Delilah pressed her eyes closed as she fumbled the key card into the slot. “What is it?” she said without looking at her stepsister.
Astrid slid up next to her, leaning against the wall while Delilah fought to get the damn red light to go green. “Look, I’m sorry.”
Delilah paused in her battle. “For what?”
“For the room situation.”
Delilah finally looked at her. Her stepsister had her arms crossed over her chest, as usual, and looked extremely uncomfortable with this apology. “Are you?”
Astrid seemed to deflate, shoulders drooping. “Yes. I didn’t leave you out on purpose. When I made the reservation, I wasn’t sure you’d actually show, okay? I was going to call back, and then things just got busy and I’m not used to...” She trailed off, but Delilah knew what she was going to say. She wasn’t used to considering Delilah at all. That old, lonely feeling from childhood crept back up on her, piling on top of everything that had just happened with Claire.
“I get it,” Delilah said. “It’s fine.”
“I just—”
“It’s fine,” Delilah said again. Her tone was so sharp, Astrid flinched, but she didn’t want to talk about this right now. Not with her breath stuck in her chest like this, her legs still wobbly from having Claire’s mouth on her neck.
The damn light finally blinked green. Delilah opened her door and disappeared inside before either of them could say another word.
Chapter Fifteen
FUCK.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
As soon as she was alone, Claire tore off her clothes and all but threw herself in the shower to try to calm herself down. She turned the water all the way to cold, maybe to freeze off the memory of Delilah’s mouth on hers, her hands, the way she’d tasted, how her neck had smelled like spring, like rain and fresh grass.
How Delilah’s face had gone still as a stone, her fiery gemstone eyes dimming to a dull blue, the moment Claire asked her to keep what had just happened a secret.
Why the hell had she done that?
Because Astrid would have completely lost her shit, that’s why.
One didn’t simply make out with one’s best friend’s estranged sister and then announce happily that it was the single hottest fifteen minutes she’d ever experienced, and that included the time she and Josh frustration-fucked on her backyard patio table three years ago while her mother had taken Ruby to a movie. Tonight, she hadn’t even come, Delilah hadn’t even ventured below her hip bone, andClaire still felt like she was about to explode just standing here under the water.
But that didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter that the whole thing had felt like so much more than just kissing and touching, or that even an hour later as she lay in bed wide awake, she was still wetter than she’d ever been in her entire life, her body humming and twitching like a live wire.
None of that mattered at all because what happened tonight absolutely would not happen again. It couldn’t. Delilah lived in New York City. She was leaving in less than two weeks, for a huge show at a major museum no less. She didn’t do relationships. Claire knew this from Astrid, just like she knew Delilah didn’t care about anyone but herself and never had.
Claire grabbed the pillow Delilah had been using and threw it across the room. Then she got out of bed and turned the air-conditioning all the way down, hoping the cold would distract her from remembering the look in Delilah’s eyes as she’d told her about Jax, about photographing Claire on the shores of the river. A look that seemed like the exact opposite of not caring.
Chapter Sixteen
THANK THE GODDESSfor AirPods.
Delilah spent the entire drive back to Bright Falls with a sapphic fantasy audiobook blasting in her ears. After an afternoon of touring the vineyard and snapping photos of Astrid, Iris, and Claire tasting all sorts of fancy wines and then hocking them back into what can only be described as a spittoon, and trying her best to ignore Claire while making it seem like she totally wasn’t ignoring Claire, all she wanted right now was her chintz-covered couch at the Kaleidoscope Inn, some liquor she could actually swallow, and a nice long session with her California Dreaming Minx.
Iris sat next to her in the back seat, which Delilah would also thank the goddess for except Iris legit kept writing messages to her on her phone’s Notes app, then thrusting the thing under Delilah’s nose.
What now?
We have ten days.
Come on, I’m sure you can think of something really devious.
Hello?
