Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Harper

I was staring quietly at the picture—something I kept telling myself I had to stop doing—when Solomon caught me, leaning in the office door behind me and knocking on where the door stood open, most of the office empty around us by now. I turned back to him with a vague sheepish smile, setting the picture down.

“Hey. Sorry. Something up?”

“The graphics report—deadline on that’s been pushed back. Client’s in the Bahamas.”

“What, just like that?”

“Apparently someone invited him and he went the next day. Probably bribing him with a ticket. Frankly, I’d take the bribe and be gone the next day too. Anyway, pushed back to the first. Just letting you know so you don’t spend all weekend trying to get it done.”

I still would… I couldn’t let my mind wander for an instant these days. I was hoping it would numb this time faster than it had when I’d first moved to New York, but… somehow this time was worse.

“Thanks,” I said. “Will do.”

He glanced down at the picture. “Family?”

“Ah…” I looked back at the picture—the one that I decided to torture myself with every day by keeping on my desk. The overlook in front of the Rove estate, with Paisley sitting on the grassy bank, one knee pulled up into her chest, looking out at the horizon with that twinkling joy in her eyes that had inspired me to snap a subtle picture. The sunset haloing off her hair…

I must have looked too wistful, because Solomon faltered. “Er… special somebody?”

I’d never even mentioned I was bisexual. Was it that obvious just from how I looked at it? “She, er… she was.”

He gave me a look of sympathy. I hated it—the last thing I needed right now. “I’m sorry.”

He thought she was dead. I was the one who was dead, but I didn’t want to correct him. “Don’t worry about it. Some things are just… you experience it once and that’s all you can get.”

He softened. “She’s very beautiful. I can tell she meant a lot to you.”

“Mm.” I let my gaze drift back to the picture, feeling like my chest was tearing like paper. “Absolute slob. No sense of boundaries. Loved her, though. Well… still do.” I sighed, shutting my laptop and standing up. “Heading out, Sol?”

“Yeah…” The change of tone threw him, but he adjusted. Guy had a good sense for when I didn’t want to talk about something. “Couple of buddies and I are going to a kitschy new club on 55th Street. Wanna come? Kind of a boys’ club, though, I’ll warn you.”

“Nah. You have your guys’ night. I’ll see you on Monday, Sol.”

“Have a good weekend, Harper.” He turned, his footsteps clicking down the hallway, and I let my gaze go back to the picture, Paisley’s hazel eyes radiant in the sunset.

Why the hell did I keep this thing here, anyway?

I picked it up, and—even though I felt like maybe I should drop it in the trash and let the cleaners take care of getting rid of it, I knew I wouldn’t be able to. I tucked the picture into my bag, my laptop along with it, and I headed out of the room, shutting the door behind me.

Shouldn’t have told Solomon. People didn’t need to know things about me. Maybe now he’d think I was a lesbian and he’d move on from his interest in me, so I guess it wasn’t all bad—anything to make people attach to me less.

How the hell was it so hard? It should have been an easy ask. But I just… some essential part of me reached out. Wanted to be loved. Wanted to love.

I’d been trying to kill that part of me for a decade now. Maybe I didn’t know how. Maybe I just wanted to run home—back to Bayview—back to Paisley.

As if she’d take me back after I broke her heart again, anyway.

Footsteps came quickly behind me as I hit the elevator button, and I glanced back to where Susanna Holcomb came down the hall just in time to catch the elevator, opening in front of us. She smiled at me, looking exhausted.

“Hey, Harper,” she said. “Stayed late?”

Mostly just staring at Paisley’s picture. “Julian in legal was getting antsy. Spent a while chatting with him and letting him know he wasn’t going to lose his head in the new deal.”

She was quiet for a second, settling into the elevator with me and waiting as the doors shut. Once we started moving down towards the lobby, she said, “Harper, where are your sights set?”

“Pardon?”

“That’s not in your job description. You’re taking on a lot of upper executive functions when you haven’t even been here a year.”

I shifted. “Is this an official reprimand?”

“You’re filling two positions at once. I’m not complaining. I’m just wondering… people don’t do that without some bigger career aspirations. So? What are you getting at?”

“Er…” How was I even supposed to say it? I’m looking for a distraction so I don’t die of heartache over a girl? “Don’t know,” I said, finally.

“You can be honest with me.”

“I am. I want to climb higher, but I don’t know concretely. I’m just trying to do everything I can, be everything I can.”

She gave me a cautious smile. “Just don’t burn yourself out, Harper. Even high achievers need a vacation.”

We reached the lobby, and Susanna took a left, heading for the garage with a hand raised my way.

“Have a good weekend. See you on Monday.”

“Have a good weekend…” I said it even though it came out as such a hollow ghost of a whisper that she couldn’t have heard it anyway, and I turned for the door, walking in a trance.

It was cold out, and I hadn’t worn enough layers. I hugged myself tightly against the bitter wind, and I took the subway back to my street, unlocking a door and heading up a cramped stairwell and up to my apartment on the third floor, wedging my key in the lock and throwing the door open.

I dropped my bag, shed my coat, and I took off the tie, hanging it up by the door, and I undid my shirt enough to pull the necklace out—the old thing I had no damn reason to be wearing—but I paused before I pulled it off, just feeling it between my fingers.

I really… regretted… leaving.

I crashed backwards onto the bed—I had a studio unit, even though I could comfortably afford a one-bed, just because why would I need more? I had everything I needed. Everything but her.

I lay in bed, staring at the small square of window over the kitchenette, my view looking out at the opposite building and the cramped alleyway below, and I rolled the beads of the necklace between my fingers. Just feeling them. Knowing she had run her fingers over this same necklace.

I swallowed, hard. I couldn’t do this. I knew what I needed to do, but there were times where the temptation was just too much, and I just… just let myself have it. Just a bit. And I let myself do what I was never supposed to do—imagine what it would have been like if I’d stayed. Let myself imagine being with Paisley.

Hell, I didn’t need to imagine. We’d been together for those weeks before I moved to New York, and I couldn’t believe how easy it was to date Paisley. How right it felt to be her girlfriend, even if we never could.

I couldn’t do this.

I rolled over and picked up my phone, dropping the necklace beads and focusing on emails. I didn’t like to respond to emails outside office hours, because then I’d run out of things to do during office hours, but… desperate times, and all that. I scanned through, shooting off a series of quick replies, and when one of them asked about a graphic they’d been promised that I think there’d been a schedule miscommunication about, I rolled out of bed and up to my laptop, putting something together myself. Got rid of a good two and a half hours cross-referencing everything, pulling up all the information we needed, successfully burning through the painful evening quiet.

Except when I glanced at my inbox again, I felt like the floor dropped out when I saw an email from the last person I needed right now.

Paisley M. It felt like a knife in my gut.

Information Request.

What kind of a subject header was that? Like she was working with a client? I hovered over the delete button, but I hesitated there—frozen for seconds ticking by like hours, heart pounding, my throat tight—before I opened the email instead.

Good evening,

Sorry to email you this late on a Friday, but I’ve heard from sources that you’re reliable even at this late hour.

I’m contacting you to ask a question I couldn’t find anywhere on your website. I picked a name completely at random from your website’s staff form.

I appreciate you taking the time to read and respond to me. Have a great evening.

Sincerely,

Paisley Macleod

I swallowed, pinching the bridge of my nose and forcing myself to take in a long breath. She even had terrible email etiquette. Who prompted like that without even saying the question?

Picked a name completely at random.Wasn’t she cute. I guess I hadn’t thought through scrubbing myself from everyone’s lives—hadn’t thought about the fact that Paisley knew my new employer. And that I’d told her I was corporate, so she knew she could find my email address on the website.

Dammit.

I deleted the email.

I hit it with a single tap, striking hard on the touchpad, and I watched it disappear with a cold sensation churning in my gut. Just… my inbox, staring back at me.

Work. My life. Forever.

God dammit.

I pushed my chair back, picked up my phone, and I texted her. I still remembered her number by heart, and I had a foreign sensation in my throat as I typed her number in.

You need to at least include the question in the email,I sent. My heart pounded like I was running, even though I tried to be casual—leaning against the back of the chair, one leg kicked up on the coffee table, looking out the window. Tried to be nonchalant, but I watched with every second ticking by like I had a time bomb in my hand.

And I almost dropped the phone when a text came through.

if you’re going to text me, you might as well call me. I know I’m irresistible.

Why was she irresistible? Nobody else had ever felt like this before—all the people who had hurt to leave behind, it had always healed in the end. So why this? Why her?

Guess she’d already told me. Sometimes love just didn’t make sense.

I called her. It connected faster than I was ready for.

“Hello, this is Paisley Macleod speaking,” she said. “Thank you for agreeing to engage with this matter despite the late hour.”

God, even when she was being like this, her voice made my chest ache—felt like I was home again, wrapped up where it was safe. And I felt like a damn fool for ever having left.

“Paisley… come on,” I said, trying to will my voice not to shake. Absently, I fingered the necklace, feeling the cool touch on my fingertips. “Fine. I’ll play. Not an issue—I was handling some other correspondence anyway. What can I help you with, Miss Macleod?”

“I was wondering,” she said. “Maybe this isn’t the right place to ask, but I hope you can point me where I need to go if need be.”

“Mm. Should be.”

“Could you tell me… does this hurt you as much as it hurts me?”

My throat tightened so much I could barely breathe. My vision swam, and I had to swallow twice to get it down. “It’s…” My voice came out dry, scratchy on my throat. “It’s definitely the right place to ask. I happen to be the one in charge of that.”

“Oh, perfect. Talk about lucky.”

I rolled my chair up next to the window, looking out at the sliver of sky I could see between my building and the next. “Leaning… leaning towards yes,” I said, my voice low. “Yes, it hurts. A lot.”

She was quiet for a long time, just the chatter in the background over the line. I wasn’t sure where she was—a party or something. Maybe one of Emberlynn’s impromptu get-togethers. I missed being at them—fighting with Paisley over the beers I brought, laughing at something Annabel did until I was bent double at the waist, gushing over Emberlynn’s cooking and pretending to change my mind about how much I liked it when Paisley piped in about how much she helped.

“I have another question,” she said. “A follow-up question, I guess.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Do you still wear that necklace?”

I looked down at it, clenching it in my hand. “Sometimes,” I said.

“Do you still have that picture?”

I glanced back at the bag, my chest tight now. “I… guess so.”

“Am I in the picture?”

I paused. “I think… it’s safe to say yes.”

“Another question,” she said.

“Mm-hm?”

“Do you want to see me again?”

I clutched the phone tighter, feeling the edges of it dig into my hand. “Paisley…”

“I got coffee. And I ordered your favorite, too.”

I paused. “I… believe it would get cold before I could get there anyway.”

She laughed. “Is it that far out of the way? Given the punch cards I saw in your wallet when you visited Bayview, there’s no way you’re walking hours to get here.”

It took too long to settle in. I blinked fast, staring at the window, and I found myself standing up, my heart racing. “You’re here,” I said, voice tight.

“It’s a loud city. Even at night. How do you sleep here?”

“Paisley—when did you—”

“I told the barista I’m waiting for you and asked if you have a regular, so you have a soy cappuccino with your name on it here.”

“Oh my god. Why are you—”

“Why?” She laughed. “Why do you think?”

I fumbled the phone, my heart hammering, and I hung up the call. I stood there at the window just staring for what might have been forever before I bolted—I wasn’t sure what it was, but something came over me, and I hurried for the door so quickly I almost tripped, catching myself on the closet door and holding it as I stepped into my shoes, pulled on the warmest coat I had, and I barely paused to grab my keys before I was out the door. I took the stairs down two at a time and rounded into the street, nearly taking out an old man who was walking past, and I gushed apologies as I raced around him and tore down the street, my whole body burning.

The front door of my regular café—of course she saw the damn punch cards—I flung it open, stumbling over the step at the entrance, and Joyce behind the counter smiled warmly at me, nodding to the corner. I followed her gaze, over to where—a surreal image, not sure if I was dreaming, Paisley Macleod sat at the corner table, by the window.

She smiled at me. She was so… so beautiful when she smiled. I wished I could have just…

Maybe I could.

I moved in a trance, walking over to her table, and I sat down across from her—she was dressed casually now, wearing her glasses again, her hair a little messy, but she was wearing her yellow coat. Her favorite.

“Paisley,” I said, simply. Maybe that was all that could be said.

She smiled. “I’m not gonna lie, I was hoping for better coffee from your favorite place.”

“Did you get the drip coffee?”

“Yeah. It tastes like burned rubber.”

“Yeah, the place sucks at drip coffee. I come here for espresso.”

She made a face. “Well, now she tells me.”

“Paisley… why are you here?”

She tucked her hair back behind her ear, looking up shyly at me. “I wanted to ask you another question.”

God, I already knew what the question was. And I… I didn’t know how to answer it. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to go back, to turn it all back and be happy where I was—but I knew I couldn’t, and it was…

“You could have included all these questions in the email,” I said. She laughed.

“Some things are more impactful in person. And I wanted to make sure if you tried to run away, then I could tackle you to the ground.”

I swallowed. “I’m not running,” I said. “Go ahead. Ask your question.”

She gave me an odd kind of smile, her head cocked a little, and she said, “You’re… you aren’t Harper, are you?”

I’d just picked up the paper cup for my cappuccino, and it slipped out of my hand, thumping back down on the table’s surface. A cold sensation swept through me, and I struggled to breathe as something pounded in my head. “I… what?”

“You’re Lindsay.”

“No… I… what?” I pushed my chair backwards, my throat tight, everything swimming around me. Paisley reached across the table, and she took my hand.

“Lindsay was too young to be driving. You left it to your older sister, Harper, to look after herself. And when she died…”

“No,” I said, my voice hoarse. I couldn’t see straight anymore. I thought I might fall down, might pass out.

“You thought it should have been you. So… you made it so. And your mother was already forgetting Lindsay existed, so when Lindsay didn’t exist anymore… who was going to notice?”

I stood up, my heart pounding so hard I thought I’d throw up. “I… Paisley, I can’t… I’m sorry,” I blurted. I didn’t know what I was saying. I barely heard myself. I turned, and I—I just—I left. I ran away.

I pushed out the door, stumbling over pavement in a confused, dizzy rush, and I wasn’t sure where I was or what was going on until I was in the park, quiet here in the dark, standing at a stone railing looking out on the nighttime skyline, leaning on the railing and breathing hard.

The wind murmured in the tree branches. The sounds of the city from all around were distant enough through the trees that it was like a far-off sigh, letting go of everything.

A tap came from next to me as Paisley set down my cappuccino on the wall, leaning against it next to me, cast in the warm glow of the streetlamp, but she didn’t say anything—just looking out at the skyline. My heart pounded, a surreal feeling like I didn’t belong in my body.

Of course, to be fair, I didn’t belong in it. I hadn’t for a long time.

“Why are you following me?” I whispered, clenching my hands on the railing, feeling the coarse stone grinding against my knuckles.

“Because I want you to know I love you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. She slipped closer, putting a hand on my lower back.

“As Lindsay,” she said, and it dug into me like a hot knife—I whirled on her, taking a step back, bumping into the wall. I had to swallow hard trying to get the lump down.

“I’m not—that’s not my name,” I said, my voice shaking so hard it was barely words.

She smiled, softly, sweetly. I just… I… crumbled. I collapsed against the railing, sinking onto the rough stone floor, and I hugged my knees into my chest, looking ahead at where the grass swayed in the wind. Paisley sat next to me, cupping her coffee in both hands, sipping delicately at it.

It was a long time before she spoke. “Told me yourself, you’d reinvented yourself too. That you were a gloomy kid. Funny now looking back.”

I swallowed. I felt… so… small. Fourteen years old again. Fourteen years old and alone, forgotten, sitting in a dirty bedroom playing with Harper’s toys.

“Nobody’s… called me that name… in a long time,” I breathed.

“Get the feeling nobody said your name much before then, either.” She handed me my cappuccino, which was so… so… sweet of her. She brought it all this way. I cupped it in both hands.

“Harper did,” I whispered. She smiled, sweetly, my way—sweet in all the ways I didn’t deserve.

“What was she like?”

I breathed out, slow, shaky. I was… so glad it was Paisley who found out. Nobody else in the world would make it feel okay. “Better. Than me. It should have been me…” I shook my head. “I’d always wanted to disappear anyway. Always thought it wouldn’t change anything if I… did. Harper wasn’t. She was so… so alive. Had dreams. She wanted to be a baker. Run her own shop. Wanted to live in New York.”

She looked down at her coffee. “So it didn’t matter if they didn’t make you happy. They were Harper’s dreams, so… so becoming Harper meant making her dreams come true.”

“It was just…” My voice was a thin stream through the tears, hot against my face. “I just… wanted to make it okay… wanted to make it up to her. I’d never lived for anything before… I figured what did it matter? I didn’t have any dreams to give up for—to make hers come true instead.”

“And you did,” she said, putting a hand on my arm. “Every one of them, from the sounds of things.”

“But I…” I rested an arm on my knees, burying my face in it and crying, softly, but so much—so much and I couldn’t make it stop. “But it didn’t… do anything. Nothing’s changed. She’s still… gone. And it’s my fault. It’s my fault she’s—”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “Lindsay,” she said, softly, and it was like an electric shock down my spine. I turned back to her, breathless, wide-eyed, jolted out of the tears, and she smiled softly. “Hey. Lindsay. You were a superhero. Two kids being scrappy fighting in a system they shouldn’t have to be in, and you helped save her so many times already. But even a superhero makes mistakes too sometimes. You were… you were fourteen, Lindsay.”

I didn’t know if I… dared to believe it. It felt too tempting, too easy, too good—this idea that maybe I was forgivable, that we could wipe the past clean. I didn’t think I was allowed to believe it, but I wanted to… so, so badly. I looked back down at my coffee, holding it tight in both hands. “Why was it her, Paisley?”

She mulled it over, looking down at the ground. At length, she spoke quietly. “I guess because… life is small, delicate, fragile. Ready to vanish at any second. Even the ones who shine brightest might have flickered out the next time you see them. And I think that little… fragile… fleeting bit of life we all have is too beautiful to let it go to waste by not really living in the first place.”

“But it’s like I… like I stole her life for myself,” I said, my voice hot in my throat. “And I just wish… I could see her just one more time.”

She squeezed my shoulder. “I think maybe the people who leave us are always around us. I know… if something happened to you, I’d still see you in every leaf, in every sunrise, in every little thing in this world. If Harper is right here in the wind, what do you think you’d say to her?”

It flooded me like someone had opened the gates and it all poured in at once—a torrent of grief that washed over me until I was swept away, carried back to when I’d been supposed to grieve in the first place. When I’d cut my hair short shakily with kitchen shears in the bathroom mirror, matching Harper’s. When I went to her school wearing my hood up hoping nobody noticed the difference, and struggled, swamped in lectures beyond my level, and teachers pulled me aside to tell me how I’d been such a bright student and now this.

When I got the night-shift job at a bakery that Harper had been thinking about applying for. When I used the money to get the tattoos Harper had wanted once she was older and had more money.

When I’d looked at myself in the mirror and struggled to remember what my name had been.

It wasn’t fair. To anyone. We didn’t both need to die.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, voice thick with tears. “I’m so sorry I didn’t help… I’m so sorry nobody helped. I wish you were still here. I wish… I wish you could see the… the life we have now. I think…” I sniffled, choking on words, and I wiped the tears off my cheek before I pushed out the words. “I think you’d like it… a lot.”

And I think you’d like Paisley.

I wanted—so, so badly—for her to meet Paisley. They’d probably have gotten along. Harper would have given me a hard time—she’d always been really into boys, so the idea of dating a woman was probably so foreign to her, she’d laugh and ask me if boys were all that bad—but she’d have pulled me aside later to tell me how much fun Paisley was and that she wouldn’t forgive me if I fumbled it.

Paisley touched a hand lightly to my shoulder. “I’m sure she’s proud of you,” she breathed. I choked, forcing myself to breathe in deeper.

She… she would be. It had always been us against the world, the two of us making it work. Argued all the time, but we had each other’s backs. I was so damn jealous of her all the time, and so often I wanted to never see her again, but I wanted her to succeed. To be happy.

And she’d have wanted the same for me. To just find what made me happy and get it.

“Do you…” I started, struggling to keep away from the thick, hot stream of tears again. “Do you think she’d forgive me?”

She smiled softly. “I think you’ll have to tell me.”

I looked back at where the wind brushed the grass, sweeping gently through the branches. So… soft. Untethered. Free.

She’d have whacked me over the head and told me to stop moping. And to quit it with the identity theft.

I think that was how she would say there’s nothing to forgive, it wasn’t your fault.

I laughed, wiping at my eyes. “You know, I, uh,” I started, pausing for a sip of coffee. Somehow, it wasn’t too cold. “I think she’d have liked you, actually.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. She liked causing trouble. She would absolutely have helped you breed lizards.”

She laughed, leaning back against the stone wall, holding her coffee up to her nose. “Emberlynn would have gotten a kick out of me having accomplices.”

“I bet she’d have fit into Bayview well…”

She smiled softly at me. “But I’m glad you survived, Lindsay. Against all odds. And made it to Bayview.”

I thought—for the first time, honestly—and I said it out loud, too, “I am too.”

“Hey… now that you’ve achieved all these dreams for her sake. What kind of dreams do you think you have?”

“Er…” I shifted. “I think I’ve been over that Lindsay… um… I… don’t really have—”

“Didn’t really have. You’ve lived ten years since then. I’m sure you’ve found something.”

“Ah, well…” I scratched my head. It was an odd sensation settling in now that the tears were drying—a lightness I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced. Like I was the wind now. “Not sure.”

“Do you like baking enough you want to keep doing it?”

It would have been so easy to say yes. But something else inside me spoke. “I bet it’d be fun to write a book.”

“What, really?” She whipped her head over to look at me. “With a purple-haired mind-reading protagonist?”

“Yeah, maybe,” I laughed. “I loved reading… didn’t let myself do it after it happened. Harper didn’t like books in the same way, so… I had to be Harper. But I think now I’d like… I’d like to be Lindsay again.”

She gave me a wild-eyed smile. “Um… hey, H—er. Lindsay.”

I could… kind of… get used to her calling me that. I felt bare, exposed, but not in a bad way… a wall I’d had so long I’d forgotten it was there come down and suddenly I could just be a person again. “Yeah?”

“I know it’s a bit out of left field, but I’ve got a bookstore you could take over.”

I blinked fast.

“I mean, let’s be honest. I’m not the bookstore type. I haven’t read a novel in over a year. And I kind of like the bakery. Gives me an excuse to be nosy in everyone’s lives.”

“You’re… asking me to move back to Bayview.”

“If we’re being direct? Yes. Come home. And be my girlfriend. I love you. And I want to be Lindsay and Paisley everywhere we go.”

It felt like a lurch, the sheer reality of it—of how badly I wanted nothing in this world like I wanted that—how much everything I ever wanted and never even realized was possible just settled down in front of me, in the form of this girl who just… never made sense in anything she did.

Of course it was her. Who else but the woman who climbed trees to get on my roof instead of using the damn door?

“Is it really okay…?” My voice came out a tiny whisper, trembling. Paisley smiled wider, and she caressed my cheek, her fingers warm, soft against my skin in the chill of the night.

“Have I been subtle at any one point in this process? I love you, Lindsay.”

I choked on the feeling—those three little words and that name—and somehow it had me so delirious I just laughed. “You have your glasses on again.”

She touched them. “Oh. Yeah. What, are they a dealbreaker? Only into me with the contacts?”

“Nah. I’d forgotten how cute you look in these. I like you dressed up, too, though.”

She grinned. “You’d better. I contain multitudes, and you’re getting all of them if you sign up for me.”

Nothing in this world sounded better. “I love you, too.”

She crinkled her eyes in a smile, and she leaned in and pressed her lips to mine, and everything in this world was perfect.

Everything.

She parted, not far, and rested her forehead on mine. “Let’s go home.”

“I, uh… I mean, I should put in my two weeks’ at work.”

She made a face. “Ugh, I forgot you had that awful, evil job that stole you away to this place.”

“Mm. Well, I wasn’t planning a career change right now.”

“Hey, we’re still young. No better time for a new career than…” She made a face. “Wait a second. Does that mean you’re twenty-four?”

“Oh… I guess so.” I scratched my head. “Got used to faking my age.”

“Oh my god. You’re younger than me?”

“Oh. Yeah. Does that matter?”

She put her hands up. “Does it matter? Oh my god. You’re younger than me. I’m going to patronize the hell out of you.”

I blinked. “Like that’s new?”

She grinned, standing up. “C’mon. Your hot older girlfriend is getting tired of sitting on the ground.”

“Oh, I see now what this is going to be like…”

She offered me a hand. “If you’re not dropping your job and running back to Bayview right away, you might as well at least let me stay at your place.”

I took her hand, letting her help me up, and I arched my eyebrows at her. “Mooching off your younger girlfriend?”

She beamed. When she didn’t say anything, I put a hand on my hip.

“What? Regretting it when I say it like that?”

“I don’t regret a thing when you’re calling yourself my girlfriend.” She stepped in and caught me in a wild kiss so fast and intense I almost spilled my coffee, putting a hand up and fumbling against her for a second before I softened and let the kiss go on as long as we wanted, Paisley holding me as the wind rustled our hair and the branches all around us.

She pulled away with a twinkle in her eyes, slipping her hand into mine.

“C’mon, Linds. Let’s go home.”

I’d been Lindsay again for two seconds and she was already shortening it?

Ah, what the hell. I kinda liked it.