Page 76 of Keep It Together

“I meant chocolate, and you know it.”

“Oh, I know how serious you are about your chocolate. When I asked your dad what sort of things you liked, he mentioned you had a sweet tooth.”

“For sweet things and sweet words?” Carmen looked up at me, her face suddenly serious.

“I thought you might have been listening to us talk that day. What else did you hear?”

“That you didn’t think I’d accept sweet words from you.” Carmen picked up the recipe page from the counter and got to work buttering and flouring the ramekins and then starting water to boil so we could melt the chocolate chips. Her sudden focus didn’t fool me. She was thinking about things. Maybe about sweet words, and whether or not she wanted them from me. I reminded myself there was no need to rush her. Her trust in me and her affection were enough. I would never take that for granted again.

“It’s too bad we don’t have vanilla ice cream to go with,” she murmured, pouring the semi-sweet chocolate chips into a metal pan with the butter and placing it over the boiling water.

I opened the freezer and pulled out a fresh carton of ice cream I’d hidden behind the bags of frozen vegetables. “Oh, but we do.” I even had mint leaves stashed away.

Carmen’s eyes widened. “Isaac.” She started to get teary, and I put the ice cream down on the counter and pulled her in for a hug. She sniffed against my shirt.

“You are embarrassingly easy to impress, Carmen.”

“No. You are wonderful, and I love you.”

I froze before tempering my reaction to those three little words. That was the chocolate lover in her talking. She’d said pretty much the same thing to the guy handing out the chocolate lava cakes at the food truck event.

She pulled back and looked up at me, her eyes assessing but sure. “Does it freak you out to hear me say that? Because I’m not taking it back.”

“It doesn’t freak me out, and I don’t want you to take it back.” I leaned down and rested my forehead against hers. Was this real? “I love you so much it hurts sometimes.”

“It’s not supposed to hurt.”

“Well, it does when you keep it to yourself and hope the other person doesn’t catch on to what an obsessed fan she has for a friend.”

Carmen took my face in her hands. “I want to kiss you so hard right now, but we’re about to burn the chocolate.”

Shoot. She was right. We both grabbed for the pan, and Carmen stirred while I looked down at the recipe to see what was next. Egg yolks. I swept her hair back and kissed her neck before picking up an egg. This woman had better prepare herself, because I had so many sweet words for her. Sweet everything.

Epilogue - Carmen (One Year Later)

“You sure you want to inherit this place from me?” I reached into the back of one of my lower cupboards and my fingers brushed against that last bowl that had been hiding back there. I leaned in further, but only managed to push it into the black void from whence it came. “I doubt Winnie will come over and bother you, but then there’s Mamá and Papá asking for this and that, and Gia sometimes hangs out here to avoid them both. Oh, and say goodbye to your underwear. It will be mixed in with Pá’s starting tomorrow since you’ll share a washer and dryer with them.”

“Carmen, you make a terrible realtor.” Eddie grabbed the tape roll from off the counter and closed the flaps on the box he’d been filling.

“I know, right? It’s a shame, too. You should really get paid for honesty. Like, hey, good luck with the swallows that show up in March and build mud nests in your eaves, and your air conditioner will not reach that back bedroom in July, and bonus, the overhead fan in the kids’ room sways like a drunken sailor.”

I stretched my arm into the cupboard again, as if by trying extra hard this time I could somehow make my arm longer.

“I’ll get it.”

I glanced back to see that Isaac had set down the moving box he’d been carrying from the bedroom. He crouched down next to me and reached in, his chest pressed up against my back, and his arm against my arm. What a helpful young man he was. I felt his lips meander from the top of my spine, working their way up, oh, so silently. Thank you, ponytail, for keeping my hair out of the way. I almost forgot to breathe.

We were trying to be respectful of Eddie’s low tolerance for PDA while we helped him move in and me fully out, but being two days off our honeymoon in Cabo did not mean the honeymoon was over. No, it did not.

“My back is turned, but I can still hear your lustful thoughts.” Eddie sighed. “You two are the worst.”

“How would you even know?” I asked, turning to press a kiss to Isaac’s neck before he stood up and got back to work. He’d successfully retrieved the bowl for me, along with a funnel I had no idea was back there.

Eddie grunted. “It’s anytime you’re suddenly quiet, Carmen. Not that hard to figure out.”

“So, I talk too much, and I’m too lustful. Got it.”

Isaac turned and winked at me. “I think you’re the perfect amount of both.” We both grinned like loons while Eddie took out his frustration on the box he was taping up.

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