Page 15 of A More Than Mayhem Christmas

We pull up to the cabin, my hand still enveloped in his. He doesn’t cut the engine right away. Instead, he looks at me, directly into my eyes, and forces a smile when he says, “We don’t have to stay too long. We can leave whenever you want.”

“I’m okay,” I say again and force myself to smile back.

He lifts my hand to his mouth, drops a kiss on the inside of my wrist… then quickly all the way up my arm—these open-mouth, sloppy kisses that leave marks along my sweater. He goes all the way to my neck, repeating the action there. I squirm in response, but he has a hold on my arm, keeping me in place, and Ilaugh—loud and unabashed—the sound foreign, even to my own ears.

He pulls back, grinning, as if he’s just won a prize, and in a way, he has. The coldness in my chest is replaced with warmth, with love for the man sitting beside me. I reach up, my palm on his neck, fingertips stroking the light curls at his nape. And then I kiss him. The way my heart has wanted to, but my mind could not. He rests his head on my shoulder, a single sigh leaving him. Right before he chuckles.

“What?” I ask, staying close, even when he pulls away.

Shaking his head, his words say, “Nothing,” but his eyes… his eyes sayI missed you.

I missed me, too, I want to tell him, and I’m grateful he was able to get a part of me back, even if it’s small, and even if it’s only for now.

Jake looks around, his chest rising with his deep inhale. “Hey, if Cam and Luce haven’t come out to greet us yet, then that means?—”

“Mayhem,” I cut in.

He ducks his head, eyes narrowed as he scopes out our surroundings. “They’re probably watching us from somewhere we can’t see.”

“So we have two options,” I tell him. “We give them a show, or we get out and take it.”

He turns to me, a slight smirk tugging on his lips. “We’ll have to get out eventually, but tell me more about thisshowyou speak of.”

I sit up on my knees, removing the hair tie from around my wrist. Jake’s eyebrows shoot up, knowing exactly what I’m suggesting. He watches as I tie up my hair, then turn my entirebody toward him. Jake grins from ear to ear, and I pause a second, questioning. “Just to be clear…”

“I know, I know. It’s just for show,” he responds, flicking on the cab light, then pressing a button on the side of his seat until it’s fully reclined.

Without hesitation, I lower my face to his lap and start bobbing up and down.

“Mmm,” he hums.

“You know they can’t hear you, right?” I say through a giggle.

“I know, it’s just you in this position…” He grabs me by the ponytail, guiding me up and down, and I can see the bulge in his jeans growing with each passing second. Then he chuckles. “What the fuck are we doing?”

We lose it. Completely. We laugh together, the silent type of laughter that comes from deep in our chests and has us struggling for air.

“Don’t fucking stop,” he wheezes out, gripping my hair tighter so he can control my movements, my pace. I picture what we must look like from the outside, and it only makes me laugh harder. “Move your head up more,” he tells me. “Make it look like I have a huge one.”

I do as he says, inching farther away with each bob. And then I take it one step further, throw in an insane amount of theatrics as I go all the way up until my head hits the roof of the car.

“Okay, now you’re just being ridiculous,” he laughs, playfully pushing me away, then pulling me back just as fast. For a long moment, he just holds me, my head to his chest, his hand stroking my hair as we let our laughter subside.

It’s been a long time since we’ve connected like this, and I realize now, as I listen to his pulse, his life, beat beneath my cheek… maybe it was never the stillness of the Preston property that brought me a sense of peace, of calm.

Maybe it was Jake all along.

7

Mikayla

“You should get out first,” I tell Jake. “I’ll wait in the car. Just in case.”

Jake groans, then squares his shoulders, as if preparing for battle. The second he steps out of the car, he gets blasted with paint pellets, one after the other. I wince, then giggle as I look around, trying to find the gunman… orgunmen. They’re nowhere to be seen. “Fuck you!” Jake yells, spinning in circles as if that’s somehow going to stop the assault. The attack only lasts seconds—ten at most—but when it’s over, my boyfriend, along with his dad’s car, is dotted in green. There’s barely a moment of reprieve before a new set of shots sounds through the air, and now Jake is just outside the car running around, changing directions every few feet. Confused, I get up on my knees to see what the hell is happening. The shots ring out first, followed immediately by the plumes of dirt that rise from around Jake’s feet. Hesquealsevery time a BB pellet almost gets him and hops from foot to foot. I bust out a giggle, watching his dramatic ass trying to dodge each shot. And, suddenly, the sounds stop. Jakelooks up into the darkness of the night. “Reveal yourself!” he demands, and it only makes me laugh harder. He points toward the cabin. “You motherfucker!”

Cam, in all black, is standing on the roof, his arms up in surrender. “I’m coming down,” he calls out, waving a white flag.

“You’re surrendering?” Jake yells. “I haven’t done shit to you!”

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