A Very Merry Mess (Cider Cove Sweet Southern RomComs #3)

Ryanne

RYANNE

I don’t know how Elliott does the things he does with his mouth. From the words he’s said tonight, to the way he kisses me like I’m his One-and-Only, the man is extremely talented with his mouth.

“Are you going to respond to what I’ve said?” he whispers as he pulls back an inch or two, then lowers his lips to my jawline. Then my neck. Up toward my ear.

He’s stolen every thought and every word straight from my throat—and that takes a lot of talent too.

Elliott straightens again, and the loss of his touch leaves me cold and somewhat petrified. My blood vessels are just going to be preserved in this state forever, with the passion he’s kissed me with living inside them.

“I’m going to need you to say something.” He takes my hand in his, aligning our fingers just-so, then sighs. “Let’s go get dinner and watch the lights. I promise I won’t say another word until you’ve had time to think.”

Just the fact that he knows I need processing time speaks to the first thing he said: He’s my best friend in the whole world too.

The fact that I kissed him back as enthusiastically as I did must’ve told him something about how I feel about him too.

He’ll need to hear it in words, though. Sometimes Elliott can’t see what’s right in front of him. I know, because I’ve told him about several women who were so much more into him than he was them, and he simply didn’t see it.

“Do you still want to go?” he asks.

I nod and let him pull me to my feet. “I’m really sorry about the orange juice.” I reach out and slide my palm down his chest and abdomen again, feeling the silky quality of this second shirt beneath my touch. Maybe a muscle or two as well, but mostly the smooth fabric of his polo.

“If our next date starts with some sort of liquid getting thrown all over me…” He grins, and I manage to return it. He leans closer, an unusual intensity in his dark, dazzling eyes. “It still won’t be enough to drive me away.”

I sigh, because what woman doesn’t want to hear an incredibly handsome man tell her she can do no wrong?

“Let’s go,” I say, and I start down the sidewalk, hand-in-hand with Elliott. When we reach his car, my pulse is a lightning storm, and words will have to come out before I can get in.

“I kissed you back,” I blurt out as he reaches for the door handle.

His gaze meets mine, and I swear, it’s like two trains going in opposite directions, colliding until the individual pieces of them melt into a whole new unit.

“Surely you realize I kissed you back.”

“It seems you did, yes,” he says.

“This is not the first crush I’ve had on you,” I say, and that gets his eyes to widen slightly. He blinks an extra time or two, but my cells have started to settle now that I’ve confessed a few things.

He opens the door. “Can we agree to get rid of the fake label?”

I nod, the word yes lodged somewhere too deep for me to unearth it right now. I step past him, finally escaping his gaze, and start to slide into the car.

Something waits on the seat for me, and I quickly swipe it up as I slide in. Elliott closes the door at the same time I ask, “You got me mini crispies?”

I look up through the window, but Elliott has already gone toward the back of the car, and I realize it’s a tactic he uses when he doesn’t want me to see him.

It’s ten seconds where he can compose himself in private, ten seconds where he gets a reset, ten seconds he gives to me to do the same.

When he opens the driver’s side door and sits behind the wheel, I immediately reach for his hand. “So it won’t be fake when we go see my family for Christmas.”

“No,” he confirms.

“But we still need to get a few things straight about when we started dating.” I look out my side window as he starts the car. He needs both hands to back out, so he drops mine to focus on that task.

“I think my momma will lose her mind if I tell her our first date was the day after I texted and told her you were coming.”

He chuckles, the sound amazing and one of the most authentic things I’ve heard out of his mouth.

“Plus, you said you wanted to start over, so I’m not sure our first date is even today,” he says.

“Oh, it has to be,” I say. “We can’t have kissed before our first date.”

He shakes his head, clearly amused. “I suppose not.”

Elliott sticks to his promise about giving me room to think tonight, and he doesn’t’ say much as he drives along the suburban streets toward downtown Cider Cove. It’s the Christmas Festival for a few more weeks, and the food trucks have shown up.

“I thought you said we wouldn’t have to get out of the car.”

“I’ll go for you, kitty-cat,” he says, using a nickname that used to drive me mad, because he’s used it to indicate how detached I am, while expecting to be cared for in a very specific way. Like a diva kitty cat.

Now, though, it feels like a term of endearment.

“Which one are you going to?”

He nods down the row of them, but it’s impossible to see them all. “Let me surprise you.”

“You know I hate surprises.” So like an aloof, solitary feline, so maybe the name fits.

“Maybe they aren’t for you,” he shoots back. “Maybe you can simply let someone else do something for you that will make them feel like a rockstar.”

“All right, rockstar ,” I say, really sliding out the last word. “Go get your surprise.”

Elliott gives me a hot look, filled with searing things, but he says nothing more. He simply eases out of the car with all the charm, power, and grace with which he usually moves, and then he crosses the street to the row of food trucks.

He strides down them until I lose sight of him among the crowd and distance, and I reach down and pull the lever that will lower the seat.

I squeal as I fall down, my laughter bubbling up in the next moment.

Because Elliott kissed me.

This is not just for-fun for him. He wants this to be real.

“Whatever this is,” I whisper to myself. I know what I want it to be, and I sober as I think of his pledge. He’s going to try to have a serious relationship, and that means there’s a reason—maybe more than one—why he hasn’t in the past.

Maybe not the right woman, but surely I’m not her. No, there’s definitely something else Ell isn’t telling me, and I sit myself up and reach for my phone. He’s only said that one thing about the robots on Mars, and I want to speak his language when he gets back with my surprise.

It only takes a few taps and a single search—and a mini-handful of mini crispy M&Ms—to find the newly released communications from the Mars rovers —not robots.

They’re programmed to say cute things to each other, and to Earth, and I find myself smiling as I read through their travelogue.

“What are you smiling about?” Elliott asks as he lets in a blast of colder air. Then he’s in the car, closing the door, and holding two plain white Styrofoam containers.

“Curiosity had a birthday,” I say.

Pure joy lights up his face, and it makes me so happy too. “She did,” he says. “Only a couple of days after my daddy’s. Did you find the feed of her singing to herself? Or was it Perseverance doing the duet with himself?”

“There’s a Mars rover duet of Happy Birthday ?” I practically dive back into my phone, but Elliott plucks it away from me.

“Later,” he says. “I didn’t see or smell any pizza at the Big House, and that means you guys didn’t have your dinner.”

“No,” I say, a blip of irritation shooting through me at the loss of my device. “Something came up at school for Tahlia. We’re going to do it tomorrow.” I look down at the food containers. “Then Hillary can video in with us. Give her own update.”

“What are you going to update everyone about?” he asks.

“Nothing to say,” I tell him, lifting my eyes to his. “You’re the one who came crashing into the house today like a wild bull, saying all kinds of things.”

“Everything I said happened after I got back wearing a new shirt.”

I half-laugh, half-scoff. “Right,” I say. “You said plenty in front of my roommates.”

“Is this one of those things where women can see more than men?”

“Yes,” I say simply, smiling at him. “Surprise me already. I’m starving.”

He glances to the tube of mini M&Ms. “The seal on that is broken, so you’re fine.”

“It’s candy,” I say. “Not real food.”

Ell gives me his delicious smile and pops the top on the uppermost container. “I give you…Hawaiian haystacks with Kalua pork!” He says it like he’s the ringleader at the greatest circus on earth, and he’s just announced the most bizarre trick of the evening.

I do want to cheer. Or lunge across the space and kiss him. But I’ve already spilled too much on him today, and I do love the Kalua pulled pork Hawaiian haystacks from Give It a Poke.

“They’re here?” I ask, automatically looking out the window to find their food truck. “How long are they here?”

“Just tonight,” he says. “According to their social media.”

“Just tonight,” I repeat. Warmth fills me from head to toe as Elliott tucks a fork into the most delicious version of Hawaiian haystacks known to mankind and offers me the container.

“You’re my favorite person,” I tell him as I take it.

“You always know how to give me the reaction I want.” He laughs and opens his own container. I can guess what he’ll have ordered from my favorite food truck.

“Sushi,” I say at the same time he says, “Ah, I love sushi.”

I shake my head and pick up my flimsy plastic fork. “I don’t know how you eat raw fish from a food truck.”

“It’s good,” he says.

“It’s unsanitary.”

“It’s fish,” he says. “No different than getting it from the restaurant next door.”

“Don’t call me upset when you’re puking tonight,” I say.

“We’re not even open tomorrow,” he says. “So it doesn’t matter.” Then he uses a legit pair of chopsticks to lift a sushi roll out of his container. It is beautiful, sushi, though I don’t particularly like it.

But my Kalua pork, shredded over white sticky rice, with edamame, pineapple, and a Hawaiian spiced red-eye gravy? Yes, please all the day long.

And Elliott even got the crunchy lo mein noodles—my favorite. I glance over to him, and I haven’t spoken incorrectly.

He is my favorite person in the world, and I should be giddy with the way tonight has gone. I am, for sure, but my heartbeat also twitches in fear. I take a bite of my favorite food and look over to him.

“What?” he asks.

I let the party continue in my mouth, really hamming it up with a moan and a roll of my head. Ell smiles and laughs, and he’s the most handsome man in the world.

When I swallow the best bite of my life, I look over to him again. “What happens if you try to take things seriously between us, but you just can’t do it?”

The smile disappears right off his face. Just slides away, and I kick myself for ruining this first-date-for-the-second-time for the second time that night.