Homegrown - Chapter 7

Six months later…

“Who the hell let me buy so much shit?” Ella asked as Sam walked into the room. She paused and stared at the boxes stacked in a semicircle around Ella before dropping another one.

“I’m pretty sure no one let you,” Sam replied, the corners of her mouth twitching in mild amusement. “I’m pretty sure someone probably tried to stop you, though I doubt you listened.”

Ella put her hands on her hips. “Well, they weren’t you, so I probably ignored them.” With a sigh, she ran a hand over one of the boxes. “Will you still love me even if I never unpack all of this?”

Sam rolled her eyes before walking over and sweeping Ella into a tight hug. “I’ll love you if you don’t unpack them, because we could probably bribe Peter into doing it for you. Sometimes I think he likes you more than me.”

“It’s because she’s nicer,” Peter said as he walked in, lugging another box. “Do you want this in here or in the office?”

“The office, please,” Ella replied. “I need to finish setting that up first before my client meeting in a couple days. Going solo means never-ending work apparently.”

Sam didn’t say anything, instead enjoying the feeling of Ella being in her arms. When Ella had proposed moving back to Peach Blossom, she’d had to fight against her need to tell Ella she didn’t have to. Being truthful about their wants was something they both still struggled with, but they were getting better, slowly but surely. It helped that what they wanted usually lined up. The few times it didn’t, they had talked things out…in the bedroom.

“Dad said he wants to talk to you, actually,” Peter said as he shifted the box in his hands. “Something about ‘setting up a trust for the twins.’ I don’t know what any of that means, so consider my part in this game of telephone over.”

Sam shook her head as she watched Peter walk toward the hallway leading to the office. “Are you sure you want to move in? I don’t know when he’ll ever decide to shape up and find someone so we can have the place to ourselves.”

Ella snorted. “You just want to get bent over every surface in the house without worrying about identifying stains.”

Sam’s cheeks heated, but she didn’t deny it. They kept their bedroom activities confined to the bedroom or the en suite bathroom, but sometimes Sam would see Ella and her libido damn near got the best of her. Never had she found lawyerspeak so exhilarating as when listening to Ella. It might be a problem, but it was one she was definitely enjoying.

“I will neither confirm nor deny.” Sam had also started enjoying the way Ella fell apart with giggles. “Did you ever think we would get here?”

It was a question she had been pondering for the past few months, since Ella told her that she planned to move back to Peach Blossom and open her own firm specializing in estate planning. Sam hadn’t understood any of it, but it made Ella smile and she looked a lot less stressed, so it was good enough for her.

“Hoped, maybe,” Ella replied as she leaned her chin on Sam’s chest. “I like to think that one day I would have realized how much I didn’t want to live that life anymore and come back home to you. I’m just glad I didn’t make partner.”

That truly was a blessing in disguise. The first couple months after Ella returned to Nashville had been hard. She had been busy closing out her business at her previous firm while looking at what she needed to do to open her own and transition from one field of law to the next. Surprisingly, she had called Sam not even a week after getting her firm started to say she already had her first interested client, and it was someone in Peach Blossom. It seemed people in town preferred having a lawyer they knew when it came to doing business, and news of one of Peach Blossom’s own returning had reached a few towns close by. Sam didn’t know anything about law, but she knew about business, and Ella’s would no doubt flourish.

“You know, at the time I was really devastated,” Ella said, pulling her attention again. “I had been gunning for that for years, and to have it snatched away from me was hard.”

Sam nodded. “I remember. I thought I was going to have to keep you from marching back up to Nashville and going off on them. Truthfully, though, I probably would have enjoyed watching you hand them their asses.”

Ella smiled widely. “Why, I do believe you have a little mean streak in you after all. Good for you.” Sam snorted when Ella patted her chest. She sucked in a breath when that hand got a little too close to her nipple. Ella’s eyebrow raised. “Oh, I heard that. Praise does that for you, hmm?”

Sam shook her head with a smile. “It’s not that. I like seeing you smile.”

“Stop it, you big softie.” Ella leaned her face up, and Sam wasn’t able to refuse her. They kissed softly until a throat clearing had them pulling back again.

“Can you two wait until I’m gone, at least? I swear, you are the horniest people I have ever known.” Peter’s grumbling made Sam chuckle. “I dropped that box off, and now I am going to go spend a few days with our other single-as-a-Pringle brother so we can talk about how all of you are in love and suck.”

“Maybe if you sucked more,” Ella teased, “you wouldn’t be single. Just saying.”

He tipped an imaginary hat at her and smirked. “Touché. Anyway, have fun. Don’t make a mess in the common areas, and make sure to air the place out.”

Sam waved him off. “Right, goodbye.” She chuckled at his indignant grumbling but waited for the front door to open and close before making a move. She swiftly dipped down, gripping under Ella’s knees and hoisting her up, bridal style. Ella yelped before wrapping her arms around Sam’s neck.

“You homegrown lesbians are strong as hell. I sure know how to pick them.” She smiled as she swung her legs. “Now that you have me, where are you going to take me?”

Sam pretended to think even as she navigated around the boxes on the floor and headed toward the stairs. “Well, now that you have officially moved in, I was thinking we need to work on rechristening our spaces. First the bed, obviously, and then maybe the floor and the wall.”

Ella smirked before shifting and pointing at a box at the bottom of the stairs. “First, open that one and bring the small black box up with us.”

Sam paused and looked down at the brown box. It looked the same as all the others aside from the pink heart on it. “What’s in it?” She shifted, letting go of Ella’s legs and placing her back on the ground. She pulled the box cutter from her pocket. “Does the pink heart mean something?”

When she leaned over to drag the blade across the tape, arms wrapped around her middle as a smaller frame curled around her back. Sam’s eyes fluttered closed when lips brushed against the shell of her ear.

“It means I love you, and I love seeing you fall apart at my touch,” Ella whispered. The air filled with a familiar delicious tension, and Same had to force her eyes to stay open as she finally got the larger box open. She pulled out the small black box but didn’t open it. She turned and handed it to Ella.

“That still doesn’t tell me what’s in it,” Sam said even as she let herself be pulled down for a heated kiss. Their lips fit together like two pieces of the same puzzle, and Sam felt the buzzing in her ears intensify. It was like her body had a Pavlovian response to Ella’s kisses, always revving up as soon as those lips brushed against hers.

“I’d rather show you,” Ella replied simply. She pulled back far enough to get a hand on Sam’s cheek, brushing her thumb over kiss-bruised lips. “I love seeing you enjoy all that your body can do, and this will absolutely help with that.”

Sam’s body heated more. Nothing else needed to be said. She had become very familiar with Ella’s streak for introducing her to new things in the bedroom, and she was even more eager to see what it would include this time. She wrapped her arms around Ella’s waist, hoisting her back up into her arms.

“Well then, we’d better get into the bedroom so we can get started.”

Ella’s giggle was swallowed up by Sam’s kiss as she moved back up the stairs. It might have taken them decades to get here, but Sam was more than a little excited at what their next decades would hold.