RIVER WILD BOOKS didn’t open until ten, but Claire always arrived around nine, ready for her workday to begin. Some days, she was already perched at her desk by eight, sifting through invoices or perusing online catalogs, making schedules and trying to figure out how to work some e-commerce into the store’s services. Especially this week, with Ruby staying at Josh’s new cabin in Winter Lake, she needed a distraction. Iris did her best to be available, but she had her own life, her own relationship to stress over, and god knew Astrid had enough on her plate lately.
Now, three days after what Claire knew was Delilah’s show at the Whitney, she unlocked the store’s door and stepped into the fairy light–illuminated space at eight forty-seven. She left the main lights off, like she always did until they opened, and flicked on the two computers behind the front counter, listening as they whirred to life and booted up the shop’s systems.
Her thoughts strayed as she waited, wandering without permission to Delilah, to how her show went, if she’d gotten an agent. In the past few days, she’d reached for her phone more than once, itching to text Delilah and ask about it, ask about her, ask anything. But she always stopped herself. There was no point, and as Delilah hadn’t reached out to her either in the more than fourteen days since she’d left Bright Falls, Claire had to assume the other woman agreed.
She rubbed her forehead, exhaustion making her eyes swim. She hadn’t been sleeping great lately, which made absolutely no sense, but there it was, nonetheless. She’d even bought brand-new sheets and a new coverlet, new pillows and a new quilt to fold at the end of the bed. Nothing helped. It was like Delilah’s scent, the feel of her, was impressed into the walls, the mattress itself, and Claire’s bed was damned expensive. No way she was replacing that.
The point-of-sale program bloomed onto the computer screens, and Claire logged in to both registers. She had just come around the counter and was starting to weave through the shelves to her office when she saw them.
Claire had been trying to decide what to hang on the walls for a while now. She wanted some local art, a way to bring the community together, but thus far, no one had expressed real interest in selling their work in River Wild. Either that, or the artist’s style didn’t fit with the bookstore’s aesthetic, which Claire wanted to keep clean and simple. Over a year ago, she’d taken down her mother’s choices, plastic-framed images of book covers, most of which were written by dead white dudes, and the walls had been blank ever since.
Until today.
She stood near the counter, her eyes roaming over the black-and-white photographs that now hung on her store’s walls, all of them in distressed wooden frames the colors of a desert sunset—terra-cotta and sage green, the palest dusky blue. The images were large, at least twenty by forty, and Claire saw familiar faces behind the glass of each one.
Her and Ruby at Vivian’s, Claire’s face pressed into her daughter’s hair.
Claire, Iris, and Astrid at the vineyard, Astrid in between the other two women, wineglasses in their hands, their mouths open in laughter, rolling rows of grapes blurred behind them.
Firelight in the darkness, Iris and Claire huddled on a log bench, Iris’s mouth near Claire’s ear as though sharing a secret.
Ruby on Josh’s shoulders in the hot springs, her arms spread and the most beautiful, euphoric smile on her face.
Image after image, Claire’s life surrounded her. Her friends, her family, her town. There was even a photo of the outside of Stella’s, all rough wood and brass. She felt her throat thicken, and she was just about to call Iris and Astrid and ask them what the hell was going on when she saw one more photo.
A black-and-white image of one woman.
Claire. All alone.
Wading into Bright River five years ago in a lace dress.
She gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth. She spun around, eyes searching through the dim lighting. Astrid could’ve had access to all the other photos. She knew Delilah had sent her a file with the images she’d taken during her time in Bright Falls. And this was the sort of thing Iris would do for her—organize some amazing display of the exact kind of art and photographs Claire would want to populate her store.
But this photo, only one person could’ve hung it here. Only one person had it in their possession, and there was no reason she’d ever give it to Astrid or Iris. No reason Claire could think of anyway. She walked swiftly through the store, hope and dread mingling in her gut. She angled around a freestanding shelf that held reference books, the reading area she’d set up with soft brown leather chairs coming into view.
And in one of the chairs, Delilah Green sat with her elbows resting on her knees.
Everything in Claire froze—her body, her breath, her heart. That’s what it felt like, her pulse pausing to see what was going to happen next.
“Hi,” Delilah said.
Claire didn’t say hi back. She couldn’t. She just blinked, her mouth hanging wide open.
“I’m really here. You’re not hallucinating,” Delilah said with a little smile. She had on a pair of gray skinny jeans and a fitted black V-neck tee, her lovely tattoos on display.
Claire snapped her mouth shut.
Delilah’s smile fell, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft. “Say something. Please.”
Claire finally got a good breath into her lungs. Her brain worked hard, trying to process all of this. She noticed one other pale green wooden frame resting on the coffee table in front of Delilah. It was far smaller than the ones on the walls, maybe a five by seven, and it was facedown so Claire couldn’t see the image.
“How . . . how was your show at the Whitney?” she finally said.
Delilah looked surprised. “Is that really what you want to ask me right now?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I just . . . I’ve wondered.”
Delilah’s eyes lit up. “It went well. Really well.”
Claire smiled. She couldn’t help it. She wanted good things for Delilah, even if those good things didn’t include Claire. But then again, Delilah was here. She was in Bright Falls, in Claire’s store. Curiosity and confusion warred in her mind.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Delilah laughed, the sound small and a little nervous. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Claire took a step forward, then another and another until she found herself sinking into the chair across from Delilah, the coffee table in between them.
“So?” she asked when Delilah didn’t continue.
Delilah swallowed and nodded, then scooted to the edge of her chair, lacing her hands together. “First, I wanted to bring you these photos.”
“You could’ve mailed them.” Her tone came out harsher than she intended. Or maybe not. She felt her defenses rising, and maybe they needed to. She didn’t think she’d even admitted it to herself yet, but this woman broke her heart when she left two weeks ago. She wouldn’t go through that again. She’d already been there so many times with her dad, with Josh. So whatever Delilah’s game was here, Claire wasn’t playing it.
Delilah took a deep breath. “I could have, but that brings me to my other reason for coming here.”
“And what’s that?”
“You.”
Such a tiny word, but it landed like a bomb. “Me.”
“You.”
“What about me?”
Delilah looked down at her boots as though gathering her thoughts. She chewed on her lower lip like she did when she was nervous, and Claire had to force herself to stay put, to not go to Delilah and touch her face, tell her it was going to be okay. She needed to hear whatever Delilah was going to say, and she needed Delilah to tell her on her own. Claire couldn’t help her with this one.
“What about me, Delilah?”
Delilah reached for the frame on the table, sliding it into her hands and staring down at whatever image there was behind the glass.
“After I left,” she said, “I didn’t have much time to think about anything. The show at the Whitney was coming up, and I knew I couldn’t blow it. I worked night and day getting photos ready, and then, when it was time for the show, time for everything I ever wanted, it didn’t feel like I thought it would.”
Claire frowned. “What do you mean?”
Delilah glanced up at her, eyes clear and bright, almost feverish, like maybe she hadn’t slept very well in a couple of weeks either. “The night of the show was everything I dreamed. But it also wasn’t, because I was . . . I was doing it all alone.”
Claire felt something in her chest start to crack, but she rolled her shoulders back, lifted her chin. “I’m sure you could’ve found a date.”
“Oh, I’m sure I could’ve too.”
Claire pressed her mouth flat.
“But I didn’t want a date,” Delilah said. “I wanted you.”
Claire shook her head, but she could feel those all-important defenses crumbling one by one, her eyes already starting to sting. “You left,” she said, because it was all she could think to say. “You left without a single word of explanation.”
Delilah nodded. “I did. And it was a mistake and I’m sorry.”
Again, so simple, those words, but the way her voice curled around them, Claire found herself believing them, which was dangerous.
“And the bet?” she asked. “Did you really try to get close to me to annoy Astrid?”
Delilah watched her, and Claire held her breath.
“Yes,” Delilah said after a second. “It was a shitty thing to do, and I won’t make excuses for it. But I swear to you, Claire, after we kissed that first time at Blue Lily, it was only about you. About us. Probably even before that. You were so beautiful and sweet, but I was never very good with beautiful and sweet. I didn’t know how to . . . I don’t know. Accept it. Treat it well.”
Claire’s eyes filled, and she shook her head. She appreciated the honesty, but it still stung that this whole thing had started out as a game to Delilah.
But it hadn’t ended that way, had it? It hadn’t even progressed that way. Claire knew that was also true, because she felt it, because Delilah was sitting in her bookstore. She’d come back. She’d come back for Claire.
Delilah got up, photo frame still in her hands, and rounded the coffee table until she was right in front of Claire. She sat on the table, their knees barely touching, and leaned into Claire’s space, just a little. Just enough that Claire leaned too, her body instinctively wanting to be closer.
When she was settled, Delilah flipped the frame around so Claire could see the image. It was in full color, a selfie of two women lying on their backs in a bed, dark hair a mess against the white and lavender linens, smiles on their faces, cheeks pressed to cheeks.
Claire and Delilah.
Delilah and Claire.
Claire remembered this photo, that last time they spent in bed before everything went pear-shaped, after their roller skating date and Delilah had spent the night. The next morning, they’d made love and then slipped on tank tops and underwear and eaten bagels in bed. Afterward, Delilah had grabbed her phone and taken photo after photo of the two of them, tickling Claire to get her to laugh, kissing her senseless to get her to be serious.
It was the perfect morning. The perfect way to wake up. The perfect everything.
“This is what I want,” Delilah said. “My whole life, this is what I’ve wanted. A best friend. Someone who gets me, who accepts me. Someone who fights like hell to get me to see that they love me. Someone who lets me love them back. Someone who’s so goddamn beautiful, she makes my toes curl. Someone who calls me on my bullshit. Someone who makes me laugh. Someone who makes me look at her like this and looks at me the same way. Someone who . . . who’s my home.”
Tears spilled freely and silently down Claire’s cheeks. “But . . . New York. Your art. You—”
“I can take photos anywhere. I can take trips when I need to. You can come with me. We’ll figure it out.”
“You hate Bright Falls.”
Delilah’s shoulders fell a bit, but she shook her head. “I hated who I was here. How I felt here. But you changed all that. Ruby changed all that. Iris. Hell, even Astrid changed all that.”
Claire frowned. “Astrid? Have you . . . have you talked to her?”
Delilah’s smile was small, a little sad. “She came to New York. To the Whitney.”
“She did?”
Delilah nodded. “And we talked. A lot. She stayed a couple days—not with me, hell no—and we had dinner and worked through a lot. We’ve still got a long way to go, but it’s a start. It’s what I want. She helped me get these photos shipped out so they’d arrive yesterday, and we actually flew back together last night. She let me into the store at the crack of dawn this morning.”
Claire knew that Astrid hadn’t been around for the past few days, but she always responded to Claire’s and Iris’s texts that she was fine, giving nothing away as to where she was or what she was doing.
Claire took the photo from Delilah’s hands. In the image, she was so happy. God, she was happy. She was . . . she was in love. She could admit it now. More than she’d ever been in love with anyone in her whole life. But . . .
“I’m a lot, Delilah,” she said softly, looking down at the photo. “I’ve got a kid, an ex who will always, always be in my life. I can’t just fly off to New York at a moment’s notice, and you’re used to this wild kind of life. I’m a small-town girl. I always will be. Josh built a house—”
“I know. Astrid told me.”
“Then you know I’m here to stay. Ruby comes first. Always, and I can’t—”
“I’m not asking you to put her second. I would never do that.” Delilah took the frame from Claire’s hands and set it on the table. Then she twined their fingers together and pressed her forehead to Claire’s. “I’m putting you first, Claire. In case you couldn’t tell, that’s what’s happening here.”
Claire laughed, more tears spilling over. “Really?”
“Really. I want to try this. I adore Ruby, you know I do. And I’ll follow your lead for how you want to handle us when it comes to her. I’ll do whatever you want. Astrid’s already looking into a place for me to rent in downtown and—”
“But your art.” Claire leaned back so she could see Delilah clearly. “You need to be in New York. If you get an agent, you—”
“I’ve got an agent.” Delilah smiled. “Her name is Julia Vasquez and she’s a goddamn shark and I’ve already told her I’ll be spending a lot of time in a little Oregon town for the foreseeable future.”
Claire squeezed Delilah’s hands. “That’s so amazing. I knew you could do it. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, yes, it’s all amazing, but did you hear the part where I said I’d be spending a lot of time here? Apartment? You? Me? A life?”
Claire grinned. This was happening. Delilah had left, but she’d come back.
For her.
For good.
Claire had no idea how it would work, if it would work. All she knew was that she wanted this. She wanted Delilah Green. And for once, goddammit, she was going to let herself have exactly what she wanted.
“Claire?” Delilah tilted her head to meet Claire’s eyes.
“Can we stop talking now?”
Delilah frowned. “Um, I guess, but are you—”
Claire didn’t let her finish. She closed the space between them and pressed her mouth to Delilah’s, framing the other woman’s face like it was a precious work of art. God, she’d missed her. And from the way Delilah gasped a little, then slid her hands to Claire’s hips and pulled her to the edge of her chair, both of their thighs parting to fit together like puzzle pieces, Delilah felt the same.
“Is that a yes?” Delilah asked between kisses.
Claire pulled back. “To which part?”
“All of it. You. Me. Us.”
“It’s a yes,” Claire whispered against her mouth. “Yes to all of it.”
