by Anna Burke
“Do we know any other Morgans in common?”
“No, and no. Morgan’s like a sister to me. Why?”
“I always wondered.” Ivy shifted on the couch. “You were so close.”
“We were roommates, then and now. What about you and that girl—what was her name? Adele?” She recalled the redhead with distaste. One of the polished girls who clung to Ivy like the vine of her namesake, Adele had been especially nasty to Lillian whenever she had the opportunity.
“I almost forgot about her. We were sort of a thing, but it didn’t last.”
“Because she was a pit viper?”
“No. You actually.”
“You . . .told her about what happened?” She took a sip of scalding tea and hissed in pain, which was still better than meeting Ivy’s eyes.
“Of course not. I just . . . lost interest. The timelines overlapped.”
She didn’t need to ask which timelines. There was only one that mattered.
“I’d apologize for ruining your fling, but you don’t deserve it,” she said.
“I know.” Ivy tucked her legs up beneath her. Steam wreathed her face from the mug clutched in her white-knuckled hands. Silence pulsed between them. At last, Ivy let out a shaky breath, then asked, “Will you spend the night?”
The confidence that radiated from her earlier had broken. She looked small and fragile in her white blouse. Lillian had dedicated a significant portion of her adult life to wishing she could reduce this woman to the kind of vulnerability displayed before her now. She’d longed to crush her, scoop up the remains, and run them through a blender. Instead, confronted with the reality, she felt a rush of an emotion she refused to analyze or name. What had Angie and Stormy told her? There is no easy out. If she said yes, she was committing to something, and she wasn’t foolish enough to believe it was just one night. Once was an accident. Twice could be shrugged off as coincidence, but three times was a pattern, and patterns were hard to break. Scratching Darwin behind the ears, she set her mug down on the coffee table and took a deep breath.
“I’d like that.”
• • •
“You have a woodstove in your bedroom?”
Ivy paused at the door and considered the room. Her bed, piled with quilts and pillows and topped with the best mattress money could buy, faced the small red-enameled cast iron stove in the corner. Windows overlooking the water framed it, and she crossed the plush carpet to light the fire she’d laid in it earlier that day.
“I like being warm,” she said. “And so does Darwin.”
The overstuffed armchair covered in a shimmer of white hair beside the stove proved her point. She glanced at the book she’d left open on the arm to make sure it wasn’t anything embarrassing, then turned around to face Lillian.
Lillian, here, in her bedroom. The glow of the fire and the ambient cast of the lamp by her bedside glimmered in her dark hair. The throw was still tucked around her shoulders, and she stood, looking around the room, her eyes quick and assessing.
What does she see?
Her bedroom wasn’t anything special. Well, the king-sized bed and the woodstove were special, but the decorations could have belonged to anyone. Pale curtains. An oil painting of the harbor. The only visible personal touch was the photo of her and Freddie on her bedside table. She’d picked up before going out, anticipating this moment, but she hadn’t pictured how Lillian would look standing in the middle of it. She hadn’t anticipated how absolutely stripped it would make her feel. Her pulse sped up as panic dried her mouth.
Fucking Lillian—the word sounded coarse in her mind, but she refused to substitute another—should have been simple. They had a history. There was a score. The stakes had been set and broken years ago, and in a twisted way, that had made her safe in Ivy’s mind.
Safe was the last thing she felt now.
“Lil,” she said, her voice catching on the name, “I—”
She what? She was sorry? She wasn’t ready? What could she possibly say that would convey any of the things currently shredding her from the inside out?
Lillian did not come to her rescue.
Okay then. Truth time.
“I kicked you out that morning because I was scared.”
The words crawled out of her like the slimy, cowardly things they represented. Lillian crossed her arms over her chest.
“Scared of what? You were out.”
“Not—not that.”
“Then why?”
“You’re just . . .so different from me.”
“Different how?”
Lillian’s expression closed, and Ivy’s heartbeat sped up further. How to explain? How to adequately express the panic that, then and now, Lillian’s proximity triggered?
“There were things about my family I didn’t want to think about. Things about . . . about myself I didn’t want to think about. Being around you—it was easier to hate you.”
Part of the truth, but not the whole of it. She didn’t know how to tell Lillian that when she’d looked down at her sleeping face that long-ago morning, she’d realized she was never going to get over Lillian Lee.
And she’d been right. Looking at her now, watching suspicion cloud her eyes and twist her lips, the urge to run clawed at her throat. Ivy was a Holden. Holdens were cool, collected, and always in control. Holdens married senators and lawyers. Holdens did not fall in love with Navy brats who wore secondhand clothes and looked at Holden money like it was covered in blood, because Holdens pretended their money was clean. She knew how privileged she would sound if she put any of those things into words.
Since then, she’d read. She’d listened to the people put at risk by her family’s business interests and donated as much as she could without compromising her quality of life to causes in direct opposition to her family’s operations in pipelines, tar sands, lobbyists, and war.
It wasn’t enough. She’d never be clean of that guilt, and as long as she surrounded herself with people like Lillian, she’d be reminded constantly of the harm her bloodline continued to wreak. She had never hated Lillian. She had hated how she felt around Lillian: vulnerable. Out of control. Complicit.
Holdens did not fall in love with Navy brats.
Her earlier thought came back to her with the force of a sledgehammer.
Oh. Oh no.
“That’s such a cop-out, Ivy.”
A cop-out? She struggled to remember what she’d said. Something about how hating Lillian was easier than thinking about other things. Things like how she’d been in love with Lillian for years. Her ears rang. Her limbs were numb. The room itself seemed to tilt.
“I know,” she said, because that seemed like an appropriate response.
“Do I scare you now?”
She met Lillian’s gaze and answered honestly.
“You terrify me.”
The trembling started in her legs. Her knees shook, and she sat on the edge of her bed as it passed through her body and down her arms to her hands, then up through her chest and into her jaw. Her teeth chattered. This wasn’t MS. This was something much worse. This was—
Her eyes welled up.
Her lower lip trembled.
No, please no, I don’t want to cry. Not now. Not in front of her.
But the pressure, once it found a crack, sought release.
“Hey.” Lillian closed the gap between them and took a seat beside her. “Ivy—”
Hearing Lillian say her name that tenderly broke the valve wide open. She buried her face in Lillian’s neck and sobbed.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for everything,” she kept repeating, no matter how many times she tried to clamp down on the words. It was as if words, like the sobs wracking her shoulders, were convulsive. She couldn’t stop them or even slow them down. The blanket absorbed most of her tears, and Lillian wrapped her arms around her and pulled her closer, stroking her hair and rocking her gently. She did not deserve this kindness. She did not deserve this compassion. She was a worm.
A maggot. Something filthy and diseased, and Lillian was bright and perfect and whole. If Ivy truly cared for her, she’d let her go, but she’d done that once already and she knew she did not have the strength to go through that again.
That wasn’t quite true, either. Letting Kara go had been hard, yes, but had she really run from Kara? Or had she run to Lillian? Lillian kissed the tears from her cheeks when the sobs finally subsided.
“Let’s get you to bed, okay?”
She nodded and let Lillian unbutton her blouse and lead her to the bathroom, where Lillian found a washcloth, drenched it in warm water, and handed it to her to scrub her face. Red rimmed her eyes in the mirror and her skin was blotchy and puffy. I’m a mess. A total, absolute, mess.
Then her eyes caught sight of the medicine bottles by the sink, and she froze. Lillian had seen them too. The prescriptions told a story to anyone with a medical degree, and she grabbed them and hastily tumbled them into a drawer. Lillian said nothing.
Ivy stood, panting and ashamed, and wanted to scream at the entirety of creation for the injustice of this moment. Lillian placed a soothing hand on her waist.
“Let me get you a glass of water. I’ll be right back.”
Mute, she nodded.
When Lillian left, she gripped the edge of the counter and stared into her wild eyes, bright green against the bloodshot whites, and considered bashing her forehead into her reflection until the mirror lay shattered in bloody pieces around her.
She couldn’t tell Lillian about her condition. If she hadn’t been able to tell Kara, then confessing her weakness to Lillian was out of the question. She’d already revealed the depth of her inadequacies. And yet, what was one more? Lillian had already seen the very worst in her. It could hardly matter.
Except then passion would turn to pity, and she needed Lillian. Needed the heat from her gaze, whether it was hate or lust or something in-between.
Tepid pity would break her.
• • •
Ivy’s kitchen lay in darkness as Lillian padded down the stairs in her stockinged feet. Her mind tumbled over itself as she scrambled to process everything that had just happened. Ivy, in tears. Ivy, confessing. Ivy, shoving those pill canisters into a drawer before she could get a good look, but she’d seen enough to know something was wrong. People didn’t hide medications without reason, and the ones she’d seen were not prescribed for potentially embarrassing but ultimately manageable conditions like irritable bowel syndrome. They suggested systemic damage. Sparks of fear burst in the corners of her vision. Ivy, however, clearly did not want to talk about it, and one look at her face had told Lillian that asking would cross a line. She’d let her guard down tonight and shown Lillian more than she’d ever expected to see, but it was obvious those pills had represented a bridge too far. She had no choice but to respect Ivy’s privacy—for now.
Finding cups required opening only three cabinets. Filling two with tap water, she took a moment to gaze out the window at the stars over the river. Orion hung above them, his bow pointing toward distant galaxies and constellations.
His arm must get tired.
The absurdity of the thought was a measure of how far off course the night had gone. Not that she’d known what to expect. Perhaps that, once arriving at Ivy’s, they’d tumble into Ivy’s bed for another night like the one they’d shared on the island. Definitely not that Ivy would dissolve into tears in her arms and apologize repeatedly for everything she’d ever done to Lillian. Ivy’s absolute dissolution had made it impossible to gloat or even feel mild vindication. The other woman’s pain was palpable beneath her hands as her ribs shook with sobs and she clung to Lillian, curled in on herself like a broken thing.
She tore her eyes away from the stars and headed back upstairs.
Ivy waited cross-legged on her bed in an oversized sleepshirt. Her eyes were puffy and the tip of her nose was red, as were the two bright spots of color in her cheeks, but she breathed slowly and met Lillian with a sad little smile.
“Drink this.”
Ivy obeyed.
“Do you . . . do you want me to go?” she asked.
Ivy shook her head. “This wasn’t how I expected the night to end,” she said in a voice roughened by tears. “I’m sorry. I had a really nice time with you.”
Lillian scooted closer to her on the bed and tucked an errant strand of hair behind Ivy’s ear. “It was always going to be messy.”
“I was kind of hoping you would be the messy one.”
“Give it time.” Her heart clenched at how small Ivy looked, hunched in her sleepshirt, lashes still damp with tears. She’d never thought of Ivy as fragile, just insidious, like a weed.
“Do you want to borrow something to wear?”
Clothing would offer a layer of protection for them both, as well as comfort.
“Sure. Which drawer?”
“Top left.”
She left Ivy on the bed and rummaged through the drawer she’d indicated, noting and mentally cataloguing the lingerie her fingers skimmed as she pulled out a loose, silky T-shirt, and trying and failing not to imagine how Ivy might look dressed in lace.
“Can you unzip me?” she asked Ivy.
Ivy rose and, barefoot in just a shirt, brushed Lillian’s hair to the side as she eased the zipper down her back.
“Thanks.”
Warm hands gently tugged the straps over her shoulders. She let Ivy pull the dress down, assisting when the fabric strained over her hips, and stepped out of it as it fell to the floor. She hadn’t worn a bra, and Ivy’s hands skimmed along her bare back and down her sides, pausing at the hem of her tights.
“Are you going to sleep in these?”
She was glad some of the ironic tone had crept back into Ivy’s voice. “Absolutely not.”
Before she could pull the sleepshirt over her head, Ivy turned her around. Lillian was an inch taller, which didn’t amount to much, but it did mean Ivy had to tilt her head up very slightly. The kiss she gave her was sweet and lingering, and she tasted salt on her lips as she ran her hands through Ivy’s tousled hair.
The sleepshirt, when Ivy eventually let her pull it on, was even softer than the cashmere blanket. It flowed over her skin, managing to be both silky and warm. She immediately contemplated stealing it. Ivy tossed back the quilts and slid into the bed, turning off the light as she did so. The remaining glow came from the woodstove, and as Lillian slipped beneath the sheets, she felt like they were once again back on the island with only the storm outside.
Ivy nuzzled into her and tucked her head beneath Lillian’s chin. They breathed together for a long while, listening to the wood crackle in the stove and the pine trees whisper outside the windows. It had been a long time since she’d held someone like this. Ivy fit into her arms with an ease that triggered multiple alarm bells. She silenced them and murmured into Ivy’s hair.
“I didn’t take you for the little spoon.”
“Shut up.”
A dog barked somewhere far away.
“Hey Ivy?”
“What?”
Ivy’s words warmed the skin of her chest through the shirt, and her body stirred in response.
“You’re not the only one who needs to apologize.”
“I started this.” Ivy’s lips had moved closer to the taut skin around her nipple, and Lillian’s hand tightened around the blond locks currently vining through her fingers.
“I judged you, too.”
“Oh yeah?”
Ivy’s breath was hot and close, and Lillian fought not to pull her closer still.
“I said to myself, ‘There’s a blonde with an attitude problem.’”
Teeth raked her, light and teasing, and she bit her lip. It did not quite muffle her moan.
“You weren’t wrong,” said Ivy.
“No, I wasn’t.”
Ivy nipped the curve of her breast and dragged her nails lightly down Lillian’s side and over her ass. She shuddered. Part of her wondered if she should ask I
vy whether she was ready for this, considering the emotional output of the last hour. Another part of her was wet and aching for Ivy’s touch, and as Ivy’s fingers slid over her ass and between her thighs, brushing her through her underwear, she fought to stay sentient.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” she managed to gasp.
Ivy took her nipple in her mouth through the fabric in response.
“Holy hell, Ivy.”
She felt Ivy’s smile against her skin. Hands tugged at her underwear. She wriggled out of them, then urged Ivy to do the same. Ivy stroked her thigh and the curve of her ass, sliding her fingers up over her hip and then down, her thumb skimming the crease between thigh and center. Electrified by the touch, she rolled over onto Ivy, parting her legs with her body. She could feel Ivy slick against her as she kissed her neck and bit her shoulder, rocking her hips and gasping each time Ivy pushed back. Nails dug into her as Ivy urged her on, her heels digging into the back of Lillian’s thighs like spurs.
The heat of her pressed into Lillian. Beneath her, Ivy’s lips parted, and a flush crept up her chest and into her cheeks. Her breasts rose and fell rapidly, moved by her breath and the motion of their hips, and Lillian watched, awed, as the color in Ivy’s face heightened and she bucked, faster and faster, until her body shook.
“Lil.”
She felt Ivy come against her, and her vision swam as her own need drove her on, pushing Ivy over the edge. Ivy cried out Lillian’s name again, arching her back to grind into her, and Lillian kissed her cheeks and lips and jaw, wanting to taste all of her.
“May I?”
She didn’t understand the question, at first. Her body trembled on the brink, and all that mattered was Ivy and the places they touched. Places like where Ivy’s hand had slid between them, cupping her, stroking her opening and rendering her helpless.
“Yes. Please, yes.”
Ivy’s fingers, inside her. Ivy’s mouth, sharing her breath. Ivy’s hips, rocking against hers, guiding her hand deeper and deeper. She felt each curl of finger through her entirety, as if Ivy stroked every nerve, and she let herself be rolled onto her side. Sheets tangled in her fingers as Ivy increased her tempo. She twisted, needing Ivy deeper, needing more, bypassing the point at which she would normally have come and climbing higher.
