Chapter Sixteen

When Wil put her hands against Katie's neck, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Katie in her entire life, and Katie's life was a case study in excitement.

She'd watched Wil Greene kiss a lot of people—watched carefully, watched rapturously, watched enviously. The kisses had turned her on or made her laugh or made her cry. She had learned what Wil did to make herself safe, to encourage the other person, to reassure them, and sometimes, every once in a while, to let them know she wanted them.

With her hands gently against the sides of their necks.

Katie didn't know why it surprised her so much that Wil wanted her, and wanted her so badly. She was surprised, though. Wil's hands had been shaking a little, but she'd been smiling at Katie with her indecent, terrible, ruthlessly hot mouth, and then surprise whooshed up through Katie's body and she thought, it's me, it's me, it's me. That's what she'd tried to give back to Wil in her first kisses—it's you, it's you, it's you—until everything started to fray at the edges and a pulse hit her down low so hard, she couldn't breathe.

Until she had one hand driven into Wil's hair and the other clamped onto the T-shirt at her waist and was pulling her in the direction of her bedroom, Wil's tongue rubbing against hers, both of them making noises that Katie marveled at because these were their voices, they sounded like themselves gasping and moaning, but also like an entirely new thing they were making together.

"This is my room." Katie pulled Wil to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress, kissing Wil's neck and her jaw before leaning over to find the switch for the lights beneath the floating shelves that gave the room a romantic glow.

In the light, she looked at Wil. Her kisses had swollen Wil's lip line into a gloriously pink mess without definition, and her hands had destroyed Wil's hair like they'd been to bed already.

God. How long had she wanted to see what she could do to Wil Greene? To have the attention of Wil's brain and her body and her racing heart?

How long could she have this? She'd already let it go once, before it had even started.

"There aren't any windows." Wil was looking around, her eyes flicking from the textured cream duvet to the array of shelves around the bed to the open doorway, but she had kept the same grip on Katie's hip that she'd managed as they'd gotten to the bed, and her voice was husky and impatient.

"They're up there."

Katie pointed until Wil's gaze found the ring of clerestory windows and the skylights set into the ceiling. "For privacy?"

Katie nodded and leaned close to Wil. It was so quiet in the house. In Green Bay, there had always been the Bronco's engine or the sounds of her parents' footsteps and activities above them. Here, she had Wil to herself, which had always been what she wanted. "And because sometimes I have to sleep at odd hours. There are motorized blackout blinds that can turn the room into a cave, and, like, this white noise machine so I can make it sound like I've been tossed up on a beach in the blackness, which is kind of amazing or extremely annoying, depending on my mood."

Katie wasn't tracking her own words. Wil's eyes on her face had gone dark blue and hot. The pulse between Katie's legs got so insistent, she was pretty sure she was seconds away from her clothes rending themselves from her body and fluttering to the floor, charred at the edges.

Wil's indulgent smile told Katie she had not failed to notice how fast Katie was talking or how many words she was making about nothing. "What's your mood right now?"

Wil sounded so calm. That was how she got, Katie knew, when things were overwhelming. She was going to be an alarming attorney.

"I feel… excited?" She showed Wil her trembling hands and laughed. "Maybe a little nervous? I haven't…" Katie looked away for a moment, trying to think how to capture the feeling in words.

It wasn't about how long it had been since she'd had sex. She'd already had sex with Wil in a way that very much counted to her, and hugging Wil in the Bronco counted, and watching the kissing video with her, and watching Wil's videos on her own while she was thinking about Wil.

Katie knew her own body and what she liked. Her life had not lacked sensual pleasure or intimacy with other people, even if she hadn't been sexually intimate with anyone but Wil since Ben. She wasn't afraid of Wil's experiences or hung up on worrying she lacked them.

It wasn't about Wil's gender or sexuality, either, some perceived difference between man-sex and woman-sex that didn't feel remotely real or important to Katie inside her body.

"It's the knowing," she said, squeezing Wil's hands. "Sometimes I get like this in my trailer on set when I'm about to do a scene and I know what it's going to ask of me and what it's going to give me. I know I'm ready for it, because I can feel that inside my body, and I'm intensely looking forward to it. But I'm also afraid. Because I know it's going to roll through me and use me and knock me over like a wave. And because, maybe, I know that's what I'm for. It's why I'm here. Why I'm alive."

She looked at Wil's blond eyelashes and her pale hair swooping down over her forehead, almost covering one of her blue eyes. Her mouth was so serious. Wil's serious listening face. Then she smiled, and it made Katie want to laugh because she knew this smile, too.

This was how Wil smiled when she was pleased with whatever had just been dealt to her.

"Oh, no," Katie said. "I mean, I think I just made it sound like it's my life's purpose to have sex with you." A snort-laugh escaped her, and she covered her mouth with the back of her hand. "Which sort of feels true at this moment, but is probably not the coolest thing I've ever said."

Wil laughed, too, but then she slid her hands up Katie's thighs with enough firm pressure and intent that Katie's eyelids began to feel heavy. "Can you do something for me?"

"Probably, yes, I will do whatever you ask me to do."

As soon as she said it, Katie knew it was true, and it was something she could hang on to.

She didn't know what would happen next. There were a lot of things, a lot, that she hadn't been able to keep herself from worrying about, including her mother's reaction to the news that Katie had decided to miss Christmas and take Wil home to Los Angeles with her, which was not the reaction Katie had been hoping for, and the way April's face had looked when Katie told her about Wil, and everything, really, about the future.

But she would probably do whatever Wil asked her to. Katie knew that.

She knew what it meant.

"Can you keep talking to me?" Wil asked. "Tell me what you like. Tell me what you want. I don't want to lose track of you."

"I'm good at talking." Katie put her shaky hands on Wil's shoulders. "I want you to take off your shirt."

Katie had been thinking of Wil in her bed in Wisconsin, the pink and red flowery sheets that she wouldn't have guessed Wil would have, the color matching her cheeks. Lying down in Wil's bed to tell her about Ben and eat ice cream sandwiches, with Wil's T-shirt riding up and her full breasts spilling from that black bra underneath, Katie had discovered another patch of freckles, secret freckles between her breasts, and she'd looped and looped on kissing them and on touching Wil's nipples, imagining them almost as pale as her skin.

Katie had liked everything about how soft Wil looked, seeing her hidden body at the same time as her beautiful, familiar face, and how… It was more a feeling. Almost an aggressive one, but velvety and big inside of her. Katie was so comfortable with bodies, with nudity, with thinking about how everyone around her was using their body and using her own body as a way to tell stories, that the clumsy and obsessive lust she felt about Wil and about her body was completely delicious and the right amount of scary.

Wil took off her shirt, this one a long-sleeved T-shirt with raw hems where a collar and cuffs should be. Tight and black. As she pulled it off, the warm, dark vanilla, powdery Wil smell of her body, the wintergreen of her breathing out, her bra still unhooked and loose at her sides, the way her belly curved down toward her belt—Katie caught herself trying to record and memorize all of it, as though this were a video she would only let herself watch once.

"It's off." Wil smiled. She shrugged forward and out of the bra. It was black, too. There was a flush spreading over Wil's chest. Katie reached up and traced it, feeling the heat of Wil's body against her palms, and Wil closed her eyes. "What else?"

"I don't want this to only happen once," Katie said. "What if we don't get to do everything I want to do? That's too much pressure. I can't take it." Whatever was making her spine white-hot and everything ache deliciously was ferocious inside of her.

"Katie Kat," Wil said. "Even if we don't do anything but this right now, we'll get to whatever we want to do." She unbuckled her sturdy belt, and the thick leather running through the brass buckle was Katie's new favorite sound.

"It's just that your body is like… you know Bay Beach?"

Wil laughed, her zipper down. Katie noted with interest that the edge of the elastic of her panties was also black. The low light caught a shadow from her belly button to that elastic that Katie wanted her mouth on. "Yes. I know Bay Beach."

Bay Beach was an amusement park on the shore of Lake Michigan that was owned and operated by the City of Green Bay. Most of the rides cost one or two twenty-five-cent tickets, and there was a big Ferris wheel and an old-fashioned wooden roller coaster whose claim to fame was that it had been Elvis Presley's favorite.

Katie had a lot of feelings about Bay Beach.

"Remember the very first time you went on your own, and your parents got you an extremely fat amount of tickets and told you to have at it—" Katie swallowed as Wil leaned over, her breasts pressed against her thighs, her face still looking up at Katie while she pulled off her short boots and then her socks.

Wil's toenails matched her manicure. It was devastating.

"I remember." Wil didn't take her eyes from Katie's while she shimmied out of those extremely tight jeans. So much happened to Wil's body when she shimmied.

Katie laughed, mostly at herself, as Wil slid close to Katie in only those extremely tiny black panties. "So many tickets that you kept folding and refolding them to figure out how they felt the best between your fingers and in your pocket, and your parents were just going to sit on a bench and have coffee, and it felt so bad and incredible and dangerous and filthy and…"

Wil laughed against Katie's neck. "Filthy, huh?'"

"Filthy," Katie repeated. "Completely. There were too many choices, all of them could be yours, you would never run out of tickets, you were tall enough for every ride."

"Okay." Wil's thighs were a roller coaster, a Viking ship swing, a gravity spinner, dusted everywhere with pale blond hair. "Filthy Bay Beach."

"That's what this is, right here. I have so many tickets to spend on your incredibly filthy amusement-park body, I might lose it."

Wil put her hands on Katie's shoulders and pushed her down, then crawled over top of her and backed her up the mattress while Katie wiggled and squealed. "I'm going to undress you."

"Yes. Do that. Take a lot of time over it. Or don't. I can't decide. There are just two pieces of clothing. It makes me wish I'd invested in some kind of high-necked, multilayered Victorian costume." Katie was certain she'd never been this wet in her entire life. She had never been this turned on, of that she was sure. She'd only had a very theoretical idea of what turned on even was until this moment.

"Ready?" Wil kissed Katie's neck with a very satisfying amount of tongue.

"I am the perfect amount of ready and not ready." Katie said this with more confidence than she'd had before. She did know her own body, her own heart. She did have a lot of experience with letting herself feel, letting emotion and sensation overtake her.

Then she took a look at what happened to Wil's body on her hands and knees, and her hips lifted up, practically involuntarily, because she was one giant, throbbing ache from the tops of her knees to deep inside, where she felt luxuriously slippery and hot. She pulled off her own T-shirt.

"God," Wil said, and got closer, holding herself up on her forearms, pressing their breasts together, which made both of them make a good noise. "I'm just going to kiss you for a minute."

"Two minutes," Katie said.

Wil laughed, and then she was kissing Katie, her weight pressing down, and Katie soaked in Wil's taste and her heat and her mouth, letting her hands roam over Wil's silky back, the shapes of her shoulders, Katie's knee coming up so she could rock against Wil's hard thigh over and over again.

Katie fisted her hands in Wil's hair, breathing hard, her clit starting to pinch and start up the climbing, climbing sensations. "Hold up."

"Yes." Wil was panting, too.

"I inadvertently got close."

"Was it inadvertent?" Wil asked. "Because I feel like I was helping make something happen."

"You were." Katie palmed one of Wil's breasts. "Oh, fuck. That just made it worse. Don't move."

"Don't move what?" Wil kissed her forehead. "Can we get your pants off?"

"Yes." Katie maneuvered herself to the top of the bed so she had a pillow behind her head and skimmed off her leggings, then immediately had to press her thighs together tight because she couldn't stand the look on Wil's face. It was too promising for her almost-come to handle. "Your panties, too."

Wil reached down and pushed them off. "Can I touch you?" She put her hand on Katie's thigh.

"Yes." Katie moved onto her side, looking at Wil all over. Her blond hardly darkened, not between her legs, not over her shins, not under her arms. It made Katie want to slide all over this fucking golden bear she'd managed to get into bed with her.

"What are you thinking?" Wil said this while stroking the back of her hand over Katie's belly, her hip bones, her voice betraying amusement so that Katie knew she'd been caught up in her thoughts in a way that was obvious to Wil.

Katie told her.

Wil laughed. "Oh my God, Katie."

"Well. I mean, I'm lasered. I have been for years because it's just easier with the costumes and stylists. And so then I get thoughts like that, and I don't even know. I'm a babe in the woods, Wil. I am a raw sex nerve that you have made with your body. Show me mercy."

Wil did not. She moved closer and put her hand between Katie's legs, her fingers very explicit, suddenly, and terrible in their knowledge. Katie had to hang onto the duvet and bite her lip for dear life, and she made a noise anyway that made Wil laugh, so Katie had no choice but to grab her by the back of her neck and get serious about kissing her for long minutes while she pressed against Wil's fingers and died.

"Do that forever," she said. "Do that until I come, I don't even care anymore." They were both on their sides. She lifted her knee to give Wil better access, and Wil hooked Katie's leg over her hip, moving close enough to press against Katie everywhere.

"Is that what you want?"

"It's one of the things I want." Wil slid her fingers between Katie's legs, skating over every sensitive place, finding a rhythm. Katie lowered her head and licked Wil's pebbled nipple. "But I want you to come, too, so you're going to have to figure out the mechanics on that." She stroked between Wil's legs experimentally, breaking out in goose bumps when she found her wet.

Wil reached down, cruelly taking her fingers away from Katie, and slid her hand over where Katie was touching Wil. "Put these two together, and press… there. God, God, exactly like that, and then when I'm close, go inside me if you want. You can't do it too hard." Wil's voice was somewhere between a whisper and gravel, distracted.

Katie groaned. That was too good, hearing Wil suffering as much as she was, feeling her at the same time, and Wil's hand returned to Katie, touching her confidently, soft, but in a way that made everything buck and clench, but then Wil came back with only the heel of her hand against her, and it was exactly right.

"Fuck against me like that," Wil whispered, kissing her. "Do you like anything inside when you get close?"

"I am close. I have been close since the dawn of time." Katie was already moving against Wil's hand. "Also, yes. Sometimes. Now is sometimes. But then kiss me. Kiss me and kiss me."

Wil did, and Katie felt her entire center meld into Wil, just the way she liked it when she was connecting with someone but in a way it had never, ever been when she'd done this. She let her fingers follow Wil's hips and gasps, and she got herself kissed, so kissed, while Wil pressed with her hand and slid so cleverly inside of her with fingers.

It didn't take long. It took forever. Katie had no idea, but if it stopped, she was going to be angry, or so happy, who knew?

She hadn't known before. She was so glad to know, finally, about this.

Then Wil bit her bottom lip, and everything got hot under Katie's fingers. She slid down, inside, and oh. She'd had no idea how much she was going to like that, love that, being inside Wil, feeling her get tighter and tighter, and then Wil was inside her, and Katie pressed her thighs together to keep her there.

It felt like she came for a long time. She knew she was saying Wil's name. At least once, her whole name, including middle, but there was nothing to do because the sound of Wil coming against her neck, on her hand, while Wil's fingers were inside her, was the best thing Katie had ever heard.

The best thing she'd ever felt.

Wil was the best thing.

"Katie," Wil breathed. "Are you…"

"We live here now," Katie panted. She put her hands on Wil's waist and dug her fingers in so Wil would know she was serious. "In this bed. Everyone will have to adjust their own insurance, do their own lawyering, and hire someone else for their Sarah, Plain and Tall remake set in 1980s Brooklyn." Katie pushed the damp hair away from Wil's neck and kissed her.

Kissing her. So easy.

"I really liked that one," Wil whispered. "I cried for hours."

"Everyone does." Katie didn't know if she was sleepy or spinning or if this was just what it felt like when you wrenched open your heart. "That story is a nuclear explosion of longing and miserable love." She kissed Wil's neck again.

"Katie." Wil pulled back and looked at her, her face a little bit serious.

"Yeah." Katie cleared her throat against some feelings that were there—not exactly, exactly a nuclear explosion of longing and miserable love, but something she was afraid could end up in that neighborhood.

She didn't want to be afraid. This was Wil. It would be okay. It would. Because it was Wil, and when she was with Wil, she was Katelyn Rose Price. She was Katie Kat. They had both decided on this together—for Wil to be here, dipping her beautiful manicured toes into Katie's life, so that Wil could learn what it was like, and so that Katie could… could find out. Could know.

But she already knew.

"I have to settle Almond Butter in and sleep," Wil said. "I'll stay here with you. But in the morning, can we talk more about me here? In Los Angeles? I'm glad to be with you. Don't look like that. I've been meaning to talk to you all day about how you're doing and what you've been thinking about. But…"

"I know." Katie slowly rolled over and looked at the ceiling's raw wood beams, the dark glass. She watched Wil lean over the edge of the bed and realized she was reaching for her shirt.

"No. Don't. Hold on." Katie got up, the room too cool against her skin and too bereft of Wil, and pressed the panel in the wall that opened her closet door. She turned the lights on in the dressing room to grab a robe for Wil and her favorite jersey nightshirt for herself. "For you."

Wil belted the robe on and held her arms out. "Come here."

Katie took the hug. "Can I just say a little bit? So I don't freak out?"

"Yes. Follow me around while I deal with Almond Butter."

Katie did. She followed Wil to the living room and watched her squat down beside her beautiful geriatric cat and scratch her neck. She thought about Wil on the plane. She'd been cautious at first, but then she'd relaxed and laughed and talked with Cy.

Katie thought of how Wil had looked sitting next to Joel by the cat carriers, listening to Joel say more words in a row than Katie had ever managed to pry out of the man, even though she'd met him several times because he was Cy's best friend.

She thought about Wil in her robe, Wil in her house, Wil in her bed, and it felt so completely, perfectly possible that Katie didn't know what to say, after all.

It was hard to know what was right for yourself. She'd gone to hundreds of therapy sessions to learn how to figure that out—how to identify her feelings and know what to do to help herself feel them and make choices.

But Katie had never learned how to know what was right for someone else.

Their luggage was in the entryway where the person who drove the van had unloaded and left it. Wil found the big duffel bag where she'd packed everything for Almond Butter. She located Almond Butter's cat bed and heat pad and food dish and a bag of special cat food.

It would be Christmas in three days. Katie had spent Christmas a lot of different places, a lot of different ways. She'd thought she would be spending it in Wisconsin this year, so she hadn't asked for her decorations to be brought out of storage.

"Have you ever spent Christmas away from home?" she asked.

Wil turned to look at her. "No. But I've spent Christmases feeling like my home was away from me."

Katie swallowed over a sudden burn of tears.

She should've been there. Where had she been that first Christmas Wil and Beanie spent without Jasper? On set? Overwarm, her feet rubbed raw from her heels at an industry party that was super important to be seen at because of her next project? Hosting a charity event? She would've been twenty-two. Four years into her career, a year since she'd left Ben. It would have been her first Christmas since she'd arrived here that she'd spent without Ben.

She remembered. She'd fought with her mom at Thanksgiving in Green Bay and then flown to Iceland for the location shoot. She'd stayed through Christmas, by herself in a condo with a view of a cliff and the sea, even though she didn't have to. She could've gone home. But she hadn't, because she was mad at her mom, and mad that she didn't know what Christmas meant to her anymore.

If she'd gone to Green Bay, she would've heard how hard a time Wil and Beanie were having, and she would've seen them, even if it was only to be kind. And she would have realized soon enough, probably on the way over to their house, that all she wanted was Wil.

Home.That was what Christmas was supposed to mean.

Wil had been her home, or she'd almost been. They'd almost been that for each other, but they were still children, with only the experiences of children, and no one to tell them what they were about to lose.

Katie stepped close and touched her forehead to Wil's. "The good news is that we can do absolutely anything you want. You want a tree, we can have a tree. You want to drive out to the desert and lay on a blanket under the stars? That is an option. Beach bonfire Christmas. You name it."

Wil smiled. She slid her hand up and pressed it against Katie's sternum. "I like the idea I'll spend Christmas with you." Wil pulled away and kissed Katie on the mouth, just a short kiss. But it was an I like you kiss, and maybe that was the best one Katie had gotten so far. "Show me where to plug this in, okay? Your bedroom walls are mysteriously smooth."

Katie led her back to the bedroom and showed her how the outlets were hidden. Wil set up Almond Butter's cat bed and put out a dish with her nighttime snack after checking to be sure Katie's cats wouldn't get into it.

I love you.That was what Katie really wanted to say. The part of me that loves you has always loved you. I feel like it just keeps getting bigger, and pretty soon it will be all of me, all of me will love you for always, and I want you here with me for the rest of my life.

Katie couldn't say any of that.

Not when April had all but secreted them to LA, when her mom had texted while they were in the car from the airport that the media still thought Katie was in Green Bay, when Katie knew that April had already spoken with Alison about casting and scheduled three other money meetings.

Katie had lived for so long with the feeling that she had to do one more thing and do it just right, do it to win the next thing, just so that the world would tolerate her fame another year, and then another. It scared her to try to imagine what it would take to spend another run of years like that with someone else. It made her feel like she would be sure to hurt them. Sure to hurt.

That was what her mother had said—lovingly, sadly—when Katie told her she would be taking Wil to Los Angeles for Christmas.

I love you both, and I don't want you to be hurt.

Hurt was everything Katie had worked so hard to never feel again, and definitely not to do to another person.

To Wil, who was—who was her person.

"You're sleeping in here with me, then?" Katie tried to make this sound casual, but her talents failed her, and it came out more like, You are sleeping in here with me or I will throw myself against the guest room door like a cat shut out of the bathroom.

Wil had stood up from petting her cat and Trois, because Trois had shoved herself into Almond Butter's bed, and now Almond Butter was grooming Trois's head.

"Of course." Wil laughed, which meant Katie had sounded exactly as demanding as she thought she had.

"Good. Okay. Are you hungry?"

Wil laughed. "You saw how much I ate on the plane, right?"

"It was barely anything. I don't want you to be hungry, even a little. I can have anything delivered you want. Korean barbeque? Tacos? Caramel corn?"

"Katie." Wil put her arms around her. "I think you need to get into bed with me."

Katie closed her eyes. "Was I too impulsive, bringing you here? I don't know."

"I invited myself here, if you'll remember." Wil took off her robe and climbed into the bed. It was extremely distracting. Katie hadn't gotten a good enough look at Wil's ass before, and Jesus Christ, it was the ass to end all asses, like an actual peach emoji, including the flushed color. Wil had two big dimples in her lower back where the swell of her backside started up. Katie was mesmerized.

"Are you staring at my butt?" Wil climbed in on Katie's usual side, but that was okay, because maybe Katie's imprint would soak into Wil's body and cast a spell on her.

"How am I supposed to stop myself?" Katie slid into the unfamiliar other side of the bed. "I'm big spoon. You have to let me, because I want to hold all of your deliciousness in my arms, and also when I am spooned, I feel like I'm suffocating."

It was the first time Katie had overlapped her experience of being with Ben with being with Wil. It made her stomach drop a little, realizing how much there might be in front of her for her and Wil to navigate, to learn, to work out.

And what if it didn't work out? The lessons she'd learned being with Ben were such hard ones.

But Wil just laughed, a low rumble that sounded to Katie like being liked, and she let Katie wrap herself around her from behind. Wil's skin was warm. Katie put every one of her limbs around her, aroused all over again.

Wil fell asleep first, and as soon as she did, Almond Butter hopped up on the bed and made biscuits on Wil's pillow until she was satisfied, then curled around Wil's head. Trois came up next, and then Phil, confused to find a new person in the bed but happy to make his usual cat circle with Sue at the foot of the bed.

Katie reached for her remote and turned on the white noise machine with the timer. She just wanted an hour of the ocean. She could be a castaway with Wil and their four cats curled up around her. She could pretend they were alone here in the big dark world, with only the basic things to figure out.

She fell asleep wondering if she knew enough to build the life she wanted.