Book Boyfriend (Someday #5) (9 page)

She laughed quietly. “You have no idea,” she said. “I’m just getting started.”

Michelle

S
ebastian walked toward
me, across the spacious lobby of the hotel the debate tournament was being held in. He held two keycards up as he drew closer, a triumphant smirk gracing his face.

My jaw dropped. “I can’t believe you managed to convince them to check both of us in. Kaminsky made a huge point about everyone having to be careful not to forget their IDs because no one was going to be able to check in without IDs, and blah blah blah. Now you just flash your pearly whites and they hand over my room key? I call bullshit.”

“Hey, what can I say? It’s good to be king.”

“Damn sure is, I guess,” I teased.

He laced his fingers through mine. “Hey, no worries, babe. The upside for you is that you’re my queen.”

“Is it good to be queen too?”

He kissed me long and hard. “You tell me,” he rasped.

“Yeah, it’s pretty fan-freaking-tastic,” I whispered.

I wasn’t trying to be coy. Or even seductive. He had just stolen my voice with the power of his hotness. Again. Damn. That was becoming a very annoying habit of his.

In a reluctant tone, he said, “There is one tiny wrinkle I couldn’t manage to iron out.”

I stepped back, widening my eyes in mock surprise. I splayed my fingers across my chest and made my voice high and unbelieving when I said, “What? How is that possible? I thought it was good to be king? Let me guess. Now you’re going to tell me that heavy is the head that wears the crown.”

“Yeah, yeah, smartass. Well, here’s the thing. I tried to get our roommates to trade places—”

“Why would I want to stay with your roommate?”

He laughed. “God, you’re in rare form today.”

I smiled and leaned against his chest. I liked that his automatic response was to wrap his arms around me when I did this. “I’m just happy,” I murmured. “That makes me witty.”

“I guess so. Anyway, I tried to get our roommates to trade places with us. So that we could stay in the same room, and they would be in the same room.”

“No dice?”

“Not a one.”

“Does whatever girl I’m rooming with feel uncomfortable at the thought of rooming with a guy?”

“No, actually, she was one hundred percent for it. In fact, if I hadn’t snatched my hand back quick enough when she tried to grab the room key, I think you’d be staring at a dangling stump right now instead of the handsome limb that you see before you.”

“Oh, so it’s the guy that doesn’t want to switch up the room? That’s surprising.”

“I know, right? Apparently, he’s in a relationship and his girlfriend would have his nuts in a vise if she found out he spent the night in the same room with another girl, even if it was completely platonic.”

I made my voice high and sound unbelieving again. “Even if he explained that he was doing a favor for the
king
?”

Sebastian laughed. “Even if. Although I guess I kind of get it. If I found out that you went out of town and spent the night in the same room with some random guy, I’d have to track him down and personally tear his throat out with my bare hands.”

“Damn,” I said, impressed. “If this guy spends the night in the same room with a girl, his nuts get put in a vise. If I spend the night in the same room with the guy, his throat gets torn out. It seems like the guy is always the one that gets the short end of the scenario.”

“That’s because of how guys think. Always planning something. You’ve gotta threaten them with punishment based on what you know they
want
to do, not what they actually did do. That’s the only way to keep the fear alive and keep them in line.”

I nodded, absorbing that little piece of wisdom. My mouth twitched as I said, “Hmmm. Good to know. I’m definitely going to keep that in mind for the future.”

He grasped my upper arms and moved me back a couple of steps, leaning down so that he could look directly into my eyes. There was not a hint of levity about him now. He was completely serious. His tone was grave, and so was his body language.

“You don’t have to. It’ll never come up. Trust me. With you is the only place I want to be, and you’re the only girl I want to be with.”

My eyes misted over. Having someone declare their feelings for me so straightforwardly, so passionately and intensely, was something I wasn’t sure I would ever get used to. But one thing was for sure: I wasn’t used to it yet. Every time Sebastian was honest with me in that raw, guileless way he had, a tsunami of emotions washed over me, threatening to knock me right off my feet.

I didn’t know how to respond to that kind of vulnerability, so I cheated. Instead of answering, I lifted myself up on my tiptoes and kissed him. Sure, it wasn’t the most emotionally mature thing to do…but from the way that Sebastian wound his arms around me and squeezed like he could never get enough of holding me while his lips pressed to mine with an intensity that actually dwarfed what had come from his words…well, I figured he probably didn’t mind too much.

In fact, as he slipped his tongue into my mouth and began to explore, I decided he might have downright preferred it.

“Students, students!” Kaminsky yelled ineffectually in the lobby.

Sebastian didn’t stop kissing me though. Didn’t even slow his pace. But ignoring a teacher calling for my attention simply went against my nature. I couldn’t do it. So I pulled back from Sebastian’s delicious kiss and faced Professor K.

“All right, then… All right. Let me see,” Kaminsky muttered once he had the majority of our attention. Then he consulted his clipboard. “Ah! Yes. Here we have it. Let’s see. You are split up into three groups… No, four groups. And you will be splitting up between the various ballrooms to view different portions of the debate competition. Um, yes…uh… Your name tags… Let me see… No, oh, all right… You need to pick up blank name tags and fill them out…”

Our teacher babbled distractedly with instructions for at least ten minutes. Most of the students standing around the lobby were either staring off into space or engrossed in their phones or tablets. When the endless instructions finally finished, small clumps of students began to wander off to the various ballrooms. A couple of them who had been paying better attention than the rest walked over and took a blank name tag before heading back to the hall that led to the conference rooms, but it was a relatively small number.

Sebastian grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. In a mischievous and excited tone, he quietly said, “This thing is completely disorganized. It’s a fuckin’ mess, in fact. Not to put too fine a point on it. Kaminsky’s never going to know if we were in one of those ballrooms or not. You wanna get outta here? Go see the city?” His eyes were sparking with adventure.

I don’t know what possessed me. It ran completely contrary to my nature to do something like cut class, play hooky, or whatever you want to call it. Deliberately not fulfilling one of the requirements of the class I was enrolled in was ssssoooo not me! But, without even giving any of that a second thought, I smiled and shot back, “Sure! Sounds like fun.”

Sebastian

“I
really think
San Francisco might be the perfect city to explore on foot. Everything you’d want to get to is right there, or if it’s not, it’s a quick bus ride away.” I gave Miche a quick kiss. God, I loved being able to do that whenever I wanted to! “Of course, anyplace would be amazing to explore as long as we were doing that exploring together.”

She beamed up at me. That was something I could definitely get used to as well. When she gave me that smile, I felt twice as tall, twice as strong, and twice as masculine and virile. Hell, if somebody could figure out how to take “Miche’s Proud, Beaming Face” and convert it into a pill, they’d make billions. The feeling it gave me was indescribable and incomparable.

She threaded her hand through mine as we walked down the steep hill and then laid her head on my shoulder. “So, what do you think we should see? I mean, there are so many amazing San Francisco landmarks. The Golden Gate Bridge, obviously. Lombard Street. Ghirardelli Square. Fisherman’s Wharf. Alcatraz.”

“Do you have your heart set on anything?”

She squeezed my hand. “On the one hand, I’m kind of on the same page as you in terms of enjoying the day. As long as we’re together, I’m having a fantastic time.”

“But on the other hand?”

She giggled, and it held a joy and an abandon, a sense of excitement, I had never heard from her before. She sounded like a little kid being offered a choice between playing with all of her favorite toys, with every option so exciting that it was impossible to choose. It was adorable as fuck.

“I want to see it all!” she burst out, a hint of guilt underneath her animated tone, as if she were surprising herself by being so greedy.

I stopped and took her in my arms. “Then, baby, by God, we are going to see it all!”

She clapped her hands in front of her as her face lit up with a glow of pure and unadulterated anticipation, and it was maybe the cutest thing I had ever seen in my entire life. And I’d seen baby goats playing. In person.

We spent the rest of the day walking and Ubering to all the different sights Michelle wanted to see. While enjoying them, we snapped a ton of pictures of us in front of them for her to upload to Instagram. I knew I would copy those photos onto my computer when we got back to Arcata, no question. I wasn’t even able to enjoy all the landmarks we were seeing during the day, breathtaking though they were. I only had eyes for Michelle. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her. Watching her face as she looked at amazing things was more fascinating and moving to me than the amazing thing itself could ever be.

As we rode the cable car for our last tourist-y activity of the day, I wrapped my arms around Miche and held her close to me, protecting her shivering frame from the chilly San Francisco evening air. She felt so delicate in my arms that I wanted to hold her forever, shield her from much more than just the cold—I wanted to protect her from every bad thing the world could ever throw at her. I wanted her to be able to exist only in the sheltering circle of my arms, where she was safe from any harm.

I gently kissed the top of her head, her silky-soft hair caressing my lips. “I noticed you took my advice.”

She looked up, puzzled. “What advice is that?”

“Remember when I told you what was missing from your Instagram feed? What the only beautiful thing in your life that you were around every day was that you never posted?”

A blush crept up her cheeks, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she faced forward again and snuggled into my arms. Then she gave my forearm a playful tap.

“Oh, stop.”

“I’m serious!” I protested. “You are the most beautiful and fascinating thing I’ve ever seen, and on your social media account, which is entirely devoted to posting photographs of beautiful and fascinating things, I very rarely would ever see a picture of you. But all that’s changed today. I think you’re part of every single photo you’ve uploaded today. And I’m proud of you for that. That’s all I’m saying.”

She was quiet, and I hoped that I hadn’t embarrassed her so much that she would clam up and end the conversation right there. I certainly didn’t want a repeat of the other night in my dorm room. That two days of radio silence had been fuckin’ torture. But, luckily, that wasn’t the case this time.

After a moment, she said thoughtfully, “You know, I never wanted to be one of those girls that was constantly posting duck-lip selfies of themselves, as if their faces were the most interesting thing anyone might want to look at. So I think I just went the other way. I only posted beautiful photos of nature, scenery, books, food—all the little vignettes that made up my life. But what I didn’t realize was that, by excluding myself from the record of my own life, I was sending a message. To the world, and to myself. That I didn’t even deserve to be there. That I didn’t live up to the things that were surrounding me. That I wasn’t even good enough to be included in my own life.”

It tore my heart out to hear her talking about herself like that. I wanted to shut it down, to stop her words of depreciation with my own words of encouragement and support. Or maybe even stop them with a kiss. Whatever it took.

I held myself back, though. She needed to work through this. But I could protect her by giving her a safe place to talk about what she was feeling, and I would do anything to protect her.
Anything
. Even shutting the hell up when everything inside me was screaming to tell her how amazing she was, that she deserved all the wonderful things life had to offer just as much—if not more—than anyone else did.

She shyly bit her lip and dropped her head, looking up at me through lacy eyelashes. Whatever she was about to say made her feel vulnerable. I knew it was coming straight from her heart.

“You changed all of that,” she whispered. “Seeing myself through your eyes—that’s what made me realize I deserve to be part of the action. I’ll never be a duck-lips-selfie girl, but I damn well deserve to be in my own photographs. I deserve a place in my own life.”

I kissed her, trying to express every ounce of pride and affirmation I felt through the act of pressing my lips to hers. “You do,” I agreed, my voice tight with intensity. “You deserve a place in your own life. I’m so happy that you see that now. And, Miche, you deserve a place in mine too. So much. I want you there, more than anything. I only hope I can prove that I’m worthy of a place in yours too.”

Michelle

M
y hand trembled
as I slipped it into Sebastian’s. This had been the most wonderful day of my life, bar none, and I was absolutely sure about what I was working up to say to him. Still, that didn’t mean that it didn’t take courage to say. It did. And, where he was concerned, having courage was a new experience for me.

I squeezed his hand and drew to a stop on the sidewalk. He halted in this tracks as well and turned to give me a questioning look.