by Lili Valente
“I’m so sorry, Ra.” I put an arm around my sister and hug her close. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Like I said, maybe I deserved it,” she says, her breath hitching. “I mean I never cheated on a boyfriend, but I wasn’t always gentle when I ended it with someone. Back in the day.”
“Teenagers are stupid,” I assure her. “They can’t help it. We’re all thoughtlessly cruel when we’re young.”
“You weren’t,” she whispers.
“Sure I was. Just not about boys. Mostly because I was too shy to date anyone seriously until I was almost twenty,” I say, continuing to pet her back, grateful for the chance to offer what little comfort I can. “How old were you when you dated Nash?”
“We never really dated,” Aria whispers. “We met at that arts camp I went to when I was fifteen.”
“Fifteen,” I echo, vindicated. “See? You were practically a baby. You couldn’t be expected to know what you were doing when it came to feelings and boys and relationships. You didn’t even have real boobs back then. I remember. It was the only thing that kept me from being insanely jealous of how beautiful and popular and talented you were. At least I had the boobs.”
“You still do.” Aria snorts. “Glory days, huh?”
“No way. Your glory days are still ahead of you,” I say, smiling when Aria turns wistful eyes my way. “You are an amazing person and mother, you have a precious little girl, and you make the most gorgeous works of cake art I’ve ever seen. The future is so bright, Ra. Just give me a few years and I know we’ll be bringing in enough for you and Felicity to get your own place. I swear I’m going to make Ever After Catering so big we’ll all be rolling in dough. Or frosting.”
“Or cheese balls,” Aria says, her lips lifting on one side. “I could go for a cheese ball right now.”
“How about a cheese plate? I’ve got feta and brie and some only slightly funky bleu cheese in the fridge. Why don’t I whip up a cheese plate and find some more wine, and we’ll make Melody play cards with us?”
Aria’s smile crumples in the middle. “That sounds really nice,” she says, and promptly begins to cry again, even harder than before. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying now.”
“Because you need to cry. And you deserve to cry, so don’t you dare apologize.” I hurry to the bathroom to fetch some tissues and return to the bed to press them into Aria’s hand as she stands. “Now, go on. Go downstairs. I’ll put Felicity in her crib and be right down.”
Aria hesitates a beat before lunging at me, pulling me in for a tight hug. “Thank you. I love you, you know that?”
“You, too.” I hug my sister hard, feeling closer to her than I have in years.
Chapter Nineteen
Aria
I wake up early. Very early, considering I stayed up until midnight playing cards with Lark and Melody.
I should be more tired. I got up to feed Felicity at two thirty, and then again at five. But for some reason, my eyes flew open at six fifteen and stayed that way, fixed on the ceiling while an unexpected sense of dread—like a raincloud sweeping in to hover over the bed, menacing me with its ominous, black belly—swells inside me.
It’s…strange.
There’s no reason to feel so off-center, not when I went to bed happier than I’ve been in months.
The stubborn, prideful part of me hasn’t wanted to tell anyone what Liam did, not even my sisters. But the lonely, broken, certain-I-am-unlovable part appreciated hearing Lark call Liam a bastard so much it was probably sinful. I needed to hear that I’m too good for the man who broke my heart into a thousand, razor-sharp pieces. I needed Lark’s strong hug and assurance that the best days of my life are still ahead of me. Just a few hours of not being alone with my secret—one of them, anyway— was enough to send me to bed with a smile on my face and a tiny, flickering flame of hope in my heart.
I fell asleep more easily than I have in months and dreamed a scandalous dream starring Nash Geary and his impossibly perfect body. The boy was perfect enough back when we were kids, but the man he is now…
Well, now, Nash is the stuff of fantasies.
And naughty dreams involving me, him, a bucket of ice in a hot tub, and not a stitch of clothing.
No matter how awkward and humiliating eating dinner with him had been, it was almost worth it for a dream like that. I haven’t had a dream that wasn’t a nightmare since I caught Liam cheating the first time.
Between the talk with Lark, the perfect late night with my sisters—eating massive amounts of cheese and snorting wine through my nose over stories from when we were little—and the delicious dream, I should be waking up invigorated and ready for a fresh start.
Instead, I have…dread.
It’s almost as if something inside of me knows.
Knows I’m going to run into Mason’s creepy uncle at the store while picking up the diapers I forgot to grab yesterday. Knows Parker will tell me that he received the message I left the other day asking if he still has any of Mason’s things, and that Parker will give me a box of his nephew’s old papers right there in the parking lot of the A&P.
Knows I will take those papers home and sneak them up to the closet in my room and go through the box during Felicity’s nap, even though a voice in my head screams for me to leave it alone, to let Lark and Mason be happy and quit looking for the fly in the ointment.
Knows I will find something that proves that Mason is a liar—a liar then, and a liar now, and making a fool out of Lark all over again.
And once I know the truth, I can’t un-know it. I can’t turn back time and restore my own innocence, and I can’t sit back and let Lark be tricked by the man who already shattered my too-trusting sister once before.
I don’t want Lark to know what it’s like to give everything she has to a man, only to be left alone and devastated when he decides everything isn’t good enough. I don’t want my sister to hurt the way I hurt, the way I’m not sure I will ever completely stop hurting, no matter how much time passes or how many good things come into my life.
I have to tell Lark what I found. I have to show her.
There is no other choice.
By the time I find the evidence I hoped didn’t exist, Lark has already left with Mason for their fifth date. I debate calling her and telling her the truth over the phone, but decide it isn’t right to spring something like that on her when she’s alone with Mason, miles from home, with no one there to back her up if things get messy.
So instead, I send a text, warning Lark that I have some bad news and that she should come home as soon as possible.
And then I stick my phone in my pocket and wait.
Felicity gets up from her nap and we play in the backyard with her toys for over an hour, and I wait. I put on Blue’s Clues and whip up a lemon meringue pie for desert, while Melody makes chicken stir-fry for supper, and wait. I feed Felicity and give her a bath and spread out toys for her on the floor of our room while I fold clothes, and wait.
I read my daughter a bedtime story and put her to bed and go downstairs to read until Lark gets home, but Felicity’s eleven thirty feeding comes and goes and still Lark doesn’t respond to my text.
She doesn’t respond, and she doesn’t come home.
By twelve-thirty, I realize she’s not coming home at all and make my way slowly to bed where I end my day the same way I began it, lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, certain something terrible is about to happen.
I don’t want to destroy Lark’s dream, but I don’t want my sister to be destroyed, either.
Chapter Twenty
Mason
Date Five
The musical—a dark comedy about competitive table tennis that somehow manages to be fun to watch—is much less torturous than I was expecting. The mojitos and appetizers at Damon’s afterward are amazing, and the walk through downtown Atlanta as the street musicians play and the restaurants light up for the night is completely atmospheric.
Not that
we need atmosphere.
We’re creating our own atmosphere.
All day long, Lark and I have been drifting through the world in a protective bubble. Nothing bad can trouble or touch us. Not traffic, not the hellish parking situation that led to paying forty dollars to park in a hotel’s garage, not the four-year-old behind us at the play who kept kicking our seats, not even the thunderstorm that blows through around eight o’clock, turning the sky dark just as we’re about to head back to Bliss River.
We’re too happy, too tipsy on mojitos and drunk on each other to let anything bring us down.
“It’s getting pretty nasty out there. Could make the drive home dangerous,” Lark says, eyeing the leaking sky from beneath the parking garage’s overhang. “Think it’s going to keep it up for a while?”
I tighten my arm around her shoulders. “I don’t know. If it gets too bad we can always pull over somewhere between here and there. Get a coffee or something and wait it out.”
“We could.” She hums beneath her breath.
A thinking hum.
“Yes?” I ask, smiling as she turns to look up at me, a mischievous light in her eye.
“I was thinking…” She leans closer, until her lips are only inches from mine and it is hard to think about anything but how much I want to kiss her.
“Yes,” I prompt again, when she lets the silence trail on.
“I was thinking that we’ve already paid for parking at the hotel, so…” She purses her lips. “Well, maybe it would be a good idea if we just went ahead and…got a room.”
“Got a room,” I repeat, wanting to make one hundred percent sure I heard her correctly, that my hopeful ears aren’t playing tricks on me.
She nods. “I’m ready to get a room. Aren’t you?”
“I am completely ready to get a room,” I breathe. “I can’t think of anything I’ve ever wanted more than getting a room with you. Ever.”
“Ever?” She grins wider.
“Ever ever,” I promise as I take her hand and start toward the entrance to the lobby.
A few minutes later, we’re at the front desk being booked into a room on the top floor. Not long after, we’re in the hotel shop buying toothbrushes and toothpaste and condoms.
Condoms. Because we’re finally going to be together. After all the years of dating and waiting and even more years spent living apart from the girl I love, wondering if this dream was ever going to become a reality, wondering if I’d ever be with Lark like this, it’s finally going to happen.
The ride up to our room seems to last a thousand years, and the walk down the hall a second thousand. But then, I’m sliding the key card into the slot and the green light on the door flashes—a sign if I’ve ever seen one—and we’re alone in a beautiful room with a view of the city sparkling twenty stories below, and nothing to do but get our clothes off and our hands on each other.
I put the bag from the shop on the nightstand and wander to the desk on the other side of the room before turning to face Lark, nervous. It’s hard to believe this is really happening.
She’s so beautiful, so good and fun and sweet and…mine.
Finally mine.
I want this night to be perfect. This isn’t just our first time together, but also, I hope, our last time sleeping with someone new. I never want to touch another woman. I want it to be Lark’s lips I kiss goodnight from tonight until the day they put me in the ground.
This is it, one of the biggest moments of my life, and I’m suddenly feeling the pressure.
And of course, she knows. She can sense it. She can read me like no one else ever could or ever will.
A smile gentles her lips. “Nervous?”
“No,” I lie.
She narrows her eyes. “Are you sure? Because you look a little nervous.” Before I can respond, her fingers move to the top of her red dress, slowly slipping the button at the top through its hole, robbing me of my capacity for speech.
“But there’s no reason to be,” she continues, undoing another and another, until she reaches the final button near her waist and the front of her dress gapes open, revealing a black satin bra, making my heart beat so fast I can feel it punching my ribs like a fist.
She holds my eyes as she reaches for the zipper on the side of her dress and drags it down with a smooth buzz that’s audible in the almost silent room. The only sounds are that zipper, the patter of rain on the windows, and the blood pumping too fast through my veins.
“I mean…” She begins bunching the skirt of her dress in her hands, revealing more curvy thigh with each passing second. “We’ve both done this before.”
I swallow, finally finding my voice. “No, we haven’t. Not together. And I never have, really, not with someone who matters the way you matter. I’m crazy in love with you, Lark March. Always have been, always will be.”
She pauses with her dress bunched so high I catch a glimpse of matching black panties. “Me, too,” she whispers, her eyes shining.
“So I think it’s okay if—” My words end in a swiftly drawn breath as she draws her dress over her head in one smooth motion.
The filmy red fabric floats to the ground between us, but my attention is all for Lark.
Lark, standing in front of me in nothing but a bra and tiny black panties that make her skimpy bathing suit seem modest in comparison, all her curves on display, every dip and hollow practically begging for my lips to explore them. The black satin emphasizes the pale beauty of her skin, making her seem to glow in the dim light.
She’s breathtaking, like something out of a dream, too beautiful to be part of the everyday world.
“You’re staring,” she murmurs, her fingers tangling together in front of her.
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
She shakes her head, but her eyes don’t leave mine. “I need to lose fifteen pounds.”
“Bullshit. You’re perfect.” I cross to her in three long steps, gathering her into my arms, my pulse leaping as my hands find the soft skin where her waist begins to curve into her hips and squeeze just hard enough to make her eyes darken.
“You don’t need to lose a pound,” I continue, drawing her closer, my hands skimming up and down her sides, from her hips to just under her breasts as I back her toward the bed. “In fact, I’d be angry if you did.”
“Is that right?” she asks in a breathy voice. Her knees hit the bed and she scoots on top, sliding back toward the pillows as I kick off my shoes and pull at my socks. “Well, I wouldn’t want to make you angry.”
“No, you wouldn’t. I’m a shit when I’m angry.” I quickly work open the buttons on my shirt, shrug it off, and reach for the bottom of my undershirt, tugging it over my head.
“You’re sexy when you’re angry,” she says, her chest rising and falling faster as her gaze skims down my chest to where my hands work at the close of my pants. “Your eyes do hot, flashy things when you’re angry.”
“Hot, flashy things?” Holding her gaze, I step out of my pants, wearing nothing but black boxer briefs that I know do nothing to conceal the way she affects me. I’ve never been this hard. Or wanted to be with a woman so much. And it isn’t just a physical want, it’s a soul deep need to get as close to this incredible, intoxicating, deeply-lovable person as I can get.
I adore her, and I can’t wait to show her how much.
“Yeah, just like that,” she whispers, reaching a hand toward me. “Now, get over here. I need to touch you. Everywhere.”
She doesn’t have to ask me twice. A second later, I’m on the bed with Lark beneath me, her arms wrapped around my neck as we come together for the first time in four long years.
Warm, soft skin, meets warmer, softer skin and for a second I forget how to breathe. Her kiss is an electrical storm sweeping through my nervous system, short-circuiting the usual pathways, leaving me to hack out a new way to feel, a new way to experience what she does to me.
Our mouths move slowly at first, testing, explori
ng, and then the tip of her tongue brushes across my bottom lip and slow is a thing of the past. Mouths open and heads angle and soon I’m lost in the taste of her, the feel of her mouth so alive against my own, the softness of her body as she squirms beneath me, hips lifting, legs parting to wrap around my waist, drawing me tight to the heat between her thighs.
I press against her, the thin barriers of my boxers and her panties too much, and not enough, at the same time.
“Wait,” I murmur against her lips before I pull away, putting a few inches of air between us. “Let’s slow down.”
“I don’t want to slow down,” she says, pulling at my shoulders, urging me closer once more. “I want you.”
“And I want you, you have no idea how much.” I reach behind her back to unhook her bra, using both hands, knowing I’m already too unsteady to manage it with just one. “But I have unfinished business.”
She arches her back, giving me easier access to the close of her bra, bringing her breasts within inches of my mouth in the process. I groan as I free the hooks from their clasps and draw the bra down her arms before tossing it to the floor.
There she is, bare to my mouth for the very first time. Back when we were dating, I touched her just about everywhere, but always under the bra or over the panties. We never let ourselves get more than partially undressed, knowing we wouldn’t be able to keep our promise to wait until we were engaged and living together if all our clothes came off.
But now…
Now…
I close my eyes for a second and open them again, still not completely sure this isn’t a dream. She’s even more beautiful than I imagined. Her full breasts are creamy white, and her nipples the palest shade of pink drawn into tight points that beg for me to taste them.
I drop my head, brushing kisses to the soft underside of her breast, bringing my mouth to hover above her nipple, circling the taught flesh with my tongue before drawing her into my mouth.