This was not a good time - or place - to be getting completely turned on, but it was totally happening anyway.
"Don't tease me," I said, leaning into his chest.
"Not teasing," he said, hand sliding out from under the jacket to go to the back of my neck, sliding into my hair, and pulling to make my head angle up. The pain seemed to spread from my scalp and shoot right between my legs. "We're going back to my place tonight so we don't have to worry about traumatizing your sister."
"Right," I said with a grin, "because she's such a shrinking violet."
"Might have to stop at your store for some goodies though," he added, eyes full of promise, making an almost intolerable pressure press into my lower stomach.
"You!" Peyton's voice called, making me jolt backward a step, the jacket started to fall, making me reach for it to pull it back up as she walked up, pointing at Eli.
"Me?" Eli asked, leaning back against the car, smirking at her.
"Yes, you!" she hissed.
"What'd I do?"
"You made me feel things, you monster," she declared, crossing her arms, small-eyeing him.
To that, he threw his head back and laughed a little. "Can't be having that, can we?"
"No," she agreed, shaking her head in exasperation, "we absolutely can not."
Eli reached out, dragging a very stiff Peyton in for a hug. "Don't fucking change, Peyton."
"Why would I?" she asked, trying to pull off unaffected, but I knew my sister, and she was totally having a moment. "There's no improving on this," she added, even as her hands went up and gave him a quick, tentative hug back. "Okay, you big sap. Let me go," she added a moment later, pulling away. "What? You're not getting enough affection from this one?" she asked, waving a hand at me. "She's like a clinging vine for chrissakes."
I totally had to force affection on her from time to time. Mostly because I felt like she needed it, no matter how much she denied it.
With that, though, she turned on her heel and started toward the house.
"Also, we're having dessert. And it looks like you guys will need to cut my fat ass out of the wall and take me out with a crane."
"Some day," Eli said, shaking his head at her, "some guy is going to come around and throw an entire Home Depot department full of wrenches in her works."
"Won't that be awesome to watch?" I agreed, moving in when he held out an arm for me to step into.
"Thank you," he told me a second later, pressing a kiss into my temple.
"For her? I don't think you've woken up to her standing in a corner with a knife yet. You might not be thanking me then."
He chuckled at that, giving me a squeeze.
"Yeah, for her. For you. For this. For taking that hollow shell I was when I got out, and steadily filling me back up."
Oh, my poor heart.
I couldn't take any more of the up and down.
But thank God we were ending the conversation on such an up.
I filled him up.
That might have been the best compliment I had ever received.
"You're very welcome," I said, meaning it. "I really love your family."
"They'll be happy to adopt you. It seems like Ma just keeps building a longer table."
"Well, that's good. Because I don't think Peyton will ever give them up. She follows her stomach. She swears the only time she's ever been in love was with the absolutely perfect cheesy lasagne we got once at a restaurant that went out of business a week after she had it."
"We better go help her eat the dessert so she doesn't bitch the whole way home about how much we let her eat."
She would totally do that, too.
We walked into the dining room, making our choices.
Eli stopped on the way back to the table, going by habit toward his mother, but stopping, and moving to sit down next to Little Eli instead.
"That's a nice truck," he said as I stood watching, my breath caught in my chest.
"It has a backseat," Little Eli declared, holding up the bright blue pickup.
"I see that. I have a truck just like that. With a backseat."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he agreed as Mark walked over to sit down on Little Eli's other side. "Maybe one day your daddy can bring you over, and we can take a ride in it."
"To the beach?" he asked, perking up immediately.
"Anywhere you want," Eli agreed, giving him a smile. "And my name is Eli, by the way."
"That's my name!" Little Eli declared.
"You stole it from me," Eli agreed.
Little Eli looked at his father. "Did you?"
"Sure did," Mark agreed. "I thought Eli was pretty cool, so I thought you'd like to have the name of someone cool."
"He has a truck!" Little Eli declared, adorably oblivious to how big the moment was.