“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.”
“Thank you, darling,” Claire said.
“Surely, you’ve looked in a mirror,” Iris said, cupping Claire’s chin and peering into her face.
“I just didn’t sleep much last night,” Claire said. She met Delilah’s eyes over Iris’s shoulder, and her stomach fluttered.
“Why not?” Iris asked.
“Just . . . stuff with Ruby. She spent the night at Tess’s but then came home in the middle of the night. They had a fight.”
There. That wasn’t a lie. She wasn’t lying to her friends about having the best sex of her life—several times—all night long. She was simply . . . keeping it for herself.
Which, Claire realized, she would do even if Delilah wasn’t who she was. This thing with Delilah was new, temporary, but intense. And Claire was a grown woman. She was allowed to hold things close, keep them to herself until she figured out how to handle them.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Iris said. “She okay?”
Claire sighed. She’d tried to talk to Ruby this morning about Tess, but her daughter had refused to go into it. Looking at her now, up in Josh’s truck bed and helping him arrange the camping gear, she looked happier than Claire had seen her in a while.
“I think so, yeah,” she said.
“Okay, good, because we need to focus,” Iris said, waving Delilah over. “I picked up Cranky Pants this morning—”
“Cranky Pants?” Delilah said when she reached them. “What am I, five?”
“—and it’s imperative that we share a tent with Astrid.”
“That you two share a tent with Astrid,” Delilah said, circling her finger at them. “I’m sleeping in that hammock I just saw old what’s his name throw in his truck.”
Claire lifted her brow. Old what’s his name?
Delilah lifted a brow right back, and Claire had to fight a smile.
“Look,” Iris said. “It’s go time, all right? We’re a week from doomsday, and we have to—”
Iris cut herself off when a car that most certainly wasn’t Astrid’s pulled up along Claire’s curb. It was silver and sleek, its Mercedes emblem shining under the morning sun. Astrid stepped out of the passenger side, a Louis Vuitton weekender bag on her elbow, and walked around to the driver’s door.
“Please tell me that is the fanciest fucking Lyft in the history of all Lyfts,” Iris said.
The driver’s door opened, and Spencer stepped out, aviator sunglasses like mirrors over his eyes.
“Maybe he’s just dropping her off,” Claire said, but her palms had started to sweat.
Astrid hooked her arm through his, smiling as they walked up the drive, an expensive-looking leather duffel bag dangling from Spencer’s hand.
“Or maybe,” Delilah said, slinging an arm around Iris’s shoulder, “Astrid just really, really doesn’t want to share a tent with you two.”
* * *
BAGBY HOT SPRINGS was located deep within Mount Hood National Forest. Claire surveyed the spot Josh had reserved for camping, which was pretty perfect, she had to admit. The forest floor was wide and flat for the tents, evergreens and pines rising high above them and hemming them in, creating a shaded area that was cool and quiet. The springs and the bathhouse, which boasted newly renovated wooden tubs for soaking, were just a short hike away, about a quarter of a mile, and there were plenty of trails to explore during the day.