Daphne waited until her body stopped shuddering, the waves still radiating down her legs. She took her hand out of her shorts, then moved to sit on the closed toilet lid while she caught her breath.
She smiled, laughed almost, as she thought about what had just happened. It had felt good, of course, and she didn’t feel ashamed at all. It had taken her years in college—with a lot of talking with Vivian, actually—to not feel an instant wash of shame after touching herself. She’d worked hard to leave the purity culture of her youth behind. So, no, she didn’t feel ashamed.
But she felt…something. A bit of postorgasmic euphoria, sure, but underneath all that, there was something else. Something light and free and happy.
She felt like herself.
Maybe a self she’d never met before—dirty dancing and letting her body feel what it needed to feel. Laughing with the last person she ever thought she’d meet in real life, much less feel some sort of camaraderie with.
She liked this Daphne. It was a glimpse, a moment that might vanish at any second, but for now, even with a sprained ankle and an uncertain future, she felt a tiny sliver of hope that she might actually, really, truly find her—the Daphne Love she’d lost all those years ago.
Chapter
Thirteen
Today, prepare for calls to adventure and embracing the unexpected. Your evolution requires packing away the stories that weigh you down and following less toxic narratives for your life. Your boldness will transform you.
A couple of mornings later, April sat at a table by the window in Cloverwild’s dining room and read Madame Andromeda’s daily assertions for Scorpio on her phone. She forced herself not to glare at words likeevolutionandtransform. Trigger words, as of late, but today, they hit a little different.
Daphne fucking Love.
April couldn’t stop thinking about her.
The dance.
The ankle.
The way they’d talked while lying on the cabin floor, like they were two teenagers at summer camp, the sentences flowing so easily between them, the laughter.
Thedance.
Somehow, practically dry humping with Elena’s ex wasn’texactly what she thought Madame Andromeda meant by embracing the unexpected.
Then again…
April squeezed her eyes closed. Absolutely fucking not. She sipped her coffee, then took out her sketchbook and flipped to a new page. Her mind worked—or tried to, clawing at ideas like fingers grabbing at the empty air.
And then…there.
An image, clear as day, though it wasn’t anything she could use for the Devon. No, this was for pale skin, randomly freckled and smooth.
Soft baby skin.
She smiled, just a little, then flipped her pencil over her knuckles once and started sketching, the dining room fading behind her. It all took shape quickly, the sketch of what she’d eventually fill with warm colors for the wildflowers, the faintest flame flickering against the glass of a lantern. Her fingers moving as though separate from her, driven on by some force she didn’t understand. She loved it when this happened, when art and creation and beauty took on its own life.Not because she wasn’t the artist, or because she hadn’t worked hard to create it, but because what she’d made felt inevitable.
Itwas, and she was simply the vessel through which it came into being.
She nearly had the entire outline before she slowed down or looked up, the dining room filling with guests as the clock ticked closer to lunch. She hadn’t meant to sit here this long, but she knew Daphne was painting in the studio, and it didn’t seem right to hover while she created her masterpiece for the Devon.
Either that, or April felt suddenly shy around Daphne, but that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?
“Hey, I need you both to try this,” Sasha said, appearing at April’s table with a plate in her hands.
April blinked up at her. “Both who?”
Sasha tilted her head toward something behind April. “Daphne’s on her way over here.”
April’s stomach undulated, but she squashed the feeling down.
