Elise was quiet for a long time. Then her shoulders began to shake. She lowered her head and pressed her good hand over her face and she cried. Not loudly. Not dramatically. She cried quietly, as if she'd been holding on too long and the structure had finally given.
"I'm sorry," Elise said, her voice thick. "I'm sorry. I keep doing this. I keep being a mess in front of you."
Sienna put her arm around her. The movement was instinctive, bypassing every professional protocol and every carefully maintained boundary. She pulled Elise close and held her against her side, and Elise turned into her and pressed her face into Sienna's shoulder, and the crying deepened.
"I'm so sorry," Elise said again, muffled against Sienna's jacket. "I'm not coping. I'm really not coping and I don't know how to say that to anyone and I keep trying to be fine and I'm not fine."
"I know," Sienna murmured. Her hand moved on Elise's back, slow circles between her shoulder blades, Elise's ribs close beneath the thin fabric, her skin warm, the tremors running through her body. The salt air mixed with the herbal scent of Elise's hair and the faint trace of gin on her breath.
"You don't have to be fine," Sienna said. "Not with me. Not ever with me."
The crying went on. Sienna held her and said nothing and let the bench and the ocean and the night hold them both. Elise cried with her whole body, her shoulders shaking, her hand fisted in the front of Sienna's jacket. The tears soaked through the fabric of Sienna's dress and she didn't care. She would have sat on this bench until morning if Elise needed her to.
When the crying finally ebbed, Elise's voice came small and rough against Sienna's shoulder. "I'm sorry I tried to kiss you. I'm sorry I made it complicated. You've been so good to me and I ruined it."
Sienna tightened her arm around Elise's shoulders. "You didn't ruin anything."
"I keep apologising. I know I keep apologising." Elise pulled back, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Her eyes were red and swollen and her mascara had run in dark tracks down her cheeks and she was still so beautiful that Sienna's breath ached. "I'm a disaster."
Sienna looked at her. Elise Moreno, sitting on a bench by the ocean at midnight, tear-streaked and raw and so far from the composed athlete the world saw that it broke Sienna's heart. She was apologising. Again. For wanting Sienna, for being honest, for being human. And Sienna had let her apologise. She'd let Elise believe that the wanting was wrong, that it was one-sided, that the professional boundary was more important than the truth.
The truth was that Sienna had been falling for Elise Moreno since the first day she'd met her, and every day since had only made the fall faster and more inevitable, and no amount of cold showers or professional distance or her parents' disciplined silence was going to change that.
She leaned in and kissed her.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't tentative. It was a kiss that had four weeks of restraint behind it, four weeks of clinical distance and cold showers and her parents' disciplined silence, and when Sienna's mouth met Elise's, the force of everything she'd been holding back came through. Her hand came up to Elise's jaw, fingers sliding into her hair, and Elise went rigid with shock, a full-body stillness that lasted one breath, two breaths, and then she made a sound against Sienna's mouth, a broken, desperate noise that vibrated through Sienna's lips and down her spine, and kissed her back.
Elise's good hand came up and gripped the fabric of Sienna's dress and pulled her closer, and Sienna went, all of her went, thelast wall collapsing with a rush that was so vast and so sudden that her eyes burned. Elise's mouth tasted of gin and salt tears and her lips were soft and her tongue pressed against Sienna's lower lip and then into her mouth and the ground dropped away beneath her.
Sienna's other hand found Elise's waist. The fabric of her top was thin and beneath it her body was solid and real, so real, not a fantasy in a shower or an image behind closed eyelids but a living, breathing woman who was kissing her on a bench by the ocean and whose hand was fisted in her dress and whose mouth was moving against hers with an urgency that matched everything Sienna had been carrying and hiding and locking away.
The ocean washed against the rocks. The breeze moved through the trees along the path. A car passed somewhere behind them, its headlights sweeping briefly across the pavement. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered except Elise's mouth and the taste of her and the small, soft sounds she made when Sienna's fingers tightened in her hair and her body curving toward Sienna's on the bench as if the distance between them was physically painful.
They kissed until Sienna's lips were swollen and her breath was ragged and the string lights from the waterfront restaurants were blurred points of gold in her peripheral vision. When they finally broke apart, they were both breathing hard. Elise's eyes were wide and dark and wet and absolutely stunned, the green swallowed by her dilated pupils. Her lips were parted. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. A tear track caught the light on her cheek.
The stars were out. The ocean was steady. The bench was cold beneath them and the night was warm around them and Sienna's hand was still in Elise's hair, her thumb following the line of Elise's jaw, and Elise's fingers were still on her dress,holding on, holding on, and neither of them moved. Neither of them wanted to be the first to break the spell. Neither of them wanted to go back to the world where this hadn't happened.
12
ELISE
Sienna's mouth was on hers and the world had stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped. The ocean was still there, the rhythmic wash against the rocks below the path, but it had become background noise to the only thing that mattered, which was the press of Sienna's lips and her hand on Elise's jaw and the taste of her, elderflower and underneath that, clean and entirely Sienna.
They were still kissing. On a bench. By the ocean. At midnight. And every cell in Elise's body was singing.
When they finally pulled apart, it was because breathing had become a necessity rather than a choice. Elise's lungs burned. Her lips were swollen and tingling and Sienna's thumb was tracing the line of her jaw, slow and gentle, and Sienna's eyes were wide and dark and slightly terrified.
Elise looked at her. Sienna's lipstick was smeared. Her dark hair was mussed from Elise's fingers. She looked undone in a way Elise had never seen before, the careful, composed Dr. Park replaced by a woman who was breathing hard and trembling and who had just kissed her like it was the last thing she'd ever do.
"So you are a bit gay then," Elise said.
The laugh that broke from Sienna was raw and startled and absolutely beautiful. She pressed her free hand over her mouth and her eyes crinkled behind it and the laugh turned half-sob, the sound of someone who'd been holding their breath for years and had finally, finally let it go.
"More than a bit," Sienna said. Her voice was hoarse, her eyes bright. "Very. Extremely. Irrevocably. Always have been.”
"Since the tennis courts."
