by Lee Winter
“I know,” Ayers said tightly, pouring their glasses of wine. “I didn’t mean for it to come out that way, but I’m well aware how it sounded. I saw the look on your face…” She looked down and fiddled with the cork screw. “Cynthia had been making certain loaded comments for days. About how you kept watching me, and I you. The observations were a little too close to the bone. I may have said what I did in…panic. And then I’m well aware I said nothing when I should have.”
“Panic,” Lauren repeated sourly. “Well, congratulations on putting those rumors to rest. You were thoroughly convincing as someone who thinks I’m a backward hick worth laughing at.”
Ayers brought the wine over, lips thinning. She sat beside her. “I’m well aware. It’s a skill.”
Lauren glared at her in outrage.
“I’m not proud of it,” she sighed. “You’re a better woman than I am. All I do is cut people to the quick, find their weakest spots without even thinking. Sometimes without caring.”
“So which was it? With me? You didn’t think or you didn’t care?”
“Lauren…” Ayers shook her head. “You already know the answer. The moment the words were out, I wanted to take them back. I went to find you almost immediately. Where were you?”
“Getting drunk at a Star Trek marathon,” Lauren muttered. She sipped on the wine and relaxed slightly as she felt her palate do a jig of delight in recognition. It was her favorite label of all the bottles they’d tried from Ayers’s cellar. So—she’d remembered.
“I’m so sorry,” Ayers said after a few moments.
“Hilarious.”
“No, I mean it. I’m truly sorry.” Ayers moved closer.
Lauren met her steady gaze. “I don’t get this. What are we?”
Ayers took a deep sip of wine. “Ask me an easy one.”
“That was the easy one. Way I see it, we had a chance of being together, but you made sure that was shut down by reverting to Caustic Queen mode. And then you went out of your way to ensure I wouldn’t follow you to Washington by convincing them to give me Daley’s job. But suddenly I find you do give a shit to the tune of two-dozen voicemails. So color me confused.”
Ayers seemed taken aback. “Lauren, I put you up for Daley’s job because you’re the best person. They asked me who I’d pick, and you were an excellent choice. I also wanted you to have options and not be undervalued again once I was gone. But this is the first I’m hearing that you wanted to go with me to DC!”
“You didn’t give me a chance to tell you!” Lauren slammed her glass on the coffee table. “You were so busy throwing me out the door, I couldn’t even tell you how I felt.”
“How you felt?” Ayers stared at her. “We’d only had one night together. You couldn’t possibly have felt anything!”
“There you go again!” Lauren snapped in frustration.
“What?”
“Deciding how my life should be. Which job I should get. How I should feel about what happened between us. This has been going on for a lot longer than one night. I think we should name it.” Lauren tilted her head. “World won’t end.”
Ayers pursed her lips. “If you knew my family, you’d think it would.”
“They’re not here. It’s just you and me. What is this? Was it really only me engaged in foreplay all these months we’ve been working together in LA?”
Ayers looked at her distastefully. “Crude description.”
“But accurate?” Lauren asked hopefully.
“No. Not even close.”
“Oh,” Lauren said. Her face fell, and she felt foolish all over again.
“Stop it,” Ayers said. “Stop this kicked puppy thing you do whenever you think I don’t like you that way. Listen to me. I don’t share my privacy, my home, and certainly not my shower with anyone. But with my departure coming up, I was well aware nothing could come of us continuing things, so to hold out hopes for more would only end in tears. It was the best course of action. It was necessary. A clean break.”
“You keep saying that. But what makes you so damned sure I’d cry over you?” Lauren asked indignantly.
“For god’s sake Lauren.” Ayers exhaled heavily. “Must you drag it out of me? Are you really this obtuse?”
Lauren stared at her in confusion. Ayers’s shoulders were slumped, and her gaze suddenly flashed up to Lauren’s. Her eyes were wet. Lauren sucked in a shocked breath.
“Don’t you see?” Ayes said, voice cracking. “I wasn’t talking about your tears.”
There was a long silence. All Lauren could hear was the ticking of the chrome clock on the far wall.
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.” Ayers fiddled with the ring on her right hand, an embarrassed redness dusting her cheeks. “Now do you understand?”
Lauren’s mind was in disarray.
“You knew you’d miss me?” she asked uncertainly.
“More than is sensible,” Ayers said. Her eyes softened. “Or logical. And I thought if I could just shut it down, distance myself from you, I’d stop feeling before it could hurt too much.” She looked up. “I was wrong. Pretending is worse—much worse. Trust you to be a pain in my neck regardless.”
“Did you just insult me?” Lauren asked lightly, but her mind was spinning.
“I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.” Ayers smiled. “You’d suspect me of being an imposter if I told you that when you walk in a room, I can never take my eyes off you. That whenever you stand up to me, I feel alive. You challenge me. You blew into my world when I was at my lowest, all brash and daring and honest, and in spite of myself, I wanted that. Wanted you.”
Lauren breathed out slowly, turning over the words in her mind.
“I know it’s crazy,” Ayers said, her voice filled with irritation. “We’re polar opposites in many ways. And my contract is up now. Tomorrow marks my first day of freedom, and I’ve never been more relieved to be done with a place. And yet…” Her gaze drifted back to Lauren’s.
“And yet there’ll be no more of me challenging you.” Lauren guessed.
“Something like that.”
“What if I told you the Washington Post had offered me a junior reporter job. Starts in two months. Catherine—it’s in DC. And I looked it up. It’s in the same building as the Sentinel’s DC bureau. So if you took back your old job, and I know you’ve been offered it, we’d be working in the same damned place.”
Ayers stopped, surprise flitting across her face. Her mouth opened momentarily then snapped shut.
“Yeah.” Lauren grinned. “And just so you know, I’d have taken it regardless of whether there was an us. But now we can give it a shot. If you want to, that is.”
“Hell,” Ayers turned away, uncertainty lining her features.
“Catherine?”
“You know all those times you just don’t dare to dream? You tell yourself it’ll only end badly. Why hurt yourself for no reason? And after a while you teach yourself to not dream at all?”
Lauren shook her head. “No, I always dream. The bigger, the better. Otherwise I’d still be writing about Pork Princesses and butter cows. It’s not too late, you know. To dream. To want. If you want me?”
She swallowed and had never been more terrified of an answer in her life.
“There it is again,” Ayers said, shaking her head incredulously. “You just ask earth-shattering questions like that. You’re fearless.”
“If you don’t ask, you never get anything. Certainly not your dreams.”
Ayers sighed. “Do you have any idea how frightening it is to care for someone who dreams? They infect you with their optimism. And soon you start to dream together. You begin to dare to hope.”
“Is that so bad?”
“There’s only one thing more painful than a dream being crushed. That’s a dreamer being crushed. When you met me, Lauren, I wa
s destroyed. Can you even remotely understand what that feels like? To have every hope and ambition ripped from you while the people you thought you mattered to just skulked away and pretended not to see you dying on the inside. Even my friends,” she said, her voice strangled, “friends for years, looked away. You were right—of course they weren’t real friends. I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, that it’s just politics, but in the end, I think that hurt even more than Stephanie’s betrayal. Can you imagine what that felt like?”
“No,” Lauren murmured.
“It’s a dark, lonely place to be,” Ayers continued, anger edging her voice. “It tastes like ash, decay, and bitterness. But it was familiar in the end, my little self-loathing prison. And then you just turned up and carelessly kicked down the door.”
“Why was that so bad?” Lauren asked.
“Don’t you get it? Rock bottom is the safest place in the world. No one can hurt you, or threaten to take anything from you—because it’s already gone. I became used to being there. It was comfortable, and I was bulletproof.”
“And I took that away.”
Ayers clenched her hands. “You are clueless, Lauren King. And obtuse. And terrifying. Because you kicked down that door and made me want more from life. You made me want again. A part of me hates you for it. I was safe. Now I’m not.”
“Life isn’t safe, Catherine,” Lauren said. She squeezed her hand. “Life is risk. That’s what makes it so exciting.”
“What if I don’t want any more excitement?” she asked. “It’s vastly overrated.”
“Sure you do. You’re Catherine Fucking Ayers, and you eat it for breakfast. That’s who you are. That was who dragged me off to Nevada and got us our story. And hell if you didn’t bill Frank $3200 in expenses and get the cheap bastard to pay. Those two weeks were the most incredible time of my life, and I couldn’t have done it without you. And you are going to sweep back in, take DC by the throat, and give it a shake. Because that’s what you do. And you’re going to take other risks. Even bigger ones. And you’re going to love those, too.”
“Maybe I’m not as brave as you.”
“Well, that’s where I come in. To remind you how to dream and dare again. And tell you it’s time to stand back up and seize life with both hands.”
“Why do you even care what I do next?”
“Now who’s being obtuse? You make me feel alive, too. You get me. All of me—my ambitions, my drive, and who I am. The simple truth is we’re good for each other.”
“This is crazy,” Ayers whispered. She rubbed her temple. “I mean, look at us.”
“I am. We’re awesome together. Not to mention cute.”
Ayers rolled her eyes. “Blind and ambitious. We’re doomed.”
Lauren grinned. “You said we. So we’re doing this then? You and me?”
“So help me.” Ayers drew in a deep breath. She looked at Lauren’s lips, now so close they were sharing breaths. “I must be mad,” she whispered and closed the distance.
They kissed, and it was like nothing Lauren had ever experienced. Tender, yet intoxicating. Ayers’s eyes were dark with desire and, without a word, Lauren allowed her to take her to bed.
Ayers undressed her slowly, carefully, and then slipped out of her own clothes, sliding into bed beside her, stroking her skin, fingertips dusting her jaw.
“I always knew you were trouble,” she said. “First time I met you.” She kissed her. “So much trouble.” She nuzzled her neck, and her hands played with Lauren’s hair.
Lauren shifted her thighs, feeling a growing urgency. But the desperation they’d shared one adrenaline-filled night weeks ago had been replaced by something else.
Ayers was making love to her. Slow, intimate, and measured, piece by piece, she was taking Lauren’s heart apart, with every trail of fingertips and softly dropped kiss.
“I think I’m falling for you,” Lauren admitted shakily.
The hands idly combing through her hair tightened briefly then relaxed. Ayers kissed a lazy trail down her throat and paused before she reached her aroused nipple. Ayers took her breast in her mouth, and one hand skimmed down to cup between her legs.
Lauren cried out, tears leaking from her eyes at the intensity. Ayers leaned up and kissed the tracks of saltwater away. Then she lowered herself, rubbed against Lauren’s thigh, teasing her own core against her as she slid down, her fingers still exploring Lauren’s folds.
Ayers’s slickness revealed just how aroused she was.
“The things you do to me,” Ayers whispered against her quivering stomach. “It should be illegal.”
And then, with a mouth so famous for being brutal, she kissed her lower lips tenderly and began to love her so attentively that Lauren wondered if she was losing her mind. Her moans became more intense with each carefully placed lick and thrust, and then she finally broke. Her voice cracked, dying into blissful, spent gasps.
That wicked mouth finally retreated, kissed back up her still-trembling thighs, and slipped over Lauren’s stomach, leaving wet trails. Her eyes danced as she studied her, a fingertip sliding up and down Lauren’s toned arm.
Her expression became serious.
“It’s not just you,” she admitted, resting her chin between Lauren’s breasts. “I feel it, too.”
Lauren lifted her eyebrows in hope, her hands curling through the rich auburn hair splayed out on her chest.
“This thing between us,” Ayers clarified. “I’ve felt it for a long time. Even when we hated each other, when I fought you dragging me out of my safe little hell, it was always there.”
Lauren smiled.
“So let’s go to DC,” Ayers said thoughtfully. “Take the suits on together. Like they could withstand us both.”
“They’d have no chance,” Lauren joked, her heart leaping. She paused. “Although, remember that we’d be rivals. There would be no together.”
“Please,” Ayers said. She gave her a fond smirk. “Like that’s ever stopped us before.”
Lauren grinned.
Hell yeah.
Epilogue
One year later
Washington DC
Lauren pulled The Beast into the shared media parking lot a few blocks from the National Press Building. Thanks to some sage advice she’d scored the highly prized spot during her negotiations with the Washington Post.
Her new boss had given an impressed snort, accused her of being a ringer, and reluctantly agreed.
She turned the steering wheel into her named space, then slammed on the brakes. She cursed. A car was parked right on the line. It wasn’t over far enough to block most cars. But then The Beast was no ordinary vehicle. She glared at the sign posted above the offending silver vehicle.
C. AYERS, B-Chief, Daily Sentinel.
Lauren hit reverse. With a grim smile, she changed gears, edged forward, and boxed in the annoying Saab. She slammed her car door and headed toward the fourteen-story building that housed eighty percent of Washington DC’s media organizations, twirling her keys around her finger.
“Hey lady!” a man shouted behind her. “If you park there, that silver car won’t be able to get out.”
“That’s the general idea,” she called back, feeling deliciously evil.
It had been a year, Lauren mused as the elevator rose. A year of getting used to a new city and a faster way of life. Everyone lived and breathed politics here. It wasn’t some postscript to who’d been spotted at a film launch. She could smell the adrenalin; taste the power and the ambition. It was where she’d always wanted to be. And for so many reasons she was having the time of her life.
The elevator rose past her office’s floor and stopped two higher. It was a path she was very used to beating now.
Catherine Ayers, esteemed bureau chief for the Daily Sentinel, was on the phone, her chair swivelled to face the window
and its stunning view below. Lauren could see the top of auburn hair, a long-sleeved, cream silk-clad arm waving expansively. “I know you said that, Senator, and I will be happy to put that in my story when it happens to be the truth, not when you claim it is.”
She pivoted around slightly, saw Lauren, and smiled.
“How do I know it’s not?” she asked her caller, her voice still stern, even as her sultry look stroked Lauren’s body and glazed slightly. “Because your mistress told me about it over sushi three nights ago. Mm. Yes, excellent. I’ll see you at that meeting on Tuesday. Look forward to going through your files. Goodbye, Senator.”
She swivelled her chair around and hung up. Lauren stood in front of her, hands rammed in her black pants, eyes glinting.
“Ahh, I see you got my message.” Ayers gave her a positively wicked smile.
“Really?” Lauren asked, voice lifting to a squeak. “You couldn’t just call me like a regular person when you want to see me?”
“Now where would be the fun in that?”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’m here now. What do you want?”
“To coordinate tonight. Can you pick up my dress? I had Lee’s take up the hem.”
“What did your last slave die of?”
“Who can say without an autopsy? Here’s the ticket.”
She passed over a yellow stub for Lee’s Tailoring and Dress Alterations, two blocks from their office.
“Aren’t you leaving it a bit late?” Lauren asked, plucking it from the desk. “You’ve only known about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner for a whole year.”
“I hadn’t planned on working sixty hours this week.”
“Ooh yeah, the illegal drone story. Can’t wait to read it.” Lauren sat on the edge of her desk.
“Shush,” Ayers scolded; her gaze flicked to the closed door and back.
“Please, who do you think will hear anyway? You practically have the floor to yourself since the other two regionals and that motoring quarterly folded.”