Chapter Fourteen
“Really?” Peyton scolded her reflection in the mirror.
She was in the bathroom, hands gripping the edge of the sink.
Her cheeks were pink. Her blue eyes were a little watery and there were patches of red on her neck she only assumed were from severe stress.
Not that she had anything to be stressed about.
“I was engaged once,” she muttered under her breath, repeating what she had said to Josie, wondering why the hell she had shared the one thing she had told herself not to.
It was the rule.
The one and only rule she had sworn upon ages ago. The rule she had told herself right after her first and last date with a woman called Veronica Parker.
Peyton could still clearly remember how Veronica’s face had scrunched up and how her shoulders had tensed.
She could picture exactly how she had seemed to retract, pushing herself back in the cushy restaurant chair as if repulsed.
Her reaction was as if Peyton was a cockroach sitting across the table from her.
Never again.
At least until now.
Josie’s face had worn the exact same expression—shocked, stunned, blindsided by something she hadn’t expected. And that was fine. It was normal. But when Josie’s lovely face fell with pity, mirroring Veronica’s reaction, well, that was the problem.
Pity was the last thing Peyton wanted to see burning in Josie’s eyes.
She studied her reflection for another minute. Nothing about the way she looked said ‘put together.’ Actually, Peyton looked pretty much like a woman who had fallen apart at the seams. An old, worn-out goat, who couldn’t even share something about her life without running away.
“Peyton.” Josie’s voice sounded on the other side of the door. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” she blurted, and stepped back, nearly knocking over the shampoo bottle standing on the edge of the bathtub.
Just like the rest of Josie’s apartment, the bathroom was small and cramped, but in a way that came off as cozy and cute and not claustrophobic or cluttered. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Are you sure? You’ve been in there for almost ten already.”
She studied the digital numbers on her watch, realized Josie was right, and spoke to the door. “How about you pour us some more wine? I’ll be out in a literal minute.”
“Got it.”
When the footsteps faded in the hallway, Peyton looked herself dead in the eyes.
“You’ve made your bed, Pey. Now you gotta lie in it.
” She pointed a finger at her reflection, right between her eyes.
“If she asks, only tell her the superficial stuff. Nothing deep, alright. Or better yet, try to avoid any questions altogether.”
Satisfied with her pep talk, Peyton tucked her hair behind her ears, took a deep breath to still whatever nerves were still flapping around in her stomach, and walked out of the bathroom with her head held high. No pity party for her.
When she got back to the living room, Josie was sitting on the couch, her legs folded to the side, her trunk leaning against the armrest. She straightened up as Peyton walked in. “I opened up a new bottle.”
“What happened to the last one?”
Josie’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and she broke eye contact, concentrating on the half-full glass in her hand instead. “I might have finished it earlier. But in my defense, I opened the bottle last night already, so technically, it wasn’t all today.”
Chuckling, Peyton sat down beside her, giving her more space than before.
No funny business this time. Especially no handholding.
She hadn’t even noticed it earlier—the part where she had kept Josie’s hand in her own instead of letting go—which was quite crazy since Peyton generally wasn’t a fan of handholding.
Too sweaty. Though Josie’s palms were far from sweaty, just a twinge of clamminess.
The movie remained paused. The screen was stuck on a screaming Laurie running across a street. When she glanced sideways at Josie, she nearly sighed; the woman was watching her, big brown eyes waiting expectantly.
“Are we going to watch Michael kill some people or are you going to pester me with questions?”
“Pester,” grinned Josie. “Definitely pester.”
“Fine,” she exhaled loudly. “What do you want to know?” As soon as the words left her lips, she wanted to pull them back in. It was obvious Josie was going to ask what happened. What happened to the woman she was once engaged to?
Peyton could lie, of course. She could say it was a mutual breakup, a decision made by both of them. Or she could say that it was just a joke confessing something so ludicrous, that she had just made it up for fun and giggles.
“Why tell me this now?” asked Josie. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
Peyton was suddenly at a loss for words.
Relieved yes, but still lost for words. It wasn’t the question she had expected.
“I…” she started, but cut herself off, wondering how to answer.
It wasn’t an easy answer. Peyton had never intended to say it out loud.
Not really. But she had and couldn’t change the fact that she had.
The only plausible reason she could come up with for the unintended confession was the near-death experience she had experienced yesterday.
A spiritual awakening, as some would call it.
“I nearly died yesterday,” she said stoically, though she didn’t mean it in that way. Her job was high risk. There was always the threat of death every time she zipped up the turnout gear.
Again, the look of shock shadowed Josie’s face.
Her jaw fell slack, her eyes widened, and then she reached across the gap and curled her fingers around Peyton’s wrist. “What the hell, Peyton? You almost died? And you think now’s the time to mention it?
” she gasped. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?
You were just going to sit here and watch Myers kill a bunch of people, never once thinking that I would care if you died—”
“Calm down,” interrupted Peyton, biting back a smile.
It was rather touching, actually. Josie looked positively offended by Peyton’s planned omission of her near-death, and she hadn’t missed the part where Josie had said she would care if Peyton died.
That part she could still hear in her head repeatedly.
“It’s fine. I’m alive, am I not? And don’t worry, I’m making it sound far worse than it was. ”
“What happened?”
“Work happened. You know how it goes.”
“But what actually happened?”
Peyton brought her feet up on the couch and folded her legs beneath herself. Reflecting on the mission yesterday, she started, “Fire broke out in an apartment building in downtown Los Osos. We responded immediately, aware that there were three civilians trapped on the second floor.”
“Rockwood Street, right? One of the few apartment blocks in Los Osos,” said Josie. “I heard about that fire yesterday.”
Peyton nodded. She suddenly felt a prickly layer of goosebumps run down her back.
Picking up the glass of wine, she took a sip, waited briefly for the liquid to run hotly down her throat, and continued, “We geared up, went in. Flames were licking up the walls. The place was basically an inferno. Debris was crashing down all around us.”
Josie placed her glass back on the coffee table and shifted closer.
For the second time tonight—the first was when Peyton had just walked into the house—Peyton noticed that Josie wasn’t wearing a bra. The soft peaks of her nipples were poking deliciously through the cotton T-shirt.
Keep your head on straight, Peyton reminded herself. No sex.
“We managed to find the family,” continued Peyton, doing her utmost best to keep her eyes on Josie’s worry-lined face and not anywhere below her collarbone.
It was far harder than she had expected.
“Mads and Roddy escorted them out while I tried to contain the fire before it ravaged the kitchen. I went in, thought I heard something in the apartment next door like a scream or something, and lost concentration.”
Josie’s grip tightened around Peyton’s wrist, her warm fingers burning in a way that was both comforting and surprisingly electric.
Was it wrong to want just more than that touch?
A whole lot more. Was it wrong to feel a fluttering of something behind her navel?
Was it wrong for that fluttering to stream down to her hips, pushing memories of the other night at the Cozy Cave Inn back into her mind?
“I should’ve checked the ceiling,” she continued, taking another sip, hoping it would distract her enough from Josie’s knee, which somehow had made its way closer, now touching her thigh.
“The thing came down and the last thing I remember was Roddy’s voice shouting for me to back up.
All of a sudden, this beam fell out of nowhere and Roddy came running at me.
” Peyton could still remember exactly how it felt when Roddy slammed into her, yanking all the breath from her lungs.
She could also still remember how he had screamed when the beam had landed on his leg instead.
“Roddy fractured both his tibia and fibula and went in for surgery last night.” Peyton had ended up ordering four different horror movie boxsets for him, all of which were set to be delivered tomorrow. It wasn’t enough to say thank you for saving my life and breaking your leg, but it was a start.
“Imagine if you died,” came Josie, not yet letting go of Peyton’s wrist. Instead, her thumb was stroking the skin on the side, leaving a trail of tiny warm prickles. “I honestly would have thought you ghosted me or something.”
“Who says I wasn’t considering it?” replied Peyton, who had given it a thought or two. But given everything she knew about Josie thus far; it would be impossible to ghost her.
Josie chuckled and released her wrist, leaving a cold spot on Peyton’s arm. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t. You’re far too interesting and I would have had to resort to stalking.”
“You’re as bad as Michael.”
“Not nearly.”
Peyton laughed. They both did. And when their breaths returned to normal, Peyton could not only see Josie’s curiosity about her failed engagement, but she could feel it too. Static electricity crackled in the air between them, charged with unspoken questions.
But Peyton couldn’t give her the answers she wanted, not now.
It just didn’t feel right. Less so because she wanted to keep that part of herself safe and unexposed, and more so because mentioning Sorel and explaining the pain she had caused would shatter the unexpected moment.
A good moment. A moment Peyton actually wanted to hold on to just a little longer.
Besides, Sorel had ruined enough already. She didn’t want to give her any more satisfaction wherever she was in the world—possibly sailing along the coast of Madagascar.
“Now, can we please watch this movie before we’re both as old as Jamie Lee Curtis?”
Josie gasped. “She’s only sixty-five, and she looks amazing.” She shifted forward and leaned back into the couch. “But yes, let’s do it.”
The movie started again. The part where Laurie ran across the street to Doyle’s and couldn’t find her keys had her tense all over again.
But the feeling was nothing compared to the feeling of Josie’s closeness.