“Vivian,” Iris said, voice low.
“She’s not done,” the masseuse replied for her.
“I can see that, but there’s someone at the door,” Iris replied.
Vivian popped her head up like a naked gopher. “Who?” There was only one person capable of such a welcome intrusion, but Vivian couldn’t hope for it. Couldn’t let herself want the impossible. Not when she’d slammed that door closed.
Iris’s inability to stifle her smirk gave Vivian her answer. She lifted herself off the table and reached for her short robe. She draped it around herself, still tying the sash while descending the stairs. Iris didn’t immediately follow.
Heart pounding in her mouth and breathing embarrassingly shallow, she called on every acting trick she’d ever learned to compartmentalize her anxiety. To box it up and shove it down and project the quiet control she didn’t actually have.
Vivian was halfway through the foyer when she saw her through the sidelight. When her heart stopped, only to propel itself forward like it wanted to crash through muscle and bone to get to her. Her instincts told her to run. Run back upstairs and back to safety because if nothing ever touched her, then it couldn’t hurt her.
Instinct and fear had gotten too intertwined for her to trust either. She kept walking, kept moving, because the fallout from seeing Bryn had to be better than another moment without her. Even if it made letting go harder, made the missing cut deeper, she’d pay any price for a furlough from the weight of Bryn’s absence.
She ran her fingers through her hair, only belatedly thinking of her appearance, and opened the door. At the sound, Bryn turned toward her.
In the unrelenting summer sun, Bryn was lit by the gods. Or maybe she’d been shaped by light itself. Luminous and radiant, she shattered Vivian’s suffocating darkness, consumed it, transformed it into something warm and golden.
“Hi,” Bryn said, face flushing hard.
Her gaze cut down to Vivian’s clothes, or lack thereof, and darted back to her eyes. A kaleidoscope of emotions flashed in her beautifully expressive eyes.
“Oh, I, um, didn’t realize you…” Bryn repeatedly clenched her jaw like an invisible force was tearing out the rest of her sentence by force. “Had company.”
The flush deepened, dripping down her neck, and Vivian felt a dangerous flutter of delight. Bryn was jealous. Spectacularly transparently jealous and it was possibly the most adorable thing Vivian had ever seen in her life.
“Well, I’m sorry to disturb you,” Bryn snapped, a cub learning how to snarl.
Vivian couldn’t help but chuckle. To smile from a new, previously undiscovered, reserve of joy. Pristine and untouched by any other moment in Vivian’s life, and existing only for Bryn. Belonging only to her.
“Oh, that’s funny?”
The redder Bryn turned, the more Vivian’s heart soared. Unrestrained by veins and arteries, it rocketed up her chest and made breathing impossible in the best way.
“How did you get in?” Vivian let herself wonder aloud.
Bryn furrowed her brow. “I brought Danny his favorite coffee,” she replied, wound so tight, so upset.
“Who the hell is Danny?” Vivian countered, but Bryn was determined to keep going.
“And you can’t have him fired because you never took my name off the list, so he didn’t do anything wrong?—”
Movement behind Vivian stopped Bryn short. When her masseuse approached the door with the table, Vivian moved out of the way so she could take it outside. Iris followed with a couple of large bags a second later.
“Hello, sweetheart.” Iris kissed a startled Bryn on the cheek. “There’s leftover lunch if you’re hungry,” she added before continuing outside. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
“Thanks,” Bryn replied weakly.
Vivian couldn’t stop smiling when Bryn bit her lip and gave her a sheepish look while wrinkling her nose. She chuckled and motioned for Bryn to step inside.
“Come in, or you’ll let the ocelot out,” Vivian joked. “Let’s sit outside. Iris loves to eavesdrop.”
Seated at the center of the long patio sectional, Vivian was relieved when Bryn sat beside her. When she didn’t recoil from Vivian’s proximity.
“Vivian, I don’t like the way things ended in New York,” Bryn said, and Vivian remembered why her chest ached with every inhale. She stopped smiling. The unending storm swallowed the sun.
“I’m so sorry I hurt?—”
