Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Savoring the silence on the otherwise abandoned terrace, Vivian closed her eyes and sank into the patio chair.
She let the breeze cool her perspiration-damp skin.
She took a deep breath, taking the city air into her lungs and pushing it out through her nose.
Bryn’s voice, soothing and steady and imaginary, was in her ear.
Feel the armrests under your fingertips.
She gripped the chair.
Let go of all the noise.
She took an even deeper breath, as if she could expel the ringing in her ears caused by so much conversation.
Unclench your jaw.
Muscles loosening, Vivian’s breathing steadied. She stopped hearing her pulse pounding against her eardrums. The urge to tear off clothes that felt like a straitjacket eased.
It had been so many years since Vivian had been in a setting like this. She had no way to describe the crush of cannibalizing energy. The active siphoning of her soul. The revolting sensation of so many eyes on her, the whispering about her like rats scratching the inside of her skull.
You’re doing so well. Keep breathing.
All she had to do was keep breathing. If she kept breathing she’d stop seeing them. All the faces trained on her. The eyes that took and took even when they knew they’d already had their fill. Took until she had nothing left.
That’s it, baby. You’re doing so well.
Believing Bryn’s manifested voice, Vivian opened her eyes. She didn’t feel like taking off in a sprint anymore, but she was tired. She checked her phone.
Bryn had only been networking for an hour.
Harvey, loving to hear himself talk, had probably only introduced her to a couple of people.
He’d know exactly who she needed to meet and loved getting to escort the rising star he plucked out of the darkness.
She debated going up to her room but didn’t want to risk Bryn seeing her sneak away.
Thinking of Bryn chased away the lingering discomfort in her tense belly.
Part of Vivian wanted to keep her away from the piranhas, but the other part of her was so proud of her.
So excited for all the success yet to come.
Bryn was going to have a meteoric rise, and she seemed to have the maturity to endure it.
“Here you are!” Bryn’s voice cut through ambient city sounds.
“Jesus!” Vivian clutched her chest, heart hammering against her palm.
“What are you doing out here?” Bryn looked around the terrace, which was little more than a few chairs positioned in front of a hedge poorly concealing a massive pumping system and an unnecessary ground floor railing.
Vivian imagined it was the kind of place she would have found to smoke her Marlboro Lights in the 90s.
Vivian uncrossed her legs. Looking at Bryn and her bright eyes and infectious energy, she couldn’t find the will to say something snappy. To answer her question with another.
“Maybe I’m listening to more Kelly Craves audios,” she said like a fisherman casting a line into an ocean so vast it felt like providence that a fish would be crossing the right lure at just the right moment.
Bryn didn’t shy away or blush or stammer, although Vivian wasn’t sure why she’d expected that.
There was such a surprising confidence in Bryn.
She was at once the self-doubting novice that hadn’t known to read an entire book before performing and the voice that had made Vivian feel more connected to her body than she ever had.
Bottom lip trapped between her teeth, Bryn grinned. “Yeah?” She stepped closer, prompting Vivian to stand. “Which one?”
Vivian leaned against the railing, cool metal hard against her lower back. “The one with the wife coming home to a massage after a long day.”
Bryn’s expression gave everything away, like it had never occurred to her to conceal her true thoughts. Like she’d never once paid the price for sincerity. “You’ve really been listening?” She took another step forward.
It was reflex to answer with a quip. As natural as a porcupine raising quills. But Vivian ordered the archers on the wall to stand down.
“Yes,” Vivian admitted with all the valor of a deserter, tone too soft. Too revealing.
Even without moonlight, Bryn’s beautiful face seemed to glow.
She was radiant, Vivian realized. All the times she’d stood across from her in the booth, when her gaze had gotten trapped in the perfection of Bryn’s features.
She’d been unable to pinpoint what it was about her.
But now that there was no light to illuminate her, Vivian understood.
Bryn was radiant. Radiant in the nearly literal sense of the word. She was light burning inside a gemstone, bright and mythical and real.
“Why?” Bryn took another step.
Her proximity was too real. An archer knocked an arrow before Vivian could stop it.
“Maybe I’m trying to determine whether you’re acting or if it’s performance art.” She hated herself for deflecting. For finding the light unbearable after such a long period of seclusion.
“Well…” She neared, only an inch from Vivian.
Close enough that if anyone caught them like that, there would be no innocent reason for Bryn’s proximity.
Not when Vivian was pressed against the railing.
When her heart was pounding and her body was screaming for Bryn’s touch.
But it wasn’t an observer Vivian feared. “Magic only works if it’s a mystery.”
All Vivian wanted to do was lean in. To feel the magic of her lips again. No, not magic. Magic implied illusion and sleight of hand. In a lifetime of glittering artifice, Bryn had been the most real. As real as earth and precious metal.
It was too much. Wanting someone—wanting anything—could never end well. Not for anyone. Everything in the natural world had to bend to the laws of physics. What rose had to fall. Even precious things.
“I’m assuming if you’ve been listening…” Bryn reached for Vivian, her fingertips warm against her forearm. Her touch an electric rush igniting from the base of her spine and through her extremities like light was contagious. “That means you like what you hear?”
The cruelty of a touch so soft was unbearable. A touch that taunted Vivian with its absence even when she still had it. A touch that she’d ache for when she was back at home. That would make safety feel like a prison.
“Did you meet Russel?” Vivian asked.
Bryn furrowed her brow as if she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to discuss less than work. “No.”
Vivian clawed at the life preserver bobbing in the ocean. She clung to it, dragging her exhausted body out of the waves. Away from the crushing want she couldn’t indulge.
“Let’s get back inside. He does all the casting for—”
“Vivian, stop running from me.” Bryn ran her hand up Vivian’s arm, following the artery up to the frantic pulse in her neck.
“I’m not running.” She couldn’t even add a defensive edge to her tone.
Bryn’s smile was so gentle. So kind. “No?” She cocked her head to the side. “What do you call sitting outside when you forced me to mingle—”
“It’s important that you make connections—”
“Vivian,” she repeated her name like a grounding wire. “I don’t care about networking—”
“You should—”
“I don’t.” Bryn cradled Vivian’s jaw in her palm. She held her gaze until Vivian stilled. “Can we just stop pretending?”
It was a demand dressed up like a request. Vivian shook her head, but she couldn’t make herself deflect. The best she could counter with was a feeble, “What?” that didn’t even sound confused.
Eyes like crystalline water lapping against powder-white sand, Bryn looked at her with so much compassion the deepest ocean trench couldn’t hold it. “I like you. Like, I really like you. And I think you like me too.”
She ran her blunt fingernails over Vivian’s temple and followed the curve of her ear with lethal tenderness. Her stomach dropped and breathing became impossible. Vivian couldn’t muster the strength to lie. It was all she could do to cling to the meager life preserver in the unforgiving sea.
“And all I’ve wanted to do since I kissed you once is to kiss you again,” Bryn muttered, hand on the back of Vivian’s neck, urging her closer, peeling back her fingers grasping her floating salvation. “To kiss you until my lips are numb and I can’t feel my tongue.”
Against her direct orders, Vivian’s hands found Bryn’s waist. She gripped her hard. Trading one desperate clinging for another.
“And I think…” Bryn pressed her body against Vivian’s, breath warm against her mouth. “I think maybe you’ve been waiting to kiss me too.”
Vivian let go, sinking into Bryn’s kiss. But with Bryn’s lips between hers, she was terrified to find out there was something worse than drowning. There was the intolerable relief of floating.
Body roaring to life with desire so intense it was foreign, Vivian told herself that one night couldn’t kill her.
She pulled Bryn in hard, thigh between her parted legs.
When Bryn groaned, hot and hungry, before deepening their kiss, Vivian was sure she intended to prove her wrong.
That she might succeed in making this night her last.