Chapter 32 #2
Over the next few days, Teddy helped me solve each crisis in turn.
She connected me with a contact Dylan sent her – a local biodynamic farmer who saved the day.
The AV company came to arrange for the new stage, measuring around the warehouse contents we assured them would be out of the way.
We spent hours clearing the space, working late into every evening, Maggie using the tractor to move the heavy equipment.
A lot could be left outside, even in the rain, though some things had to be covered with a marquee that ate into the emergency reserve budget quite substantially.
The rest was shoved into the barn, rendering the workspace unusable for Jen and Maggie until we could clear it again.
It was truly all hands on deck. I even stayed in the shepherd’s hut every night to be closer to the action, and to eliminate my killer commute.
Months on, it was still hideously inefficient, even if my calf muscles looked better than ever.
If I were going to work for Gwenynen long term, I’d need to finally learn to drive.
I started promoting the fact that the event would now be indoors, and given the positive response, I was very much still worried about overcrowding, but there was nothing I could do about that until the day.
Jen was thrilled, as Teddy had predicted, to take on the art lessons, saying she trusted Teddy and me to run things without her constant oversight.
She even donated her new painting – the one of Teddy and me at the hives – to the silent auction.
I couldn’t quite look at the painting without feeling a sharp tug of emotion, but it was a really beautiful painting, and it was generous of her to donate it.
Even if she did seem reluctant to part with it when the time came to set it up in the warehouse.
My friends ditched D for her to come on me.
I braced against the treads behind me, my head tilting back until it found metal, but I held Teddy’s gaze as she watched me writhe.
I thought I might come from just that contact; from the way she was looking at me like I was everything she wanted.
She slid one hand up my thigh, the other still holding my hip in place, then leaned forward.
Her mouth was suddenly everywhere – my neck, my collarbone, the hollow behind my ear.
Every touch sent a jolt through me, and I felt myself dissolve, atom by atom, until there was nothing left but the feel of her and the sound of the rain.
I wanted her so badly it hurt.
She cupped my jaw, kissed me slowly, and then pulled back, just enough to look me in the eye.
“You’re perfect,” she said.
It shattered me. I didn’t want to be perfect. I didn’t want to be anything but hers, just for a little while.
I pulled her in, desperate, and kissed her like it was the last thing I’d ever do. For all I knew, it was the last time I’d get to.
She slipped her hand lower beneath my shorts, fingers hot and sure, and I gasped as she found my wetness, arching into her touch.
She smiled, wicked and gentle, and said, “Let me take care of you.”
So I let her. I let her make me forget the world as I rode her hand, gasping for air as she pulled up my T-shirt and closed her mouth around my nipple, tongue swirling and teeth nipping.
She touched me and licked me and fucked me until I was shaking and clutching at her shoulders; until I buried my face in her neck to keep from crying out.
Even after I came, she didn’t stop, and before long I felt the edge building again, sharp and sweet, and I rode it, trusting her to catch me when I fell.
She did.
She held me through it, her fingers pulsing softly as I rocked my hips, her breath at my ear. “You’re so good,” she said, her voice honey-thick. “Fuck, Chloe, this is so good.”
When I could finally breathe again, she kissed my temple, pulled her fingers out of me, and licked them clean, holding eye contact the whole time.
When I was confident I wouldn’t come again just from the sight of it, I let her lay her head against my chest, and I was sure she could hear how hard my heart was beating; even harder now that she was there to hear it.
We stood there, still tangled together, the ladder at my back, my raincoat splayed open, the fairy lights twinkling overhead. We didn’t say anything for a long time, just slowing our breathing together.
But I couldn’t just enjoy it, could I?
I’d barely come down from the high, and I was already anticipating what came next. The awkward conversation, the hurt feelings, the ache of loneliness. I wanted to say something – something real; something brave – but my throat was thick with tears.
Why did everything have to be so messy? Why couldn’t I have just this one thing? I begged the universe in that moment to let me have her. To not tear us apart by circumstance or resentment or whatever else plagued our path.
But the universe clearly wasn’t listening, because, hope as I might, nothing changed in that moment. I didn’t blink and wake up in an alternate reality where everything would be fine; I was still in the one where this wouldn’t work. Not now, and maybe not ever. And it was breaking my fucking heart.
Teddy looked up at me, worry etched on her face, and I knew my stupid heartbeat must have betrayed me. “You okay?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“You’re not,” she said. “I can tell.”
I took a deep breath, and she must have read where this was going, having learned better than I had from last time, because she stood up and started shaking her head.
I was instantly desperate for her to come back and lay against me again; to feel the weight of her on me instead of the weight of all this bullshit.
“Chloe, don’t,” she said, and I heard an edge of emotion in her voice, her chin quivering slightly in the pale light. It only made me more upset; I hadn’t seen her lose it before, and I hated being the person to cause it.
“Nothing’s changed,” I said, my own voice breaking. “We’re in the exact same situation we were in before.”
“Which you decided was unviable,” Teddy shouted, pointing at me. “You unilaterally decided that it wouldn’t work.”
“And how could it?” I asked, pushing myself up to standing.
My voice echoed around the warehouse, and I was almost certain we’d wake Jen.
But I didn’t care at this point. “Seriously, Teddy, if you have a way that we can be together without you resenting me for staying, or if you’ve miraculously conjured a way to stick around, I’m all ears. ”
I stared at her pointedly, both of us with trembling lips and ragged breaths. She didn’t say anything.
“Exactly,” I said eventually, quieter this time.
“Fuck this,” Teddy said, practically spitting the words out.
“Hear, hear,” I said, my face softening, and I reached out to take her hand in mine.
She let me grab onto it for a moment, but then she pulled it away, and I didn’t blame her.
As much as I wanted to comfort her – wanted her to comfort me – we couldn’t be that for each other.
If we couldn’t even have what we’d just done, we certainly couldn’t be one another’s anchor.
I shouldn’t have even let this happen; how fucking selfish of me.
“We should go to sleep,” I said, my voice small.
“Sure,” she said, nodding at the staircase. “I just need to finish. Put things away.”
“Don’t stay up too long. Big day tomorrow.”
She smiled, but it was a cold smile. An angry one. “Yeah. Big fucking day.”
I didn’t have anything else in me – nothing that would make things better, anyway. I just needed to be anywhere else. “See you then,” I said weakly.
“Sweet dr— See you then.”
I winced at how she’d aborted the nicety, but I understood it.
And without picking at the wound, there was nothing more to say.
So I took one last longing look at Teddy, and then pulled up my hood and walked out into the rain, sceptical that I’d get even a wink of sleep.
If I did, I knew I’d dream not of to-do lists now, but of Teddy.