duh.”
Rook shook his head. “She’s just being friendly. We’re friends.”
James raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “Whatever you say, man. But you might be missing the opportunity of a lifetime. May Jones is smokin’.”
***
“Did you hear that May Jones gave Travis McKinnon a black eye at prom last night?”
Hearing that, Rook sat straight up, knocking the open book off his chest and nearly upending the can of coke he’d screwed into the sand next to him. Above him seagulls whirled and cawed, and behind him the whoosh of the Coney Island rollercoasters was on constant repeat. As usual for the first truly hot weekend of the year, the beach was absolutely packed with people. He’d been dozing on a too-small towel, the sun hot on his eyelids and his feet buried in the sand when the sound of James’s loud voice pulled him straight out of a loopy dream.
“What?” one of their friends, Matt, asked James. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah.” James nodded. “Misty told me about it when I invited them to join us this afternoon.”
“You invited them?” Rook asked, one hand automatically going to the back of his neck. “Here?”
“Yeah.”
“Misty and…” Rook prompted.
“Misty, Julia, and May. Apparently they were all having a sleepover when I called this morning, so I invited all three of them.”
“Only three?” Matt complained. “But there’s five dudes.”
Two of their friends were out in the water, body surfing.
“I didn’t invite them for us all to hook up,” James said, kicking at the sand. “But, you know, if that ends up being on the table, dibs on Misty.”
Rook couldn’t help laughing because now everything was making sense. When he’d gotten the call from James this morning to get his ass to the beach or else, Rook had thought it was a weird way to get invited to Coney Island. But now he realized that James had probably called Misty to ask her out on a date, then realized she was with a group of girlfriends and had to materialize a group-date situation out of thin air.
“She gave him a black eye?” Rook asked, resting his elbows on his bent knees and hoping he sounded casual.
“Two, actually,” a voice said from behind him. Rook recognized it as belonging to Misty.
Rook tipped his head back over his shoulder and felt ropes in his stomach get pulled painfully tight. Because there was a barefoot May Jones standing a foot away from him. Her girlfriends were standing just behind her, but Rook barely even noticed them. May’s hair was tousled by the wind and in her face. She wore an oversized Yankees T-shirt and, as far as he could tell, no pants. She tossed her bag onto the sand next to Rook.
“You gave Travis McKinnon two black eyes?” Matt asked in awe.
May shrugged and dug in her bag for a towel. She laid it out, but the wind kept catching the corners so Rook leaned over and held down one end while she spread out the other. His fingertips were tingling as a thin layer of sweat sprang out all over his skin. He was helping May Jones spread out a towel so that she could lie down next to him.
He wished he were still wearing a T-shirt. He was just wearing his worn out bathing suit that had been blue at the start of last summer, but was now a kind of faded gray. He wasn’t ashamed of his body, but he also had absolutely no idea what May might think of his bare chest. He played varsity soccer, but wasn’t nearly as lean as the other guys. He was built like his dad. Thick and wide. He’d always put on muscle easily, but he still had a thin layer of puppy fat that had some of the girls on the cheerleading squad referring to him as Teddy Bear.
He freaking hated that. What sixteen-year-old kid wanted girls to think of him as a teddy bear?
He figured there was no unself-conscious way to put his T-shirt back on, so whatever May thought of his bare chest and stomach, he was just gonna have to live with it.
Julia and Misty had captured the other boys’ attention so when May sat crosslegged on her towel and faced out to the waves, Rook had the alarming feeling that the two of them were kind of … alone together.
“Is that Eddie and Antoine out there?” May asked, squinting out at the water.
“Yeah.”
Rook cast around for something more to say. He really, really wanted to have a conversation with her.
“So, I’m guessing that prom didn’t go how you were expecting it to go?”
She winced a little. “Not exactly.”
He cleared his throat. “You, uh, wanna talk about it?”
“Travis is an asshole.”
“I could have told you that. Saved you the trouble of buying a dress.”
He’d been making a light joke, but she turned to him with a curious look in her eyes. “Seriously? You knew that he was a jerk?”
Rook cleared his throat again. “Meh. I never liked him. He always talks a big game about the girls he’s with.”
“Hmm.” She leaned back on her palms and winced again, this time because she was in pain. She picked up her right hand and kind of cradled it on her lap.
Rook’s eyes traveled down to her lap and zeroed in on her hand. “Shit,” he muttered in a low voice, noting the bruising on her knuckles. “You really did it, huh? You punched him?”
May looked down at her hand as well, flexing her fingers. “Yup.” She popped the p sound and raised her eyebrows.
“Here.” Rook leaned over to their cooler and pulled out another coke that had been floating around in the melting ice. “Hold this on your knuckles, it’ll help a little.”
“Thanks.” May said, eyeing Rook for a minute after she pressed the can to her bruised hand.
He was just opening his mouth to say something else when she suddenly stood up.
“I think I’m gonna join them in the water.”
“Oka—” He choked the rest of the word down his tight throat when she smoothly stripped off her big T-shirt and dropped it onto the towel behind her.
Rook felt like he was in a beer commercial or something. In reality, she’d taken her shirt off in about two seconds, but he felt as if he’d watched it in slow motion, as if she’d performed some kind of
strip tease for him.
Because suddenly, she was standing there in a black bikini with multi-colored beads all over it with her ass barely covered and her little waist tucked in and just two knots holding the damn thing on her chest.
That was what he couldn’t take his eyes off of. Normal bras were complicated and he’d had only fair-to-middling success in removing them in his fairly limited experience. But May’s swimsuit wasn’t fastened on with hooks. Nope. It was simply tied on. And he knew how to undo knots.
She turned back over her shoulder and caught him looking, but he was so dazed by the sudden appearance of her hot little body that he wasn’t even embarrassed that he was mouth-open staring.
“You comin’, Javi?” she asked, tilting her head to one side.
He practically jumped to his feet. Yes. Hell yes. She walked to the ocean and he was just a few feet behind her, feeling as if she’d tied a rope around his neck and was tugging him along like a dog on a leash. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her ass.
The water was freezing and she yelped and laughed when it lapped around her knees. “Cold!” she shouted to him.
Then she turned and dove gracefully into an oncoming wave, surfacing with another delighted shout, as shiny and dark as a seal.
It really was cold, and Rook probably would have rather been on the warm sand right then, but May Jones had asked him to swim, and dammit, he was going to swim. He dove after her and the two of them swam out to where Eddie and Antoine were paddle-boarding around.
The four of them messed around for a while, trying to shove each other off the boards, the boys trying to impress May. May kept de-throning Rook from his paddle-board but he figured it was because he was an easy target. Even though they were all wrestling in the water, he was trying to keep it respectful and not get too handsy with May, so she was winning all of their battles over the board.
After a half an hour or so, Antoine and Eddie paddled in on one of the boards, too chilly to stay out any longer. But May and Rook stayed out. She lounged on the paddle-board like it was a deck chair and she was a movie star while Rook trod water next to it, his elbows propped next to one of her arms.
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