Page 18 of Star Pupil

Chapter 8

Griffin

“Can you believe this crap?” Avery grumbled, tossing the gossip magazine she’d been reading onto the kitchen counter between us. “Look at what they’re saying about us now!”

“If you’re going to continue with your acting career, then you’ll need to learn how to ignore shit like that.” I took a sip of my coffee, disregarding the magazine. “It’s a lesson I learned way too young because of who my mom is.”

It wasn’t worth the possible destruction they could wrought if you let the gossip-mongers into your life. It was one of the reasons I hoped she’d decide to head to college instead of accepting any of the myriad of offers that had started to come her way. Filming had only wrapped a day ago and her new agent was already pushing for her to pick another project.

I could have nudged her in the other direction, but I wanted her to pick whatever would make her happiest. If she wanted to follow in my mom’s footsteps and become a superstar, then so be it. I wasn’t about to let her go, no matter what she decided. Avery was mine. End of the motherfucking story.

“I know I’m a curvy girl. It’s not going to change. It’s the way I’m built, and I refuse to diet all the time just to end up in a perpetual bad mood so I can lose a few pounds.” She picked the magazine up again and peered closely at the page to which it was open. “But does that mean they’re always going to be on the lookout for a baby bump? Dissecting what I’m wearing, to see if Hollywood’s bad boy prince knocked up his student?”

Knocked up?I yanked the magazine out of her hand to read what they’d written. “If only it was fucking true,” I mumbled under my breath.

“I was a virgin up until a week ago,” she said, jerking the magazine away from me to go drop it into the garbage. “Even if you had knocked me up between now and then, I wouldn’t have a baby bump yet.”

My eyes dropped to her belly since I sure as fuck had been doing my best to put my baby in there. Each time I took her, I went in bare and I hadn’t seen any sign of birth control pills in the stuff she’d unpacked into the master bathroom.

“Don’t you go getting any ideas. This stuff it trash. Literally.” She kicked the garbage can for good measure. “And I’m sick and tired of them playing up the whole student-teacher thing. We didn’t even meet until my eighteenth birthday. I’m not some underage girl you started a relationship with when you shouldn’t have.”

“But I was your teacher,” I teased, loving how worked up she was getting. With her cheeks turning red and her eyes heating up, she looked even more gorgeous than usual.

“Not like a teacher teacher.” She wagged her finger at me. “We met on a movie set where I was one of the stars of the film. I might have only been in Hollywood for less than half a year, but I know darn well that I was in a position of authority just as much as you were. It’s totally different.”

“We both know who the boss is around here, but whatever you say, bright eyes.”

“Argh!” She stomped her foot and growled. “Stop. You know what I mean.”

“Would it be so bad?” At her look of confusion, I gestured towards her stomach. “If I knocked you up?”

“What? No!” Her eyes went wide and her hands slid over her belly, covering it. “Yes! I don’t know, Griffin. I’ve only known you for like a month, and I just moved in with you. A baby would complicate things for sure. Imagine the field day the papers would have if I was an unmarried teenager living with her former teacherand pregnant with his baby.”

“I thought you said it was totally different.”

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t see it that way,” she complained. “All they would see is an unmarried teen mom. Next thing you know, I’d be on that reality television show instead of doing another movie or going to college.”

She’d mentioned it twice, and it was enough for me to lead into a topic I’d thought was going to have to wait many more months. “What if you weren’t an unmarried teenager?”

“We’re not getting married just because the stupid paparazzi is on the lookout for a baby bump!”

“Don’t move,” I growled, running out of the room to head into my office. Yanking open the top drawer of my desk, I pulled out a little black box and raced back into the kitchen. Avery’s eyes got even bigger, her mouth opening to form a little O as she gasped.

“That’s not why I want to make you my wife, bright eyes.” I dropped to my knees in front of her. “I couldn’t give two fucks what anyone else thinks about our relationship, except that everyone knows you’re mine.”

I flipped open the box and lifted it up for her to see inside. “With a ring that big, it would be hard for anyone not to know I was yours.”

“Go big or go home wasn’t an option for me. I went big because you are my home. My heart. My everything.”

“Oh, Griffin,” she gasped, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Marry me.” I didn’t ask it like a question as I plucked the ring from the box and slid it on her finger, but she answered anyway.

“Yes.”

“Fuck yeah!” I whooped, wrapping my arms around her upper legs and lifting her up when I got to my feet. I spun her around before I let her body slide down my front as I set her back onto the floor.

She’d put on the dress shirt I’d worn yesterday, with only one button in place holding it together. As my hands slid upwards, I encountered the bare skin of her ass cheeks and realized she hadn’t bothered with any panties. What little restraint I had snapped, and I bent low to haul her over my shoulder. With one hand sliding between her legs to hold her in place, I marched into our bedroom and tossed her onto our bed.

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