Page 32 of The Sweetest Connection

“What did he say?”

“Well, I showed him the list and he immediately started naming people he thought it could be. Why do the middle-aged and older men in this place know everyone’s business, anyway?”

Silas shrugged one broad shoulder, pouring the eggs into the heated pan. “Airport illuminati?”

“Maybe so.” I tapped my fingertips on the surface of the laminate counter before filling my finger again. “But Sam didn’t write it.” I held my finger out to offer Silas some of the cream—he always declined, but his gaze fell to my finger like he was considering it before turning back to the pan.

“No... no, thanks.” He flipped the omelet, adding the cheese as best he could with what I gave him to work with. “So, I guess we’re out of leads.”

When I finished sucking the sweet cream off my finger, he was looking at me again. “What? Is there some on my face?”

Silas shook his head and returned to the eggs. “Sorry we didn’t solve the mystery. I know you wanted to before you left.” He slid the food onto a plate but didn’t make a move to get forks. Instead, he watched me spray more whipped cream. “It was fun to investigate with you, though.”

“We always have fun.” My stomach did a weird flip-flop at the way he looked at me. I’d wanted someone’s love story to work out, for the letter to mean something, but now time was up and maybe I’d been putting too much symbolism into all of it. I held out my finger again, waiting for his rebuff, but just before I pulled my hand back, Silas turned off the burner and his fingers wound softly around my wrist.

“Yeah, I’ll try some.”

“You will?”

His lips wrapped around my index finger, his tongue sliding along the pad of my finger and sending chills through me. More than the feel of his mouth, the intimacy of the gesture, his eyes were on mine the entire time, and my body warmed. “It’s good,” he murmured, his fingers still holding my wrist, the hold loose but unmoving.

My brain was rearranging itself, sitting there in the tiny half-packed kitchen with the ghost of Silas’s mouth on my finger. Maybe he was calling my bluff or he just wanted some whipped cream, but it felt like more. My voice was small when I spoke. “Did you know when I first found the list, I wondered if you wrote it?”

“You did?”

I nodded. “Isn’t that horrible?”

“No.” He didn’t elaborate.

“You’ve been dating Erin for years,” I said, pulling back my hand, my senses coming back to me as I realized how wrong it was to feel the things I was feeling. “How could I hope for even a moment you’d be thinking those things about me?”

His brows pinched together and his hands stilled.

I lifted the whipped cream can. “I know. I’m a bad person. You are lucky I’ll be in a different time zone for the next several months.” I didn’t want to put a wet blanket on what little time we had left, so I sprayed the whipped cream directly into my mouth, alleviating me from having to say anything or acknowledge how long I’d wanted Silas to touch me like that.

Silas’s lips tipped in a grin once my mouth was full. “I broke up with Erin.”

I stared, incredulous. “Last night? What?” The words came out as a garble because my mouth was still full.

“A few months ago,” he said, interpreting my nonsense, his voice still low. He wanted to look away, I knew he did, because he always did when I was angry, but he kept his eyes trained on mine. “I didn’t tell you because...”

I swallowed the rest of the whipped cream. “What happened?”

Silas sucked in a deep breath but didn’t answer my question. “You have some here.” He swept his thumb under my lips, his gaze following the movement. “I ended it.”

“But why?”

Silas stepped closer and I placed my palm on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. “Because I didn’t write that list...” His thumb still ghosted near my lip, sweeping back and forth in a slow arc. “But it wasn’t fair to her that I could have written that list.”

“What are you saying?”

He shook his head slightly. “I don’t know.” Silas cupped my jaw, one soft palm against my face, warm and solid. Our mouths were so close together, foreheads almost touching. “I don’t know what I’m saying because you’re my best friend but I want to kiss you.”

“My mouth is going to taste like whipped cream.”

His chuckle was low and his chest vibrated under my hand. “That’s better than tasting like the cheese.”

“Can you imagine an American cheese kiss?” My voice was a whisper, but now we were both laughing, pressed together in my cramped kitchen.

---