“Sure.”
Claire paused at the door. “Um . . . stay in here, okay? I’ll get Ruby to bed fast. She’s probably exhausted. Just . . .” She trailed off, her eyes uncertain as she bit her lip.
Delilah understood what she was saying. Please don’t let my eleven-year-old know we’re sharing a bed. Delilah got it, but still, her chest sort of tightened up, and she suddenly very much wished she was wearing clothes.
“I should probably just go,” she said. She rarely stayed overnight after sex anyway. Why should this time be any different? Still, she couldn’t seem to move her ass off the mattress.
“No, don’t,” Claire said. “Just give me ten minutes, okay?”
Delilah nodded and then Claire was gone. Delilah heard the front door open and close, and she exhaled into the empty room. She really should go. She’d had sex with Claire, scratched the itch, and now she was done. Satisfied. And she’d definitely proven Astrid completely fucking wrong with her whole Claire would never go for you proclamation.
Yeah, this was over. Claire didn’t want her here with Ruby in the house anyway. Delilah shoved the covers back, located her bra and underwear, her jeans, but her shirt was nowhere to be found, because it was still in the middle of the kitchen floor.
“Shit.”
She went to the door, but before she could open it to try and sneak out, reclaim her clothing, and possibly bolt out the back door like a teenage boy running from a dad with a shotgun, she heard the front door open and shut again, Claire’s and Ruby’s voices mingling as they neared the hall.
“I . . . just . . . she’s . . . so . . . mean . . .”
Ruby was crying, words falling out in stuttering breaths.
“Honey, shh. Let’s just go to sleep, okay?” Claire said. “We can talk tomorrow and figure it all out. I promise.”
“Can . . . can I sleep with you?” Ruby asked.
Delilah stiffened. She looked around the room, wondering if she needed to dive into the closet or jump out the window.
This was ridiculous.
She was two seconds from crawling under the bed when Claire spoke.
“Oh, honey, I think you’ll sleep better in your own bed. But remember, we’re going camping tomorrow, and you can share your tent with whoever you want, okay?”
Ruby said something in response, but Delilah couldn’t hear the words as their voices faded down the hall. She slumped back onto the mattress, her head in her hands. Had she seriously been about to hide under the bed?
Yes. Yes, she absolutely had been.
The door opened and Claire slipped inside. “Hey.”
Delilah sighed. “Hey.”
“Sorry. She’s in bed now. Do you—”
“I should go.”
Claire froze, her mouth open. She stepped closer to Delilah, twisting her fingers together. “Yeah, I guess you probably should.”
Except neither of them moved, and Delilah didn’t know what to say. Sex had never made things so . . . awkward before. And she sure as hell had never been a secret. Attached women occasionally came on to her in bars, one too many glasses of Chablis running through their veins, but Delilah had a strict policy that she never slept with anyone else’s monogamous partner. She knew what it was like to be on the other end of that raw deal, and no orgasm was worth inflicting that kind of pain.
That overwhelming feeling of not being enough.
She rubbed her forehead, that same feeling—from all her years in Wisteria House and again from Jax—creeping up on her now. How the fuck had this happened?
“You can stay for a few more hours if you want,” Claire said. “Get some sleep.”
“But be gone by first light, right?” Delilah looked up at her, a bitter smile on her mouth.
“Delilah. That’s not fair.”
“No, I guess it’s not.”
“I’m careful about who I bring around Ruby, that’s all. The last person I dated, she never even met Ruby. Not once. And I dated her for over a month.”
“But I’m already around her.”
“Not like this.” Claire motioned to Delilah’s topless state, the bed in disarray. “Not like someone who means—” She cut herself off and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her voice was quiet, low. “Again, why do you care? This is just sex, isn’t it?”
Delilah frowned at her. She’d never told Claire it was just sex. She’d never hinted that she was only looking for a hookup, even though she absolutely was. It couldn’t be more than that. They lived three thousand miles away from each other, she had the Whitney and her art, and hell if Delilah was ever going to put herself in the position again to be heartbroken by a woman who wasn’t over her ex. She didn’t know what Josh meant to Claire, but he had to mean something. He was the father of her kid. He was hot. And he’d always be in her life.
“Yeah,” Delilah said, standing and starting for the door. “It is.”
Claire blocked her path. “Okay, then what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Something is. I can tell.”
“You can’t tell shit, Claire. You don’t know anything about me. You want to stuff me in a closet—”
“A closet? What?”
“—and oh, I assume I’ve got to keep all this sex a secret from Astrid, right? Wouldn’t want to upset Princess Perfect. Now, if you’d kindly move, I need to get my shirt and go back to my floral hell of a hotel room.”
Claire didn’t budge. In fact, she seemed to dig in, brow furrowing as she reached out and grabbed Delilah’s arms.
“Hey. Stop for a second, okay? Just slow down.”
Delilah chewed on her bottom lip, but she stopped. Her chest was tight, and pressure built behind her eyes, like they needed to release something. God, she hadn’t felt like this in so long, like she was shrinking, like everyone around her was more important than she was. She was just tired. Exhausted and tired and, okay, maybe a little overwhelmed by the fact that she may have just had the greatest sex of her life. One didn’t just walk away from the greatest sex of one’s life.
“I don’t want you to go,” Claire said. “Okay?”
“Why not?”
Claire’s eyes searched hers. She searched back.
“Because I need this,” Claire finally said, sliding her hands down Delilah’s arms to tangle with her fingers. “And it was . . . fun.”