Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Prone on a massage table in her fitness room, Vivian tried very hard to relax.
She inhaled the essential-oil-doused steam.
Tried to visualize a creek moving slowly through a quiet forest while the ambient sounds played.
Tried to enjoy the shiatsu that wasn’t quite getting to any of the pain in her body.
“Vivian,” Iris said, voice low.
“She’s not done,” the masseuse replied for her.
“I can see that, but there’s someone at the door,” Iris replied.
Vivian popped her head up like a naked gopher. “Who?” There was only one person capable of such a welcome intrusion, but Vivian couldn’t hope for it. Couldn’t let herself want the impossible. Not when she’d slammed that door closed.
Iris’s inability to stifle her smirk gave Vivian her answer. She lifted herself off the table and reached for her short robe. She draped it around herself, still tying the sash while descending the stairs. Iris didn’t immediately follow.
Heart pounding in her mouth and breathing embarrassingly shallow, she called on every acting trick she’d ever learned to compartmentalize her anxiety. To box it up and shove it down and project the quiet control she didn’t actually have.
Vivian was halfway through the foyer when she saw her through the sidelight.
When her heart stopped, only to propel itself forward like it wanted to crash through muscle and bone to get to her.
Her instincts told her to run. Run back upstairs and back to safety because if nothing ever touched her, then it couldn’t hurt her.
Instinct and fear had gotten too intertwined for her to trust either.
She kept walking, kept moving, because the fallout from seeing Bryn had to be better than another moment without her.
Even if it made letting go harder, made the missing cut deeper, she’d pay any price for a furlough from the weight of Bryn’s absence.
She ran her fingers through her hair, only belatedly thinking of her appearance, and opened the door. At the sound, Bryn turned toward her.
In the unrelenting summer sun, Bryn was lit by the gods. Or maybe she’d been shaped by light itself. Luminous and radiant, she shattered Vivian’s suffocating darkness, consumed it, transformed it into something warm and golden.
“Hi,” Bryn said, face flushing hard.
Her gaze cut down to Vivian’s clothes, or lack thereof, and darted back to her eyes. A kaleidoscope of emotions flashed in her beautifully expressive eyes.
“Oh, I, um, didn’t realize you…” Bryn repeatedly clenched her jaw like an invisible force was tearing out the rest of her sentence by force. “Had company.”
The flush deepened, dripping down her neck, and Vivian felt a dangerous flutter of delight. Bryn was jealous. Spectacularly transparently jealous and it was possibly the most adorable thing Vivian had ever seen in her life.
“Well, I’m sorry to disturb you,” Bryn snapped, a cub learning how to snarl.
Vivian couldn’t help but chuckle. To smile from a new, previously undiscovered, reserve of joy. Pristine and untouched by any other moment in Vivian’s life, and existing only for Bryn. Belonging only to her.
“Oh, that’s funny?”
The redder Bryn turned, the more Vivian’s heart soared. Unrestrained by veins and arteries, it rocketed up her chest and made breathing impossible in the best way.
“How did you get in?” Vivian let herself wonder aloud.
Bryn furrowed her brow. “I brought Danny his favorite coffee,” she replied, wound so tight, so upset.
“Who the hell is Danny?” Vivian countered, but Bryn was determined to keep going.
“And you can’t have him fired because you never took my name off the list, so he didn’t do anything wrong—”
Movement behind Vivian stopped Bryn short. When her masseuse approached the door with the table, Vivian moved out of the way so she could take it outside. Iris followed with a couple of large bags a second later.
“Hello, sweetheart.” Iris kissed a startled Bryn on the cheek. “There’s leftover lunch if you’re hungry,” she added before continuing outside. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
“Thanks,” Bryn replied weakly.
Vivian couldn’t stop smiling when Bryn bit her lip and gave her a sheepish look while wrinkling her nose. She chuckled and motioned for Bryn to step inside.
“Come in, or you’ll let the ocelot out,” Vivian joked. “Let’s sit outside. Iris loves to eavesdrop.”
Seated at the center of the long patio sectional, Vivian was relieved when Bryn sat beside her. When she didn’t recoil from Vivian’s proximity.
“Vivian, I don’t like the way things ended in New York,” Bryn said, and Vivian remembered why her chest ached with every inhale. She stopped smiling. The unending storm swallowed the sun.
“I’m so sorry I hurt—”
“That’s not what I mean.” Bryn waved her away with surprising confidence. “I don’t like that I let you run. That I didn’t know how to hold you when you were scared.”
Each syllable was heavy artillery fired on Vivian’s decimated defenses. She had nothing left. Nothing to counter the accusation.
“And I was selfish—”
“Bryn, absolutely not—”
“Please, let me finish.” Bryn’s hand was so warm through the thin robe when she rested it on Vivian’s arm.
“If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in what I wanted, I would have seen that you weren’t ready.
I should have stopped when you were comfortable with sex but not talking.
Instead, I ignored the warnings and kept going because I was so sure that any part of you was better than nothing.
But over the last week I’ve realized that I’m greedy and all I want is everything.
” Her eyes watered, but she didn’t cry. “I want your good news and your nightmares. I want your disappointments and wins. I want to know why you kept those tiny little room service ketchup bottles when you never add any condiments to your food. And the only thing I don’t want is to ever let you go. Not again.”
“Bryn—”
“And I know I’m saying a lot. I do. And, probably, I’m saying too much.
But I’d rather say too much than not enough.
Because I’m never turning around and leaving again with anything left on my mind.
And I should never have left your room without telling you the truth.
Vivian, I like you so much that it should scare me, but all it does is fuel this—this—this…
” She put her hand to her chest and it was only when Bryn’s tears dripped onto her cheeks that Vivian realized hers had already been streaming.
“This thing you make me feel doesn’t scare me.
It gives me the kind of bravery a frontline soldier needs to run into battle screaming to fight for what they believe in. ”
In a parallel universe, Vivian would have made a joke.
Would have asked if Bryn was comparing her to certain death at enemy hands.
But she couldn’t call upon even that shield.
She had no defenses at the ready, and she couldn’t bring herself to search for one.
She didn’t want to deflect a single beautiful sentiment.
“And I know how you must feel about sex.” Bryn squeezed her arm, voice trembling as hard as Vivian’s hands. “I should have been more careful. Talked about—”
“Bryn, I cannot allow you to continue to place this burden on yourself.” Vivian reached out and gently cupped Bryn’s face, brushing her tears away while her own burned her skin.
“I slept with you because I very much wanted to, and my choices are not your responsibility. My mishandling of our time together is not your fault. And I’m so sorry I hurt you.
” She closed her eyes against the unbearable regret. “I thought I could do it. I thought—”
“I just need you to know that I don’t care about sex,” Bryn said so passionately that Vivian couldn’t help but look at her with total disbelief.
“Oh?”
Bryn chuckled, face red and eyes drying. “I mean, I care, but not nearly as much as I care about you. About getting to know you as a whole person.”
“You say that, but—”
“I mean it. And I’ll prove it to you. No sex until you believe in your bones that my feelings for you are real and have nothing to do with that.
” Bryn really did resemble a warrior ready to face any foe.
Ready to slay any dragon… even if it lived inside Vivian. Even if it was of Vivian’s own making.
“And what if I’m never ready?” Vivian’s fear slipped out the unguarded door. “If I can never access both my heart and my body for you? For anyone?”
Without a shred of hesitation, Bryn looked unblinkingly into Vivian’s eyes and vowed, “I’ll choose your heart, Vivian. Every time.”
The words, uttered so sincerely, left Vivian standing alone and exposed. Left her wondering how Bryn could promise so much with unwavering certainty. Vivian wanted to have that kind of confidence. To know with total conviction that she could commit to anything with that ferocity.
“I don’t know if I can.” She shook her head.
“If I should.” She tried to swallow but her tongue felt like sandpaper against the roof of her mouth.
“I have lived my entire life as an imposter, Bryn, but everything about you is so painfully authentic it’s hard to believe a person like you exists in a world like this. ”
“I’m real, Vivian.” She leaned forward, both hands on Vivian’s face. “I’m real and I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”
Vivian covered Bryn’s hands with her own and brought them to her lap. She didn’t let her go. She clung to her selfishly, cowardly, and destroyed Bryn’s fragile beauty with the truth.
“As much as I wish things were different… that we’d met sooner or later… I’m not suitable for you.”
“Vivian, that’s not true—”
“Please,” Vivian asked softly, and Bryn slammed her mouth shut.
“Believe me, believe that I wish this wasn’t true.
But you’re looking at everything with so much hope, and I’m staring at the truth of who I am.
You are on the precipice of everything,” she said with simultaneous pride and regret.
“You are bright and new and deserve to step into your future without the burden of a broken person holding you back. Infusing you with doubts and fears and cautionary tales because all I can see is the sewer while the surface still gleams gold for you.”
“I’m not an idiot, Vivian. I know what—”
“I know you’re not,” she promised. “But I don’t want to tarnish anything for you. And let’s just be honest if we’re being honest. I’m nineteen years older than you, Bryn. Even if nothing else, that’s insurmountable.”
“Says who?” The blue in Bryn’s eyes was defiant resistance. “Who decides that?”
“It’s a lifetime, Bryn. I will always be a lifetime ahead of you. There’s no bridging a gap like that.”
“Okay, great. We’re a few years apart. Tell me why it matters,” Bryn challenged. “Tell me in real practical terms why it actually matters. And I’m telling you right now, I don’t want to hear a word about your appearance changing or I’ll run right out of here and you’ll—”
“I’m going to die well before you,” Vivian replied with the painful facts.
“We won’t have golden years together, even if there weren’t a hundred other reasons we don’t work.
I’m nearly fifty. You’re still climbing toward the peak of your life, your career, and I’m already looking at base camp on the other side.
We are only at the same place at the same time in this briefest moment.
But we can’t pretend that it will stay this way.
It can’t.” She begged Bryn to hear her. “You deserve someone who can climb alongside you. Who can give you a family and partnership. Who isn’t too old.
Too damaged. Who can give you back every ounce of the light you bring rather than swallow it whole.
I don’t even know how to talk about my feelings the way you do.
How to be so…open. That counts for a lot.
” She choked down a small sob. “I would never forgive myself for taking your best years when you could have given them to the person who can stay by your side after you’ve grown old together. ”
“I understand what you’re saying,” Bryn replied quietly. “Have you considered that you’re literally only looking at every possible worst case scenario?”
Vivian leaned back, letting Bryn have her turn.
“I just don’t see what you see. All I see is how we balance each other.
Where you see damage, I see experience. You say darkness, but I see grounding earth when my enthusiasm wants to carry me too far away.
You’re not broken, Vivian. You’ve been hurt.
And despite every kick and shove, you have so much love and empathy in your heart.
I see you,” she promised and Vivian so desperately wanted to believe her.
“I see the person you are when you think no one is looking. You are fiercely protective. Even now all you’ve done is list the reasons you don’t want to hurt me, without thinking about what that means for you.
” She smiled, bright and hopeful and contagious.
“Just give me a chance. Let me show you why none of your fears will ever touch us. Or that maybe I’m too optimistic and your pessimism could win an Olympic medal, but meeting in the middle will give us everything we’ve ever wanted.”
Vivian closed her eyes. She wanted so badly to believe her.
Even if life had only repeatedly taught her the same lesson, because in her life, she’d never met anyone like Bryn.
And maybe she was a variable that could change the equation.
That could, for once in her life, prove her wrong about people. About herself.
Forehead pressed to Bryn’s, Vivian shut her eyes tight until the tears stopped. Until she heard herself whisper, “Please don’t mishandle me.” The truth was the only thing she’d ask of her. “If you’re over this, for any reason, just tell me. And I promise I’ll try not to say I told you so.”
“Deal.” Bryn laughed, the sun claiming the sky. “But I’ll definitely be saying I told you so.”
And then Bryn kissed her. Soft and gentle, like she was practiced at handling scar tissue and fear.
It was the most terrifying kiss of Vivian’s life, but she couldn’t stop reaching for it.
Couldn’t stop wanting what Bryn’s kiss offered.
Couldn’t stop reaching for Bryn, pulling her closer, kissing her deeper because how could she ever let go of a soul who’d looked at all her broken pieces and ran headlong into her anyway.