: Chapter 23

SHE’D COME ON too strong. That must be what it was. Delilah could tell that what Claire had really wanted to talk about was them, what this thing between them was, even when they’d already established it was sex, sex, and more sex. Why else would Delilah have pulled away from her like that, gasping for air like Claire was smothering her? She knew this was a mistake. Claire couldn’t do casual, and now Delilah was freaking out and realizing that Claire was starved for love and wanted nothing more than to climb inside Delilah and set up shop.

Except Claire didn’t want that.

She couldn’t.

This was Delilah Green, her best friend’s stepsister who took off on her family twelve years ago and barely looked back, and Claire knew too well what it was like to love someone who couldn’t stay. Who wouldn’t stay.

Only . . . after listening to Delilah talk about Astrid last night, how she and Astrid weren’t complicated at all, how Astrid and Isabel simply hadn’t wanted her . . . something about it rang true. Not that she blamed Astrid for it. She’d already lost her own father, then a stepfather, and Isabel wasn’t the kind of mother who doled out love easily. Delilah was strange as a girl, cold and distant, but she’d lost both parents by the time she was ten years old.

Wouldn’t that make anyone strange and cold and distant?

And now, as an adult, Delilah was anything but. A little rough around the edges, sure. Prickly. But something about her made Claire’s blood hum, apart from the amazing sex, even if they were just talking. Delilah was brilliant and funny and strong, and Claire wanted to wrap herself around her, soak her up, help fill that haunted look in the other woman’s eyes with something soft and gentle.

Claire rubbed her eyes under her glasses, trying to press back all of these damn feelings. She had always wanted to be one of those people who could sleep with someone and let it be just that—sex, feeling, skin. She knew it wasn’t a bad thing that she’d never been like that—she’d had a kid young, and there had always been too much at stake or simply not enough time in the day, but it always sounded so fun, hearing about Iris’s exploits in her early twenties. Even Astrid had had a few one-night stands, and those were only the ones she’d told Iris and Claire about.

You’re just not wired for casual, and that’s okay.

Iris’s words from that night at Stella’s rang through her skull, but she ignored them. She could be wired any way she pleased, and right now, what pleased her was Delilah in her bed. She straightened her clothes and rolled her shoulders back, determined to play it cool with Delilah from now on.

Sex, she told herself. Just think about sex.

“What are you doing?” Iris asked, frowning at her as she stepped out from behind Josh and Ruby’s tent.

“Oh. Um, just looking for a water bottle I can use,” she said, making a show of glancing around. “Josh usually brings a million.”

“Yes, except your water bottle is with your backpack,” Iris said, pointing to Claire’s pack leaning against their tent, a purple Nalgene hooked onto one of the straps.

“Right,” Claire said and left it at that. She grabbed the bottle and took a long pull of the now lukewarm water.

“All right, let’s hit it,” Spencer called, clapping his hands like they were cattle. Then he smacked Astrid on the butt when she started toward the trailhead. He grinned at her, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Claire watched, teeth gritted, as Astrid kissed him back. But her best friend wasn’t smiling. And her arms seemed stiff around Spencer’s shoulders while his hands roamed down her backside. She wasn’t enjoying this, not in the least, but then again Astrid had never been one for PDA. Where most mothers teach basic manners, Isabel had hammered propriety into her daughter like a nail through wood.

“Is it too much to ask for a large rock to just, I don’t know, fall on his head?” Iris asked as she tied up her hiking boots.

“If only we were the praying kind,” Claire said.

“I’d be willing to convert if it got that shit hat out of our lives.”

“Now he’s a shit hat?”

“He’s a shit-all-types-of-clothing. Shirt. Belt. Jacket.”

“Shit shirt has a nice ring to it.”

“It really does.”

Claire laughed, but her eyes trailed over to Delilah without her permission. The other woman was sitting on the picnic table, scrolling through her phone. Claire forced her gaze away.

“Ready?” Astrid called, pulling back from Spencer.

“Yep,” Iris said, linking her arm with Claire’s and squeezing her tightly. Together they walked over to the trailhead, but when they arrived, Delilah still hadn’t moved from the picnic table.

“Are you coming, Del?” Astrid asked.

Delilah glanced up, a bored expression in her eyes. “Nah. Looks like it might rain.”

“It’s the Pacific Northwest,” Spencer said. “It always looks like it might rain.”

“Oh my god, you’re so right.” Delilah looked around at the trees, wide-eyed, her voice saccharine. “I almost forgot what part of the country I was in. Thank you so much.”

Iris snort-laughed, but then Spencer muttered something that sounded suspiciously like bitch under his breath, and Iris’s smile turned into a murderous glare. Claire heard Astrid take a deep breath, then turn away and gulp from her water bottle.

“I’m good here,” Delilah said, going back to her phone.

“Are you sure?” Claire asked. She took a step back toward the campsite, willing Delilah to look up at her.

She didn’t. Instead, she just nodded, and Claire felt her stomach plunge to her feet. Iris pulled Claire’s arm toward the trail, and she went, but she couldn’t get rid of the panic bubbling into her chest. First Josh, now Delilah. She felt marooned, out of control, and very much like she was about to burst into some extremely embarrassing tears.

Five minutes into the hike, she pulled her arm free from Iris’s. “You know what? I’m going to go check on Ruby at the springs.”

“What?” Iris asked, her face going pale.

“Yeah, I just . . . I’m nervous, you know? About her and Josh and I just . . .” She didn’t know how to say it, that she simply needed to go, that she needed to cry, to wrap her arms around her daughter, the one thing in her life that she was sure of.

“Sweetie, is everything okay?” Astrid asked, stepping closer to her. “Do you want us to come with you?”

Claire shook her head. “You go hike. Have fun.”

“You heard her,” Spencer said, taking Astrid’s arm. He started walking her up the trail, leather sneakers and all. “She’s fine. Let’s go.”

“Claire,” Iris said, widening her eyes with meaning. “Are you serious right now?”

“I’ll see you back at the campsite, okay?” she said before Iris could say anything else. Guilt swirled in her gut, but still, she turned away from her friend and ran back along the trail.

SHE BURST THROUGH the trees and into the campsite’s clearing, breathing heavy, eyes searching. Delilah was still perched on top of the picnic table, phone in her hand. Her head snapped up when she saw Claire, brow furrowing in what Claire could only hope was concern and not annoyance.

“I thought you were going to hike?” Delilah asked.

Claire tried to calm herself down as surreptitiously as possible as all the wrong answers flitted through her head.

I wanted to see you.

I was worried about you.

I was worried about us.

But she knew she couldn’t say any of those things. Those weren’t casual answers to Delilah’s question.

“I decided not to,” Claire said. “I’m going to go to the springs and check on Ruby.”

There. A perfectly breezy response. Her voice didn’t even shake.

Delilah nodded, and Claire moved off toward their tent to change into her bathing suit. She ducked under the door flap, zipped it closed, then pressed her fingers to her eyes under her glasses. The tears welled, and she tried to push them back. This was ridiculous. She fought with Josh all the time. And Delilah had every right to stay back from a hike, to stay back from her.

But Claire had never been great with conflict. When she was young, her parents fought nonstop, her mother completely miserable for most of their life in San Francisco. After her father took off and she and her mom moved to Bright Falls, Claire spent years making sure her mother was okay, making their life as smooth as possible, always following the rules as much as she could.

Then she got pregnant.

Even then, her mother supported her—they’d been all each other had for so long—and everything ended up okay. Wonderful even. But then she and Josh started arguing, two stupid kids with huge adult problems, and she always ended up crying when they fought, always ended up feeling pathetic. And now Iris was most certainly pissed off at her for abandoning her with Shit Trousers, so essentially, Claire had just made everything worse. Still, she couldn’t have gone on that hike without doing what she was doing right now—letting a few tears fall to get some release and heaving some shuddering breaths. She just needed a few minutes, then she’d be fine. She’d be ready to find her daughter, ignore whatever Delilah was doing, and figure out a way to make it up to Iris. She’d be—

The tent door unzipped, and before Claire had a chance to wipe her face dry or at least pull her shirt over her head to hide what were probably very blotchy cheeks and red eyes, Delilah was ducking into the tent.

“Oh, hey,” Claire said. Calm. Breezy. Except her voice sounded thick and watery. She turned her back to the other woman, squatting down to unzip her pack and find her swimsuit.

“What’s wrong?” Delilah asked, her voice so gentle it made Claire want to cry even more. Which she absolutely was not going to do.

“Nothing.” She found her red-and-white polka-dot one-piece and clutched it to her chest as she stood up. “Just . . . I think I’m allergic to something out here.”

God, she was getting good at lying.

“Claire, that’s bullshit.”

Okay, apparently not good enough.

She sighed and turned to face Delilah. “I just . . . I had a fight with Josh. It’s not a big deal, but it threw me off.”

Delilah’s eyes went soft. The inside of the tent was hot, humid, despite the coolness in the June air outside. There wasn’t a whole lot of space in here to begin with, and as Delilah took a step closer, Claire swore she felt their breaths mingling.

“What did you fight about?” Delilah asked.

Claire shrugged, her chest tight again. “Ruby. Us. The same thing over and over.”

A little dip appeared between Delilah’s brows, but she just nodded. “What can I do to help?”

Claire didn’t expect that question. Not from Delilah. A nod of sympathy, sure. A joke about the universal awfulness of straight cis white men, perhaps. But not this caring offer, spoken while her arms slid around Claire’s waist and pulled her closer. It made her want to bury her face in the other woman’s neck, breathe in that smell that was all Delilah, sun and rain all at once.

“I . . . I don’t know,” Claire said. “Come down to the springs with me?”

The plea fell from her mouth before she could rethink it. It was a perfectly reasonable answer, but the way she said it, desperately and with a slight pant, made her want to curl up in a little ball again.

Except Delilah didn’t seem to mind. She smiled, pulling Claire’s hips flush against hers. Want fluttered low in Claire’s belly.

“Is that all?” Delilah asked, then her tongue dipped into Claire’s collarbone.

“Um . . . well . . .” Claire said, but when Delilah’s teeth grazed her skin, a moan slipped out instead of any coherent words. She dropped her swimsuit and buried her hands in Delilah’s curls.

“That helps, huh?” the other woman asked.

“A . . . a little.”

“What about this?” Delilah’s fingers went to the button on Claire’s cutoffs. She flicked the clasp free, then worked the zipper down so slowly, Claire felt the vibration between her legs.

“That . . . yeah, that might help,” she said. She pressed the back of one hand to her mouth to try and stay quiet as Delilah slipped a hand inside her shorts and palmed her over her underwear, fingers pressing and exploring.

“Already wet,” Delilah said, lips on her neck.

God, she was. Claire felt like she’d spent this entire week soaking wet, anytime she was around Delilah Green, even before they started . . . whatever this was.

Delilah’s fingers worked over the cotton in delicious circles. Claire gripped her shoulders, her legs wobbly, her hips pushing against Delilah’s hand.

“Okay?” Delilah asked, fingers moving north to slowly glide along the waistband of Claire’s underwear.

Claire could only nod in response, desperate for Delilah’s skin on hers. The other woman didn’t make her wait long, releasing her own quiet moan as she dipped into Claire’s wet heat. Delilah circled this way and that, exploring slowly, tortuously, before she slid one finger inside and pressed her palm against Claire’s clit.

Claire gasped, tipped her head back. Delilah’s tongue flicked out to taste the skin just under her ear as she inserted another curling finger, pumping them so her hand rubbed right where Claire needed it.

“Faster,” Claire whispered, nails biting into Delilah’s bare shoulders. Other words flowed from her mouth, things Claire had never said during sex, complete and utter dirty talk, but she didn’t care because this—this was what she needed. Fucking, hard and fast, nothing emotional about it.

She bucked her hips against Delilah’s talented fingers, grinding against her hand until she broke. Her orgasm blazed through her, and she sagged against Delilah, her cries muffled by the other woman’s neck. Delilah kept her hand in place until Claire stopped shuddering, and even when she was done, Delilah took her sweet time, fingers teasing and caressing as they slowly emerged from Claire’s pants.

“Better?” Delilah asked, a smirk on her mouth.

Claire tried to smirk back, but she just ended up laughing, a space opening up in her chest she couldn’t explain. “Much better.” Her hand went to Delilah’s jeans, more than ready to return the favor, but Delilah stopped her.

“Later,” she said.

Claire frowned. “What? But I want to—”

“I know.” Delilah took Claire’s hand and wrapped it around her own waist, pulling them together even closer, mouths bumping as she spoke. “And you will. But right now, let’s go swimming. You wanted to see Ruby, right?”

Claire exhaled against her. “Yeah.”

Delilah nodded. “So let’s do it.”

She went to pull back, probably to get her own swimsuit, but Claire yanked her closer. She kept her eyes open as they kissed, soft and slow. Once they parted and turned away from each other so they could change into their swimsuits while keeping their hands to themselves, Claire could’ve sworn she saw a spark of something that looked a lot like happiness in Delilah’s expression.

“IRIS IS GOING to kill me.”

Claire glanced at Delilah as they walked along the trail toward the springs. She wore a black bikini top that put all of her tattoos on display, along with a pair of high-waisted denim shorts and her boots. She looked soft and badass all at once, and Claire couldn’t stop staring at her.

It was a problem.

“Why?” Delilah asked, her own eyes on the pine straw.

“I left her alone with Spencer and Astrid,” Claire said.

Delilah winced. “Yeah, she’s not going to thank you for that. Not unless you somehow managed to further Operation Shit Boot from afar.”

Claire groaned but then stopped abruptly, her hand flying out to land on Delilah’s arm.

“That’s it,” she said.

“What’s it?”

“Operation Shit Boot.” She turned to Delilah, and what felt like a Cheshire cat grin curled her mouth.

“What about it?”

Claire flapped her hands around. “We need to . . . I don’t know. Further it.”

Delilah lifted a brow. “Are you talking about shenanigans?”

“Yes!” Claire clapped her hands once and then pointed at Delilah. “Exactly. Camp shenanigans.”

“Like pouring honey all over his sleeping bag or something? Because I’m here for that.”

Claire frowned. “Well, not exactly like that. I mean . . . he’s sharing a tent with Astrid. I want to drive him nuts, not her.”

“We could feed them both a sleeping pill and then pull his air mattress out onto the springs like in that movie The Parent Trap.”

“Oh my god, I love that movie.” Claire tapped her chin. “I don’t think he has an air mattress though.”

“And the water’s not exactly dragging distance,” Delilah said.

“Give him some sugar water for the bugs?”

“You know how he hates bugs.”

They laughed, but nothing they’d mentioned felt feasible or, well, mature. But Claire didn’t care about maturity right now. She cared about this. Delilah and her under the trees, plotting like teenagers to help their friend. It felt like something more than just planning a prank—it felt like getting something back, something fun and light and meaningful that they never got to have as girls.

Something Claire never even thought to try for.

But she could one hundred percent try for it now.

“Maybe we should consult the oracle,” Claire said, taking Delilah’s hand and lacing their fingers together as they started walking again.

“Ah, the all-knowing,” Delilah said, smiling. “Now if Astrid could draw the praying mantis card, that would be ideal. Just bite his head the hell off and be done with it.”

Claire laughed. “I seriously doubt she’d draw the apple.”

“Well, she’s not a horndog like you.”

“Hey now.” Claire bumped their shoulders together, and Delilah bumped right back. They walked like that for a while, nearly reaching the springs before Claire’s posture snapped straight.

“I’ve got it,” she said, turning them around and pulling Delilah back toward camp by the hand.

“I thought we were going swimming,” Delilah asked.

“We are,” Claire said, knocking a pine needle–covered limb out of her way. “But first we need to make a little stop by Josh’s cooking supplies.”