Page 74 of The Price of Forever

I bit back a laugh. “Nope. You can call me Eleven.”

“Better than Seven-Eleven.”

My shoulders shook with laughter as I poured the boiling water over the tea bag. Once it was full, I moved to the kitchen island and slid onto a stool to watch Jordan finish the meal.

“How do you know that isn’t my name already?” I teased.

“So this whole time I should have been calling you Mr. Eleven?” She sent me a doubtful look. “I want to see your license. That’s the only thing that will lay this to rest.”

I rose wordlessly, heading for my wallet. It had been on the kitchen counter all along; not only that, Jordan had been within stealing distance of this wallet plenty of times, yet to my knowledge, she’d never looked.

“You mean to tell me you never took a peek for yourself?”

“I’m weird about boundaries,” she said, “as in I actually respect them.”

“Unless it comes to date nights.” I slipped my driver’s license out of its laminated holder and handed it to her. She took it eagerly, gobbling up the information. A moment later, she gasped.

“No way.” Her gaze slid up to me, looking awed. “You’re Antonin Silva.”

I nodded, sliding back onto my stool. “That’s me.”

“Why do they call you Seven?”

“Somebody misheard my last name in boot camp, and it stuck.”

“So it isn’t referencing what number in the robot production line you were.” She pursed her lips, her gaze stuck on the license once more. “Six four, huh? And two hundred thirty pounds. I told you—Greek god.”

“Now that you’ve received this confidential piece of information, I trust you’ll tell no one.”

“As long as you tell me where the names come from. Antonin and Silva both sound a little…foreign, but not the same foreign.”

“My mother is from the Czech Republic and my father was from Guatemala.”

Her brows lifted. “Do you speak either of the languages?”

“Nothing more than understanding the occasional outburst or bad word,” I told her. “My lullabies were in Czech. But when I fucked up, I heard about it in Spanish.”

She took one last look at the license and then pushed it toward me. “I bet your parents have an interesting origin story.”

“My dad was military. Mom was a recent immigrant to the US. They met in California, got married, settled in Nebraska, and eventually divorced. Nothing wild.”

“Nothing wild that they told you,” she corrected, smiling down at the plates as she slid the paninis off the electric griddle. “So do my brothers know about Antonin?”

“Nope.”

She gasped, touching her chest. “I feel so honored.”

“Consider it your twenty-day reward.”

“What does that—” Her eyes went to slits. “Is that how long you’ve been my bodyguard?” When I nodded, she added, “Feels like twenty years, Seven.

“Since you were born, then?”

Her mouth rounded, delayed shock and delight spreading across her face as she chucked a cherry tomato at me. “You jerk. I am not twenty.”

“You sure act like it sometimes.” I couldn’t resist needling her. Last night unlocked something—I was showing her my legal name and sharing more with her than was necessary. But it felt good. It felt natural. “Crashing my guys night out because you were jealous.”

She rolled her lips inward, a pretty pink staining her cheeks. “Here. You better eat before your Greek stature starts to shrivel. Or should I call you…Griego?”

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