The Billionaire's Playmate ✔

02 | ANGEL

"I guess I threw it kind of hard," I tell her, scratching the back of my neck.

"You threw it straight into the middle of our discussion group," she tells me, nodding in the direction of her friends.

I grin even more sheepishly, "I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

That's two apologies.

She looks at me like she's actually considering whether I'm telling the truth. She cocks her head to a side and it's adorable.

"I'm Marco," I tell her.

She cocks her head to the other side.

I smile wider, half because what she's doing is so cute and half because I want her to tell me her name.

"Lily." She tells me her name.

Lily. Lily.

"I'm Marco Huntington," I tell her, grinning like an idiot.

That makes Lily smile. "Lily White."

Now, I cock my head, my smile growing. "Your name is an adjective," I tell her.

Lily looks at me for a moment and then, she does one of the most wonderful things I've ever seen: she laughs.

She laughs and I want to make her laugh more, but I can't think of any jokes because I'm distracted by her laugh.

I want to make her laugh my alarm tone, so that I smile when I wake up.

"I've never heard that one before," she says.

Her voice is like my favourite song and I want to play it on repeat. I doubt I'd ever get tired of her voice.

"I'm sure I've got plenty of phrases that you haven't heard," I can hear myself saying.

Lily puts her hands on her hips. She's looking at me like she's calculating something; like she's considering what I said. I guess she does that a lot.

I don't mind. I like that she's looking at me, so I smile some more.

"Are you a football player?" she asks me, eyeing the football that I toss between my hands.

I shake my head. "I play tennis and basketball."

"You're a jock." She smiled from the corner of her mouth when she says it. Her corner-of-the-mouth smile is something I'll remember for a long time.

I shrug. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"I'm not judging," she says, sliding her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, "It's just a label. Labels aren't harmful. It's what people do with those labels that's wrong."

I like that she doesn't judge. She seems smart. I like that Lily is smart and has her own thoughts.

I lean into her. "What's your label?"

Lily smiles and thinks.

Lily is so many things that she has to think of one to tell me. "I'm a debater," she tells me.

"A debater?" My eyebrows raise. "You are smart."

She cocks her head. "You came up with that label all on your own," she says.

That makes me smile.

Lily makes me smile.

I want to make Lily smile.

At that moment, though, I can't do anything because Lily moves her head and the sun shines from behind her like a halo.

It's glorious.