Why did she keep finding herself unable to move away when Lily stepped close?
Eva knew why, a voice—sounding suspiciously like Kate’s—whispered in her head. It was because she was drawn to Lily. Because she did like Lily, in spite of everything.
Eva clenched her jaw. This exact situation was what she’d been afraid of when she’d found out Lily would be coming to D.C. The slip of her tenuous self-control, the sheer disaster of her and Lily alone together. The heady descent into madness, the slow dissolution of her sky-high walls, gone with an arch of Lily’s hips against her own.
Eva couldn’t lie there for another second. Not with her mind so restless. Eva rolled out of the bed and landed lightly on her feet, not wanting to wake Lily. She was supposed to be meeting Kate for breakfast, but she had two hours until then. Loitering around the streets while she waited wasn’t an appealing proposition, so she passed the time in the hotel’s gym, instead.
After an hour on the treadmill and a shower—in the gym, her desire to not wake Lily overriding her distaste at using a public shower—she dressed and slipped back into the room to pack her things. It was time to meet Kate.
Eva took her case with her, dropping her room key at reception on the way out, and trying not to feel a twinge of guilt at leaving Lily behind. Would Lily be angry, when she woke up alone? Or would she be relieved?
The café she and Kate had chosen for breakfast was a block away from the hotel, and Eva found Kate already there waiting for her.
“Rough night?” Kate’s eyebrows raised when she got a look at Eva’s face.
“It was fine.” Eva had already talked about Lily too much—she wasn’t about to tell Kate what had happened last night. She’d never hear the bloody end of it.
“Lily around?”
“No.” Eva kept her face neutral as she slid into a booth. “I don’t know where she was.”
“That’s a shame,” Kate said, picking up a menu. “I was hoping for fireworks. Maybe for the two of you to finally have a proper conversation.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” Eva hid her face behind her own menu in a bid to escape Kate’s roving eyes. “But no conversation is going to happen.”
Eva had seen to that, distracting Lily with heated kisses. Talking was unnecessary. Talking would involve acknowledging there was something between them, and Eva had only just been able to accept that in the safety of her own mind.
Eva was not ready to say any of this out loud to anyone. Herself, Lily, or her best friend.
“How was your night?” Eva said, once she’d ordered her eggs benedict. “Your sister okay?”
“She’s good. Says she’s going to start coming to visit more often. I think she thinks I’m lonely.”
“You are lonely.”
“Still.” Kate made a face. “I don’t want anyone else to know that.”
“But it’s okay if I do?”
“Sure. You’re the loneliest person I’ve ever met.”
Eva swallowed. The words shouldn’t sting—they were true—yet they didn’t sit right in her chest.
“And you’re doing fine, right?” Kate said, looking imploringly at Eva over the rim of her coffee mug.
Was she? Months ago, Eva wouldn’t have hesitated. She liked her life the way it was—no distractions, no complications. No feelings. But Eva couldn’t deny those few months talking to Molly—Lily—she’d been happy. That it was nice to have someone to speak to at the end of the day, whether it be to complain, to laugh, to lighten up an otherwise dreary day.
And then there was Lily herself, bursting onto the scene and making Eva’s life more interesting. Challenging Eva, every step of the way, rising up to meet every single one of Eva’s barbs, and seeing things in Eva few others had ever bothered to stick around long enough to find out.
“Of course,” Eva said, but the words sounded flat to her own ears. What was wrong with her? One night with Lily and she was a wreck.
Except it wasn’t one night, was it?
It was months of conversation, of laying herself bare. Months of learning everything there was to know about Lily—from her earliest childhood memory to the reason she was still single. They were connected in all of the ways that mattered, in all of the ways Eva had been trying to deny since she found out who Molly really was.
“Isn’t this a good thing?” Kate had said, when Eva had spilled the whole sorry tale. “A good thing, to find someone you get along with so well?”
Except they didn’t in person, unless they were fighting or fucking.
