Sloane kissed all around her groin and her hips, moving up over her abdomen and breasts, mouth eventually finding Catherine’s again. Catherine tasted herself on Sloane’s tongue.
“My turn,” she smiled and rolled Sloane onto her back.
And when it was over, when their bodies stilled and softened, their breath a steady melody in the dark, Catherine didn’t flee. She didn’t pull away or reach for her robe. She curled into Sloane instead, warm and flushed, one leg draped over her hip, one hand resting on her chest.
Her fingers moved slowly, stroking the space just beneath Sloane’s collarbone in absent thought. Things had changed so much in the time she had known Sloane.
Sloane kissed her temple. “Still with me?”
Catherine didn’t speak at first. Just nuzzled in closer, lips brushing Sloane’s skin.
“Always,” she whispered. “God, I still want you like I did the first night.”
Sloane smiled, pressing a hand to Catherine’s cheek. “But now you let me see you.”
“I didn’t know I could be seen and still be loved.”
“You’re not just loved,” Sloane murmured. “You’re cherished.”
Silence stretched between them again, but this time, it was full. Catherine’s breathing slowed, and Sloane stroked her hair back from her face, watching the woman who had once been too afraid to even say the word love now wrapped in it completely.
This wasn’t the honeymoon phase. It wasn’t lust or adrenaline. It was the slow-burn devotion of two women who had burned themselves down to ash and rebuilt a life out of it.
Sloane’s voice was quiet. “Do you still believe we were a risk?”
Catherine opened her eyes and met hers, her lips curving in a sleepy smile.
“No,” she said softly. “We were a promise.”
The clink of teacups rang gently through the living room, laughter trailing behind it like the scent of the lemon verbena that bloomed outside their kitchen window. Olivia sat cross-legged on the sun-warmed floor, flipping through a photo albumwith Sloane while Catherine leaned in the doorway, arms folded loosely over her chest, a smile tugging at her mouth. The house was full, not with noise, but with the kind of peace that comes when wounds stop bleeding and start to heal.
It had been five years since the accident. Since everything changed.
There were still scars; Catherine could trace them, both inside and out. But now, there were also Saturday brunches with Olivia, occasional late-night texts from Roz with sarcastic medical memes, and, more recently, brightly colored postcards from around the world signed: Love, Lil + Rebecca.
Lillian, the youngest Harrington, had carved a new life for herself far from the clinical sterility of Harrington Memorial. Now she and Rebecca were running a medical outreach program on a small island in the Philippines. Her letters came regularly—messy, joyful, and always full of love.
Catherine held the latest one now. The envelope was thick with Polaroids, one of Lillian wearing oversized sunglasses and holding a stethoscope to a chicken, another of Rebecca teaching a small group of children how to clean wounds properly. In one, the two of them sat side by side on the edge of a dock, feet in the water, their foreheads touching like no one else existed.
“She looks so damn happy,” Catherine murmured.
“She is,” Sloane replied, chin resting on Catherine’s shoulder. “And you are too.”
Catherine didn’t argue.
Olivia glanced up from the album. “She said she might be in Madrid next spring. Wants us all to meet there.”
“All?” Catherine raised a brow.
Olivia smiled, soft and warm. “She said she misses her sisters. And you’re one of the few people who ever truly believed in her.”
That settled deep in Catherine’s chest. She had spent so long feeling distant from her youngest sister, unsure where they fit in each other’s lives. But time, and shared pain, had stitched them closer.
As for their mother, not much had changed.
She came to holidays and posed for family photos, but her conversations with Catherine remained clipped, her approval thin as gauze. Still, Catherine no longer needed it. Not when she could walk into her home and be greeted with warmth, not wariness.
Roz, too, had changed. Slowly. Grudgingly.
