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Chapter Thirteen
A Gift a Day Early
About halfway through their ride, Avril was still amid the arduous process of resetting her personality to its default. The scowls were less frequent, less vicious, and the vitriol swirling in her eyes less poisonous. During that time, Liam remembered something important. Something that caused him to shove a hand into his pocket.
Hey, so Avril wants to wrap all these gifts and stow them at my place. So, I don’t think I’ll be able to come over for a little while longer.
As soon as he sent the text, he noticed Avril’s side-eye upon him.
“Texting Tess?” After a moment, she smirked. “Try saying that five times really quick.”
“Yeah. I was letting her know that we’ll be wrapping up gifts for a while at my place.”
“Meaning that you won’t get to go snuggle your face up against her tits until later,” Avril deduced, cracking a knowing smile. “Poor baby.”
Heat scorched his ears, but he merely shrugged. “They’re really nice, so yeah.”
Avril snorted and turned down the music she’d set to play once they’d gotten away from the mall. “Please, you’ve got a nicer set to marvel at in this very car.”
As they’d both anticipated, mention of that “nicer set” drew his gaze toward them. With the car warm enough thanks to the diligent stream of heat flooding from its vents, Avril was no longer a shivering mess. If anything, her jacket, light as it was, might betoomuch clothing in their current temperature. He’d tossed his coat into her backseat a few minutes ago, and wouldn’t it like a friend to keep it company?
“I don’t know if I can make that comparison fairly,” he said. “Recency bias and all that.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Avril retorted with a snort. “I bet you’ve already completely forgotten about the lesson I gave you on my couch.”
There were plenty of lessons he’d forgotten in his life. If asked to list all ten amendments in the Bill of Rights, he’d probably struggle to get more than seven or eight of them right. If asked about the five beaches on D-Day and their placement from west to east, he’d be in trouble. He didn’t remember Brave New World as well as his sophomore English teacher would likely have hoped. The list went on and on.
But the gift he’d received a few days ago on that couch, the sights and sensations he’d experienced—no, he would never forget anything about it.
Deep down, he knew he wanted another one like it. Selfishly, inappropriately, indiscreetly.
“Well, Iamjust going to Perrymont, after all. I guess I need multiple lessons before the knowledge sticks.”
His callback to Trent’s sneering dismissal garnered a potent eye roll from the beautiful woman. “We’ll see if you can earn it,” she ultimately declared, flashing a quick smirk. “Our date’s not over yet.”
Liam’s libido-controlled heart leaped, and he struggled to take his eyes off Avril’s impressive chest for much of the ride home. It certainly didn’t help when, at every stop sign or light, she’d played with her jacket’s zipper, though she never dragged it down all the way. That teasing didn’t end until they neared his neighborhood, though he ended up distracted by Tess’s reply to his original text.
Okay. You’re both welcome to come over at anytime, of course. We could have dinner.
Thanks, Tess. You’re the best.
“Dinner?” Avril said, grinning as he passed over the news. “With two sexy-as-sin women? You lucky dog.”
As they reached the spot where Avril had picked him up, they found that the aforementioned snowplows had indeed been busy in his neighborhood. While yards and sidewalks remained mostly buried, undoubtedly to Gary’s dismay, with the latter piled under even more snow than they’d been a couple of hours ago, there was finally a sighting of road pavement again.
Carefully, Avril sent them heading down the long hill into his neighborhood. There wasn’t too much ice to endanger them, and in just a few minutes, Avril guided her car into the open spot on his driveway beside his. She didn’t shut her car off, though. Instead, sitting in its warmth, she peered toward his not-so-distant-but-very-distant-for-someone-who-couldn’t-stand-the-cold doorway. After a few seconds, she pulled her mouth to one side.
“How about a deal?” she said, leveling a verdant stare upon him.
“Is it one where I carry in all of your presents while you sprint inside and get to stay out of the cold?” he asked, more than capable of reading her thoughts. It was a nice change to the norm, getting to be the mind reader rather than the read-ee.
“It absolutely fucking is,” Avril said. “I’ll give you something good if you do.”
A rare but poignantly teasing smile split his face. “For a rich girl, you’re starting to accrue a lot of debt.”
Avril’s face pinched together. “Come again?”
“You already owe me something good, remember?”
