“And I want to have that with someone someday.”
She smiled. “I want that for you too.”
“And there’s the fact that you’re completely in love with someone else.”
Her smile dropped. “I’m sorry, what?”
He laughed. “Admit it.”
“I can’t admit to something I don’t understand.”
“Oh, please. Claire. You and Delilah. It’s obvious.”
“It absolutely is not. You saw us together, what? Once?”
“Once was enough. I know she’s got a complicated past in Bright Falls,” Josh went on, “but I’ve never seen anyone look at you like she did. Not even me. And you looked at her the same way.”
“And how was that?”
“Like you’d follow her to the moon.”
She chewed at her bottom lip and turned back to face the lake. She didn’t understand why everyone couldn’t let it go. Why everyone seemed to think the way Delilah merely looked at Claire meant she was madly in love. You couldn’t judge that from a look. You couldn’t judge anything from a look.
So why did she suddenly feel the need to cry long, shuddering sobs that would hopefully dislodge this ache in her heart? She shook her head, muttered fuck under her breath, because if any situation called for a good f-bomb, it was this one.
Josh nudged her with his shoulder. “What are you so afraid of?”
She laughed through her falling tears, wiping under her eyes. “Where do I start?”
He looked at her expectantly, and she realized he really wanted to hear her answer.
She sagged against him. “I’m scared of getting hurt. I’m scared of Ruby getting hurt. I’m scared I’ll give her—give anyone, I guess—everything I’ve got, and they’ll just end up leaving. I’m a lot, Josh. I’ve got a kid who’s about to be a teenager, for god’s sake. I’ve got you. I’ve got a business. And I’ve got . . . well, I guess I’ve got some major trust issues.”
He nodded. “And a lot of that is my fault.”
She didn’t say anything to that. They both knew it was true.
“And my dad’s,” she said. “And Nicole’s and, hell, I don’t know. Every broken heart I’ve ever heard a sad song about.”
He wrapped his arm around her, and she rested her head against his shoulder.
“Do you love her?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
He squeezed her a little closer. “Do you love her?”
She let the question settle between them for a while. The sun sank lower, turning the golden air to lavender to a deep violet. She knew the answer to Josh’s question, but it was a ridiculous answer. Impossible.
Josh sighed. “Your whole life, you’ve been putting people first, Claire. Your mom. Astrid and Iris. Me. Ruby. It’s okay to take something for yourself.”
His words sounded like wisdom, like truth. They sparked something inside her that felt a whole lot like hope, and in any other circumstance, Claire might’ve agreed. But she’d already tried. She’d tried to take something for herself when she’d asked the woman she maybe loved to stay, to figure things out together.
And Delilah Green had left anyway.
But even though it was impossible to have what she really wanted, she liked this—her and Josh standing out on the deck he built himself, her head on his shoulder while they talked about the possibility of love.
Chapter Thirty-One
DELILAH WAS SURE she was about to throw up.
The sun was setting, casting a golden glow over Gansevoort Street, and a breeze blew over her skin, finally giving the city some relief from this mind-numbing summer heat. She was dressed in her favorite black jumpsuit, her hair big and wild, curls defined to within an inch of their lives with all manner of gel and curl crème. Her makeup was spot-on, if she did say so herself. Smoky eyes and winged eyeliner, a dark red lip that made her feel powerful and sexy, like a creature of the night in some paranormal romance novel.
Except this wasn’t a romance. Because as she stared up at the Whitney, a towering gray building, all modern lines and glass, that she’d been inside of a million times before and twice since returning to New York nearly two weeks ago, her stomach churned like it regretted her last meal.
She swallowed, inhaled, then swallowed again, but nothing was making her feel calmer. Tonight, Queer Voices launched at the Whitney. She was ready. She’d been working her ass off since she got back to New York. She’d even gotten Michaela to cover her shifts at the River Café. After her fee for the Parker-Hale wedding dropped into her Apple Cash account two days after leaving Bright Falls—no email from Astrid about it, no text, just a chunk of change that was rightfully Delilah’s anyway—she’d pushed all worries of money and rent out of her head and gotten to work.
Ten pieces.
That’s how many photographs the Whitney wanted, and by the time she’d returned to New York, she’d had one week to prepare before the museum needed everything for framing. Those seven days had been a blur—barely eating, catching cat naps on her couch, constantly poring over her existing body of work for pieces that showed the world who Delilah Green was, niche and all. But she’d done it. She’d even worked on a new piece, a shot she’d taken in Bright Falls after the camping trip during those long couple of days before she’d taken Claire roller skating. She’d gone out to the falls, about ten miles outside of town, a woodsy area where Bright River pooled under a series of small white waterfalls that cascaded down from a rocky cliff. She’d brought her tripod and her camera, then proceeded to spend the entire day lost in hundreds of shots of the natural world, herself in a soaked white blouse the main subject.
“Wow,” Alex Tokuda had said as they’d stared at the photograph five days ago when Delilah had dropped everything off. Delilah had named the piece Found. She wasn’t sure why, but it’s the only thing that popped into her mind when she’d finished editing the shot she’d chosen.
“This is . . . powerful,” Alex said, tilting the large rectangle of photo paper this way and that. Their hair was short and dark, and they wore a maroon suit with a silk black blouse, chic as hell. “Painful, even.”
“Yeah” was all Delilah could think to say, but inside, she felt as though she was made of glitter, a feeling that only increased as Alex had continued to sift through her ten pieces, commenting simply but authentically.
Later that day, when she’d returned alone to her fifth-floor walk-up in Brooklyn, the space a mess of clothes and food wrappers, half-drunk glasses of wine abandoned on side tables for more nourishing gulps of water, she’d grabbed her phone and opened up to her texts with Claire.