He lifts his head and grins. “I could if you wait a couple more minutes.”
I brush his hair off his forehead and smile at him. “I asked if you could get up, not get it up.”
“I thought you were inviting me in the shower with you.” He doesn’t move, but instead leaves kisses along my collarbone.
“If you want to you can, but I’m only planning on showering.”
“Yeah, okay.” He says it like it’s a challenge.
We get up and go into the walk-in shower. I don’t know if it’s from months of dating a swimmer or that first kiss we had in the pool or what, but I find water to be like some type of potent aphrodisiac. Garret knows this, which is why he invited himself to shower with me.
As soon as I feel the slickness of his skin, see the beads of water forming along his broad shoulders, and slide my tongue past his wet lips, I lose all control. Before I know it, my legs are locked around him, my arms go around his neck, and we’re doing it against the shower wall. With the water and the steam, it’s even hotter than doing it in the bed. I hold onto him as we hit the peak of pure intoxicating pleasure, me first and him following seconds later.
Garret turns off the shower and sets me down. I rest my body on his as he reaches out to get the towels. He wraps one around me but I won’t move. I’m too comfy, leaned against him, savoring the feel of his warm skin and the steam that still surrounds us.
He laughs. “Jade, are you falling asleep on me while standing up?”
“I think so.”
“Let’s get you to bed.” He dries me off, then dries himself off and helps me out of the shower. I wake up enough to walk to the bed while he grabs one of his super soft t-shirts from his drawer.
“I don’t have any clean underwear,” I say as he puts the shirt on me.
“You don’t need it. This is plenty long on you.” He kisses me. “And it’ll make things easier when we do this again in a few hours.”
I kiss him back. “That’s true.”
Even though I’ve reached a level of exhaustion I’ve never felt before, I’ll sacrifice another night of sleep to be with him because I have no idea when we’ll be together again.
“Garret, what are we going to do?”
“About what?” He’s at his dresser pulling out his pajama pants. He doesn’t bother with boxers or a shirt.
“About this? Kissing? Sex? I can’t go months without any physical contact.”
He slides under the covers next to me and nuzzles my neck. “Maybe my dad could arrange some conjugal visits.”
I playfully hit him. “I’m serious.”
“So am I. If Katherine and Lilly aren’t here, we could take separate cars and meet here. We’ll have the car service take us. Nobody will see us with the dark windows.”
“You think your dad would go for that?”
“Why wouldn’t he? He did just now.”
“But you have all these people working here. They could tell someone.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I guess it won’t work, but let’s not worry about it right now.”
I yawn. “I really wish I could stay awake, but I think I’m falling asleep.”
“It’s okay, Jade,” he says softly. “Just go to sleep.” He kisses my head and hugs me closer, the back of my body fitting perfectly into the front of his.
I’m going to miss this. I’m going to miss it a lot.
19
Around 3 in the morning, I wake up from a really hot dream starring Garret and me in the pool and I can’t help myself. I’m ready for more. I kiss him until he slowly wakes up.
“What time is it?” he whispers, turning to me.
“Time for this.” I slip my hand down his pajama pants.
The blue lights strung around his bedroom window are on, giving off enough of a glow that I can see him smiling, his eyes still closed. He stretches his arms out. “You’re waking me up for sex? I swear you’re the perfect woman, Jade. Did I mention how much I love you?”
“Yeah, you did. Now show me.”
And he does.
Afterward, we fall sleep again and don’t wake up until noon.
“I’m surprised your dad didn’t get us up,” I say.
“He knows better than to do that. He doesn’t want to walk in on us doing something.”
I sit up straight. “Didn’t you lock the door last night?”
“I don’t remember,” he says, yawning.
I get up to check. “Garret, it’s unlocked! Someone could’ve walked right in. Your dad. The maid.”
“The mailman. The gardener. The delivery guy.”
“This is so not funny. You have no shame, you know that? You walk around naked. You leave doors unlocked.”
“I’m at my house, Jade. I’m not worried about people walking in my room seeing me naked or having sex.”
“Well, I am.” I lock the door.
“You feel better now?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you come back to bed?”
He’s sitting up, his arms casually resting over his bent knees, which are covered with the white sheet. The combo of his strong arms, chiseled chest, and muscular shoulders is so damn appealing. Add in the tousled dark hair, those beautiful blue eyes, and that perfect smile and he’s like a male model. I could take a photo of him right now and put it on a calendar and it would easily sell millions of copies.
There’s no way I’m turning down his invitation, especially now that the door’s locked.
After another round of sex, we finally get out of bed, dress, and go downstairs to the kitchen.
Pearce is there and I feel like I’m doing the walk of shame, stuck in the same clothes as last night. But it’s all I have and I’m not borrowing something of Katherine’s.
“Hey, Dad,” Garret says.
Pearce looks at both of us and I feel my cheeks heating up again. Garret, of course, isn’t the least bit embarrassed.
“Did you eat yet?” Garret asks him.
Pearce smiles. “Yes, Garret. I’ve already had breakfast and lunch. It’s 1 in the afternoon.”
“Yeah, okay. Well, I’m gonna have breakfast.” Garret walks over to the fridge. “What do you want, Jade?”
Why is he asking me questions? I’m trying to fade into the wall here or dissolve into the floor. Anything to not be noticed.
“You two eat and then come to my office,” Pearce says. “I have some updates to share.” He refills the cup of coffee he’s holding and walks out.
Garret comes over to me. “You didn’t answer me. You want breakfast or lunch?”
“Whatever. Breakfast is fine.” I cover my face with my hands.
“Are you seriously still embarrassed?” He pulls my hands away and kisses me.
“Did you see how your dad looked at me? And that comment he made about it being the afternoon? He thinks I’m some nymphomaniac!”
Garret laughs and kisses me again. “You are a nymphomaniac. It’s another thing I love about you. Now let’s figure out breakfast.”
He goes back to the refrigerator and starts pulling stuff out; eggs, cheese, green peppers. “I’m making an omelet. You want one? I make really good omelets.”
“I’ll just have cereal.”
“That’s not enough. You need to replenish your body after that sex marathon we had last night.”
“Garret! Someone could hear you.” I look around to make sure nobody’s there.
He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “I’m still waiting for an answer here.”
“Okay, I’ll have an omelet.”
He whips up two omelets and some toast and we sit and eat breakfast at the kitchen island.
“You’re a good cook,” I tell him.
“Thanks,” he says, biting into his toast.
His cooking reminds me of our plan to live together and a wave of disappointment goes through me. “I just thought of something.”
“Let me guess. Now that your stomach’s full you want to go have
sex again.”
I punch him. “No! That’s not at all what I was thinking.”
He shrugs. “Yeah, whatever, my little nympho girlfriend.” He tenses up, preparing to be punched again but I leave him alone.
“What I was really thinking is that now we can’t get an apartment together next fall.”
“Why not?”
“Because people would think it’s weird if bad-boy Garret went from having a different girl every night to living with just one.”
“I’m hoping by then people will have lost interest in me.” He gets up and takes the juice carafe from the fridge. “You want some more?”
“Sure.” I hold my glass out. It’s fresh-squeezed juice, not the canned stuff I had as a kid that wasn’t even juice but more like orange-colored sugar water.
“Besides, I’m not planning on going back to Moorhurst next year.” He puts the juice back in the fridge and comes back around to his seat.
“You’re not? When did you decide this?”
“Yesterday. When we were in my dad’s office.”
“Why you didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.” He shoves his plate aside and turns to me. “I think we both should leave Moorhurst and get a fresh start somewhere else. Too many people at school know our history. And if we show up there in the fall, they’ll start gossiping and spreading stories about us and I’ll end up on the front page of a celebrity magazine again. I can’t have that, Jade. When this is over, I can’t reappear in the press. I need to hide out somewhere quiet and let people forget about me.”
“Where do you plan to go?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’m not going anywhere unless you’re going with me. So what do you think? Would you be okay leaving Moorhurst?”
“I’d miss Harper, but yeah, I could leave. It’s a good school but you’re right about the people. They gossip too much and I’ve never really felt like I fit in there. But we’d still go to college, right?”
He picks up our plates and takes them to the sink. “Well, yeah. But we need to find a small private college where people have no interest in me and are more focused on academics than celebrity gossip and reality shows.”
“And we’d still get an apartment together?”
“Yes.” He comes back over and lifts me up and into his arms. “We’ll definitely get an apartment together.”
“And you’ll do all the cooking?”
His eyebrows raise. “I’m pretty sure I never agreed to that.”
I tilt my head. “But you’re so good at it.”
“I’m good at a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean I want to do them all the time.” He pauses when he sees me smiling. “Okay maybe some things I want to do all the time, but not cooking.”
“I’ll do the laundry if you do the cooking.”
“Hmm. Okay, but I think you got the better deal.”
I got a way better deal. Laundry is easy. The machine does all the work. I’ll just have to fold and put clothes away which is so much easier than cooking something.
Garret and I go down to his dad’s office but Pearce is on the phone. We wait for him to finish his call then go sit down.
“So here’s what’s going to happen.” Pearce goes into a detailed plan of what will transpire this week. I’ll tell people at Moorhurst that I broke up with Garret over spring break. Then the story will be that Garret was so upset over the break-up, he took his dad’s plane to Bermuda and rented a house on the beach. While in Bermuda, Garret got drunk, hooked up with some girls, and trashed the house he rented.
Pearce shows us some fake photos he already had made up. They look so real I almost punch Garret, like he really cheated on me.
When the rest of the world sees these photos, they won’t be thinking he cheated on me because they don’t know me. Instead they’ll think he was cheating on Ava which is what will get people talking and spread the story across the Internet.
Pearce gets out his laptop and plays footage of a fake interview from the fake homeowner in Bermuda who rented his house to Garret. The homeowner describes how Garret destroyed his house last week and left condoms, marijuana joints, and broken liquor bottles on the beach behind his property.
“I did a lot of bad shit in just a few days,” Garret says. “You sure people will believe that?”
“The public doesn’t know you so yes, they’ll believe it,” Pearce says. “You already have the image of a privileged trust fund kid, which the public usually finds unappealing. But for the reasons we learned about on Friday, people are able to look past that with you. They think you’re different. What we’re doing here is showing them you’re not. You’re just a selfish, spoiled, rich kid who does what he wants and doesn’t care who or what he destroys in the process.”
“Yeah, but people who know me will think it doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s where Jade comes in. The people closest to you know your past, so when Jade breaks up with you, it makes sense that you’d go back to this type of behavior. It’s not like people forgot what you used to be like.”
“I was never that bad,” Garret assures me.
His dad’s expression seems to disagree with that statement.
“What happens after this story gets out?” Garret asks his dad.
“It’s already out. People are already talking about it online. Now we just keep it going. You’ll need to hide out every weekend so people at Moorhurst buy into the stories about all the wild weekends you’ll be having. I got you a small house in the woods not far from here. It’s very secluded. You’ll go there every Friday night and stay there until Sunday night or Monday morning. You’ll need to stay there the whole time. You can’t be seen in public.”
“Can Jade meet me there?”
“No. Absolutely not. It’s too risky. And Jade, you need to hang out with your girlfriends. Do whatever girls do after a break-up. And I agree that Harper may not buy the break-up story, so I came up with something to tell her.”
He goes over the details and tells me to give the same story to Frank and Ryan, who would also be suspicious of the break-up.
“So that’s it for now,” Pearce says. “Oh, and Jade, you can take your car back to school. If anyone asks how you got it, just tell them I bought it for you as a congratulatory gift for doing so well in your classes. In the past I’ve given my scholarship recipients gifts for excelling in their first year. Nothing this big, but given you were dating my son, people shouldn’t question it too much.”
“Okay.” I say it calmly, but inside I’m jumping up and down. I finally get to drive the car! I finally have a car! It still doesn’t seem real. “But what if Garret’s fans see me when I drive out?”
“They’re not out there. As soon as we posted the story about Garret being in Bermuda, the fans and photographers went away.” Pearce stands up. “It’s time for you two to say goodbye.” His eyes dart from Garret to me and back to Garret. “A short goodbye, son, meaning stay downstairs. Jade needs to leave now. She needs to be seen on campus as people start arriving back from break. You’ll show up there later tonight.”
Good thing Pearce isn’t looking at me because I’m sure I’m blushing. Did he really think Garret and I would go upstairs and have sex again? Like we haven’t done it enough already? Okay, he’s probably right, but still.
We go out into the foyer, closing the door to Pearce’s office. Garret gets his phone out and sends a text. “Brad’s bringing your car around. It’ll just be a minute. You sure you’re okay to drive? It’s been a week since I checked for any concussion symptoms.”
“I’m good. I haven’t had any symptoms.”
He gets up close and gazes into my eyes. “Who am I?”
“Not the questions again.” I laugh, then get serious, playing along. “You’re the jerk who trashed some guy’s house in Bermuda and did it with two girls you just met.”
“Nope. Sorry. You’re too confused to drive.” He gets his phone out again. “I’ll text Brad a
nd tell him to leave the car in the garage.”
“Wait! Let me try again.”
Garret slides his phone in his pocket and circles his arms around my waist. “When’s my birthday?”
“August 22.”
He kisses me and keeps his lips on mine as he asks another question. “My favorite color?”
“Green.”
It earns me another kiss, this one longer.
“Sports I played in high school?”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Swimming, football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and lacrosse.”
“Correct.” He gives me one last lingering kiss. When he starts to break away I hold on, not ready for it to end. Because what if this really is the end? We have to be apart from now until that group makes their decision, and what if their decision doesn’t change?
“Jade.” Garret pulls back. “We’ll be here all day if we don’t stop.”
“I know. But what if this is it?”
“Don’t start thinking that way. You need to stay positive. And we’ll still see each other. We live in the same dorm. Eat in the same dining hall.”
“But I can’t talk to you or touch you or—”
“Yeah, it’s gonna suck, but we can do this.”
I nod, then look up at him. “One more kiss?”
We come together for one final kiss and I feel us both struggling to end it. Eventually he does. “Now get out there and drive your new car.”
He turns me around and opens the door and there it is all shiny and new. “I’m so excited I can finally drive it!” I step outside.
“You forgot your coat. Wait here. I’ll go get it.”
When he returns I’m in the car, buckled in and ready to go. I roll the window down and he hands me my coat. “So I guess a final goodbye hug is out.”
“Oh, just a second.” I undo my seatbelt and get back out to hug him.
“I love you.” He squeezes me tight, then lets me go.
“I love you, too.”
Garret holds the car door open. “Okay, now you can go.”
I get back in and drive away. The parade of girls is gone, just like Mr. Kensington said, along with the photographers.
Back at Moorhurst, I go to my room and find my suitcase still sitting unpacked next to my closet. As I’m putting my stuff away, I call Harper.
Promising You (The Jade Series #4) Page 20