25. Epilogue – Lily
Lily
“Where are you going?” I ask Adam sleepily when I feel the mattress dip as he gets up from bed.
It’s our three-month anniversary today, and it’s fair to say we’ve spent a good amount of it right here in this bed.
“It’s Saturday,” he points out, and I make a humming sound at the back of my throat.
“Say hi to your brothers for me.”
“Will do.”
He leans down to press a kiss to my lips before getting up and closing the door behind him.
I stretch out like a cat, spreading my limbs over the queen-sized bed like a starfish. God, I love his bed. It’s fucking giant.
With a grin, I reach for his pillow and cuddle it to my chest, pushing my nose into it and taking a greedy breath of his scent.
The past three months have been amazing .
While we’re finding that our schedules conflict more often than not, both of us force ourselves to make enough time for each other. It usually ends with me crashing at his place or him coming to mine, so we still manage to see each other.
And I find that knowing he’d be waiting for me makes me leave my laptop at work more often than before. The same goes for him. I’ve even gotten a ‘thank you’ note from Barbara for making him cut back on his overtime.
Professionally, things have been challenging. I’ve never liked industry functions. I find most of the C-level people in this industry to be pompous asses, and they’ve spent the past months proving my opinion of them right at every turn.
Those who thought I slept my way to the top now feel that my official relationship with Adam makes them righteous in their gossiping behind my back.
Others think that just because we’re an item, they can talk to him about stuff regarding Siren’s Talent. He’s quick to shut it down and direct them to me, but it’s annoying that they wouldn’t talk to me in the first place nonetheless.
Then again, it helps me weed out people I don’t want to work with, so there’s a silver lining to it.
Maybe someday Siren’s Talent will have a network focused on building each other up instead of tearing others down, but I’m not holding my breath.
And lastly, there are all the CEO wives who shoot me dirty looks and try to squeeze themselves between Adam and me, trying to capture his attention because their sorry excuses of husbands probably can’t satisfy them in bed.
Well, sucks for them because I know his eyes are always on me. I’ve caught him staring often enough, and what can I say, I’m staring right back.
I look up from his pillow when the door opens, raising a curious eyebrow at him when he pops his head through the gap.
“Done so soon? Did you win?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head and walks closer. “Your presence is demanded.”
“My presence?” I raise my second eyebrow at him as well.
“Yeah.” He nods and pulls at my hand until I let go of the pillow, then pulls me into a sitting position. “They’re demanding a formal introduction and challenge you to a round of our racing game.”
“Are your brothers as sore losers as you are?” I grin at him and get up in all my naked glory, walking over to his closet to grab one of his shirts and collecting my panties from the ground.
“Oh, they are so much worse.”
Adam’s lips curl into a wide grin as he watches me pull on his shirt. “You’re not going to wear any pants with that?”
“Do I need to?” I raise my eyebrow at him and roll my eyes. “You’re doing full-body video calls with your brothers?”
“That’s not the issue.” His eyes are on my thighs, and I do a little shimmy. “The issue is that you’re distracting as hell. ”
“Maybe that’s my strategy.” I shoot him a wide grin but take one of his joggers out of his closet and slip into them quickly. “But if I wear these, I better not hear a single word about you losing because you’re distracted.”
He shakes his head at me, muttering ‘oh they’re going to be so mad’ under his breath.
We played the game for the first time after we’ve been together for a month. Turns out, it’s one of the games I already played as a child and it didn’t take me long to get into it again, and dare I say that after two months of practice, I’m pretty good.
Unless Adam lets me win to stroke my ego, but I’ll just assume that’s not the case.
“Could’ve warned me earlier, though,” I mutter under my breath as I walk past him, trying to comb my fingers through my hair. “I look like a mess.”
“No, you don’t, Beautiful.” He sidles up next to me, hands on my hips, and presses his lips against the side of my head.
“Hmm, freshly fucked. Just the kind of first impression I wanted to make.” I roll my eyes at him, motioning for him to go first. “I’m going to get us some drinks. I’m parched.”
“There’s beer in the fridge.” He grins and squeezes my hip before walking into the room that doubles as his home office. I’ve seen it from the doorframe when I told him to stop working and pay attention to me instead, but I’ve never set foot in it. Now it feels like I’m crossing a forbidden border .
The first thing I do when I walk inside with two bottles of beer is let my curious eyes wander over his shelves.
“There’s the woman of the hour,” the first of them greets me as I sit down next to Adam and hand him his beer.
I give them a shy wave and the first one starts introducing himself. Even though I've seen them around and even chatted with at least one of them sometime back, it's sweet they're doing the 'official' introductions.
“Hi, I’m Jackson.”
“You're in London, right?” I ask him back and shoot the screen a smile. Adam told me about his little hissy fits and guilt trips about not having enough time for the brothers so I can’t help but feel a bit apprehensive of him.
“Yes, exactly.” He doesn’t elaborate and nobody else in the call says anything.
“I heard it’s beautiful there. How are you liking it?”
“You know what, let him sulk,” Tanner interrupts, making my eyes jump to his little window on the screen.
“I’m Tanner,” he states the obvious and I give him a small wave as well. Holy shit I knew he had a deep voice but hearing it again is something else.
“I’m Reed,” the last one adds. I shoot them a grin.
“I know.” I grin and see Adam shake his head from the corner of my eyes. “I’m Lily.”
“Nice to finally officially meet you,” Reed says, making Tanner chuckle and Jackson roll his eyes. “Although it already feels like we're besties, because Adam just can’t shut up about you.”
“He can’t?” A wide grin spreads on my face as I move a bit closer to the screen. “Do tell me more.”
“I’ll tell you all about how she thinks she’s going to smoke y’all in the game,” Adam says, putting his hand in front of my mouth.
“Big words,” Jackson says and crosses his arms in front of his chest.
Adam hands me his controller. They’re playing via some kind of console and video chatting via their laptops at the same time.
“Not a setup I’m used to, but all right.”
“We’re going to need to give you an hour to pick your character,” Jackson quips and I sigh.
How original.
Rolling my eyes, I subtly scratch my chin with my middle finger.
“I’m good, thank you,” I say sweetly shoot them the most innocent smile I can muster, picking my usual character.
There’s a buzzing atmosphere, all of them hyping each other up and trash-talking while I go through the motions of picking my accessories and setting up my equipment.
“Okay, ready,” I let them know, barely five minutes later.
And Reed whistles when he sees my character. “You’ve played this before, haven’t you?”
I shoot the screen again. “I have a brother too, you know. ”
“Oh shit,” Reed says, followed by a “She’s really going to smoke us” from Tanner.
Adam starts chuckling as the countdown begins.
“Maybe you should let them win once, beautiful,” Adam whispers into my ear when I drive the fifth victory home.
“Where’s the fun in that?” I whisper back. Then, a bit louder, I add, “I thought you said your brothers were good at this.”
“He really wasn’t exaggerating when he told us how competitive you are,” Tanner says, shaking his head in disbelief as he stares at his screen. Reed looks amused as hell, while Jackson seems to be silently seething, the red colors of the flag-waving loser reflecting in the light on his face.
“Damn, girl. So how about it, one more?”
I raise my eyebrow at them, giggling when all of them avoid looking at the camera.
“I actually have to leave for work,” Jackson says, looking at his wristwatch. “Oh shit. It was supposed to be an excuse, but I actually need to go. Have fun, everyone. Bye.” And with that, he logs out.
“I’m going to leave you three alone. It was nice to meet you,” I tell the remaining brothers and clasp Adams shoulder as I get up, leaning down for a quick kiss before I leave the room.
As soon as the door closes behind me, I can hear chatter from the laptop, but I’m doing my best to ignore it. Instead, I carry our now-empty glasses over to the kitchen and put them into the dishwasher before grabbing some chips from his cupboard and throwing myself onto his couch .
Reaching for the remote, I search through the streaming platforms for a movie to watch. One might think gossiping and chattering are more of a girl’s hobby, but let me tell you, Adam and his brothers spend at least as much time talking to each other as Lucy and I do.
I wonder what’s going on with his sister. From what I’ve gathered, she’s cut contact to all four of them, and none of them is quite sure why. Hopefully, I get to meet her someday.
Finally, I settle on a movie that I’ve been meaning to re-watch that Adam’s not a fan of. But I’m barely ten minutes in when his office door softly closes, and I hear his steps moving closer to the couch.
“Not much to gossip about today?” I raise my eyebrow at him as he sits down next to me, immediately lifting his arm so I can cuddle into his side.
“They just spent fifteen minutes gushing about you.” He grins and pulls my legs into his lap. “And wondering which games we can play that you aren’t as good at. Fair to say you managed to impress.”
“Of course I did.” I roll my eyes at him. “I was serious though, next time give a girl more warning. Not a fan of getting introduced to your family in your shirt and joggers with hair that screams ‘I just had sex and scrambled to make myself presentable.’”
“It’s less the hair and more the remainders of your makeup.” He grins and lifts his hand to swipe something away from under my eye .
“And you’re telling me that now?” Both of my eyebrows shoot up.
“Relax, you’re beautiful.”
“Probably in the way a panda or raccoon is,” I mutter under my breath, then stifle a yawn behind my hand. “You want me to change the movie?”
“I’m good,” he says and reaches for his phone. Where he got that from now, I have no idea. Sometimes I think it’s magic the way he just conjures it up. “How about I order us some food and we can spend the evening just like our first official date: huddled up on this couch under a soft blanket and watching this god-awful movie.”
“You take that back,” I tease him and turn to him to tickle his ribs. “This movie is not awful. It even got freaking Oscars.”
“Okay, okay.” He quickly catches my hand and pulls on my arm until I fall into him. “What are we eating tonight?”
“How about ramen?” I ask him.
He chuckles. “Very on-brand for our three-month anniversary,” he says and types something into his phone before laying it to the other side of the couch, screen down. “It’s going to take half an hour.”
“Good.” I turn back to the TV and continue the movie.
“Means we can get half an hour into this movie.” His hand starts tracing small circles on my shoulder, and I lean my head against his side.
I’m still a badass. Who doesn’t like when somebody else takes the reins? At the same time, it’s so nice to know that there’s this person in whose presence I can let myself fall completely.
Who I know for sure will catch me.
And if ever another idiot thinks it’s funny to make a joke about me sleeping my way to the top, who’s not only going to cut that person right off and put them in their place but will also follow through and remove them from their network in a professional capacity.
“What are you thinking about?” Adam asks. I look up at him with innocent, wide eyes. “I can hear you thinking. Don’t give me that look.” He taps my nose with his finger, and I crinkle it out of reflex.
“About you.” I shrug. “And that I’m really glad you went behind my back and talked to Millie and Kayla.”
“You’re welcome.” He grins and presses his lips against the side of my head. “Trust me. I’m very happy with myself about that too.”
When I look up at him again, I find his lips only millimeters away from mine. I quickly bridge the gap for a languid kiss. “I love you,” I mumble against his lips, feeling them stretch into a smile.
It’s not the first time I’ve said these words to him, but I know he can’t hear it often enough.
“Love you too, beautiful,” he mumbles right back before cupping my face and intensifying the kiss .