Claire pressed even closer. “I’m not saying it because we’re screwing. I’m saying it because I feel it. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder. I could’ve . . . I don’t know, pushed Astrid to include you more.”
“No one pushes Astrid to do anything.”
“Then I could’ve included you more.”
Delilah scoffed. “No, you couldn’t have. Because you didn’t want to.”
Silence filtered in between them, Claire left with no response in the face of the truth. Delilah waited for the awkwardness of it all to push them finally apart, for Claire to sigh and admit that maybe this was all a big mistake. She even waited to feel some of that old anger flare up, the resentment that had fueled her relationship with anyone in Bright Falls for over two decades.
Instead, she just felt sad, desperate to not feel that way anymore.
Claire reached out and slid a finger down Delilah’s cheek to her mouth before sliding her palm around the back of her neck. Instead of pushing her away, she pulled Delilah closer and pressed her forehead against hers.
“I want to now,” Claire said, then pressed her mouth to hers, gentle and slow.
Too gentle and slow.
Delilah hadn’t meant for the conversation to turn this direction. It’s not like it mattered. She didn’t want or need Claire’s apology. She didn’t want to hear excuses for whatever Isabel did to Astrid to fuck her up proper. Delilah was fucked up enough herself. She rolled over on top of Claire, settling between her thighs, and turned all that gentle and slow into hard and fast. She didn’t let either of them come up for air for the next hour.
Later, as they both lingered in that place between awake and asleep, the first touches of lavender light trickling through the window, Claire entwined her fingers with Delilah’s.
“Come camping with us,” she said softly. “Ruby wants you there.”
Claire’s eyes were free of her glasses and hazy with sex and sleep. Delilah brushed her bangs off her forehead with her other hand.
“Ruby wants me there, huh?” she said.
Claire smiled. “Yep. Just Ruby.”
Chapter Twenty-One
IT WASN’T ONLY Ruby who wanted Delilah on the camping trip, and they both knew it. Still, even in that intimate space between them in bed, Claire didn’t want to admit it out loud. And when Josh’s truck pulled into her driveway the next morning and Ruby sprinted outside to greet him, she told herself she was only looking out the window and down the street for Iris and Astrid, who were both coming separately and were due any minute.
Delilah had agreed to the trip. As she stood in Claire’s room at five o’clock that morning, pulling on her clothes, she’d grunted a fine, what else have I got to do when Claire asked about it again, but Claire barely knew the woman, and Delilah didn’t have the best reliability track record. At least twice, she remembered Astrid getting in a huff because Delilah hadn’t shown up for a holiday, complaining about wasted food she’d ordered or tickets she’d procured to the symphony in Portland. Claire kept telling herself it wasn’t a big deal if she didn’t come—it was one day and this thing between them was just sex and it wasn’t like they were going to have a chance to engage in a bunch of just sex while surrounded by Claire’s best friends, daughter, and her co-parent ex-boyfriend.
Jesus.
She rubbed her sleep-deprived eyes as Iris’s Subaru wagon pulled up. What had Claire been thinking? No, it was definitely better if Delilah didn’t come. Maybe she should even call Delilah and tell her—
Claire gripped the curtain tighter as Iris’s passenger door opened and Delilah stepped out, clad in another pair of gray jeans and a burgundy tank top that made it very clear she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Okay, so they were doing this.
Claire pressed a hand to her stomach, memories of last night washing over her like warm rain. The way Delilah had looked when she was talking about her childhood being simple. How lonely she had sounded. How her eyes—
No.
No, she was not going to think about Delilah’s eyes, for Christ’s sake. This thing between them was casual. Transient. Completely carnal, no hearts involved whatsoever. Claire took one . . . two . . . three cleansing breaths, then grabbed her backpack stuffed with her bathing suit and a change of clothes, her water bottle dangling from the side by a carabiner, and walked outside.
“Morning, sunshine,” Iris called, but as she came closer, her smile dipped. “God, you look like shit.”