She was so beautiful. Jori pulled her into her arms, melding their bodies together, forgetting her own unreleased tension as she relaxed into the pure joy of holding her. Rae’s warm cheek rested on her shoulder, and their breaths synchronized and slowed. Peace radiated from Rae’s flushed face and enveloped them both. It felt profoundly right.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Rae said, breaking the silence too soon, recovering her energy with an athlete’s speed.
Before Jori could protest, Rae scooted all the way down and took Jori in her mouth. The tense need she’d thought she could put aside came roaring back and she bit back a cry.
Her knees drew up and her legs fell open, but they didn’t get very far. Unlike Rae, Jori was never going to be able to do the splits.
Rae raised her head with a rough, uncontrolled breath that proved she wasn’t as recovered as she seemed. “I’ve never been with a woman whose knees didn’t flop apart all the way.”
Jori had never been with anyone whose knees did. She groaned. “I can’t do a backbend, either. That’s not going to stop you, is it?”
“I like it. I think it’s sexy. Like you won’t let everyone in.” Rae rubbed her hands up and down Jori’s thighs and wedged herself more firmly into place. “Only someone special.”
Rae lowered her head. Jori thought she felt her smile, the arrogant little shit. And then her tongue darted out. There was no mistaking that.
“God.” Jori’s hips bucked off the bed. “That feels…” …like you love this. Like you love me.
Jori caressed the top of Rae’s head. With the way her hand was shaking, she worried she’d catch at her hair, so she drew back, because maybe she was projecting, but no woman liked to be controlled.
But then Rae was reaching for her, clasping one of her retreating hands, interlacing her delicate, fine-boned fingers with hers with unimaginable tenderness as her relentless tongue made the trembling worse. Rae wasn’t trying to make her grip on her hand gentle on purpose, like a caring brute; she was just being herself, and it was exactly what Jori had always wanted. She’d never known what it was she wanted until this moment—never known such a feminine touch would excite her to mindlessness—but it was perfect. Rae’s touch was so full of love and so heartbreakingly sweet that she almost couldn’t bear it.
I love this. I love you.
“Oh God…” A gentle, sublime ecstasy shot up her spine and overwhelmed her, making her shake so hard that she sobbed, desperate for it to stop, desperate for it to never stop.
“Rae,” Jori whispered helplessly, barely able to suppress her screams.
Rae’s murmur of encouragement vibrated against her skin and seeped into her bones, and deeper still, touching the barrier that guarded her soul, breaching it, breaking her apart.
You won’t let everyone in, Rae had said. Only someone special.
She was right.
* * *
Rae woke in the dark, cold. She was sprawled diagonally across most of the bed, leaving Jori curled on a corner of the mattress. The sheet and blanket they’d been too heated to need at the beginning of the night had disappeared off the foot of the bed.
Silently, she slipped out of bed. Pain shot through her knee. She stifled a gasp and pressed her hands to where it hurt, flashing back to how she’d straddled Jori’s body, her knees digging into the mattress, her back arching as desire shot up her thighs and lodged deep inside her. She could still feel Jori’s touch on her skin, warm and exquisite. In the heat of the moment she hadn’t felt any limitation from her injury, but she must have put too much stress on the joint. It had been worth it, though. She’d recover.
She tripped over the pile of bedding and caught her footing with another stab of pain. Well, at least she’d found the sheet. She hauled it off the floor and settled it over Jori as gently as possible and leaned down to kiss her forehead with a soft, slow, quiet touch that wouldn’t wake her.
Definitely worth it.
Next stop: ibuprofen. She felt her way to the end of the room and clicked on the bathroom light, leaving the door ajar so she’d have some illumination to search for her bag and avoid making too much noise knocking her way around in the dark. She checked the bedside table, the floor…oh, there it was, against the wall.
She rooted around in her bag but couldn’t find the breath mint tin she kept her pills in. Not by feel, anyway. She returned to the sting of the brightly lit bathroom and set her bag on the edge of the counter and somehow everything tumbled onto the tile floor. Yikes. So much for being quiet.
She listened for any sound from the other room, but there was nothing. Good. She found the tin and snapped it open. It was empty. Empty? She’d forgotten to replace her last pill right before she needed one in the middle of the night?
“You okay, sunshine?”
Great. She’d woken Jori.
“You don’t happen to have any ibuprofen, do you?”
“In my purse,” Jori mumbled, sounding not fully awake. “Can you find it yourself? You knocked me into such a good sleep, I don’t think I can move.”
“You’re a lifesaver.” Jori’s purse, Rae had already noticed, was on a shelf underneath the bathroom sink next to her toiletries bag.
“In the zippered pocket.” Jori’s voice faded like she was falling back asleep.
Rae opened the purse. It was a lot smaller than hers and a lot more organized. She found the zippered pocket and nabbed the travel-size pillbox. And saw what else was in there and froze.
A square foil wrapper. She’d never seen one up close, but really, what else could it be? Cautiously—even though there was no need to be cautious, it wasn’t going to attack—she touched it. The squishy hard ring inside felt exactly the way she imagined it would.
“You carry a condom?”
Jori groaned. “Please don’t be upset about this.” She didn’t sound sleepy anymore.
Rae left the bathroom without swallowing the painkiller that had started this and approached the bed. Her knee didn’t hurt anymore. She was too numb for anything to register.
Jori sat up, wrapping the sheet around her chest. Had it only been a minute age that Rae had covered her with that sheet?
“I carry it in my purse just in case. I never think about it. It’s been in there forever.” Jori shook her head like she couldn’t believe she had to defend herself. “It’s not like I was planning on meeting up with a guy tonight.”
“Then why do you need it?” Her purse was so organized. And so small. She didn’t have room in there to keep things she didn’t need. If she kept a condom handy, it was because she thought she might use it. Rae kept a ton of things in her bag “just in case”, and not a single one of them was a condom, because she didn’t sleep with goddamn men.
Jori pressed her lips together in a stark, angry line and tugged the sheet more tightly across her chest. “Is this really a surprise?”
No, not really. She knew this already. She just…wanted Jori to change her mind. About who she was. And how selfish was that?
Rae threw on her clothes and stomped to the second bed, the one they hadn’t touched, and ripped off the sheets. She grabbed a pillow and threw it against the wall.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? Making sure housekeeping thinks we slept in separate beds.”
“Rae—”
The cleaning people weren’t going to care. They wouldn’t even notice. But Rae needed to do it, needed to erase their night together. It was childish, and she hated that she was acting this way, but emotions were physical for her. She threw another pillow against the wall.
“I didn’t plan on using it,” Jori said.
“I don’t date bisexuals.”
“Date? You just slept with—”
“I don’t sleep with bisexuals, either.”
“Thanks,” Jori said. “It was good for me, too.”
Rae stumbled over the sheets she�
�d yanked to the floor, knocked into the hard, industrial-grade armchair beside the bed, and fell into the seat. Shit, that was her bad leg.
“What are you so scared of?” Jori said. “That I’m going to leave you for a man?”
“It doesn’t matter.” There was no need to explain, because explaining would just be hurtful. And for what? Their relationship wasn’t going to work. “I can’t be with someone who’s not a lesbian. This is a deal-breaker for me.”
The bed creaked and Jori made an impatient, irritated sound as she sat up straighter against the headboard. “You knew what I was before you got into this bed.”
Rae clenched her teeth. “I convinced myself you weren’t. That you were really a lesbian but just wouldn’t admit it.” It was high school all over again. She’d thought she’d learned and matured, but somehow, she hadn’t. “I wanted you to be what I wanted you to be. I was wrong.”
“Why do I have to be—”
“Because men always win! Because eventually, women like you—”
Jori choked. “Like me?”
“—always end up with a man.”
“That’s not true.”
“I need someone who feels comfortable calling herself a lesbian. Not bi, not curious, not questioning, not I used to like boys but now I’ve seen the light but oops it’s just temporary, not I sleep with girls right up until I marry a man, not I screw with people’s feelings because I’m too confused to know what I want, not I prefer to hover in some doorway instead of choosing a side and being fair to the people I date. Just lesbian.”
“Whoever hurt you,” Jori said gently, “I’m not her.”
The fight almost seeped out of her at Jori’s steady calm. Almost.
Rae drew her feet onto the chair and hugged her knees. “No one hurt me.”
“Are you sure? You’re this angry at me for no reason? No one who wasn’t quite lesbian enough ever rejected you?” Jori shaped her hands into a letter K and raised her eyebrows. “No one we know?”
“Kaoli has nothing to do with this.”
Jori shook her head, looking disappointed that Rae didn’t trust her enough to tell her the truth. How did she know? How could she know? None of the dancers Rae worked with had ever figured out that she had once had a painful crush on Kaoli, even though they saw them together every day. If Sylvie and Chloe and Preston didn’t suspect, how did Jori?
Because Jori knew her. Jori paid attention to little clues no one else noticed and put them together.
“Kaoli did hurt me,” Rae admitted. “But it was a long time ago and it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It does if it’s preventing you from trusting me.”
“It’s not about Kaoli.”
“Lesbians change their minds and marry men, too, you know. Sexuality is fluid. People change. Relationships fail. You want a guarantee? I’m sorry, but anyone who pretends they can give you one is lying.”
“At least my odds would be better,” Rae said.
Jori was right, though. God knew there were no guarantees. Not in relationships, not in show business, not in life. Rae could tolerate uncertainty in her career, but she deserved at least a little bit of certainty in the person she gave her heart to.
“I’m not going to lie about who I am just to make you trust me,” Jori said.
Unlike Kaoli. Jori really was nothing like Kaoli.
Didn’t change anything, though. Because Rae was going back to her real life where she spent half the year on the road, and Jori was going to land a respectable, well-paying job in a claustrophobic office where she’d meet some open-minded, inoffensive guy and marry him, and Baylee would become a big sister to a couple of little kids who were just as adorable as their mother. And Rae? Rae would dance her heart out until her body fell apart and she couldn’t do her job anymore, and she’d spend the rest of her life searching for someone who made her forget what she’d once felt for a woman who flirted with men and made a swimming pool noodle look like fun.
“What if you decide you want Baylee to have father?”
“Baylee already has a father.”
“She does?” Rae blinked. Of course technically Baylee had to have a father, but the way Jori had said it, it sounded like she meant a real parent—someone who was involved.
“Axel.” Jori winced like she was embarrassed to say his name. “Not that anyone would notice. But he does love her in his own distant way.”
Axel. How could Axel be…
“You told me he was gay. You told me you were pretending to date. You told me it wasn’t real.”
“All true.”
“You couldn’t tell me you slept with him?”
“I didn’t think it was important.”
“You didn’t want me to know.”
Jori sighed. “Yeah, okay, I didn’t want you to know. I was afraid if you knew I’d slept with a specific guy, if wasn’t just theoretical—even though I did tell you, lots of times, that I’m open to the idea of sleeping with men—you’d think differently of me.”
Jori had told her. She’d been nothing but honest about not wanting her sexual identity to be boxed in. What difference did it make, really, to know she’d slept with Axel? If there was anyone Rae should be angry with, it was herself. Jori may have lied about Axel, but she’d told her the part that mattered. Rae was the one who’d seen the red flags and ignored them.
“Why does it matter so much?” Jori said, eyes cast downward, strength draining from her voice until it was no more than a hurt whisper. “Why is what I am so awful?”
Acid burned Rae’s throat and she swallowed it back down, sick to her stomach.
“It’s not,” Rae whispered.
Jori clenched the sheet bunched in her lap.
Rae crawled out of the armchair and hobbled over to the bed. As much as she wanted to comfort her, she had no right to—not when all of this was Rae’s fault. Jori should hate her. It wasn’t fair of her to hope she didn’t. She held out her arms anyway, braced for Jori to push her away.
That deal-breaker? That was before she met Jori. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“Jori?”
Jori looked up at her as if Rae’s fumbling whisper had made a difference—as if maybe her open arms counted as an apology—so Rae sat on the bed and wrapped her arms around her.
Jori leaned into her touch. Just a little, but that small movement was everything.
Rae’s heart sped up and she buried her face in Jori’s neck.
“I’m sorry,” Rae said, her lips moving on Jori’s skin.
Maybe she was wrong about there only being one acceptable, safe location on the continuum. Maybe she was wrong about herself—about what she was willing to risk.
Or maybe she was right.
Or maybe…
Jori tucked a stray strand of Rae’s hair behind her ear like it was the most important task in the world. It was more than she deserved.
“Why do you have to be so nice?” Rae said. Didn’t she know Rae was messed up? That Rae was a terrible person who didn’t know what she wanted and who was going to end up hurting her worse than she already had? “So…” Loveable. “…nice.”
“What…evil people like me can’t be nice?”
“That’s not what I mean. I just…”
“Don’t decide now.” Jori’s thumb traced the line of her cheekbone with a softness tinged with sadness, a touch so wistful it was almost unbearable. “We don’t have to decide now.”
Chapter Seventeen
The sunshine was blinding when Rae arrived at the pool in her ratty terrycloth cover-up, glad to be back at this place she used to think she couldn’t wait to leave. There were dozens of women in the water, but her gaze went unerringly to Jori, finding her without consciously being aware of looking for her, as if part of her needed to know where she was at every moment because knowing was vital to her survival. Jori was standing in the middle of
the pool where it started to get deep, only her head and shoulders above the surface, helping her daughter swim.
Water dripped from Jori’s hair and clung to her face. Rae held her breath, captivated by the planes of her nose, her cheekbones, her lips. Maybe if Jori looked at her, she’d remember to breathe. Or maybe eye contact would make it worse. She wrenched her gaze away from Jori’s mouth but only got as far as the tight straps of her swimsuit and the sculpted slope of her shoulders, which really didn’t help.
What am I doing? She closed her eyes and clasped the wrought-iron gate for balance. The metal burned after having been heated by the sun all morning and she bounced off, more out of reflex than from any conscious sense of self-preservation.
What was she doing? This wasn’t logical. This was lust, and lust was not a healthy basis for a relationship.
It’s not lust, a tiny voice whispered in her head.
Of course it was lust. Because if it wasn’t, that meant it was love. And if it was love, she didn’t want to hear it. She had a history of falling in love with the wrong people. Of making bad choices. Of believing the object of her affection would choose her over a man. Of being wrong.
Like the Valentine’s Day dance in their high school gymnasium when Kaoli made the out-of-character choice to get drunk. When Kaoli whispered “I don’t feel so good” and covered her mouth and bolted for the restrooms, Rae had run after her. Well, not run—walked really fast. She didn’t want the teachers to notice something was up and decide to investigate.
Kaoli’s pale folded legs and the soles of her valentine-red heels had been visible under the door of the first stall. When Rae asked if she was okay, Kaoli answered by vomiting.
Rae touched the stall door and it swung open. Kaoli was gripping the germy toilet bowl, her knuckles white. She must have barely made it in time and not bothered to lock the door. Rae squeezed into the cramped stall, careful not to step on the hem of Kaoli’s skirt.
She leaned down and swept her hands through Kaoli’s long hair and held it back from her face, struggling not to lose the contents of her own stomach from the smell. Kaoli trembled. Her head was hot, feverish. She puked again. Rae handed her a wad of toilet paper to wipe her mouth.
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