Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Where are we going?” Vivian asked from the passenger seat of Bryn’s Subaru.
“To meet my parents,” Bryn replied, managing not to laugh at Vivian’s sudden shift. At her desperate attempt to hide her horror. Given that she’d turned into a stone version of herself, even her excellent acting skills couldn’t conceal her true feelings.
“Meeting my parents with no notice?” Bryn chuckled. “What kind of monster do you think I am?”
“The kind who wants to push my Botox to capacity.”
Vivian relaxed, but only until they reached a closed wooden gate with the words Olga’s Orchid Oasis painted within a colorful mural. However, in the dark, it had a terrifying tourist trap vibe Bryn hadn’t expected.
“Don’t worry.” She unhooked her seatbelt. “This hasn’t all been an elaborate trap to steal your kidneys.”
Vivian’s side-eye was as regal as all her other gestures. “We’ll see.”
Bryn laughed, high on the night air and the smile dancing in Vivian’s eyes. “Organ removal is a bit much for a first date.”
Vivian arched her eyebrow. A silent question.
Grasping the handle, the car obnoxiously reminding her the door was open, Bryn leaned away. “What?” She dropped her smile, stomach souring with the fear of another step backward. “Are you denying this is a date?”
Vivian considered it for too long. Bryn couldn’t breathe. Anxiety expanded like spray foam, clogging her throat.
“After spending several evenings together, it feels a bit…twee to call this our first date.”
Relief flooded Bryn’s system. She laughed too hard, but couldn’t find the will to care. “I’m still a gentleman, Vivian.” Skin buzzing, she couldn’t stop grinning. “And this is the first time we’ve agreed to go out romantically. Hence, first date.”
Vivian openly resisted the urge to smile. She looked between Bryn and the gate that now looked absolutely creepy where the paint had faded in the sun. “Is this…the date?”
“Almost,” Bryn replied with a wink she instantly regretted and fled the scene on foot.
Olga, who’d been a friend of the family’s for longer than Bryn had been alive, had come through in extraordinary fashion.
The screened-in patio attached to the large stucco plant shop was a lush space covered floor to ceiling in orchids and ferns.
Flameless candles were tucked into every available nook.
And at the center, a worn patio sofa Olga must have scrounged up from somewhere in a hurry.
“Bryn,” Vivian whispered, dark eyes on hers.
“Wait.” Bryn was beaming, she knew it, but couldn’t stop. “There’s a little more.”
Racing to the car she’d left parked on the gravel path meant for golf carts, Bryn popped open the trunk. She grabbed the insulated bag she’d borrowed from her mom and the Bluetooth speaker her roommate used to blast ABBA every Saturday morning.
When she returned, Vivian was looking at an exotic orchid bloom that resembled a mysterious deep-sea creature.
“What’s this one called?” she asked without looking away from the unusual flower.
“I’m not an orchid guy.” Bryn set the speaker on the floor and connected her phone. A carefully curated playlist joined them on the quiet patio. “I’ve always been really into palm trees.”
Bryn unzipped the cooler and pulled out the charcuterie board she’d spent way too much money on.
She placed the board on the crate Olga had left as a coffee table.
It all looked a little more rustic than she’d planned, but she figured Vivian would appreciate the privacy.
Last, she grabbed the Dom Pérignon from Harvey she’d been saving.
“Orchids are gorgeous, but temperamental.” Bryn looked at Vivian while she uncorked the champagne and laughed. “I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t always go for the—”
“You can’t imagine what I’m thinking,” Vivian said so softly as she neared, expression unreadable.
Bryn tightened her grip on the wildly expensive champagne, condensation threatening to make it slip through her fingers.
When Vivian stepped into her space, Bryn held her breath. Her eyes were glistening, but not with excitement like Bryn hoped. They burned with regret. With I’m sorry, but. Bryn’s heart plummeted into her stomach.
“This is beautiful,” Vivian said as if offering condolences at a funeral. “It’s so thoughtful, Bryn.” She held Bryn in her gaze. “I really need you to hear me when I say that. I’ve never had anyone put together something so special and—”
“Is it too much?” Bryn was desperate to get to the point. To understand where she’d gone wrong. She set the bottle down next to the food.
“No,” Vivian muttered, warm hands cradling Bryn’s face with so much tenderness, it shouldn’t have made Bryn want to puke.
“You’re not too much.” Her voice broke on the words, cracking a fissure down Bryn’s sternum.
“I’m not enough,” she said, pain coating her words.
“I could never match this. You deserve someone who can give you in return—”
“It’s just a date, Vivian. It’s not like—”
“It’s not just a date.”
She dropped her hands from Bryn’s face, but Bryn caught them. Held them tightly in hers. Showed Vivian that she wasn’t going anywhere.
“You’re so big. Everything about you is just…huge.” Vivian shook her head. “I’ve spent all my life contracting. Pulling in to survive. And you’re so—” She took a breath, eyes watering. “You’re expansive and generous in a way that I fear can only suffocate.”
Bryn opened her mouth, but Vivian kept going. Kept bleeding. No, not bleeding. Bloodletting, like she was pouring out fear like infection.
“I don’t know how to do this.” She gestured vaguely at the display.
“I’ve never built anything. I’ve only ever protected what I clawed back from people who wanted to take it.
That’s all I know how to do. Survive. Endure.
” Vivian clenched her jaw as if holding back a tide.
“But building something with someone I care about? I don’t have the blueprint for that. I’ve never even seen one.”
Vivian pulled one hand free to press it against her stomach, as if she could hold herself together from the outside. Like she was keeping tectonic plates together by sheer force of will.
“And the terrifying part isn’t failing.” She wiped away a single tear before Bryn could catch it. “I’ve failed before. What scares the absolute shit out of me is taking you down with me when I do. I can’t risk that. I can’t risk you.” She shook her head. “I won’t.”
“Vivian.” Bryn’s voice was nearly inaudible, lost in her heart pounding in the back of her throat.
“I hear you, I do.” She begged with her eyes.
With her teeth. With her soul. Begged with everything in her power for Vivian to believe her.
“But your fears are fears, and you’re treating them like facts. ”
“You’re going to get tired of me being like this.”
“I won’t,” she vowed. “We’re in this together.
Building this together. It’s not all on you.
” She pulled Vivian in, one hand on her jaw and the other gripping her waist. “You’re standing here with me.
That’s enough. The rest comes one brick at a time.
You know now to protect something worth building.
And I believe that this—that we are worth building. ”
Bryn slipped her hand over the back of Vivian’s neck. With the lightest touch, Vivian bent toward her. A willow finding the wind. She pressed her forehead to Bryn’s like she might feel Bryn’s truth through her skin if her ears couldn’t be counted on.
“I will remind you every single day,” Bryn muttered, eyes closed and heart roaring in her own ears. “I will never get tired of showing you that you deserve patience and care and—”
Vivian cut her off with a kiss. Not tender. Not tentative. An unstoppable crash. Her mouth found Bryn’s like she was trying to say something her throat refused to carry. Like she could press her terrifying truth through the seam of Bryn’s lips because words fell short.
And Bryn returned every greedy swipe of Vivian’s tongue and begged her to take more. To take it all.
Vivian grabbed Bryn’s shirt, pulling her closer until there was no space left between them. Until Bryn could feel the hammering of Vivian’s heart against her own chest. Until she couldn’t tell whose heart was racing.
They’d kissed so many times, but it had never felt like this. This was desperate. Bryn wanted to absolve her of all the unnecessary weight she carried. To chase away the fears that had calcified. The fears that had hardened into scar tissue, restraining the regular beat of her heart.
A small, involuntary sound. Something between a whimper and gasp. Bryn didn’t know who’d made it. But her entire body ached with it. With Vivian.
Understanding hit all at once. The concept of being pulled apart to be rebuilt for a new purpose. Vivian’s hands, hot and hungry, running down her back had the power to deconstruct. Each swipe of her tongue was creation. A brush against canvas. A stake driven into steel.
Bryn gasped into Vivian’s mouth, but she didn’t stop. Vivian pulled Bryn flush against her. One hand making a tight fist in her hair and the other splayed over her lower back. Pulling her in. Pressing her closer. Closer. Closer like she might crawl inside of Bryn if she just tried a little harder.
“Ready to admit you were wrong?” Vivian panted against Bryn’s mouth, voice devastatingly husky.
It took Bryn several disorienting seconds to translate the sounds into speech. “What?” She caught her breath. “Wrong about what?”
“About not wanting to sleep with me,” Vivian teased, testing Bryn with her lips ghosting over her neck.
She strained to feel more of her kiss. Fantasized for a single deranged moment that Vivian would bite her hard enough to draw blood.
“I never said I didn’t want to sleep with you.” She swallowed hard, working to disengage all the lustful desire vibrating through her skin. “I said that I wouldn’t until you were ready.”
Vivian’s hands roamed down her back. Slowly. Cruelly. “Are you really so restrained?”
It was a test. A crucial one Bryn was determined to pass even if her entire body was pounding with aching want.
“For you? Yes.”
Vivian toyed with the button of Bryn’s jeans. Promising her the most extraordinary relief with nothing but a playful tug and her lips against Bryn’s earlobe.
“I don’t have that kind of restraint,” Vivian muttered, hand sneaking under Bryn’s shirt and finding her trembling torso. “If you don’t want me”—she moistened her lips, the tip of her tongue taunting the shell of Bryn’s ear—“I’ll have to go home and listen to Kelly again.”
Bryn’s knees weakened.
“To finish that boss and secretary audio I started this morning.”
Bryn groaned, hands on Vivian’s waist to keep herself steady.
“To touch myself while I imagine it’s you splayed across my desk. Bent over and so incredibly needy.” Vivian cursed, breath hot and her words hotter. “I was so wet while listening to you, but I made myself wait. Wait until it was your fingers so deep inside of me.”
“Fuck,” Bryn muttered, body swaying when her legs tried to stop doing their one job.
Vivian’s grin against her jaw sent a million goosebumps rushing over her skin. “Ready to admit you were wrong and beg me to bend you over that couch?”
She sounded so good. Felt so good. Bryn’s aching core wanted to say yes. To convince her they could survive a single slip. That they’d already survived more than one small indulgence.
“What do you say, baby?”
Bryn whined, but her heart had always been more powerful than her baser instincts. She found the will to open her eyes, to pull away just enough to look at Vivian when she said, “I say that very expensive champagne is getting warm.”
Vivian stared at her, exhaling long and slow while she watched her. It was like she’d slipped out of character and back into herself.
When Vivian moved soundlessly to the couch, she didn’t go alone. She reached back, fingers intertwined with Bryn’s, and pulled her down to the sofa next to her.
One brick.
She reached for the champagne and took a surprisingly elegant swig out of the bottle even though Bryn had remembered to bring glasses. Glasses that were still in the car.
She handed Bryn the bottle. “To a beautiful first date.”
Bryn smiled, chest full and heart bursting. She took a sip, but all she savored was Vivian’s eyes on hers, the weight of her hand still in hers.
Another brick.