The Relationship Pact(61)

I’m all for going hard. I love it hard with her. I can’t get enough of feeling Larissa want me like that.

But there’s something about this moment that makes me want something different.

Something probably insane.

Something I’ve never wanted before.

“Hey,” I say, breaking our kiss.

She looks up at me.

“Can we take this one slow?” I ask her, a little unsure what I mean.

Her features soften, and her smile stretches across her face. “Yeah.”

She locks her legs around my ass and pulls my face to hers again.

We kiss more than we fuck. We touch more than we come. We laugh and tickle and take our time.

I’m not sure what to call this, but it isn’t fucking. It isn’t sex. But it is the best.

Because it’s with her.





Twenty





Hollis





“Who is going to be here again?” I ask.

Larissa looks at me from the passenger’s seat. She has the mirror pulled down from the visor and a tube of lipstick in her hand.

“Everyone,” she answers.

I hold a hand out and look at her like she’s crazy. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” she says, running the tube around her lips, “that everyone I know will be here. Okay. Maybe not everyone.” She smacks her lips together and folds the mirror back up. “But most of them.”

I lean back in my seat and try to rationalize how many people that might be. It might be a few hundred if everyone brings someone and you count the stragglers sneaking in for free beer on campus.

“Give me a quick rundown,” I tell her.

She shoves her lipstick in her purse and settles back in her seat. “Okay. Well, Aunt Siggy and Uncle Rodney. My dad. Siggy and Rodney’s kids—Holt, Oliver, Wade, Coy, and Boone.”

“Holy shit, that’s a lot of kids.”

“It’s just five.”

I balk. “That’s a lot of kids, Riss.”

She smiles at me. “How many kids do you want?”

“Zero.”

“Hollis!”

“What?” I ask, leaning away from her. “They seem like a pain in the ass.”

Kids have never been on my radar. I stay fully-wrapped up during sex and have walked out of situations that seem sketchy. A sketchy chick cannot be hot enough to risk getting pregnant.

I do not want kids.

But I can see Larissa as a mother and that fucks with me a little bit on a level I don’t want to indulge at the moment.

“Well, I want like six,” she says, staring ahead.

She says it very matter-of-factly, but a hint of something in her voice has me reaching across the console and grabbing her thigh. I squeeze gently, applying just enough pressure that has her smacking my hand.

She doesn’t push it away. But she doesn’t look at me either.

“Tell me about your cousins,” I say to keep her interacting with me. “Do I need to watch out for any of them?”

A grin ghosts her lips. “Holt and Oliver run a real estate investment company. Holt is my buddy. He’s the one I go to when I need help convincing my parents of something. Oliver is … Oliver.” She laughs. “He’s more of a jokester but still super smart. He’s a good mix of them all, I think.”

That all sounds doable.

“Wade is serious. He’s an architect. He just works … and that’s it. He has no life. Boone is the wild one. You met him.”

I nod.

“He’s my best friend, besides Bellamy. It used to be me, Bells, Boone, and Coy, but then …” She holds her hands out. “Whatever. I don’t know. But I’m close with Boone. Coy is off touring the world most of the time now so we don’t see him as much. I’m excited he’ll be here tonight, though. He flew in just for the night.”

I furrow my brow. “Is he military or something?”

She bursts out laughing.

“I … Is something funny?” I ask.

“Hollis.” She says my name as a complete sentence. “Coy is Kelvin McCoy.”

I snap my face to her. “The country music guy?”

She nods with a look of amusement on her face.

“Wait. Your cousin is Kelvin McCoy. No shit?”

“No shit.”

What the actual fuck?

I withdraw my hand from her leg and follow my GPS’s instructions to turn right. Up ahead, the road is lined with cars on both sides.

“Mason family hack,” she says, sitting up in her seat. “Pull up to the driveway. It’ll be blocked off, but we’ll tell the guy it’s me, and he’ll let me through.”

“Nice.”

I do as instructed. A man stops us on the road. A rather large man with a suit on leans into the car.

“Hey, Nate!” she says. “Can we get through, please?”

“Hey, Larissa. Sure thing.”

He steps back from the car, and we’re allowed to proceed up a driveway made to look like cobblestones.

“That guy looks like he could throw down.”

She winces. “I bet he can. He owns a bar called The Gold Room. I think being able to hold your own kind of goes with the territory.”