“I fucking missed you,” he murmured into the side of my neck.
Oh, God. Don’t cry.
“Are you…Ben, are you sniffing me right now?” I asked, teasing him, because if I didn’t, I’d break down instead.
“Yes,” he said, unabashed. He shoved his nose into my skin and took deep, panting breaths like he was some sort of deranged werewolf scenting his mate.
“Your beard!” I said, struggling to pull away.
His response was to let loose a muffled, “Muah ha ha ha ha!” and sniff his way lower, until it tickled so bad I started to squirm.
He finally let me down when a scream-wheeze-laugh burst from my mouth, but the second he released me, a sob followed.
Great. So much for keeping my composure.
“Shit, are you okay?” He leaned down to look at me. His hair fell loose over his shoulders with the motion. I wanted to wrap my fingers in it and never let him go. Even in the darkness, his eyes were an almost inhuman color.
“I just really missed you too,” I told him. And then it just. All. Poured. Out. “This has been the worst month of my life. Are you okay to have me back in yours? We don’t have to be anything romantic yet, if you can’t handle that. I can just be here to puppy sit and work on the reno and be your friend and maybe verbally abuse all your Twitter haters.”
He took me by the shoulders. “Ella.”
“And I know that sounds desperate, and maybe kind of pathetic, but I don’t really care. I just know that if you’re ready to have me back in any capacity, I would happily take that and I won’t even try to touch your butt or anything.”
“Ella,” he said with a little more force.
“And before you question whether or not I’m really ready for this, you should know that I’ve been stuck at worst-case scenario for weeks, so I’ve had plenty of time to think about whether or not I can handle that and I can because…because I love you, Ben.”
Oh, shit. Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit.I just said that. Out loud. To a man who might not be in a place to hear it, or a place to accept it, or who might not return the emotion.
What the hell had I done?
He opened his mouth to respond, but I barreled over him. “You don’t have to say anything back to me. How you feel doesn’t matter.” I wanted to open a hole in the earth and bury myself alive in it. “Oh, Jesus, I mean, obviously how you feelmatters, but I just meant that -”
And then his lips were on mine, and hope began to rise like a phoenix within me, swelling with so much heat and ebullience that it might do real damage to me if it was allowed to grow any bigger.
I laugh-hiccup-sobbed against Ben’s lips.
He pulled back just enough to whisper, “I love you too.”
Epilogue: Ben
Iwoke to the sound of distant, pounding ocean surf and soft chanting. A warm breeze floated through the open windows, bringing with it the tang of salt. The bedsheets were wrapped around my legs, a reminder of me and Ella’s midday sex session.
I must have fallen asleep afterward. Our impromptu fall vacation was taking way more out of me than I thought it would.
This was Ella’s first trip to Hawaii, and the woman wanted to doeverything. Yesterday, we woke up at the ass crack of dawn for surf lessons. She was terrible. I had so much video blackmail to get back at her for that cross-country ski incident last winter that I gleefully looked forward to the opportune moment to unleash it. Maybe I could enlist Jane to help. She had the kind of devious mentality that would be perfect for this. Must be where Willow got it from.
Once Ella’s fail-surfing was over, we’d spent the late morning on a chartered whale-watching vessel. After landing, we ate lunch, then headed further inland to hike the volcano and watch the sunset from its western summit. Thankfully, someone picked us up in a vehicle afterward, and we were chauffeured back down to the base. We ended the night with dinner at my parents’.
And this was just one dayof activities. We’d been here for a full week, and I was so sore that it hurt to turn my head toward the sound of her chanting.
“Sipping Mai Tais on a beach, sipping Mai Tais on a beach, sipping Mai Tais on a beach,” Ella sing-whispered over by the drink cart. She wore a green string bikini, butt twitching back and forth to the tune of the song she’d made up.
I had no idea where she got this boundless energy. I knew she was sore too. Her feet had blisters on them. She woke me up at one this morning swearing and hopping up and down next to the bed, trying to alleviate the Charley horse in her leg. And yet here she was, several hours later, practically vibrating with energy. If anyone ever found a way to bottle it, they’d be a millionaire.
She lifted a silver drink shaker and rattled it over her head along with the rhythm, doing a full-on dance now. One that looked disturbingly similar to Skunkarooney Time, complete with hip-thrusts and elbow flares. The sight probably shouldn’t have turned me on, especially since I was so tired I didn’t know if I could even get it up, but…
“I like the way your ass jiggles when you do that,” I told her, voice still rough from sleep.
