Page 123 of Dirty Pool

“Are you still set on the lawyer thing?” he asked.

“Why not?”

Michel shrugged. “Because here, you can do anything.”

Gabbie winked. “And that’s what I want to do.”

“All right. We can head to the college tomorrow and start the process to get everything transferred for you. If your grades are good enough, we shouldn’t have any problems.” Then, he smirked sinfully, adding, “And just in case they are a little iffy … I have enough money to pay your way in.”

She didn’t even think before picking up a normal pillow from the bed and whipping it at him. He barely managed to catch the pillow before it hit him right in the face, which probably would have been a grand sight to see.

“Hey,” she joked, “my grades are perfect.”

“I have no doubt.”

“You do—you just said so!”

“In case, I said … in case, Gabbie.”

She threw another pillow at him.

He blocked that one, too.

“And,” she added, “I can’t be too mad at you because I love that you want to take me there tomorrow. Like it can’t wait a day or a week.”

Michel’s gaze met hers, and love shined back. “I want you to be happy, Gabbie.”

“With you, I am.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What about pre-med for you?” she asked.

Michel shifted on his feet before leaning over on the bed. He used his palms against the sheets to keep him steady as he grinned. “I had acceptances from colleges all across this state—they’ll jump to take me, so I’m not worried.”

“Arrogant,” she tossed at him.

He just laughed. “You know it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were adopted?”

“It’s not important to me,” Michel said. “I never knew my real parents, and I didn’t find out about the adoption until I was a teenager. It just … I know some people expected me to make a thing about it, but I never cared. I know who my mother and father are, and it showed me that sometimes, blood doesn’t make a family.”

She could tell he wasn’t lying.

“Is your sister also adop—”

“Catherine is the spit from my mother’s mouth, and the apple of my father’s eye. If there was ever a perfectly terrifying combination of the two of them, it is her. She is their biological child, can’t you tell?” Michel shook his head, adding, “They are so alike, in fact, that it has become a running joke to the rest of us, one they aren’t aware of because then we would have to listen to all of them go on about it together. At the same time, Gabbie.”

Gabbie pressed her lips together to keep from grinning. “Oh, you have a sibling complex, huh?”

“You didn’t have Catherine as a teenager growing up next to you, let me just say. She purposely seeks out trouble … it’s what she does. I love her, but facts are still facts.”

“And so do you, apparently.” Michel stilled across the bed, and Gabbie arched a brow to challenge him to deny it. “But am I wrong, though?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“Right.”