Chapter 17 #2
She appeared in the doorway, blouse half-buttoned, her blonde hair a bit too unkempt for Evelyn’s standards. She looked like she’d sprinted here in between rounds.
“Hey,” Lillian said, breathless.
Olivia opened her arms, and Lillian hesitated just a beat.
Then she stepped in.
The hug was real but short. Her sister’s arms were warm, but her body already leaned away like she had somewhere else to be.
“Sorry,” Lillian said as she pulled back. “I’ve got thirty patients and no attending backing me up today.”
Olivia gave a soft smile. “Still breaking yourself in two to be all things for everyone?”
Lillian didn’t answer, just smiled tightly and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear.
“Welcome back,” she said. “Sort of.”
And then she was gone, heels clicking down the hall toward the garage.
Olivia stood there, the silence reclaiming the space behind her, Evelyn’s voice filling it in its place.
“You’ll need to prepare for the advisory panel next week. Dr. Kapoor made a mess of the ortho numbers.”
“Of course,” Olivia said automatically.
But her voice felt strange in this place now. It was brittle, too loud and too quiet all at once.
She wandered upstairs, the family portrait at the landing still frozen in a time she didn’t recognize anymore: Catherine’s perfect posture, Roz’s rebellious smirk, Lillian’s wide-eyed hope, and Olivia’s carefully neutral mask.
That girl was gone now.
And she wasn’t sure who this new woman was becoming.
But she knew one thing: She couldn’t go back.
The sheets were too smooth.
They were high-thread-count Egyptian cotton, crisp and immaculate beneath her body. They smelled faintly of lavender and bleach, nothing wild, nothing real. Olivia stared at the ceiling, motionless in the dark, a single lamp casting long amber shadows across the room.
Her old journals were stacked neatly on the desk across the room, untouched.
Her new one, the one she’d filled in the desert, lay open in her lap.
The ink bled slightly from the page, her handwriting more fluid than it used to be, less defensive and clinical.
She held the pen loosely in her hand, her fingers stained faintly with dried ink and memory.
She had intended to write about her day. To capture the surreal slide from retreat to hospital to house like one would record a strange dream. But what spilled out instead was Emma.
Not her name, just the sensation of her.
The heat of her skin at midnight.
The rasp of her accent curling low against her spine.
The way her mouth found hers in the dark like it had been waiting all day to speak in kisses instead of words.
Olivia shifted under the sheet, her legs bare, her nightshirt pushed up around her thighs.
She closed her eyes and could still feel Emma’s mouth on her neck, that slow drag of tongue and teeth that had pulled a sound from her she’d never made before.
She pressed her fingers there now, just below her jawline.
Still tender.
Still hers.
The desert was in her blood too. She’d rinsed it off in the shower, but it lingered—coarse, golden, sacred. It was in the way her hips shifted against the mattress, in the way her lips parted with a memory so sharp it could’ve cut glass.
She didn’t cry because she missed it.
She cried because she knew.
Because for the first time in her life, she knew what she wanted.
And it wasn’t this, this mausoleum of status and silence. This cold hallway of expectations. This bed, too large and too empty, tucked into a life shaped by other people’s hands.
She wanted the desert.
She wanted laughter and sunlight on her legs. She wanted Emma’s hands in her hair and sage in the air and to wake up without a to-do list carved into her chest.
She wanted herself.
The version she found out there.Her breath hitched as tears finally came, quiet and unhurried. She wiped them away with the edge of her shirt, exhaling shakily. Then she reached for the journal again and, with steady fingers, wrote just one sentence:
“I want her.”
And for once, she didn’t feel afraid.
The bathtub had always been her favorite feature. Deep and oval, carved from some sleek Scandinavian stone, it had been installed not for comfort but for aesthetic symmetry. A showpiece, just like the rest of the flat.
She had never used it. There had never been time for indulgence before.But tonight, Olivia let the water run hot, steam curling in lazy tendrils against the frosted glass.
She poured in oil, desert rose and sandalwood, its scent decadent, almost sinful.
The notes reminded her of Emma’s cabin, the slow way twilight had crept across the floorboards, the heat between their bodies sticky with want and dust.
She slipped into the water slowly, her skin blooming pink under the rising heat. It lapped at her ankles, her thighs, her waist, until she was submerged to the collarbones, her breath slow and deep.
And then, she touched herself.
Her hands skimmed the surface of her stomach, tracing the soft curves of her hips and the dip just above her pelvic bone. She had touched herself before, but it was hurried, functional, and with the lights off, breathing quiet so no one would hear.
Not like this, though.
Not as the woman who had stood beneath a starlit sky while another woman whispered her name like it was sacred.
Her palms smoothed over her thighs, up her ribs, her touch firm and slow. She memorized her own shape, this body, her body. The swell of her breasts, the hard points of her nipples rising against the air, aching not from shame but from memory.
Emma’s mouth.
Emma’s tongue.
Her own sighs echoing in the cabin as desire unfurled for the first time without guilt or apology.
She cupped one breast and closed her eyes. A soft moan spilled from her lips, not for someone else to hear. Just for her.
Her other hand drifted lower, parting water, gliding over soft folds slick with more than bath oil. Her breath caught as her fingers found that familiar ache, but she didn’t rush.
She moved like she had time, like she was worth the time.
With every stroke, memories surfaced of Emma on her knees, her voice thick with reverence, saying, “You taste like salt and sun, darlin’. Like you were born to be devoured.”
Olivia gasped, her hips lifting just enough to send a ripple across the water. She circled slow, coaxing pleasure from herself, her body responsive and alive. She didn’t imagine someone else touching her; she stayed inside herself, completely, fiercely present.
When she came, it was soft and deep, like a wave cresting beneath the surface. No gasping or theatrics. Just release. Just hers.
She lay back in the tub, thighs trembling, chest rising and falling in gentle rhythm. Her fingers floated, her body humming, her soul quiet.
Not because she was numb, but because she was home with herself.
She smiled then, tears slipping down her cheeks unnoticed, and whispered into the steam, “I’m still here.”