Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It might have been a dream. All of it could have easily been a long, strange dream. The kind where Vivian only recalled an out of context sliver when she woke. But Bryn asleep in her bed, the red of her hair against the white pillowcase ignited by the sun, was real.
The way her body ached from and for her touch was real.
Her heart, already hammering at the sight of Bryn, was real.
So real that she couldn’t stop herself from curling in behind Bryn again.
From hooking her arm around her and pulling her in close, nose buried in her hair and lungs full of her perfume.
Bryn stirred and Vivian should’ve felt like a selfish asshole for waking her. But she was too eager to be with her again. To bask in her light and listen to her laugh.
Instead of complaining, Bryn snuggled backward into her. Burrowing her back into Vivian’s bare chest like she wanted to feel more of her too. Like she couldn’t get enough.
“What time is it?” Bryn asked, voice hoarse and heavy with sleep.
“Does it matter?” Vivian kissed the top of her shoulder.
Bryn’s chuckle was a little rumble in her throat. “I guess not on a Saturday.”
“It’s Sunday.” Vivian ghosted her lips over the curve of Bryn’s neck. The place where she smelled so deeply like herself, Vivian wished she could live there for the rest of her life.
“Even better.” Bryn slid her hand over Vivian’s. “My girlfriend is wildly regimented. She’d only lie naked in bed with me if there’s nothing on the schedule.”
Girlfriend declared confidently in the light of day and free from the haze of lust should have sounded terrifying. But when Vivian’s heart raced, it wasn’t a flight response. It was a grounding. It was roots breaking through stone to reach the fresh water concealed in the earth.
“I don’t hate the sound of that,” Vivian muttered, lips pressed to the back of Bryn’s neck.
Bryn laughed and squeezed her hand. “Baby, don’t overwhelm me with all your sweet talk so early in the morning.”
“You don’t even know what time it is,” Vivian teased.
“My stomach grumble o’clock says it’s at least nine. That’s early for a Saturday.”
“Sunday.”
“Exactly.”
Bryn turned in her arms to face her. Sleepy eyes and a clean face full of freckles in the streaming sunlight, Bryn was stunning. Vivian leaned forward, determined to kiss every single tiny mark on her face. On her chest. On her belly.
She was crossing Bryn’s navel when her stomach growled its complaints.
“Ignore it,” Bryn muttered, legs parted for her and fingers reaching down to tangle in Vivian’s hair.
Greedy and weak, Vivian ignored the sound. Ignored it until she was kissing her way up Bryn’s inner thigh, arousal glistening and mouth-watering in the light.
The growl came again, louder this time.
“I can wait,” Bryn promised, hips tipping upward like she could lure Vivian back in.
Her stomach screamed its disagreement, and Vivian laughed. “Looks like your stomach objects to any further delay.”
Bryn whined, but she pulled Vivian up to her face instead. She pecked her lips before flipping Vivian onto her back. “Then I guess I’ll have to eat,” she teased, but she didn’t make it very far down Vivian’s body before it was Vivian’s stomach’s turn to disrupt the peace.
Hand stroking Bryn’s hair, Vivian laughed. “Come on. I’ll make you breakfast.” She spared a glance at her phone on the charger. It was nearly noon. “Brunch.”
“Has Iris been teaching you how to cook?” Bryn said when Vivian presented her with a folded spinach and gruyere omelet.
Seated at the patio table by the pool, Bryn looked so at home in nothing but one of Vivian’s plain white tees and her underwear. In just a short robe, Vivian wasn’t significantly more dressed. There was something freeing about using the seclusion of her home for eating outside in partial nudity.
Vivian took a strawberry from the bowl she’d set between them and sat down. “I think I can scramble an egg without instruction.”
Bryn picked up her fork and gave Vivian a playful expression that said, we’ll see.
“Oh my God.” Bryn closed her eyes while she chewed. “This is so good.”
“You haven’t eaten in fifteen hours.”
“No, for real.” Bryn took another bite. “Taste it.”
Vivian did. It was good, but nothing beat Bryn’s enjoyment. Her unabashed ecstasy of the simple meal Vivian had prepared.
Never had Vivian had a domestic inclination in her life, but while she watched Bryn make a fuss about how much she liked her food, she considered taking private cooking lessons. She wanted to learn a hundred different ways to make Bryn look at her like that.
“Should we go in the pool?” Bryn asked when they were finished eating.
“What?” Vivian laughed. She’d gotten distracted by the way the sun highlighted so many different shades of red and blonde in Bryn’s hair.
“I think there’s nothing else I’d rather do than get in the pool with you,” Bryn declared while getting to her feet.
“It’s February.”
“It’s eighty degrees,” she countered. “My birthday is in two days. The big three-one. This would make an excellent present.”
“Good thing I already made reservations at Matriarch.”
“Well, cancel them because this is the only thing I want.” Bryn yanked off her shirt and discarded her underwear and just like that she was naked.
Vivian knew they were completely safe from prying eyes, but the sight of Bryn in the nude and outside made her pulse jump anyway.
“Are you going to make me go in alone?” Bryn propped her hands on her hips, and it took all of Vivian’s focus not to be swayed by her beautiful body.
“Bryn.” Vivian leaned back in her seat, arms crossed.
“Suit yourself. I’ve been dying to get in your pool since I saw it.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and then turned away.
Watching her saunter away, Vivian was on her feet before Bryn hit the water.
“You’re a brat,” Vivian said, pulling open her robe.
Bryn looked up at the sun, eyes closed and arms open as if to feel as much of the sun as humanly possible. Then she stepped up to the deep end and dove in head first.
“And it’s heated?” Bryn exclaimed when she popped up in the shallow end where Vivian was walking in using the steps.
“My aesthetician is going to kill me,” Vivian muttered when the water hit her waist and the sun hit her shoulders and she couldn’t decide which was more offensive to her skincare regimen. “Do you know how long it took to undo the damage from my twenties?”
She stopped before going into a diatribe about her last fractional CO2 laser resurfacing. She couldn’t speak when Bryn was moving toward her. Wet hair slicked back and darkened to auburn, her skin was a canvas painted with light.
Every freckle, every faint scar Vivian hadn’t catalogued yet was illuminated without mercy or filter. The sun didn’t flatter Bryn as much as it confirmed her. Bare and luminous and unbothered by the exposure that had governed Vivian’s entire life.
Despite Bryn having caught her staring, she didn’t preen or make a joke. Bryn just smiled, easy and unhurried, and sank into the water until it touched her chin.
“See?” Bryn drifted closer. “Not so bad.”
Not so bad, Vivian silently agreed with her heart hammering its way into her throat.
It wasn’t bad at all. That was the terrifying part. Standing in the pool she’d never used, in the sun she’d spent decades avoiding, watching the only person who’d ever made her feel happy down to her marrow, Vivian understood. Understood everything. Understood the point of living.
She stepped fully into the pool. Submerging herself to her chest so she could drape her arms and legs around Bryn. So that she could look in her prismatic blue eyes while weightless in the water. So that there was nothing but Bryn’s arms around her waist and her undivided attention.
Neither of them spoke. The water stilled around them and Vivian noticed every point where their bodies met. Bryn’s palms against the small of her back. Their stomachs pressed together beneath the surface. The sun on her shoulders and Bryn's breath on her lips, slow and patient and steady.
“I love you.”
There they were. Three words, bare as Vivian was, standing in the water with the sun on her face. Vivian fought the reflexive urge to add a caveat or toss in a quip. She didn’t say anything else. Didn’t take back a confession so enormous it defied physics by fitting into three wispy syllables.
Bryn blinked and then her face ignited into a smile Vivian felt in her own racing heart. Blue eyes so bright in the unforgiving light they could have powered the whole damn city. Bryn didn’t cry. She didn’t even have the generosity to look surprised.
She just tightened her grip on Vivian and grinned harder.
“I love you, too,” Bryn said, easy and warm.
Like it was a fact she’d been carrying around for so long it was unremarkable.
Like of course. Like finally. Like it was nothing and everything and the simplest truth either of them had ever spoken.
Vivian exhaled. Not a breath she’d been holding for the last thirty seconds, but one she’d been holding for decades. The warm water caught it and dragged it under the gentle waves their bodies created.
Allowing herself to be held, Vivian let the sun do its worst.
Let the light find every line and imperfection and tender swath of skin.
Let Bryn see her.
Let herself love and be loved in a way that felt like magic.
Like a miracle. Like recompense.