Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
ELLIS
I’m less than okay.
I guess the good thing about being irritated with Sam is that it softens the whole missing-him thing. It’s safe to assume our entire family all know exactly what we’re doing here and are in cahoots at this point.
I don’t want to be pushed by them—or by any outside forces, for that matter. I want us to stay in control.
Still staring at the bed, I ask Wren, “Do you really want to do a cooking class?”
I feel her eyes on me, but I can’t take mine off the stupid bed. “Sure,” she says, her voice high. It’s the same voice she used to switch into around Sam, too strained and too careful. “Sam planned it, so.”
I look at her now. So pretty it stings. I spot a freckle on the bit of her waist that’s exposed by her scrap of a shirt and force myself to blink away. “Byrd, Sam’s not here. No one’s here. There’s no one running plans but us. This whole thing is… We are taking the wheel here. Plus, it’s your birthday.”
She blows out a big sigh. “Then, no. I do not,” she admits, smiling at whatever pleased expression lifts onto my face. “Now you tell me a truth. Are you freaking out about this? About any of this?” Her gaze bounces around the room.
“Yes.”
The rosy flush on her face disappears, and her eyes flare wider. “Wait, you are?! I expected you to say no and platitude me!” She stabs a finger into my chest, and I stop myself from grabbing it and biting it. “Why are you freaking out?”
Because I want to spread you wide on these pristine white sheets and taste you. “Because I can practically touch both ends of this room with my arms spread, which means you’re close enough to touch no matter where you are in here.” Because I hate that I lost you for half of a decade and I need this to be perfect more than I’ve ever needed anything, ever. I’m struggling not to grab you and kiss you and fuck you until we both forget the time we lost. Until we both forget our names. “Because it’s a big and fast change to be this close, and I don’t want anything to go too fast between us. Because I want to do this right, which also means that on a day that is not your birthday, we will need to keep going through the bad stuff, too, and that scares me because I’ve loved finding all the good memories and good things we lost. Because, unless I sleep in that tub on the back porch, we will presumably be sharing that bed, and I haven’t heard you snore in, like, five years.” Because you make up half of my soul. Because as desperate as I am to be near you, to be inside you, I’m terrified that having you this close again will also remind you of all the parts of me you wanted to leave.
Her face is frozen in surprise. “That was… a lot of truths.”
And not even the half of it.
“Except I don’t snore,” she says, rolling her eyes.
Yes, she does. In soft, disjointed little growls that I used as my personal sound machine. “Dare you to tell me why you’re freaking out,” I say.
She softens, brown eyes glowing. “Dares now, huh?” She eyes me sharply like she’s filing that away. “And all of the above.”
The only thing between us is the suitcase at her feet. The outside of my thigh is touching the edge of the mattress. It would be so easy to tip over onto it. “At least we’re still on the same page, then? Seems like a good sign,” I offer.
She grabs the suitcase handle and rolls it behind her with a precise flick of her wrist before she steps into my chest. I can feel my heart in my temples. “Do I get a dare?” she asks.
I gulp. Coax. Convince. Gentle. Don’t go too fast. Don’t blow past all the important shit you need to get through. “Be good, Byrd,” I say, but it comes out a begging wheeze and sounds a lot like, Have mercy . “But yes, you can have your dare.”
Her smile unfurls slowly, her eyes never leaving my mouth. She cups my jaw in her fine hand and drags her thumb across my chin. I feel it in my cock. God, the way she smells. I want to bury my nose in that hair.
“I dare you to get a little day-buzzed in the tasting room with me, then haul one of those premade platters I saw in there out into the vineyards so we can have a picnic together,” she says, smile beaming. Before I can chuckle and agree to this, she adds, “And then let me take advantage of you a little bit.”
“Shit,” I breathe, shutting my eyes against the near-painful surge of blood racing south. “Wren, that was, like, three dares.”
“Keep the change,” she sings. “You can use two of them on me later.” And with that, she slides herself past me, taking care to rub her chest across my ribs.
I groan. “You’ve gotten meaner,” I tell her, thoroughly tortured. A little amazed.
“Good,” she says sweetly. “Maybe I want you to be mean back.”
She glides out the door still grinning, and it takes me the entire football field’s distance to the tasting room to walk off the semi.