by Lea Santos
“My business welfare, Geraline. Business. You don’t own me. No one ever asked you, nor are you paid, to advise me on my personal life.”
Geraline pursed her lips and stared at her hands folded in front of her on the table. “If you must know, I’m a little disappointed in Ms. Pacias. I specifically told her to keep away from the guests, and yet she seems to have done”—cold eyes lifted to Iris’s—“quite the opposite. You know how I feel about that.”
Iris struggled to school her voice. “For your information, I sought Torien out, not vice versa. She has been a good friend to me.”
“And yet…you neglected to tell her about Paris.” Geraline cringed with fake sympathy, but her eyes glittered with hardness. “Those one-sided friendships always end badly, dear.”
The statement might as well have been a slap to her face. About this one thing, Geraline was right. Torien had been a good friend. Iris had not. She sighed. “Tori didn’t do anything wrong. Have you seen your precious gardens? They’re gorgeous. More gorgeous than ever.”
“I never said she wasn’t good at her job.”
“Then don’t punish her because of my indiscretions.” Her mind reeled and futile rage churned in her stomach.
Geraline’s face remained imperturbable, and all at once Iris realized this entire conversation was useless. Gerri would never understand how Iris could fall in love with an average woman, a pure loving soul. Never. If Iris wanted her life to change, she needed to take the first step. “I’m not going to Paris,” she said distractedly, almost as if the words surprised her.
Geraline barked out one loud, short laugh. “Oh. Yes, you are, Iris. You’re just upset now, and—”
“No!” Iris yelled.
Gerri’s mouth snapped shut.
Iris shook her head. “Listen to me closely, Ger. Look at me.” She waited until she had her business manager’s absolute, undivided attention. “I quit.” She snapped her hands out flat. “I’m out of the game. Cancel the contract however you have to, but I’m not going. France isn’t a good fit for me anymore. Maybe it never was.”
For the first time, Geraline’s confidence seemed to falter. Her face blanched, leaving rounds of blush standing out garishly on her cheeks. “Iris, be reasonable. This is a multi-million-dollar—”
“I don’t give a shit about the money! I don’t need any more money, can’t you see that?” She moved closer. “I have more money than I’ll need in this lifetime, and yet I’ve been unhappy for so long. I…don’t want to go. I won’t go.”
“You’re giving up that great assignment for some chick with dirt under her nails?” Antoine scoffed, incredulous.
She pointed toward Antoine without looking at him. “Get his stupid ass out of here, Geraline. I mean it. Or this discussion is over.”
After searching her face for several moments, Geraline swallowed. “Antoine, give us some privacy.”
When Antoine had slouched from the room, she took a seat across from her longtime manager.
Geraline clasped both of Iris’s hands in her own. “Listen, you are basing a major decision on the wrong thing. A woman? My gardener?”
“This has nothing to do with Torien. It’s me. Meeting her might have given me the impetus, but…I’ve changed.” All of a sudden, having taken the difficult step, she felt weary. She hung her head and closed her eyes. There was only one place she wanted to be if she couldn’t be with Torien: in the gardens, surrounded by all the beautiful things they’d created together. “Cancel the contract. I don’t care what you have to do.”
“If you have some romantic notion of running off with Pacias, you might want to rethink it.” A pointed pause ensued. “I’ve already spoken with her.”
Iris’s gaze shot up, and dread pulsed through her veins, slow and oily. “W-what did you tell her?”
Geraline shrugged. “I didn’t have to tell her much after dropping the news about Paris. You might as well have paid the woman for her services, Iris, for how she felt. It showed all over her face.”
A small gasp of agony escaped her lips.
“But just for insurance”—Geraline’s eyes swept up to meet Iris’s—“I made her a small offer.”
“Offer?” Nausea roiled in Iris’s stomach.
“You know, a few thousand bucks to make herself scarce until you came to your senses and went on with your career. That way…she could keep her job, take care of her family. Otherwise—” Geraline made a regretful face.
“You fucking bribed her?” Iris rasped. Her extremities went dead cold and her lips trembled. This couldn’t be happening. “You’re lying.” Her head started to shake in denial, and she couldn’t stop it. “Torien would never sell her soul for a job.”
“Iris, honey, she didn’t sell her soul. She sold yours.” Geraline leaned forward and lowered her tone to a whisper. “Pacias took the money.”
“I don’t believe you.” Blood slammed through Iris’s brain. Her eyes strayed to the kitchen window beyond which lay the night-darkened gardens.
“Suit yourself, but go check the gardener’s cottage. I just hope when you realize she’s gone, you’ll come to your senses.” Geraline extracted two airline tickets from the inner pocket of her jacket. “I’ve booked us on a flight to Paris. We can leave on the red-eye.”
The moment stilled. “You just don’t get it. All I have ever been to you is a commodity.” Her words didn’t even shake anymore. Rage had smoothed them to a diamond hardness she wished she had cultivated long ago in her career. “Not anymore. I don’t care if Torien is out there or not. I don’t care if she took your money. In fact, I hope she did. But none of that changes anything.” Iris extracted her hands from Geraline’s. “I am not going to Paris. Ever.”
*
Torien is gone.
She was gone, and Geraline said she’d taken the bribe money.
Grief and astonishment cut through Iris. It had to be a mistake. And even if it wasn’t, even if Torien had taken the money…Iris knew there would be a damn good reason. She needed to see Tori, to talk this out. But she couldn’t bear to leave the garden just yet, their special place. Her eyes strayed from the gazebo steps where they first met, to the front porch of the cabaña where they’d first kissed, to the spigot where she’d first seen Torien’s half-naked body.
So many precious firsts.
She wandered through the gardens until she came upon the bed of irises she and Torien had planted too late in the season. Tori had given them a chance, nurtured them as best she could, and with any luck, they’d survive.
A woman like that wouldn’t…just walk away.
Distraught and distracted, Iris somehow managed to throw her belongings into a leather duffel and call a cab to meet her down the block from Geraline’s. She eventually made it to Torien’s house in Círculo de Esperanza. The taxi swished away on the rain-soaked street, and Iris found herself just standing there. Terrified to go to the door and find her gone. Terrified to find her there.
Purely…terrified.
But home at the moment or not, Torien wouldn’t be gone.
She wouldn’t abandon her sister.
But what about us?
Still hesitant, Iris turned toward the beautiful community garden they had created together. The rain had let up, but the droplets decorated every leaf and petal and branch, reflecting the glow of the hunter’s moon like a fistful of carelessly strewn diamonds. Her feet carried her to one of the benches, and she sank onto it with a sigh, threading her fingers into the front of her hair. The neighborhood was so quiet at night, such a different landscape in the darkness.
God…if only she’d had some clue as to Torien’s torment when she’d asked, “What are you thinking?” at the bar. Had that been earlier tonight? It seemed like a lifetime ago. The entire garden project seemed a lifetime ago.
Why hadn’t she told Torien about Paris?
Shame, like an unfriendly dog, snapped at her body, and she wanted to curl into a ball to fend it off. Everyone she had met on
the Rainbow Project had been kind to her, accepting her without question, without conditions. But the first person Torien met from Iris’s world had treated her like a mangy stray. Gerri had bribed Tori, disparaged her character, demolished her livelihood. The whole situation was such a colossal disaster, and it was completely Iris’s fault. Was it any wonder Torien had turned tail and run?
Headlights swept a golden streak over the garden. The rumble of a familiar truck brought Iris up off that bench as if she’d accidentally sat on a rattlesnake.
Torien? Could it be?
Throat tight with the need to see her, Iris hurried to the small picket fence enclosing the baby garden beds and watched Tori parallel park in front of the house. The interior light came on when she popped the truck door. Their eyes met through the windshield, and both women froze.
Iris stood her ground. She ached with tender emotion just seeing Torien’s regal face, though her heart cramped at Tori’s ravaged expression. Iris ached to touch her, inhale her scent, make it all better. But this was real life, and some problems couldn’t just be kissed away.
Fact: Geraline had told Torien about Paris.
Iris hadn’t.
Could this breathtakingly honorable woman ever forgive her?
Torien stepped from the truck, first one boot sole, then the other striking the pavement. The closing door echoed loudly in the quiet night, and in the distance, a dog barked, a chain-link fence rattled. Tori stared over the hood of her truck, eyes sorrowful. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Iris repeated, on a weak exhale.
They mentally circled, wary as wild animals, neither wanting to make a move—the wrong move—too quickly.
“Tori, I’ve been so worried—” Her throat caught, and she looked away for a moment, but her gaze drifted back to Torien automatically…the proverbial compass needle trained to true North. “I didn’t know where you went, what happened. I’m so sorry…”
“I am sorry, too. For leaving you at the bar like that,” Tori said, her voice husky with pain. She ran a hand slowly down her face. So many things left unsaid. The important things.
Iris shook her head, the motion too jerky, wrought with fear. “No. That doesn’t matter. I’m…Tori, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Paris before you found out.”
There it was.
The ugly lie erected between them like a thick glass wall.
Iris watched Tori’s throat move, a deep, slow swallow.
“Is it true, then? Are you leaving?” She came around to the front bumper, gaze never straying from Iris’s, stopping in front of the license tag. Torien’s rain-slicked arms hung limply at her sides, sculpted with sinew and muscle, accented by shadow and moonlight. But her manner remained…tentative.
“No. I’m not leaving.”
A beat passed. “What?”
“I’m not going to Paris, Tori.”
Confusion pulled Torien’s brows together. She shook it away. “But Moreno said—”
“Let me explain,” Iris said. “I was supposed to go. For—”
“Three years,” Torien said.
Iris eased forward and braced her hand against a telephone pole almost directly across the street from Tori. “Yes. But I am breaking the contract.”
“No,” Torien rasped, as if someone had kicked her. “Don’t do it. You must go or you’ll regret it forever.”
Startled by the vehemence of Tori’s response, Iris stepped back and stumbled on a loose stone. She felt as if she’d shown up for her life one day late. “No. I won’t regret anything.” She sighed. “I thought you’d be…happy.”
“Happy?” Torien repeated, incredulity in her tone.
“Yes, about…us. A chance to—”
“Don’t you see, Iris? There is no ‘us’ if you give up yourself for me.” Two more steps and Torien stood in the middle of the street, just short of the painted line that separated them. “I cannot stand in the way of your life, mi ángel. Don’t put me there. I have nothing to offer you. I have”—her voice broke, stripped and hollow—“nothing.”
Iris’s insides stung raw, and disbelief tingled her extremities. “I never asked you for anything, and—Jesus—you’ve never stood in the way of anything I wanted. Ever. I pushed my way into your life, and you let me. I shouldn’t have done it, but I don’t regret it.”
Tori’s head cocked to the side.
“I don’t,” Iris said. “You helped me find myself—”
“Bullshit.”
The word rang out like a shot, and Iris flinched.
“This is not you, Irisíta.” Torien gestured angrily around them, her words bleak, forced through the pain. “A run-down neighborhood that everyone and her uncle is trying to escape?”
“I don’t want to escape it,” Iris said.
Torien laughed, but the sound held no humor. “Be realistic. This is my world. As good as it gets. You belong in the limelight, not here.”
Iris moved around the pole, leaning her rigid back against it. “I don’t want the limelight,” she said, calm conviction in every single word. “I haven’t wanted that for a long time, Tori. You know that about me. You know me.”
Torien looked away, anguish in the set of her jaw.
“I just…didn’t know what I wanted,” Iris ventured. “Until I met you.”
“No, damnit. I cannot bear the responsibility for ruining your career.”
Iris shook her head, just as the rain started up again. In the distance, ominous thunder rolled. “Tori, the timing looks bad, but I didn’t make this decision only because of you. I have been unhappy with my career for a long time. But it’s all I’ve ever known.” She paused, schooled her words. “Being around you, around this neighborhood, the volunteers on the project—all of that made me realize exactly why I’ve been so unsettled.” She leveled Tori with a gaze, the rain kicking a steamy fog up around their legs. “I came to apologize to you, Tori. But I’m not going to Paris. Whether you want me or not, even if you never want to see me again…I told Geraline to cancel the contract. And I meant it.”
A long, worried sigh escaped Torien’s lips. “Ah, baby girl, you don’t know what you’ve done. To give up your life for another person…it will destroy you.”
“I’m not giving up my life. I’m finally going to live my life.” This close, she could see turmoil raging just beneath Torien’s surface. Not more than twelve feet of space separated them, but it felt like an ocean. A whole world. We live in different worlds, Torien had said. And she’d been right. Would they ever be able to reach across this distance, this bridgeless space between Iris’s reality and Torien’s? Did Torien even want to?
“I’m not going to Paris,” Iris said again, firmly, shoving strands of wet hair away from her face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. And I’m…sorrier than you’ll ever know that I caused you problems with your job.”
“You don’t owe me any explanations.”
“Yes, I do.” Iris licked raindrops from her lips. “Geraline told me. What she did. Offering you money.”
Dark, angry eyes jerked to Iris’s face, and in that moment, she absolutely knew Torien hadn’t taken Geraline’s bribe. “Ah, the money.” A brittle pause. “And you thought I took it?”
Her brief hesitation was a mistake; it showed in Torien’s crushed expression. “Gerri told me you did, but I never believed it. But I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had.”
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t care, Tori. You should have. Fuck Geraline.”
“Hijole madre.” Torien shook her head and stared at her feet for a long time. When she met Iris’s gaze again, her features were etched with pain. “We have to talk, mi ángel.”
“I understand,” Iris said, her tone solemn. She noted the agonized breathing in the rise and fall of Torien’s chest.
“No. You…don’t understand. I need to tell you…what I did,” Torien said, her voice hoarse, halting.
Something bad. Iris could see it in her stormy eyes.
But she
hadn’t taken the money.
What…?
“We don’t have to talk about this,” Iris whispered, not wanting to hear anything that would crush their precarious connection. Not wanting to lose Torien—again—before she ever truly had her. The rain pelted them harder, and she raised her voice over the sound of it splattering on the pavement. “There’s always time for talk later.”
“Now. I must.” Anguish eclipsed Torien’s features. “You need to know the kind of woman I am before you turn your back on…your whole world.”
“I do know you, honey. I do.”
“No,” came Torien’s vehement denial. “No one knows.”
Iris’s fingers tingled, terrified of what Torien might confess. And yet, she wanted nothing more than to be there for her, to listen to her. Whatever Torien’s secret, surely Iris’s deception was worse. She shivered in the cold rain. “Tell me.”
Torien peered up at the blackness, dark lashes blinking against the downpour. The skies cried for them, drenching them both. “Come inside, Iris. This is ridiculous, our meetings in the rain. Your teeth are chattering, for God’s sake.”
Iris nodded, then shouldered her duffel bag and crossed the last few feet toward Torien. Without asking, Torien took the bag from Iris, and together they walked silently up the path. She should’ve felt good to have been invited into Torien’s home, but she didn’t. Not yet. Nothing was settled between them, and the fear kept her teetered off balance.
Torien stepped aside to let Iris enter first, then followed her in. Iris traversed the room, her arms wrapped around her torso, chilled to the marrow. When she heard the deadbolt sliding into place, she turned back. Torien stood there on the doormat, eyes remote and ravaged. Every few seconds, rivulets of water would reach the end of her chin or her fingers and drip off onto the floor. Trails of water drained down her back. If Torien’s jeans felt anything like Iris’s—as if they were made of lead and lined with sandpaper—neither of them was too comfortable. It didn’t matter. She glanced around the room. “Who else is h-here?”
“It’s just us.”
She nodded, infuriatingly unable to control the shivers. “S-so, t-talk to me.”