Instead, she arches one eyebrow, opens her lips, and lets the words fall out, awarding her father with the best present he could ever have.

“Say yes.”

Up until Edie, December was my favorite month of the year.

Not because of Christmas. Fuck Christmas. Because of the cold. It was the only month when it felt for a second that SoCal wasn’t going to burst into flames next time someone lit a match. Years ago, when Fiscal Heights Holdings opened a branch in Chicago, I was on that shit like a rash in a community college party. I loved the winter. Loved. Past tense.

I hate the winter nowadays.

I still enjoy feeling like the sun is not trying to fucking kill me, but I don’t like seeing Edie running barefoot across the promenade, a surfboard tucked under her arm, laughing like a crazy kid between the fat pearls of raindrops. Sometimes I run after her and tackle her to the sand for breathless kisses, trying to convince her to calm the fuck down and pass on her morning surf session. Most times I know it’s futile.

The ocean is her drug.

She is mine.

To accommodate this shit, I move things around. And it’s funny, how I always thought I’d die alone, and suddenly, I have all these people around me. Theo and his weird love for Tom Brady, Luna and her noisy, mostly-content silence, and my soon-to-be-wife.

First thing I did after throwing Jordan Van Der Zee into jail—he’s a white collar bastard who gets lots of visitation rights and perks, but no one wants to see him. Not his ex-wife, not his kids, and certainly not Val, God knows where she is—was to buy the surf club on Tobago Beach. I wanted Edie to have flexible working hours, and now she’s her own boss. The second thing was to summon my three friends and partners and tell them I was going to cut back on the hours, majorly.

“I have a family now. A big-ass, in-your-face family with a crap-ton of needs and a tight schedule,” I explained. Dean smiled.

Vicious said, “Another one bites the dust.”

Jaime nodded. “We’ve got your back.”

And they do. They have my back all the time. So much so that they weren’t even horrified when I told them I was asking my nineteen-year-old girlfriend to marry me. It’s absurd. You think I don’t fucking know that? Think again. We should wait until she hits her twenties.

We should keep it on the down-low.

We shouldn’t display this. We shouldn’t draw attention. We shouldn’t make declarations.

And we don’t. Fucking. Care.

“Mr. Rexroth, your…a…Edie, is here to see you,” Rina informs me through the intercom. I toy with the idea of correcting her—fiancée, that’s who Edie is. Shortly after she said yes in front of the most beautiful sunset to ever be seen in SoCal, a cab took us to the airport for a Hawaiian weekend. She surfed a lot. We fucked a lot. The engagement ring was too heavy for her to give me a hand job. You live, you learn. It’s now in the safe in our bedroom, collecting dust.

I push the red button on the switchboard while smoothing my tie. “Send her in.”

She walks in, unapologetically young. Her body covered in baby blue short overalls and yellow tank top. Dr. Martens and a smartass smirk. She doesn’t have an engagement ring on her finger, and it doesn’t make her any less mine. She is too natural for this stone, anyway. She’s got a seashell on her neck, a new one—identical to the two she made for Luna and Theo.

“I dropped in to say hi.” She wiggles her brows, holding a Panda Express bag.

I lean back in my chair and cross my legs over my desk. “I think you came here to fuck because I couldn’t come home this afternoon.”

“Oh, and that, too.” She shrugs, laughing. She dumps the oily food onto my table. I ignore it completely.

“Are you trying to bribe me with food?”

“Actually,” she says, walking over across my desk and parking her ass on my erection—because I always have an erection when she is around—knotting her arms around my neck. “I was thinking you could look at this wedding catalog with me. It’s so weird to plan a wedding. I don’t know where to start. Other than Millie and Rosie, all my friends are male and teenagers.”

“Don’t remind me,” I groan. I made peace with Bane, but that doesn’t mean I don’t keep an eye on the bastard. I place my hands on her waist and pull her for a dirty, messy kiss that will soon turn into office sex, and we both know it. “I’ll help, but when I asked you to marry me, I didn’t mean this month. Or this year. I just want to put it out there for the world to know and to see—we’re getting fucking married. End of story.”