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I laughed at that. It was also a good reminder that Nova was still young. I puzzled over the fact that I didn’t know exactly how old she was. “How old are you?” I finally asked.
“Twenty. Why? How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Oh,”
“What does, ‘Oh’ mean?”
“I knew you were older than me, but it’s just weird to think that you’re eight years older.”
“I thought you were nineteen still. When did you turn twenty?”
Nova ducked her head, and I didn’t miss the blush on her face as she did so. Something happened on her birthday that she was embarrassed about. “It was not that long ago.”
“When?” I demanded to know.
She sighed and I watched as her shoulders slumped. Her answer wasn’t going to be good, and I felt like an asshole for pushing, considering it looked as though the answer might ruin the night I’d spent so long working on putting together.
“October 29th.”
Her answer was the date and nothing of the reason behind her reaction. I started counting back and realized that two days before Halloween was the day that… Fuck. It was the day that she’d seen me with Dee and Connie in the common room and then again with Connie being carried out of my room naked later that same day.
“Fuck!” the word came out on a growl while Nova refused to meet my eyes. “I wish you would have said something sooner.”
“Why? When would have been a good time to say, ‘By the way, it’s my birthday!’?
“Maybe before your actual birthday,” I suggested so that we could avoid talking about what happened that day.
“I didn’t think anyone would care.”
I shook my head and moved over to wrap my arms around her. “Even when I was stuck in my head and being a jerk because you rejected the first date I was supposed to take you on, it never meant I didn’t care. Sure as fuck didn’t mean Kip wouldn’t want to know.”
“It’s the first year that I didn’t have my family around,” she admitted. I squeezed her a little tighter in response. I still wanted to kill her family. They’d laid all their baggage at her feet and made her carry that shit even though she hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve it.
“I’m sorry. We’ll make your birthday something special next year. It’s a big one, since you’ll be legal to drink then.” I winked at her as I looked down to see how she was handling everything.
“Well, considering I don’t really drink, twenty meant more than twenty-one.”
“How so?”
“I’m an actual adult and not a teenager anymore.” I cringed at the thought that she had been a teenager only a short time ago and I’d been imagining all the ways I wanted to see her naked and all the dirty things I wanted to do once I got her that way. Fuck me, there was something wrong with that picture, even if she had been legal.
“Are there usually lights up out here?”
“No, we put them up earlier.”
She smiled at me again. “You had help?”
“Yeah, smarter people than me had to rig up my ideas so I didn’t run the risk of burning the place down. Originally, I wanted to put a bunch of candles out here, but it was suggested that I use these lights instead.” I pulled the remote out of my pocket and showed it to her.
“They change color!” She clapped excitedly and stole the remote from me and immediately changed the lights to a purple color that dimmed the light around us and made us less visible than we’d been under the bright white lights.
“Is this your favorite color?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Good to know.” I pulled her over to the center of the gazebo where I had a nest of cushions and blankets laid out for us to sit down on. Nova took it a step further and laid down on her side facing me, so I followed suit and mimicked her pose.
