Page 76 of Best In Class
Because when Luna steps into the kitchen doorway, everything inside me stills.
And all I can manage is, “Huh.”
She’s wearing a soft yellow sundress, the kind that drifts around her legs like it was made for sunlight and stolen afternoons. Her hair is in soft curls. She’s wearing sandals! And her toenails—God help me—are painted bubblegum pink.
She’s summer. She’s softness. She’s something she doesn’t usually let herself be.
She did this for me.
Just that thought makes my dick tingle. But for the fact that my mother is here, I’d be as hard as a steel pike.
Luna shifts, her fingers twitching at the hem of her dress. She looks like she might bolt—like this skin doesn’t quite fit yet.
“Okay,” she mutters, tilting her chin just slightly. “Say something.”
I take a step closer, smiling like an idiot. “You look like the sun remembered you were its favorite.”
Her eyes narrow, but she’s smiling, too. “That’s not a real sentence.”
“Moonbeam, when you look like this, it’s hard for me to string words together.”
We gaze at each other. I can’t look away, and she seems just as mesmerized…with me?
Mama clears her throat. “It’s time for me to go watchCriminal Mindsnow, so you both go along and have fun.”
I open the trunk of my car and put the two picnic baskets in, right next to my backpack. She glances at them and then up at me. “How much food has Miss Abigail packed for us?”
“One basket is for food and one for wine. That’s what Mama said.”
She tips open the wine basket and frowns, eyeing the bottles inside. “That is either incredibly thoughtful or incredibly dangerous.”
“Why not both?” I close the trunk, and open the passenger door for her. “You drink and I’ll drive.”
She gives me a look and gets into the car. “If you think this gets you out of me interrogating your life choices, you’re mistaken.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Moonbeam. I just want you a little tipsy so I can have my way with you.” I hear her laugh as I shut the car door.
Well, this has started well, Dom, so don’t fuck it up.
It’s still sunshine and daisies as the sun sets late in the summer when we arrive in Thunderbolt, a quiet little town that hugs the edges of Savannah and whispers old stories to the marshes.
Waiting for us is a small boat—an old-fashioned flat-bottom skiff with a quiet electric motor.
This isn’t the Steele Estate. We’re not kids. But I’m hoping to remind her of who we used to be—of how much I loved her,stilllove her.
We get into the boat with our picnic baskets and my backpack. She has a small cross-body purse. It’s not her style.
“Aurora insisted that it matches the dress,” she explains when she sees me eyeing it.
I bite my lip to not smile. I know she’s feeling strange to be dressed this way. I doubt she does this for any man.
Luna is practical. She dresses like she’s preparing for a mission—efficient, sharp, and with a kind of quiet authority that doesn’t beg for attention. Minimalist. Strategic. Her closet’s probably organized by color, texture, and event.
Even at fancy Savannah society events that she occasionally gets dragged into, she follows the dress code the same way she follows building codes—technically correct, but with just enough rebellion to remind everyone she’s not here to play nice. I’ve seen her wear a five-thousand-dollar Givenchy gown with scuffed black boots to a galadinner—boots that probably walked across a construction site that same morning.
She makes it work like no one else can.
But this pink-toed Luna is telling me, in her own way, that she’stryingbecause she wants our first date to be special.
