Rose felt her throat tighten. “When you put it that way, there isn’t much to forgive. We were played against each other by someone who knew exactly which levers to pull.”
“There’s still the Jeremy payment.”
“Yes. I’m still angry about it.” She paused. “But I know why you did it, and I know it came from the same place everything else comes from.” She reached over and took Lizanne’s hand. “We’re going to have to keep working on that.”
“I know.”
“I’ve missed you,” Rose said. It came out simpler than she’d intended, stripped of the walls she’d been building for two weeks. “I’ve missed you and I want to come home.”
Lizanne’s hand tightened around hers.
The noise of the house moved around them—Quinn’s voice from the kitchen, a shriek from one of the children that sounded catastrophic, her mother’s voice restoring order. Then Lizanne turned toward her and there was nothing left to negotiate.
The bedroom door had a lock Rose hadn’t used since she was sixteen. She used it now.
The room was small and the evening light came through the curtains in thin pale strips. The house held people on the other side of a single door, which meant they had to be quiet as mice.
Lizanne kissed her the way she kissed her when there was no camera. As though she were parched and Rose were water.
Rose pulled back far enough to look at her. They hadn’t been apart long, and yet it felt like an eternity.
She pushed the coat from Lizanne’s shoulders and Lizanne let it go without looking away from her face. Rose reached for the buttons of her blazer and worked them open slowly, one at a time, because she wanted to establish that they were not rushing. The blazer followed the coat. Then the blouse beneath it, which Rose drew from the waistband and unbuttoned from the bottom up, taking her time about it.
Lizanne’s hands found the hem of Rose’s sweater. She paused there. Rose lifted her arms in answer.
Then they were both in just their skin from the waist up and Lizanne’s mouth found her throat and stayed there while her hands moved to Rose’s back and drew her in. Rose felt the familiar architecture of her—every line of her shoulders, the angle of her collarbone, the warmth of her chest pressed flat against Rose’s own—and the relief of it made her close her eyes.
“You’re shaking,” Lizanne said, very quietly, against her neck.
“I’m aware,” Rose said.
Lizanne drew back to look at her. She brought one hand up to cup Rose’s jaw, her thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone with the focus she brought to everything she actually cared about. Rose turned her face into it slightly without meaning to.
Then Lizanne kissed her again, slower, and walked her back toward the bed.
Rose sat down and pulled her in by the waist and Lizanne came, bracing one hand on the headboard and looking down at her with that expression that only existed in private—the composure stripped back and nothing underneath it but her. Rose reached up and unhooked her bra and Lizanne let it fall. Rose pulled her down.
Lizanne settled over her and her mouth moved from Rose’s lips to her jaw to the curve of her neck to her chest, taking her time, and Rose pressed her hand flat to the back of Lizanne’s head and kept her there. Lizanne’s hands worked the rest of their clothes off without urgency and the full length of her settled against Rose and Rose exhaled against the top of her head.
They had been here before—in the pool house, in the shop, in the careful half-dark after the wedding—but this differed from all of those. The first time had been a collision, urgent and slightly disbelieving. The shop had been stolen time, quick and electric. This was neither. This was the version that came after you had nearly lost something and found yourself on the other side of it, and it moved accordingly—slowly, with attention, with the specific tenderness of two people who had both been frightened and were not frightened anymore.
Lizanne’s mouth traveled lower and Rose’s breath caught.
She was in no hurry about that either. Her hands pinned Rose’s hips gently to the mattress. Rose let her, because Lizanne knew exactly what she was doing and had since the first time. She twisted her fingers into the bedsheet and bit down on the inside of her cheek and focused on being quiet. Lizanne’s mouth was patient and deliberate, the pressure exactly right, and Rose felt it build in long slow waves.
“Lizanne—” she started, and didn’t finish.
Lizanne lifted her head just enough. “I’ve got you,” she said, barely audible. Just that. Then her mouth returned and Rose stopped trying to think.
She came apart slowly, the way she always did with Lizanne—not sharply but deeply, from somewhere in the center of her, her whole body pulling tight and then releasing in stages. She pressed her free hand over her own mouth and held on.
Lizanne held her through it. When Rose’s breathing steadied she moved back up beside her, and Rose reached for her.
“Your turn,” Rose said, against her mouth.
“I wasn’t keeping score,” Lizanne said.
“I know. Neither am I.” Rose rolled her onto her back and looked down at her. Lizanne looked with nothing in her face but steadiness and warmth and presence—and underneath that, unmistakably, want. Rose had spent two weeks telling herself she was angry, which was true. She had not spent enough time admitting that underneath the anger she had simply missed being looked at like that.
