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Luna huffs but puts down the present-slash-weapon and reaches for the last one. The only one I’m actually nervous about.
“Don’t kill me, okay?”
“Great start.” Luna snickers but her laughter abruptly dries up when she opens the slim envelope in her hands. She pulls out the contents gently, hands trembling like she’s scared she might ruin them. Her throat bobs as she swallows, her voice a little shaky. “I don't think I can accept this.”
“You can,” I disagree. “No returns.”
“They're-”
“Flexible,” I finish for her. Flexible return tickets from New York to Los Angeles, valid any time within the next year. One for her, one for her mom, in case Luna wants to go home or Isla wants to come to us. Whatever they want. “You can use them whenever you want.”
“Jackson,” she breathes my name like it’s a complaint and a praise. “Too much.”
“Not enough,” I reply, crawling over and flopping down beside her, pressing my lips to her shoulder.
I'd give the girl the fucking world if I could.
Even if the girl very clearly doesn’t want it.
With shiny eyes, she pouts. “I don’t wanna give you your presents now.”
“You already gave it to me.” And the now-shredded scrap of pink lace on the hotel room floor was put to good use.
“That wasn’t your present.”
“Felt like one.” As blue eyes roll, I shuffle upright, leaning against the headboard with my hands folded in my lap. “Come on, then. I want my presents.”
Every last one of her grumbled protests, I refute. She doesn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t expecting anything in the first place. That she could get me dirt and I’d be the happiest man alive. That I’ve never gotten a present that was actually forme, that didn’t revolve around a price tag.
And a Bob Ross mug with a Target label on the bottom?
That’s definitely for me.
32
JACKSON
The restof our week in New York is a blur, with Luna in full-on tour guide mode, ushering me around the city, cramming in as much sightseeing as possible. And eating. So much eating. The Evans girls can really pack it away; I have to fight to keep up.
I don’t mind any of it. Luna looks so damn adorable, wrapped up in a bright pink faux fur coat and a matching hat pulled low on her forehead, cheeks flushed from the cold, gripping my hand and bouncing on the balls of her feet like an overexcited toddler.
And she looks happy. Really fucking happy. Like, grinning from ear to ear every waking moment of the day. Laughing more than I've ever heard her laugh before. And not the cute little chuckle either, the real cackle that she hates but I love.
It’s that laugh that stops me from objecting when she grabs my hand and drags me towards what is quite possibly my worst nightmare.
Give me a seven foot tall horse to ride? I'll do it.
A barn roof needs repairing? Easy.
Strap a pair of skates on my feet and throw me on a patch of ice? It's not going to be pretty. Especially when that patch of ice has what looks like hundreds of people zipping around on it.
“It'll be fun,” Luna promises as she drags me towards a stall renting skates.
Fun, maybe. Deadly, more than likely.
I don't complain though; I just grin and bear it.
Luna laces up her skates like a professional while I fumble, all thumbs. She practically skips onto the ice while I shuffle like a newborn deer, awkward as hell. Her skates hit the ice and she’s off, gliding around effortlessly, while I can barely manage a single step without risking embarrassing injury. When she does a spinning twirly thing that would've landed me in the hospital, I squint at her suspiciously. “How are you so good?”
