Chapter Seventeen
Alexis yanked the shower curtain aside and stepped out. Water dripped from the ends of her hair and puddled at her feet. She grabbed a towel, slung it around her shoulders, and wondered if she should dry her hair or leave it wet before she climbed into bed.
Was hair mold a thing? Or could she get away with going to bed with wet hair?
Frankly, she was just too tired to care.
She shuffled toward the bed, one leg already up, ready to collapse under the covers. But just as she shifted her weight forward, eager to dive headfirst into the assortment of plushy pillows, her eye caught a movement at the doorframe. A slip of paper slid slowly across the floor.
Alexis groaned. She really didn’t want to think about a date now.
She’d just had one, and yes, it had been nice.
Really nice. Bianca was gorgeous. But Alexis was done with all the perfunctory compliments for the cameras, the carefully staged getting-to-know-you chatter that seemed to stretch on for hours and left her exhausted in the corners of her brain. She needed a break, a refresh.
She needed sleep.
But she also had an obligation to read that letter.
When she walked to the door and snatched the letter up from the floor, she expected it to be an envelope with tomorrow’s date itinerary on it.
But instead, the paper was small and creased at the corners with scribbled handwriting on one side.
It wasn’t a formal note at all. It was barely even a letter.
Meet me at garden number three in fifteen minutes—Birdie
Alexis stared at it for a minute. And then she tossed the note on the bed and said out loud, “Where the hell is garden number three?”
Twenty minutes later, Alexis walked silently along a pathway heading toward the right garden.
She spent much of those twenty minutes talking herself into the entire thing.
Birdie wanted to see her. She could’ve knocked on Alexis’s bedroom door, snuck inside, and they could’ve been having hot post-shower sex.
Surely Alexis would’ve allowed such a bold action.
Instead, Birdie had decided on a more cryptic way of seeing Alexis, and Alexis had no idea how to feel about that.
“I thought you weren’t coming.” Birdie stepped out of the shadows of a tall cypress.
She was wearing an aquamarine slip dress and had her hair up in a claw clip.
Alexis, on the other hand, wore loose jeans and an oversized shirt with a picture of a lemon quarter on the front.
If she’d known Birdie was wearing that, she would’ve dressed up.
“What is this?” she asked, also whispering.
She’d managed to sneak out of the villa unnoticed, but Alexis knew there were eyes everywhere.
Last season, she’d been the one watching, following Skye like a damn shadow.
Looking back now, she was mortified by her own behavior.
She wanted the earth to swallow her whole just thinking about it.
“I want to show you something,” Birdie said.
“Couldn’t you have shown it to me inside?” Alexis muttered. The summer heat stuck to her like a second skin. Her hair was probably dry already, but she didn’t bother reaching up to feel.
Birdie shook her head and extended her hand. “No,” she said. “We had to come out here to see it. Now, will you please just take my hand so I can show you?”
Alexis hesitated, eyeing Birdie’s long, slender fingers.
She had perfectly trimmed nails and lovely visible cuticles.
She wondered briefly how many paper cuts Birdie had endured over her lifetime.
Many, Alexis thought, and then she let Birdie take her hand and lead her out of the garden and into the vineyards.
“You’re not going to take me somewhere secluded and kill me, are you?” she asked, glancing ahead at the rows and rows of dark vines.
“I do tend to hold really strong grudges,” Birdie replied, smiling.
“Well, I’m not sure I deserve death,” Alexis said. “But if running away without ever calling you back in Portland is worth killing over, I should probably apologize.”
Birdie stopped mid-step, her foot halfway off the grass and on soft earth. “Wait,” she said, looking at Alexis. “Are you saying sorry?”
“It’s a onetime thing,” Alexis said quickly. She’d never been good with apologies, and if she had to give them, she preferred doing it over email. Less personal. Less humiliating. “Now let’s not drag it out. What do you want to show me?”
Birdie laughed, then caught herself and smacked her hand so fast and so aggressively over her mouth that Alexis wondered if it would leave a mark.
“We should probably be quiet until we get there,” she whispered, glancing back at the villa.
The lights were spilling out of the windows like spotlights.
She then tugged at Alexis’s hand. But Alexis didn’t budge.
“How about you tell me first where we are going?”
“How about you trust me,” Birdie replied.
“Trust you?” Alexis blurted. She sounded way more alarmed than she meant to. Why shouldn’t she trust Birdie? It wasn’t like Birdie had ever given her a reason not to.
Birdie seemed to think so too because she replied, “Yes,” without missing a beat.
“Fine,” Alexis relented. “But only because—” She didn’t get to finish because Birdie yanked her hand. The next moment they were tumbling into the vineyards with their legs moving faster than Alexis would’ve liked. She was wearing flip-flops, and the thong part was digging into her toes.
“Come on, Birdie. You know I don’t like surprises,” Alexis muttered, not loving the fact they’d been swallowed up by a sky so dark it felt like they had fallen into an ink well.
Or that it wasn’t the safest idea to be wandering through vineyards with no flashlight, no phone, no sense of where the path was going.
Not to mention the soil was loose, almost shifty beneath her flip-flops, and Alexis had to watch her footing with every step.
“I didn’t know that,” Birdie said, stopping just long enough that Alexis got hopeful, before tugging her forward again. “I had no idea you don’t like surprises.”
“Most people don’t.”
“That’s not true,” Birdie countered.
“I’m pretty sure it is,” Alexis replied. She couldn’t bring up exact statistics to support her claim, but she was pretty sure the majority of people preferred knowing things over being ambushed with them.
Birdie clicked her tongue. “You know, I don’t actually know that much about you.”
“You know plenty,” Alexis shot back. In fact, Birdie knew more about her than most people did.
She didn’t have that many friends, and the ones she did have lived in other states.
Some didn’t even know Alexis had once owned a pet bird, or that she’d never ridden a horse in her life.
If they watched this season of The Sapphic Match, they’d probably come to realize just how impersonal their relationships with Alexis really were.
“All I know is that you used to have a parrot, and you live in Portland. I don’t even know what you do, or whether you like scary movies, or how many siblings you have. I don’t know what your favorite color is or if you prefer baths over showers, or if you have plants in your house.”
Alexis sighed. There was no way she could get out of this.
“Real estate agent,” she said, trying to remember the list of things Birdie had just mentioned.
“I don’t like horror. Why would I watch something that’s going to keep me up at night?
And no, I’m not a middle child. I’m actually an only child.
Favorite color is green, don’t bathe often, prefer to shower, and yes, I’ve got plants in every corner of my third-floor apartment.
” What Alexis didn’t say was that she used to love scary movies until she watched one that disturbed her for a lifetime, that she always longed for a baby brother or sister, and that even though she had plants in every corner, she never managed to keep them alive for more than a month or two.
Birdie didn’t reply. Not for a minute, at least. And when she did, all she said was, “I should’ve known you were an only child. Explains a lot.”
Alexis chose not to be offended. “Well, there you go. Now you know enough about me.”
“Not nearly,” Birdie said. “But we can revisit this later.”
There would be no revisiting, Alexis thought.
But before she could tell Birdie that, Birdie tugged Alexis onward, deeper into the vineyards.
The smell of crushed grape leaves filled her nose, and the air carried a nip.
Goosebumps rose along Alexis’s arm where her skin wasn’t covered by her T-shirt, and she thought of the cardigan she had considered bringing along but hadn’t.
And then Birdie stopped. Dead.
Alexis nearly plowed right into her back.
“What the hell,” she muttered, but then Birdie let go of Alexis’s hand and tilted her head skyward.
“Look up,” she whispered.
Alexis did.
The sky was completely drenched in stars, and not the polite kind Portland sometimes offered when it wasn’t buried under clouds.
This was an all-out spectacle. Like someone had spilled a vat of glitter across black velvet and forgot to clean it up.
Stars on top of stars on top of stars. More than Alexis had ever seen in her life.
It was breathtaking. And for a second, Alexis forgot all about the chill, or being frustrated with Birdie for dragging her out here, or annoyed at the uneven ground.
She wasn’t even conscious of her flip-flops digging into her toes.
“Wow,” she muttered, completely and utterly awestruck. Alexis didn’t dare blink. She simply stared at the sky until her eyes watered and the Milky Way blurred, and she nearly forgot about everything. “This is…”
“Beautiful,” Birdie finished, her voice sounding so distant, so far away from Alexis she wondered if this was actually a dream. “Like you,” Birdie added.
Alexis tore her gaze away from the stars to roll her eyes, but then Birdie’s face was suddenly there.
Just inches away. Close enough that she could just make out the curve of her lips under the starlight.
Alexis smelled Dolce Gabbana and suddenly there weren’t just goosebumps on her arm; they were everywhere.
“I can’t believe I haven’t looked up until now,” Alexis muttered softly.
“I’m glad you didn’t. Otherwise, this wouldn’t be nearly as romantic.”
“Are you trying to woo me?” Alexis asked, half-teasing, half-breathless, because damn it, her chest was pounding like she’d just run a mile in flip-flops.
“Is it working?” Birdie said, grinning. Then she leaned in, and the world snapped into a single point. Birdie’s lips crushed against hers. Birdie’s fingers in her hair. Birdie’s body so close it stole her breath.
“You have no idea,” Alexis whispered, skimming her hands down Birdie’s neck to her chest. Her skin felt extra soft, silky even, and incredibly warm. But then, out of the blue, goosebumps prickled under Alexis’s fingertips, and she relished in the ability to make Birdie’s body react.
“Good,” Birdie muttered breathlessly.
She tugged lightly at the roots of Alexis’s hair, tilting her head just enough to deepen the kiss.
Although not even the Mariana Trench could compete with the depth she was pulling Alexis into.
And then she nearly blushed for thinking something ridiculous and was glad Birdie couldn’t read her mind.
She let her fingers slide along the small of Birdie’s back, memorizing the slight curve, and then she couldn’t think of any reason why the slip dress shouldn’t go. Immediately.
Her fingers brushed over the strap, tugging one from Birdie’s shoulder. She paused, waiting for Birdie to say, no, this isn’t a good idea. Because when was it ever a good idea to have sex in a vineyard? But then again, when wasn’t it? Instead, she said nothing.
Which Alexis took as a sign.
They shuffled back a step.
Alexis’s fingers found the other strap, eager to get rid of Birdie’s dress.
And Birdie’s tongue slid over hers before she tugged Alexis’s bottom lip between her teeth.
It felt so good to be in Birdie’s embrace that Alexis barely even noticed the uneven ground until something jabbed square into her shoulder blade.
“Ow!” she cried. It was a jagged vine or a stake or something worse that she couldn’t see in the dark. She winced and pulled back with a breathless laugh. “I think it’s a little too dangerous out here to be kissing like this.”
Birdie grinned against her cheek. “Well, should we go somewhere else?”
“Where are you proposing?” Alexis asked. The only place she could think of was her bedroom with its cushy king-size bed. Which frankly sounded a lot more comfortable than where they were standing right now.
Alexis felt a wave of relief when Birdie said, “Let’s sneak back into the villa to your bedroom.”