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Her hair has fallen forward around her face. Her lips are swollen from kissing me. One of her hands is braced beside my head, and her thigh has landed between mine in a way that makes it suddenly difficult to remember what was funny just a minute ago.

Merry’s eyes move over my face. “You okay?”

I nod, sliding my hand slowly along her back. “Come here.”

She does.

There are things you can learn about someone without asking.

I do it all day long. At the café with our regulars and at home with my mother, and in my online shop with my customers.

I’ve gotten good at finding the thing underneath the thing. At noticing what people repeat, what they avoid, what they bury beneath too many explanations because saying it plainly would make it real.

But I don’t want to do that with Merry.

I kiss her until the thought disappears, until there is nothing underneath anything and I stop trying to understand what this moment might mean beyond the fact that I want her and she wants me back.

Merry’s hands slide beneath my dress, and the feeling of her palms against the bare skin of my inner thigh pulls a sound from me before I can stop it. She notices immediately, and her touch slows, then follows the same path again, and when I shiver this time, I feel her smile against my mouth.

“You like that?” Her voice is breathy and raw and gravelly, and I kiss her before I do something stupid like⁠—

It gets messy quickly after that, and the kissing makes it impossible to remember where my hands started or when Merry moved fully into my lap. Her hair keeps falling between us. And my dress has ridden so far up, it’s probably easier if I take it off.

The couch isn’t remotely deep enough for what we’re trying to do on it, and when Merry shifts against me, I grip her hips automatically.

I can feel her breathing. I can feel everything.

She moves again, slower this time, my leg in between hers, and I can feel the warmth of her core, radiating even through the layers of clothing. Heat rolls through me so sharply that my fingers tighten against her hips, and she moans.

“Merry.”

Her mouth finds mine. For a while, there isn’t much room for words.

There are only small questions asked against skin and answers given just as quietly. Here? A nod. Like this? Yes. Merry pulling me close when she wants me closer, my hands learning the places that make her breath hitch, hers doing the same to me.

“My bedroom is upstairs.”

This time, I hear exactly what she’s saying.

“Show me.”

CHAPTER 26

FLORA

Merry’s bedroom is at the end of the hall.

She keeps hold of my hand the entire way there, which is somehow the thing I notice most. The warmth of her palm against mine and the way her fingers stay threaded through mine, even though there’s no reason for them to.

At the door, she looks back.

The confidence she had downstairs hasn’t disappeared, but something has shifted beneath it. I can see it in the way she studies my face for a second before pushing the door open, giving me one more opportunity to change my mind without actually asking if I have.

“Okay?” I ask.

The room beyond her is dark except for the soft amber light of a lamp Merry reaches in to turn on, and I register it only in pieces as I follow her inside: an unmade bed, books stacked on the nightstand, clothes folded over the back of a chair, and a window streaked with rain. It feels like the rest of the house—warm and lived in, unmistakably hers—but I don’t have much time to look.

“Yes,” she says, turning around and pulling me in with her. This kiss is slower than the ones downstairs, but there’s nothing tentative about it. Her hands settle at my waist as they pull my dress upward.