“What?” Delilah asked, bottom lip bumping against hers. She didn’t like that doubt. She wanted to excise it like a tumor. “You what? Tell me.”
Claire ran her thumb over Delilah’s brow. “I . . . I don’t want you to leave.”
Delilah pulled back a little farther. “What?”
“I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want this to be casual or just sex or whatever we agreed it would be. I hate casual. Casual sucks. I don’t see how anyone does it.”
“Claire, I—”
“I know you live in New York and you need to be there and I need to be here, but I don’t care. We can figure something out, can’t we? We can tell Astrid about us. Iris too. I just . . . I think, I don’t want—”
Delilah pressed her finger to Claire’s mouth, cutting her off. She stared at the other woman, trying to parse this feeling in her chest, but it only took a second for her to figure it out.
Relief.
A little spark of fear that felt pretty normal for something this big.
Happiness.
Before right now, when was the last time she felt really and truly happy? She couldn’t remember. Getting the email about the show at the Whitney, maybe, but that was different. That was . . . success. This was blood-warming, bone-settling, brain-fogging happiness.
But she couldn’t put any of that into words, not yet, so she pulled Claire closer, slid her hand up her back and around her nape, thumb swirling over her soft skin as she kissed her, pouring everything she didn’t know how to say into every touch, every press of her body against Claire’s.
Yes. Kiss. Yes. Kiss. Yes. Kiss.
Claire laughed against her mouth and wrapped one leg around Delilah’s hips. Delilah slipped her hands under Claire’s shirt, feeling her soft skin, completely forgetting where they were, why they were there. This moment was all that mattered, all she cared about, and—
“What the hell is this?”
For a split second, the voice, the angry tone, the words felt like a dream. Like a movie left on a TV no one was watching. But then Claire sucked in a breath, scrambled away from Delilah, and Delilah found herself alone on the bed as a tear-streaked Astrid Parker stared into her childhood bedroom, her mouth hanging open in shock.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
CLAIRE’S HEARTBEAT WAS everywhere, fingertips fizzing with too much oxygen. For a second, nothing felt real—her plea for Delilah to stay, her decision to tell her best friend that she was maybe, possibly, most likely in love with her estranged stepsister, and now this.
Astrid, gaping at her, hurt and anger radiating through her body. Iris stood behind her, an oh shit sort of expression on her face.
“Astrid,” Claire said. “I—”
“Don’t,” Astrid said, holding up a shaking hand.
Claire sighed and stood up. Her shirt was twisted, but she definitely didn’t want to call attention to her rumpled clothing in the moment. “Honey, let me explain.”
“Explain what?” Astrid said. She didn’t shriek or scream. Claire almost wished she would. Instead, her tone was quiet, exhausted. Sad. “That you’re, what? Screwing my sister and didn’t even bother to tell me?”
“No, Astrid, I—”
“So you’re not screwing her?”
Claire blinked at her best friend, shame warming her face.
Astrid nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
“Sweetie, maybe let her talk,” Iris said, squeezing Astrid’s shoulder.
Astrid whirled around. “You knew about this?”
“No, she didn’t,” Claire said, but Iris just shrugged and said, “I suspected.”
“What the hell is happening?” Astrid said. “What else are you two keeping from me? Oh, wait, I already know you hate Spencer.”
“We don’t hate him,” Iris said. “We just don’t like him for you. You deserve better than him. We’ve been wanting to talk to you about it all, but we didn’t know how. And through the week, Claire and Delilah and I thought if we could just get you to think about what—”
“Hold on,” Astrid said, lifting a trembling finger into the air. “You and Claire and Delilah?”
Iris’s mouth hung open, then she closed her eyes. This was a disaster. Nothing was going right. Claire didn’t know how to explain anything, her words a tangle on her tongue.
“She was with us all the time,” Claire finally managed to say. “And she . . . well . . . she was . . .”