“And the fact I’m only a few years younger than you. Which I can’t help, by the way.”
“I know.”
Smirking, he hugged his arms around my entire waist. He’d actually been able to grip his biceps this time. “We figured out the whole me being your student thing. I’m not anymore, but maybe you’d feel better if we officially came out with everything if I wasn’t a student anymore.”
“Meaning…”
“Graduation hits, and we are a couple,” he stated, smiling. “We acknowledge it. We tell my mom. We skip over a few details. Say we started talking shortly before but didn’t actually start dating until after graduation. We still will be dating before graduation, but this way, in the eyes of my mother, it looks a little more innocent.”
“I don’t see what difference that would make.” It was still lying. I shook my head. “And what? We sneak around? Behind her back?”
We obviously couldn’t go anywhere together.
His big shoulders lifted. “I don’t want to, but I’m willing to do that for you. It also puts a hard deadline on the secrecy, and who knows…” His brows waggled. “You may be tired of my ass before then and we won’t have to worry about telling her at all.”
I’d be hard-pressed to imagine that. He drove me crazy, yes.
But I liked his crazy.
I liked our crazy, and I wanted to scream about how ludicrous this entire thing was.
This won’t work. This won’t work. This won’t work.
“This will work.”
Crap. I’d said that out loud.
He took my hands, grinning. Using our fingers, he tugged some of my hair out of my face. “Or maybe it won’t. But at least, we’re giving it a chance. I told you. No regrets.”
I released a heavy breath, and I knew what I was going to say before I even said it. There was just something about this guy. He always got his way with me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he covered the back of my head.
Bending my head forward, he warmed the top of my crown.
“Ball’s in your court, professor,” he said, the smile in his voice evident. He pulled his big arms around me. “My Jersey girl.”
I closed my eyes in wild wonder that his friend could ever not love him back. Ramses was so easy to love.
God.
I hugged him tighter, nearly wishing she had. It’d be a lot easier for him. It wouldn’t be easy with me.
I was too damaged for it to be.
Chapter Twenty
Ramses
I almost regretted the commitment I’d made with Brielle, the urge to keep what we had a secret.
But then I had her.
I had her every day in my DMs, messages between lectures and board meetings. She’d given me her personal email too, so at least I wasn’t hitting her up at school when I did that.
She’d been concerned about that too, if one could imagine.
Like my mother was literally monitoring her emails, her need for secrecy apparent. I didn’t like it. Not at all, but that made her comfortable. She also didn’t run, so I didn’t argue.