I reached for her hand across the table. “Say you’ll come with me to the UK.”
She looked up sharply. “What? When?”
“Over the break.”
“But…I can’t leave my mother and brother for Christmas.”
“After, then. We’re off school until the first week of January. Plenty of time.”
She stared, absorbing this, thinking. “If I can go—if—it can only be a little while. I don’t trust my mother. But maybe for a few days? Maybe I can ask Mrs. Andolina to check in on them?”
“So will you?”
“You want me to meet your family?”
“More than anything. You’ll love my brothers.”
“And your parents?” Harper looked uncertain. “I’m not…what they’re used to.”
“You’re perfect,” I said. “Please, come. A stamp in your passport.”
“Okay,” she said, her dark eyes lighting up with the idea. “Yes. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Brilliant.”
Harper shook her head, disbelieving. “I love you...and...I love this damn ring.” She looked up to see my triumphant smile. “And oh my God, you can take that smug, victorious look right off your face.”
“No,” I said, laughing. “I don’t think I will. I think I’m going to wear this for the rest of the evening, thank you.”
She laughed too, and we ate our expensive seafood and went back to my place, and I took her to bed where the ring was the only thingshewore for the rest of the evening.
Chapter 25Harper
On the last day before winter break, Dean, Xander, and I left the Math& Physics Club meeting and stepped out of the Academy into a quiet afternoon under a cold gray sky. The walkways were scraped of snow, and most students had gone home already.
Dean and I observed a moment of silence for Xander; the club had asked him to host the Christmas party, and he’d been touched by everyone’s eagerness to meet his physicist father, who was falling further into dementia.
“So, how are things with Emery?” I asked eventually, as we crossed the parking lot. “She gives me a stellar report about you. You’re really nailing the whole boyfriend thing.”
That coaxed a smile from Xander. “Good to know.”
“And?” Dean said, wagging his eyebrows. “How goes it on your end? I haven’t had a chance to have some manly man talk with my best bro in a while.”
I rolled my eyes, but secretly I was glad to see Dean acting a little bit more like himself today, and not nervous and twitchy, or with hisnose buried in his phone.
“Things are fine,” Xander said. “Perfect, actually, except—”
“Except you can’t tell anyone or go anywhere where people will see you,” I finished. I knew the drill, and kept my right hand securely in my pocket, away from Xander’s observant eyes.
“Yes, that,” he said.
“Her dad is a piece of work,” Dean said. “But hey, in a few short months, she’ll be eighteen and can tell him to fuck off forever.”
Xander shot me a silent plea to keep his secret. He hadn’t told anyone—not even his best friend—that he’d promised to marry Emery to help her escape her family if it came down to it, while Dean knew about Orion, and I knew about Sierra. I wondered, not for the first time, how many secret relationships were floating around this institution.
A goddamn smorgasbord of Romeo and Juliets.
“What about Christmas gifts?” Dean asked. “Last year, we did a white elephant for the club. That was a hit, even if I ended up with a wall hanging of a singing fish.”
