Page 56 of A Vine Mess
Ella nodded. “Me too, Wills.”
Reluctantly, I returned to my side of the couch and lifted the remote off the table, turning the TV on and flipping through streaming services.
“Now, what do you want to watch while we get drunk?”
An hour later, we were deep in a variety pack of beers from a local brewery, and Nicolas Cage was running from the FBI on the TV.
“Riley is such an underrated character,” Ella said with a sigh, propping her chin on her fist and staring at the man on the screen. She’d just taken a sip of her beer, an errant drop clinging to the curve of her bottom lip, and I leaned deeper into my end of the couch to avoid leaning into her and licking it off. Fuck, I was in trouble. “Like…you could argue he’s solely responsible for Ben being able to steal theDeclaration.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you,” I told her. “But I’ve only got eyes for Abigail.”
She turned to me, brows drawn together. “So you’re into blondes?”
Dodging the question, I said, “You can’t deny she’s hot.”
Ella faced the screen again, watching Diane Kruger playing Abigail Chase as she and Nicolas Cage bent over his father’s dining room table, lemons and blow dryers in hand.
“Okay, fine,” Ella huffed. “She’s hot.”
“Thank you,” I grinned. Then, daring to lean closer, I added, “For the record, brunettes with green eyes are more my type.”
Ella sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t look at me, and I chuckled lowly as we continued the movie.
As it progressed, and as we transitioned into the second, sheshifted on the couch, turning herself from upright to laying down, stretching her legs over the arm and her head resting on my shoulder.
“Comfortable?” I asked.
Ella hummed and sleepily said, “Very.”
And there was no fucking chance in hell I was moving her. Not when she felt comfortable enough with me to use me as a pillow.
We were barely twenty minutes intoBook of Secretswhen she snuffled faintly, and I knew she was out cold.
I remained there, wholly content, and allowed the movie to play out before I moved us. I wanted this time with her, even when it was something as simple and innocent as us sort of cuddling during a movie until she fell asleep.
Before I lifted her off the couch, I took a beat to study her. How long her hair had gotten, the bright purple streaks faded to lavender, most likely thanks in large part to all of the time she’d been spending outside. Her sooty lashes fanned out over the freckles high on her cheeks, her skin flushed slightly in sleep.
And that mouth. My god, that mouth.
Plush, the bottom lip slightly fuller than the top, giving her a pouty expression. I wondered what they’d feel like beneath my own, and narrowly held myself back from brushing my thumb along the bottom one, pulling it to the side and imagining them wrapped around my—
No.
Vigorously, I shook my head, deciding that was the moment I needed to get up and bring her to bed before I did something stupid, crossed some line I could never come back from.
Gently, I shifted out from under her then lifted her into my arms. She tensed only slightly before relaxing into me, her head lolling against my shoulder. She wasn’t heavy in the slightest, but she was incredibly long-limbed, even with her tucked against my body the way she was, so I had to shuffle through the doorway and narrow space between her bed and the wall in order to peel the covers back and lay her across it properly.
When I released her, she shifted only to curl herself tighter into a ball, and I pulled the blankets up over her.
Fuck, she was stunning. Faint strains of moonlight filtered into the room through the window, illuminating her skin until it practically glowed.
I had to get out of this room, but I couldn’t resist bending over her, planting a soft, lingering kiss on her forehead, and whispering, “Good night, Wildflower,” before I went to bed alone.
I blinked my eyesopen to bright sunlight streaming through the window. I expected to find myself on the couch in the living room, so I was shocked to be in my room, wrapped up in my blankets, still in the comfy clothes I’d thrown on when we got back from hiking the day before.
Wracking my brain, I tried to latch onto the last thing I remembered before apparently passing out for—I lifted my phone to check the time—somewhere about twelve hours.
Holy shit.
