Chapter 28
"I logically know that you're a billionaire, but it’s moments like this that really rub it in,” Bella said, shaking her head as she shut the front door behind her. “Do you actually just have an unlimited supply of vacant apartments?”
“Not unlimited. Just fifteen.”
“Fifteen. Right, sorry, Robin Hood.” Bella shook out her soggy boot and laughed. “God, I feel like a drowned dog. Do you have a laundry basket for me to toss all my stuff in?”
“Just leave everything on the welcome mat," Yasmine said, feeling that uncomfortable sense of domesticity again. "I'll throw it all in the laundry later."
Bella nodded, immediately disrobing down to just her bra and underwear. Yasmine reddened, jumping slightly like a startled chihuahua.
Thankfully, the drive to Yasmine’s apartment in the Lower East Side had only been about fifteen minutes. That was about all Yasmine could endure being completely alone with Bella without combusting like a steam engine—a feeling that was quickly returning now as she took in a deep, balancing breath.
Get. It. Together.
"What?" Bella said with a laugh. "The dress was wet, too."
“Of course," Yasmine said, averting her gaze out of politeness, but also out of survival instinct. “I didn’t say anything.”
She looked down at the CD she was gripping in her hand and released some of the tension she was putting on it. If I’m not careful, I might break it—and there would go their entire gameplan on how to get Rebecca back.
Rebecca.
Yasmine sucked in a tight breath. She had to stay focused. Thinking about how to rescue Rebecca was the only way she wasn’t going to have a nervous breakdown.
"I'm going to grab the CD player out of storage," she said, forcing her voice into an apathetic timbre. "The bathroom is just down the hall if you want to take a shower."
Bella studied her for a long moment.
"But you’re wet from the rain, too,” she said quietly. “Do you really want to risk getting water on your electronics?”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll just take a shower after.”
“Or,” Bella mumbled, cheeks reddening as she stepped closer to Yasmine. “You could take one with me.”
Yasmine froze.
"Take a shower… with you?"
Bella looked at her shyly, and shrugged.
Fuck.
"Come on," Bella said softly, sliding her hands around Yasmine's waist. "You just lost control of your powers, had your assistant kidnapped, and then—to rub salt in the wound—you found out your son has been hiding a secret boyfriend from you. I can practically feel the bees buzzing up there. You need to relax and reset for a few minutes. You won’t save Rebecca running on fumes.”
Bella bit her lip, bringing a gentle hand up to touch Yasmine’s forehead, like she was a child with the flu. Yasmine hated that she shuddered at the touch.
“Bella…” she breathed out in warning.
“Yasmine.”
Bella held her gaze like it was nothing, and Yasmine was never going to get used to that. She’d spent her entire life watching people’s expressions crumple into despair every time they looked at her for too long. She’d always felt like a funhouse mirror.
And as much as she’d detested that fact, she had never taken a moment to acknowledge how much protection it had afforded her, too.
It felt like Bella was scraping the surface of Yasmine’s soul with her fingernails.
“Take a shower with me,” Bella whispered, threading her fingers tightly behind Yasmine’s back in a way that forced them closer together. “Come on. I know you miss your organic lavender-honey-milk-wheat-sheep-goat soap.”
That drew a stilted laugh out of Yasmine, even as her heart stormed in her chest.
“Don’t act like you didn’t beg me to restock that.”
Bella snickered. Their faces had gotten incredibly close again, like they always seemed to do. Bella’s eyes dipped down to her lips, then fluttered back to her eyes.
She bit her lip, a thoughtful sadness overtaking her expression.
“There’s something you said back at the house that’s been on my mind.”
Yasmine bristled, guard immediately raised again.
“You don’t have to trick me into kissing you,” Bella recalled, her fingers tightening against the damp cloth of Yasmine’s shirt. “That’s what you said.”
“I—” Yasmine’s heart thudded against her ribs. “Yes, well. It’s true.”
“Is it?” Bella said quietly, almost nervously, her eyes falling to Yasmine’s lips again.
She had that rare severity to her voice.
“Because I’d like to kiss you right now, just once, for no reason, but I don’t feel like I have a good enough excuse.
I feel like I’m walking through an airport without a passport.
” Bella smiled mirthlessly. “You get what I mean?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Yasmine trembled. Her body didn’t know what else to do.
So she just said what she felt, which was, “You don’t need an excuse.”
There was a loaded look in Bella’s eye then; she laughed, but then she nodded.
“If you say so,” she said, and leaned in, pressing the softest kiss against Yasmine’s lips, and it was enough to make Yasmine feel like the sun was exploding, and Oh, god, she leaned in, needing more, needing way more—“I’m going to shower.”
***
Like always, it felt like Yasmine had no choice but to follow.
The bathroom was incredibly spacious. A football field of white, gleaming tile; marble sinks; panoramic mirrors. It produced a sense of scathing, inescapable self-awareness. One Yasmine was already feeling with a burning intensity as she stepped in the room.
She found Bella washing her hands by the sink, and it tugged Yasmine’s lips up despite the overwhelming panic in her stomach.
Bella always had this tick of washing her hands before getting in the shower.
It was as if she was micro-dosing the idea of water touching her body. It was stupidly charming.
"I’m actually really excited to watch those CDs with you later," Bella said casually as the sink water washed over her hands, as if their conversation from a minute before hadn't been a loaded gun. "I know our mission is to figure out which one relates to the contract, but I’m sort of hoping I get to see Wallace playing Tree Number Four in The Wizard of Oz first. I know he’s going to outshine Dorothy.”
Yasmine's heart pulled.
Because this was always the thing with Bella, wasn’t it? Yasmine could never stay mad at her. Not that she was mad in the first place—God, more like the opposite—more like frustrated, irate at this… this untenable, unspeakable pulling feeling between them.
But she always deflated that frustration into a puddle at a moment’s notice. She was just so… relentlessly sweet. None of it was a front with her.
"He was a really good Tree Number Four,” Yasmine exhaled. “He was super into musical theater up until high school. Then he took one computer programming class and thought he was going to become the next Mark Zuckerberg.”
Bella scoffed. "He’s doing himself a disservice with that dream. He could be way better. I mean, he’s your son. He must be a genius."
Yasmine rolled her eyes at the compliment, even though it warmed her even more.
She never really felt like a genius, no matter how many times people called her it.
"He is smart, but he didn’t get that from me.
I’m no genius. In fact, I’m dyslexic, and it took me almost twenty years before I could read properly.
Another twenty before I was doing math,” Yasmine confessed.
She so rarely ever told people that—she’d always felt ashamed of it.
But Bella, apparently, was the Great Can Opener.
“I’ve just so happened to spend my extended lifespan productively increasing my intelligence. ”
Bella gawked at her in astonishment. There was an awe in her eyes that made Yasmine feel like she was on a stage, under a spotlight. She tried not to look away.
“Well,” Bella said softly. “I think persistence is much more useful than talent, anyway.”
Their eyes connected in the mirror, and Bella gave Yasmine a shy, nervous smile; Yasmine didn’t quite understand why she looked nervous, until Bella unclipped her bra, and let it drop to the white tile.
And—oh, god.
Yasmine had always joked that Bella was some sort of retired Victoria’s Secret model—one that, in a twist of fate only found in Y2K romance films, had been fired from her modeling job and forced to become a Harvard-grade biologist to pay the bills.
But she never meant it more than now; all of her bruises had healed, leaving her with bare, poreless skin, as pretty and porcelain as a Russian tea set.
While Yasmine watched on like some kind of stunned adolescent, Bella wordlessly opened the glass door to the shower and slipped inside.
Yasmine was only stunned out of her silence when Bella began to fiddle with its various buttons, and yelped in shock when jets of water began shooting out from the floor.
“What the fuck? Yasmine,” she shouted, with adorable frustration in her voice. “Why does your shower have the same control scheme as a Space Shuttle?"
Yasmine laughed. The ridiculousness of it allowed her to temporarily put aside the warmth pooling in her stomach, and she followed Bella in.
“Be patient,” she chastised, coming behind Bella, careful not to get too close, and extending a hand towards the panel of buttons. She pressed the On symbol.
From above, a gentle stream of water began to drip down. That particular stream was designed to emulate a gentle rainfall, and calculated to be at a perfect temperature—warm, not hot, and very soft. No extraneous minerals.
“Oh. That is nice,” Bella muttered, looking up, into the stream, her pretty eyelashes blinking. “But I still think a shower shouldn’t have a learning curve.”
Yasmine rolled her eyes. Bella quickly dropped her faux-annoyance, and looked back down at her, starting to blush when her eyes drifted briefly down to Yasmine’s chest.
“Fuck,” she mumbled. Yasmine noticed her squeeze her legs closer together. It was a subtle enough motion that Yasmine barely registered it, but she did.
Yasmine took a deep breath in.
This was about to be a disaster, wasn’t it?