Amelia’s voice dropped lower. “Now I don’t want to leave.”
Jo swallowed. Her thoughts were a mess between flashes of Lia’s hands on her body, Amelia’s lips on her cheek…and the very look she was giving her now. She couldn’t sort Lia from Amelia. She couldn’t tell if she was in over her head or exactly where she was meant to be in this moment. And the silence that had settled between them wasn’t helping either.
Finally, Amelia broke it. “Don’t worry. I’m not sitting here expecting a thing from you. We don’t even have to talk about anything if it’s too much. I just…I like being here with you. Even like this.”
Jo wrinkled her nose. “Even with my post-orgasm haze and sweaty thighs?”
“Especiallywith your post-orgasm haze and sweaty thighs.”
Jo laughed, almost choking on it as she glanced around the room. “You’re terrible.”
“I know.” Amelia grinned.
Jo turned back to her glass. It was clear there was a connection between them—one Jo was now beginning to realise had existed prior to this evening. She side-glanced at Amelia, aware that this question could change everything. “Do you ever wonder if things would have been different…were younotCallum’s mum?”
Amelia’s smile faded slowly. “All the time.”
And then Jo felt it. That same twist in her gut that had once belonged to confusion whenever she thought about Amelia. To grief at the idea of never seeing her again, once Callum had cut ties with Jo. To the longing she had buried but never quite let go of.
“I don’t know what any of this means,” Jo admitted, her voice barely audible. “Or what the new me is capable of.”
“You don’t have to,” Amelia said softly. “You just have to let it exist.”
Jo relaxed. Maybe she didn’t need to have all the answers tonight. Maybe she could sit here, a little drunk and a little overwhelmed, next to someone who knew her too well…and just be happy. Maybe, for once, Jo could spend the eveningnotin her own head.
She leaned back, her thigh pressed to Amelia’s. For the first time in a long time, Jo didn’t feel broken.
She feltalive.
Chapter Seven
Amelia stoodat the window in her living room, a beautiful spring day beginning outside. Children rushed past on their way to school, excitement buzzing in the fresh air as they skipped hand in hand with their friends, but Amelia barely registered it. Her thoughts were too loud.
Three days.
That’s how long it had been since she’d felt Jo’s warmth pressed against her, and ultimately the evening they’d spent together once the antics of the dark room had concluded. And in those three days, Amelia hadn’t slept properly. God, she’d been lucky to get more than three hours unbroken.
Whenever she closed her eyes, every sound Jo had made that night echoed in her mind with a startling clarity. The laughter and the breathy moans. It wasalletched into her mind.
But it wasn’t just the club that haunted her.
It was everything. Everything Jodidn’tknow.
Amelia closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against the cold pane of glass. She could still feel Jo’s hand on her thigh; she could still recall the exact moment their skin had touched, and something between them had shifted post-dark room. The Jo she had sat with three nights ago wasn’t the guarded, anxiouswoman she’d spent months consoling. This Jo—herJo—was slowly emerging from the wreckage of who she’d been with Callum, who she’d become because of Callum’s mistakes and abhorrent attitude towards her, and Amelia had been there to witness it.
No, not just witness it.
She had helped pull her from the darkness.
God, if she ever finds out…
Amelia’s stomach flipped as the weight of that truth pressed hard against her chest. But it was a familiar ache now. It was something that was slowly eating away at Amelia. Because Jostilldidn’t know.
Every whispered command. Every brush of fingertips. Every held breath. It was all Amelia.
Her hands curled into fists at her sides. Not from anger, but from need. From guilt. From the gut-twisting ache of wanting to tell Jo everything but knowing she couldn’t. Not yet.
I’ll never see her again.
