Come What May - L.K. Farlow Page 0,30
my brother, he will gloat for days on end about this.
Mamá glares. “Then you shouldn’t have lied.”
“I didn’t lie!”
“A lie by omission is still a lie,” Silvi adds unhelpfully.
“I didn’t omit anything,” I growl. “There’s nothing between us!”
“Denial isn’t any better, Dad.”
“Impossible—you people are impossible.” I throw my hands up in defeat. “I’m not looking for a relationship! Especially one with her!”
“What’s wrong with Seraphine, Dad?” My daughter wears her confusion and hurt as plain as day on her face. “I really like her, and I know you do, too.”
“She is too young. Immature. Practically a child.” My tone is more abrasive than I mean for it to be. My frustration with the entire situation is morphing; what started as an ember is quickly becoming an inferno.
“Mijo.” Mamá moves across the room to me and takes my hand in hers. “My son, is her age your only holdup?”
I seesaw my free hand in the space between us. “Eh. Mostly.”
“Your father was much older than me. Almost twenty-two years.” She squeezes the hand she is still holding. “Search your heart, Mate.”
Without a rebuttal in mind, I nod.
“Bring her to dinner,” she murmurs as she leans forward to kiss my cheek.
“Wait, you’re still leaving?”
She sighs. “You may not have lied to me, but you’re lying to yourself, and that may be worse.”
Knowing I’ve already lost the battle, I kiss her cheek as well and resign myself to figuring out how in the hell I’m going to get Seraphine to a family dinner in two days when we’re hardly talking. And how I’m going to get Desi to bring me home barbacoa without Mamá catching on.
Chapter Thirteen
Seraphine
“Wait, wait, wait. It was a kiss and a diss?” Azalea asks, while absentmindedly running her fingers through her pug Boudreaux’s short fur.
I toe the porch swing back, letting the brisk fall air soothe some of the heat scalding my cheeks. We’ve spent the last hour on Azalea’s back porch dissecting the whole kiss thing from last weekend. “Hardly a kiss.”
“But your lips touched—Brody! No, don’t put leaves in your mouth!” Myla Rose leans over and fishes the debris out of her toddler’s mouth with a huff. “We do not eat things off the ground, okay, dude?”
“O’tay, Mama.”
She ruffles his curls. “Go play with Willow.”
He scampers off, and she turns back to me. “Lip contact?”
I bob my head back and forth. “There was tongue involved”—my friends start to howl— “but only for like a second! I swear, the whole thing was over before it even started.”
Azalea squints her eyes at me. “It still counts.”
“I really don’t think it does. He acted like he was Snow-freaking-White and my mouth was a poisonous apple.”
“Oooh, maybe you need to try again, then, and this time he can be the prince instead?”
I roll my eyes at Azzy. God love her. “Pretty sure it doesn’t work like that.”
She shrugs. “It could. It’s your fairy tale, write it the way you want and fuck the rest.”
“Shh.” Magnolia holds a finger to her lips. “Little ears.”
Myla Rose laughs. “Poor Brody hears it enough at home from Cash and Drake.”
“What do you think, Mags?” I ask my cousin. “You’ve been pretty quiet.”
She scrunches her face up, tilting her head to one side and then the other. “I think… you’re both very much attracted to one another. And while there’s obvious chemistry, y’all are scared. Which is understandable. New things can be really scary.” She smiles wistfully. “But they can be really awesome, too.”
“Plus,” Azalea interjects, “he flat-out said he was into you. He called you forbidden, and everyone knows forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest.”
“I’m not a freaking apple.”
“But he wants to take a bite out of you like one!” Azalea smirks like she’s bested me.
“He got caught up in the moment. It was nothing—it meant nothing.”
Magnolia hums under her breath. “It meant something to you though.”
My phone rings before I can reply. My eyes widen when I see Mateo’s name flash across the screen.
“Who is it?” Myla asks.
“It’s him.”
“Answer!” all three women shout.
I slide the bar on the screen to the right and bring the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Seraphine, hey.” Even through the phone, his deep, lightly accented voice makes me feel all warm and gooey.
Too bad I’m still mad at him. “Did you need something?”
He coughs in disbelief. “No. Well, kind of. Yes.”
“Which is it, Mateo?” I make sure to add a little extra bite to my tone, even though I’m secretly loving how flustered he sounds.
“Yes, I need something. I need you