Chapter 9 #2
Victoria lurched forward and grabbed her by the arms. “Please, Anna.”
Anna stared up at her, consternation on her face. “What do you want from me… Victoria? You don’t even particularly like me.”
“But I do like you.” She had to push the words out.
Confessions that even remotely smelled like emotions did not come easy to Victoria and never had.
And this one earned her a deeply skeptical look, hardly a reward.
“Oh, all right. I didn’t at first. Quite resented you.
You know that, you know why. But now…” She sought for the right words.
“I have come to… want you. To know you.”
“When?” Anna’s jaw set, and her eyes were opaque, giving nothing away.
“The day I froze.” Victoria saw no point in beating around the bush. “You were right, that day. I did freeze in that surgery. And you confronted me, rightly so. You broke something open in me that day, Anna. Made me begin to think about how things had gotten so out of hand.”
Anna shook her head. “But that’s not… I was doing my job.”
“It’s something no one had ever forced me to do.
Not even you, up to that point. You stopped dancing around me that day and once I’d gotten through the panic, I began to see Anna.
Not Dr. Monroe.” Releasing Anna’s arms, trusting that she wouldn’t turn and flee, Victoria stepped back and wrapped her arms around her waist, breathing in again, so deeply this time that it almost made her a bit dizzy.
“I saw the woman behind the calm, that someone with fire and heart existed past the therapy speak and endless patience.”
“Transference is a thing,” Anna said quietly, cautiously. “When a patient experiences a major breakthrough—”
“I know about transference, thank you,” Victoria huffed. “Please give me some credit. This is not transference, I am not taking my feelings for someone else and putting them onto you, because none of my past trauma has anything to do with romance.”
Anna’s eyes widened. “Hilary wasn’t…?”
“Never. Not once. She was as straight as the proverbial arrow.” A lump caught in Victoria’s throat, and she had to take a moment to compose herself.
“I did love her, but not anything more than platonically. She was simply a dear friend, possibly the closest friend I had ever had, certainly the oldest. Losing her was the worst thing… but it was never tied to romance or sex, not ever.”
“Still, I,” Anna began, but Victoria rushed to keep explaining.
“Anna. Please. Let me… let me get this out.” Words began to tumble from her lips, and she could only let them, fearful that any one of them could make Anna turn and run as far away from the Getty as she could manage.
“There was that day at your office door. I don’t think…
I don’t think I’m the only one who felt something in the air. Am I?”
She watched as Anna froze, as she struggled to keep her face in that smooth mask. But this was Anna, open and earnest Anna after all. Victoria felt a thrill of triumph when her shoulders slumped and she breathed out a simple, “No. You’re not.”
But when Victoria stepped forward in a rush, Anna stepped back and held up a hand. “Wait! Wait. Victoria, please.” She was so agitated, Victoria wasn’t even sure the woman knew she’d called Victoria by name. “Physical attraction isn’t a good reason for me to cross an ethical line.”
“Is it just physical?” Victoria gazed at her, searching Anna’s face.
“It’s not, for me. I want to actually get to know you.
For you to know me. And frankly, for me to know myself.
” She had to stuff her hands into her own trouser pockets to keep herself from trying to reach for Anna again.
“I don’t regret kissing you. I needed to know what it would be like, and to know how it felt going for something I, Victoria wanted. ”
“I guess you don’t make it much of a habit, indulging yourself,” Anna said, her tone gentle but her entire demeanor still suggesting a bird about to take flight.
Victoria stepped back once more, hoping to ease some of that tension. “I don’t. I have always done what I am supposed to do. Home, school, with parents, friends, lovers. What I want has never really come into play. And quite a lot of the time, I didn’t want it to.”
“Allowing yourself something you want is a vulnerable point, a soft spot,” Anna observed. “Can’t have that.”
“No. I couldn’t. My mother… God love her, but she always instilled in me the conviction to do what was best. Focus outward, not inward.
Do well in school. Save lives. Be the best in all I do.
That was what was important. So I froze everyone out and focused on my work.
But you…” She clenched her hands into fists in her pockets.
“You cracked my chest wide open. The day I froze, I realized I just did not want to live like that anymore, I wanted better. The day I kissed you, I realized I didn’t want to resist you anymore because it was what I was supposed to do, I just wanted to kiss a beautiful person who was determined to see Victoria, not just Dr. Ellis. ”
Anna stared at her for a minute. “All this because I confronted you instead of pussyfooting around?”
“Are you of all people questioning the miracles that authenticity can work?” Victoria chuckled, rocking back on her heels with the amusement of it all.
“Even the strongest walls have a chip somewhere that the right tool can widen. Your honesty is…” She shook her head.
“Exhilarating. Different, in my world. And what I needed, to help me see what I wanted.”
Silence fell between them, and Anna stood, hands again in the pockets of her blue blazer.
Victoria noticed with astonishment that the woman was wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and sneakers.
A far cry from her usual chintz-furniture schoolteacher look, but she was still beautiful, her auburn curls down in a Renaissance cloud around her face.
She was chewing her rosy-pink bottom lip, making it even rosier.
“But what I want,” she began, her voice barely above a whisper, “I can’t take into consideration.
So we can’t move forward. Victoria, ethically, this is such a mess… ”
“There must be something we can do.” Now that she knew what she wanted, now that she knew there was more to the world than work and being perfect, Victoria couldn’t conceive of not being able to pursue something so enticingly joyous and full of possibility. “Anna, please.”
Anna covered her mouth with one trembling hand and gazed at Victoria. When she spoke, this time it was in a whisper, and Victoria had to step forward to hear. “You want it this much?”
“I’ve never wanted anything so much,” Victoria confessed.
In two quick steps, Anna was right in front of Victoria, her rosy perfume a heady elixir in the air. Then, with one short, sharp intake of breath, she reached for Victoria and pulled her down into a kiss.
A gasp of delighted surprise fell from Victoria’s lips, was swallowed up by Anna.
She twined her fingers into the soft russet silkiness of Anna’s curls, enjoying the feel of them in her hands as she licked and tasted her way into Anna’s warm, willing mouth.
Notes of oolong tea and that odd wintergreen mint Americans seemed to like so much danced on her tongue, and Victoria couldn’t help but chase after more, to suck on the bottom lip that Anna spent so much time biting.
Unlike the last kiss, Anna was also eager, her hands fisted around clumps of Victoria’s black cashmere sweater, anchoring the two of them in place in this Rococo paradise as they let themselves have what they wanted for once in their lives.
Victoria desperately wanted to reach down and grab Anna’s behind once again, to get another delicious handful.
She resisted, somehow, it felt like a superhuman effort but she didn’t want Anna to run away again.
She let her hands drift over Anna’s face, fingertips tracing her jawline, her cheekbones, all the while still reveling in the kiss, in the scents and tastes and sensations rippling through her.
Anna broke the kiss off, slowly, with a reluctance Victoria could almost touch. She stepped back with her head down and all Victoria could do was hold her breath.
When she lifted her head, she was smiling, her eyes a clear warm brown with no regret. Victoria exhaled and reached forward, yearning.
Anna stepped back once more. “Not… not yet.” She shook her head. “I wanted to see what was there for me, if I let myself want…”
“And?” Victoria waited.
“It was everything I’ve been thinking about for weeks.”
The confession rocked Victoria like an earthquake. Weeks? “What—”
Anna held up a cautious hand. “I have to think about what to do, Victoria. Please.”
“But there’s something you want to do?” She hardly dared hope.
“There’s a lot I want to do.” The words were heavy, but Anna was still smiling, even as she was backing away. “I’ll call you. I’ll tell you… when it’s all done.”
“When what’s all done?” Victoria called after her, joy fizzing in her chest.
“You’ll see.” One last lightning flash of a smile, and Anna was gone, away down the corridor.
Victoria stood surrounded by gilt and flowers and robins’-egg paint and ornately carved furniture, as out of her element as she had ever been in her life, but returning Anna’s smile so bright she thought she’d outdo the sun.