Chapter 8
Rose
The apartment was glowing when Quinn pulled into the lot.
Rose shoved the door open. The air was thick with the smell of microwave popcorn and the drone of a reality show.
Kayla was buried under a blanket on the sofa, clutching a mug that was definitely full of wine.
She looked up, squinting against the intrusion.
“Finally,” Kayla said. “Daisy went down at eight. She asked four times when you were coming home. I told her you were working; she told me you’re always working.”
Quinn collapsed onto the end of the sofa and immediately started digging through her popcorn bowl.
“Dude, you just ate half a pound of popcorn in the car, much of which is still going to be under my seats,” Rose complained.
“Why in your car?” Kayla asked. “And why are you together? I thought you were off with Miss Movie Star and her girl.”
“He picked me and my car up. And the movie star. He took an Uber all the way to the vineyard,” Rose explained, dropping her keys on the counter.
“You’ll need to Venmo me or something for that,” Quinn added with a smirk.
Kayla sat up, the blanket sliding off her shoulders. “Wait—why were you at a vineyard?”
“Day drinking at a vineyard,” said Quinn.
“It was two glasses,” Rose countered.
Kayla’s eyes went wide, drifting toward Rose. “You went day drinking with Lizanne Connors? I thought you were looking at wedding venues. With both of them.”
“We were doing a venue walkthrough; it happens to be a vineyard. And Katrina ditched us. So, we did a bit of drinking together.”
“She spilled wine all on herself,” Quinn added.
“It got spilled. There’s a difference.” Rose dropped into the armchair and pressed her palms into her eyes. “Can we just... not? Not right now.”
“No,” Kayla said, planting her feet. “I sat through three episodes of competitive cake decorating without an actual cake anywhere in sight, I’ve earned this.” She set the wine mug down with a definitive thud. “What’s she like all liquored up? Is she as intense as the tabloids say?”
“Yes.” Quinn said. “She’s more intense, actually. She also has an eye on Rose.”
“She does not. Stop it,” Rose called, reached forward and grabbed some popcorn to throw at him.
“You’re complaining about a bit of popcorn in the car, and here you are tossing it all over your living room.”
“Quinn, stop. She doesn’t have an eye on me. At least not in the way you think,” Rose groaned.
“Well, you are cute. I can see why…” Kayla started.
“She’s engaged, Kayla.”
“Engaged isn’t dead.”
“She’s a client.”
Kayla waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever.”
The room went quiet. The reality show hummed in the background.
“She touched my arm,” Rose said finally. Her voice was small. “At the tasting table. She laughed at something and just... reached over. It was nothing.”
Quinn and Kayla exchanged a long, silent look.
“It wasn’t nothing,” Quinn said. “Not if you feel the need to share it with us.”
“You weren’t there.”
“I was there for the fallout. You were vibrating when you came out, Rose. You were pink from your collar to your hairline.” He tilted his head. “That’s not nothing.”
Rose opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. The fight left her all at once.
“Go home,” she said. “Both of you.”
Kayla gathered her things, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She held out a hand to Quinn, who groaned as he hauled himself up. At the door, Kayla stopped and pressed a quick kiss to Rose’s cheek.
The door clicked shut. Rose stood in the center of the living room, surrounded by the smell of popcorn for a second, then took herself off to bed.
She lay on top of the covers in the dark, shoes off, jacket still on, and stared at the ceiling. She had three vendor calls in the morning. She had a canopy embroiderer to chase. She had a baker to follow up with. She could do some of that now. Instead, she thought about Lizanne’s hand on her arm.
It had been nothing. A reflex. The reach of someone who laughed at something and moved without thinking. Lizanne probably hadn’t registered doing it at all. Rose had simply been in the way of a passing impulse that was already forgotten by the time Quinn pulled up to the gate.
Except Rose could still feel it. That was the problem.
Four hours later, in her own bedroom, in the dark, she could still feel the exact weight of it.
The warmth. The two or three seconds when Lizanne had held on and Rose had been close enough to smell her perfume and see the lines at the corners of her eyes.
She pressed the heel of her hand against her sternum.
Don’t, she told herself.
She did anyway.
She let the thought come the rest of the way in. She’d been holding it at arm’s length since the vineyard. No. Sooner. Since Lizanne had walked in and said is that a Chanel without so much as a hello..
She let herself think about Lizanne.
The way she sat. Like the sofa was something she was tolerating rather than using. The way she’d looked at Rose across the tasting table — that focused, unreadable attention that made Rose feel simultaneously assessed and seen, which shouldn’t have been attractive and was.
Rose slid her hand down her stomach and pushed her underwear aside.
She was already wet.
She thought about the vineyard light. The way Lizanne’s mouth moved when something amused her, not a full smile, never a full smile, just that small shift at the corner. Rose pressed two fingers against her clit and exhaled slowly through her nose.
She thought about Lizanne’s hands. Careful and deliberate with everything she touched. What those hands would feel like if they weren’t careful. If Rose was the thing that made them careless.
She started moving her fingers in slow circles and let herself think about it properly.
Lizanne’s hands on her waist. Lizanne’s mouth at her ear, using that lower register, the one that landed below Rose’s chest and stayed there.
She thought about hearing it close. Stripped of everything it was usually wrapped in.
Her hips lifted off the mattress.
She pushed her fingers lower, slipping inside herself on a breath she couldn’t quite control, and thought about Lizanne’s face. That controlled, unreadable expression finally cracking. Rose being close enough to watch it happen.
The woman who had hired her to plan her wedding to someone else.
She pulled her fingers back up and rubbed faster, her free hand flat on the mattress, her breathing ragged and uneven. She thought about Lizanne’s blue eyes up close. She thought about being the thing Lizanne couldn’t hold her composure against.
She came quietly, hips stuttering, teeth pressed together.
Lizanne’s name stayed exactly where it belonged. She wasn’t going to say it out loud. She had that much left.
The ceiling came back. The room came back.
Then the guilt arrived, right on schedule. Lizanne was engaged. To a woman she’d been with for years. The woman paying her to plan a wedding that Rose had just used as the raw material for a fantasy.
She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
She still had her jacket on. She took it off, hung it on the chair, went to the bathroom and washed her face.
In the mirror she looked younger than she wanted to and more tired than she could afford.
The purple lipstick was completely gone.
Without it she just looked like herself, which wasn’t always a comfort.
Once she’d changed into her shorts and sleep shirt, she curled up in bed the way she always did.
She was just beginning to drift into a fitful sleep when the sharp, aggressive buzz of her phone on the nightstand jolted her awake. Adrenaline spiked through her system. She fumbled for the device, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Kayla.
“Rose! Oh my goodness, are you awake?” Kayla’s voice was a frantic stage-whisper.
“I am now,” Rose rasped, sitting up and pushing her hair out of her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Since when do you have A-list celebrities commenting on your Facebook? And I thought nobody was supposed to know about your fake wedding?”
Rose’s stomach did a slow, sickening roll. “What are you talking about?”
“Check your Facebook!”
Rose hung up and opened Instagram, her breath catching in her throat.
She opened her page and there, Lizanne had written: “Thanks for the awesome day planning my wedding. I’m so excited to learn more about yours and Derek’s!
Bring him next time!” It was on her Facebook page for all to see.
So far, she’d created dummy accounts for Instagram and Facebook, with wedding stuff.
She’d even bought fake follows to make them look real.
It was those she’d shared with Lizanne when she’d asked.
She hadn’t expected her to show up on her personal page.
No. No, no, no.
Beneath Lizanne’s comment, the floodgates had opened. Her local followers, former classmates, and even a few rival vendors were pouncing. “Wedding? Rose, you’re engaged?!” “Who is he? Why the secrecy, girl?” “Wait, is she getting married at the same time as Lizanne? That’s wild!”
The panic was a physical thing now—a cold, sharp blade twisting in her chest. This was the one variable she hadn’t accounted for.
Her thumb hovered over the screen. If she deleted it, she looked like she was hiding something. If she left it, the questions would become a roar. She hit Delete. The comment vanished, but the anxiety didn’t. What if Lizanne saw she’d deleted it?
It was done now, anyway. Rose couldn’t go back to sleep. She opened her laptop, the glow illuminating the dark room. She dove into her emails, looking for anything to anchor her.
There was a progress shot from the ironworkers for the wedding canopy. It was magnificent—an intricate, arched structure that would soon be dripping in white wisteria and silk. It was a masterpiece, and it was for a woman Rose could never have.
Finally, Rose stood up and walked down the hall to the small bedroom at the end. She pushed the door open an inch.
Daisy was a small, quiet mound under her blankets. The nightlight cast a soft amber glow over the room. Tucked tightly under Daisy’s arm was a small, faded bunny.
Rose leaned against the doorframe, her heart aching.
That bunny was the only thing Daisy’s father had ever given her—a cheap, drugstore toy sent in a box with no return address six months after he’d walked out on them.
Daisy didn’t know the truth; she just knew it was her favorite.
Rose had never told her, afraid that knowing the truth would hurt more than the silence.
I’m doing this for her, Rose reminded herself. The lies, the fake fiancé, the grueling hours—it was all to ensure that this room stayed safe. That Daisy never had to feel the cold of a world that didn’t have a place for them.
She closed the door softly and went back to bed, staring at the ceiling as the first hints of dawn began to gray the edges of the curtains. Six weeks. She just had to survive six weeks.