FUCK.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
As soon as she was alone, Claire tore off her clothes and all but threw herself in the shower to try to calm herself down. She turned the water all the way to cold, maybe to freeze off the memory of Delilah’s mouth on hers, her hands, the way she’d tasted, how her neck had smelled like spring, like rain and fresh grass.
How Delilah’s face had gone still as a stone, her fiery gemstone eyes dimming to a dull blue, the moment Claire asked her to keep what had just happened a secret.
Why the hell had she done that?
Because Astrid would have completely lost her shit, that’s why.
One didn’t simply make out with one’s best friend’s estranged sister and then announce happily that it was the single hottest fifteen minutes she’d ever experienced, and that included the time she and Josh frustration-fucked on her backyard patio table three years ago while her mother had taken Ruby to a movie. Tonight, she hadn’t even come, Delilah hadn’t even ventured below her hip bone, and Claire still felt like she was about to explode just standing here under the water.
But that didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter that the whole thing had felt like so much more than just kissing and touching, or that even an hour later as she lay in bed wide awake, she was still wetter than she’d ever been in her entire life, her body humming and twitching like a live wire.
None of that mattered at all because what happened tonight absolutely would not happen again. It couldn’t. Delilah lived in New York City. She was leaving in less than two weeks, for a huge show at a major museum no less. She didn’t do relationships. Claire knew this from Astrid, just like she knew Delilah didn’t care about anyone but herself and never had.
Claire grabbed the pillow Delilah had been using and threw it across the room. Then she got out of bed and turned the air-conditioning all the way down, hoping the cold would distract her from remembering the look in Delilah’s eyes as she’d told her about Jax, about photographing Claire on the shores of the river. A look that seemed like the exact opposite of not caring.
