“Cahoots.”
“He’s nice, okay? And I needed a distraction.”
Brighton preened. “From me.”
Lola just laughed, then smiled at her. “Turns out, you’re hard not to notice.”
Brighton smiled back, and they stayed like that, grinning like two sex-addled lovers for a few seconds. Soon enough, though, reality forced its way between them.
“Back to real life, I guess,” Brighton said. Maybe they didn’t have to deal withafter, but they had to deal withright now.
“I don’t want to go back,” Lola said, sighing and rubbing her temples.
“Me neither.”
Their phones buzzed again.
Manish:Don’t think we haven’t noticed the silence from cabin 1. Still accepting bets as to whether Brighton and Charlotte spent their time fucking or killing each other
Sloane:Manny, for god’s sake
Manish:You’re all thinking it!
“Well,” Brighton said, tossing her phone on the bed. “Did we fuck or kill?”
Lola laughed, then groaned into her hands before glancing up at Brighton. “Fucking is much more fun.”
Brighton grinned. “It is.”
“So…”
“So…”
Lola took a deep breath. “So we fucked.”
Brighton nodded. “Okay. We fucked.”
“And…we might fuck again.”
“Thank god for that.”
They smiled at each other, their cheeks still flushed from all the, well, fucking they’d been doing for the last eight hours. Finally, though, Lola grew serious.
“I still don’t want them to know,” she said. “About our history.”
Brighton frowned. “Why?”
“I just don’t. Is that okay?”
Brighton swallowed, looked down, felt shame wash over herfor reasons she didn’t quite understand. But if that’s what Lola needed, she’d give it to her.
“All right,” Brighton said. “We’re fresh and new.”
Lola nodded, then got to her knees and crawled to the side of the bed where Brighton was still standing, still naked. She put her hands on Brighton’s hips. Kissed her on the mouth softly, and just once. “Fresh and new.”
Chapter 23
According to Sloane and Adele,Barstow Gardens was regionally famous. The Barstow family had run the homegrown, ten-acre botanical garden for generations, all of the design and care currently curated by Vivian Barstow herself, who, even at sixty-seven years old, was still rarely seen in town without dirt on her jeans.
