Page 88 of A Vine Mess
“Fuck, Wildflower. Greedy, aren’t we?”
“For you? Always,” she said a moment before capturing my mouth. She was ravenous, her lips meeting mine eagerly, tongue sweeping along my bottom lip, seeking entrance, and I gave it to her. Everything in me settled when our tongues tangled, like she was breathing life into me.
But before things got too far, we needed to have a conversation.
“As badly as I’d like to fuck you into next week,” I said when I pulled away, resting my forehead against hers and gripping her upper arms, our heavy breaths mingling between us, “there’s something we need to talk about first.”
Ella backed up further to meet my eyes, hers swimming with worry and confusion.
“Okay…”
“I know it’s really soon and everything, but…well, I’ve already met your family so maybe it’s notthatsoon, but I was hoping maybe you’d want to extend your trip and come to Sammy’s wedding with me?”
I said the words in such a rush that I was breathing even harder by the time I’d gotten them all out.
“Your rambling is cute,” Ella said with a giggle.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I thought it was obvious.” She shrugged out of my hold andreached down to lace our fingers together. “Of course I’ll go with you.”
“Think it’d be alright if I introduced you to my family as my girlfriend?”
Ella grinned. “As long as I can introduce you to mine as my boyfriend when we get home.”
Home. Hell, I couldn’t wait to return to Apple Blossom Bay with her, to start our normal lives together. To plant roots deep in the land her family settled and watch them grow.
“You can call me whatever you want, as long as one of those things is ‘mine’.”
“Deal,” she said, humming happily and leaning into me. But she straightened abruptly. “Can I ask you something though?”
“Anything.”
“When I told you about A—” I made a noise of protest, and she cut herself off before uttering the devil’s name, then started again. “When I told you about douchebag cheating, you said you understood. And ages ago, you promised to tell me the story of why you left Portland. Are they related?”
Internally, I swore. This wasn’t ever a conversation I wanted to have with her, mostly because Mellie meant nothing to me now, but she deserved to know anyway.
So as succinctly as I could, mostly because it was ancient history, I told her the story of Mellie. How we’d met during my first summer working at her family’s winery. How we fucked around for years after that, breaking up and getting back together more times than I could count, but none of the breakups ever stuck. I guessed we enjoyed hurting each other too much—and making up.
Our on-again, off-again relationship continued through college, when I graduated and officially took over as head vintner at the winery. Things seemed to get more serious then. We had more frequent conversations about the future, what we wanted from our lives, settling down in Portland and having a family. Even so, for years, something held me back from proposing, from taking that next step to making things permanent.
“I should’ve known it was all too good to be true. I think, deep down, Idid, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself,” I told Ella wryly.
“What happened?”
“I caught her fucking my brother in her office one night. She’d been working late, so I showed up with dinner from her favorite Thai takeout place to surprise her, and I walked in on them together.”
“Fuck,” Ella hissed. “I hate her.”
I smiled, dragging her into my arms. “The worst part about it is, after I left,theygot together—but then Sammy started cheating on her with her sister. And now…he’s marrying Mellie’s sister, Char.”
“That’s seriously fucked up,” Ella said. “And I thought Delia hooking up with Owen after Amara had been bad enough.”
“At least Amara and Owen had been done for years at that point,” I reminded her.
“And it didn’t affect our family dynamic one bit.”
“My problems with my brother started long before that day, but…yeah, that was kind of the final nail in the coffin of us ever having a relationship.”
