12. Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Rosalie straightened up from sliding the pizzas into the oven, Savannah watching her, a wine glass dangling from her fingers. Rosalie was not quite sure she liked the glow of the expression on her friend's face.

"So," Savannah said, now they were alone. "What did you think of Cassie's bandmate? She's gorgeous, huh?"

Rosalie raised her chin.

"I didn't really notice," she lied.

Savannah smiled, cocking her head."Really? Even with those smoldering eyes? That's interesting. You might need to get your vision checked."

"I'm going to tell your little sister you're checking out her friends," Rosalie threatened. "What kind of married woman are you, exactly?" She realized slightly too late that she might be overcompensating because Savannah looked straight up thrilled.

"A very secure one with a very secure wife," she said. "Now if I were single though, and she were to look at me the way she looked at you, I think I might find myself a little tempted."

"Well, no one would be surprised to hear that about you." Rosalie knew the stab was outlandish, but she was increasingly desperate to derail this conversation.

"I guess it would be different if I were you." Savannah breezed by the accusation. "I'd probably be all tied up in knots about it. I'd probably think of her as someone I shouldn't have had sex with ."

"Savannah!" Oh god. Sometimes it sucked having a best friend who knew you on what occasionally felt like a cellular level. "Ugh, how are you this fucking psychic?"

"I mean, it helps that you turned into a literal strawberry when you saw her. Besides," Savannah smirked, a tiny glint in her eyes, "you always like to pretend I don't know what your sex face looks like."

Rosalie's cheeks burned. Apparently it was time for Savannah's regular, approximately once-a-decade reminder that they'd had sex, delighting in the reaction it provoked. Rosalie shook her head as if to deny it.

"You're a pain in the ass," she complained, focusing hard on her glass of wine.

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing!" Rosalie huffed. "She's twenty-six. She's your little sister's bandmate and friends with Lane."

"So an adult?" Savannah pointed out. "And apparently so hot in bed that it turned your life upside down?"

"Savannah, hush ," Rosalie implored, her eyes going wide. "She's literally here in this house."

"As are you, interestingly enough."

"Nothing is going to happen." Rosalie stared her down firmly. "Please, please don't tell anyone or do anything to make this more uncomfortable than it already is. Keep in mind you thought my mental state was so precarious you forced me here in the first place."

Savannah's smirk disappeared. She nodded, her eyes going serious.

"Honey, I won't. I promise," she said and Rosalie let her shoulders fall from where they'd been hunched practically to her ears. "Wow," Savannah said after a moment. "She's really done a number on you. What happened? "

"If I promise to tell you another time, when it's actually private, will you leave me alone?"

Savannah considered her.

"Tomorrow," she agreed. "It's a date."

"Babe, would you please stop offering dates to beautiful women?" Brynn sauntered into the kitchen and Savannah's eyes did that specifically Brynn-related thing where they went soft and hot at the same time. She slipped her arms around her wife and gazed up at her. Rosalie's heart did that thing it often did around them, some kind of complex emotion that was love and joy and jealousy and some other weird tug that she only just now realized was grief.

"You know what a weakness I have for them," Savannah flirted with her wife and Brynn smirked and kissed her.

Dinner was… dinner was a nightmare.

Savannah, true to her word - as Rosalie had known she would be - insinuated nothing, instead reverting to her charming hostess best, making sure to share her spotlight with every person in the room equally. She asked Cassidy and Kinsey about how the band was going, shared cute kid anecdotes with Lane, got Brynn talking about her impending album release and gently hauled Rosalie into a conversation about the cold snowy walk through the woods they'd taken earlier. It was about as low pressure and easy as a dinner party could be.

Except that Kinsey existed. Rosalie was sat opposite Cassidy and Lane, and yet somehow, it was Kinsey, sitting next to her, that despite her best efforts and being in her periphery, seemed to be all she was able to see. Her glossy hair hung in a low braid, soft strands escaping around her face. Her hands, whether innocently handling cutlery or curled around the stem of a wineglass were distractingly beautiful and her forearms escaping from her maroon plaid shirt were straight up pornographic, especially since Rosalie knew intimately what they were capable of. Her smile - as she interacted with what to most people would be towering celebrity - was natural and confident. But oh god, her eyes, when their gaze occasionally met… Rosalie was not coping.

It was so much worse because Lane and Cassidy were there: the young person she'd known as a kid and the literal baby sister of her best friend. She remembered hearing stories of Cassie when she was three, for crying out loud. Having sex with one of their peers was such a clear sign of a mid-life crisis Rosalie wanted to laugh at herself, or cry, she wasn't sure which.

Unfortunately, for all her self-recriminations, it didn't stop the lust one bit. Around the time dessert was served and Kinsey licked a sweet spoon of creme br?lée into her mouth. Rosalie heard as clearly as if she'd said it now, Kinsey whispering you're making me need to fuck you when you make sounds like that and she choked back a whimper.

As soon as dinner was finished, Rosalie made her excuses and fled to her room.

The next day was a little better. When she finally ventured out for coffee, Kinsey was nowhere to be seen. As it turned out, Lane had been given the day off and had whisked Cassidy and Kinsey on a hike through the forest, taking advantage of a lovely clear Vermont morning and a break in the snow. For the moment, at least, Rosalie felt like she could breathe again.

Savannah had gotten that focused dreamy expression that meant she had a song to write so Rosalie and Brynn headed up to the playroom and hung out with the kids together. Over the years, Rosalie had come to adore Brynn, for two primary reasons: she made Savannah happy beyond measure, and she was never threatened by Savannah and Rosalie's closeness, making her a rare creature in both their lives. Beyond that, she was warm, steady, funny and easygoing, and - if Rosalie had been forced to admit it at gunpoint - it didn't hurt that she was extremely easy on the eye. She was the perfect counterpoint to Savannah in every way.

She was also a lot more relaxing to be around than her wife right now, since she neither had psychic level knowledge of Rosalie, nor twenty years of baggage. The two of them talked easily around Tucker's excited story-telling and inventive games and Emmeline's happy gurgles. Rosalie lounged on the playroom floor while the adorable, chubby, blue-eyed baby practiced her sitting, surrounded by a semi-circle of cushions as she swayed.

It was a delicious, domesticated kind of morning, with some good coffee, and easy laughter; Brynn's lovely voice employed by storybooks or silly songs, and the sweet baby scent of Emmeline's silky blonde head that Rosalie could never get enough of. Savannah ducked in a couple of times to breastfeed and Rosalie felt a desperate warmth in her chest as she saw the way their lives seemed so beautifully effortless. She knew damn well it wasn't, having helped Lane literally pick Savannah up off the floor nearly six months ago, which only made the tranquil scene more delightful.

She looked over at Savannah on the window seat of her giant luxurious winter mansion, baby on her breast, smiling at the small child holding her ankles, her beautiful wife lightly touching her hair as she brought her over a coffee. She had a sudden flash of the thin, wary, abandoned teen that Rosalie had first met and to her surprise, her eyes filled with tears. For the first time she wondered if it was not Rachel she was still trying to rescue over and over, but Savannah, too.

After lunch Rosalie had returned to her room and read for a while. She wondered how Lemonade was going with his hastily arranged house-sitter, Mabel, another of the center's many ex-clients she kept touch with. Mabel was working as a vet nurse and jumped at the opportunity to take a break from her roommates. There were, Rosalie reminded herself, as Chloe's sweet face jumped into her mind again, many happy stories that had come out of her time at the center. Keeping in contact with what she thought of as the center's graduates was one of the things that kept her going when times were rough.

She imagined, as she often did, what Rachel would be like now, what kind of life she'd have for herself and what she'd make of Savannah's spectacular success and Rosalie's currently monastic lifestyle. She spluttered out a giggle. It was probably exactly what Rachel would have projected for her. She could see her sister in her mind, perpetually a teenager and fixing Rosalie with a disdainful stare. Of course you're a cat lady, Ros, since you dress like that.

A knock came on the door. When she answered it, there stood Savannah, childfree and smiling.

"Get your swimsuit," she said. "We have a date, remember?"

Fifteen minutes later, Rosalie sighed with contentment. Savannah and Brynn had recently installed an outdoor jacuzzi, tucked away in the trees. The outside air was freezing, snowdrifts on the ground around them, but the water was deliciously hot. As she tipped her head back, all she could see were sparse snow-covered branches and the big empty sky, dull and heavily clouded, the threat of snow upon them.

"Enough stalling," Savannah raised her eyebrows. "You promised to tell me all about that time you seduced a hot young thing and had your wicked way with her."

"It was the opposite, actually," Rosalie admitted and Savannah cocked her head.

"Oh?"

Rosalie told her the whole story of Kinsey's confident seduction, including a very brief outline of what had gone down behind the curtain. Savannah's eyes went wide.

"That's… okay, that's just extremely, indecently hot," she whispered. "God. I may need to go find my wife soon," she added, sinking her teeth into her lower lip. "Just to pretend we're not an old married couple with children and could live the kind of exciting life you suddenly lead again."

Rosalie gazed skyward, but she couldn't help her small smirk.

"It did feel a little like that," she admitted. "Like I was remembering how I used to be able to just throw myself into experiences for the hell of it. Without worrying about consequences."

"Mm." Savannah still seemed diverted. Then she sat up straight, hot water fizzing around her shoulders. "So then what? Did you go home with her?"

"No," Rosalie sighed, "then I started worrying about consequences." As she told Savannah the rest of the story, she watched her best friend's face fall.

"Oh honey," Savannah said, looking strangely sad. "That sounds about right."

"Excuse me?"

A happy shriek cut through the air. Rosalie and Savannah's heads shot up, scanning the trees. Lane, Cassidy and Kinsey had returned from their hike and now all three streaked through the snow, wearing bathrobes and rainboots. Cassidy squealed at top volume in the biting cold.

"Oh!" she said, all three of them pausing before the hottub."Mind if we join you?"

"Of course not," Savannah instantly hostessed and Rosalie nearly died. Kinsey's hair was scooped up in a silky knot on top of her head and she already looked tempting enough in a bathrobe. She looked directly at Rosalie and held her eyes as she neatly dropped the robe. Rosalie really did die then, immediately, on the spot. Kinsey wore a fluorescent pink bikini, softly straining across her breasts and covering very little of her glowing skin. Rosalie was distantly aware that she was staring but all she could see was the body she'd felt against her that night. She drank in the lovely curve of Kinsey's waist flaring to her hips, the long line of her abdomen disappearing into low-cut bikini bottoms, her strong thighs and shapely legs. She swallowed as she caught the clear outline of hard nipples behind the lycra, which was probably due to the cold, but also, based on Kinsey's frank gaze, equally might not be.

Underneath the fizzing bubbles, Savannah grabbed her knee and squeezed it hard, clearly not out of support but because otherwise she'd explode from not being able to tease Rosalie right now. Kinsey took her sweet time about getting into the water, but finally her body was submerged from view, though Rosalie still didn't quite feel like she could catch her breath.

Cassidy smiled over at them, glowing with prettiness and clear happiness, obviously none the wiser as to what was going on around her. Lane looked ridiculously in their natural element, flanked by two beautiful, bikini-clad babes, one on either side of them, though as always, they wouldn't have even noticed if they'd all been naked as long as Cassidy was around.

Kinsey, though, had definitely noticed Rosalie's blatant ogle of her body. Her face said made you look, as clearly as if she'd said it out loud. Rosalie could ostensibly blame the hot tub for the color her face was right now, but more than one person in this tub knew that would be a lie. Why was the universe doing this to her? Actually, fuck the universe; this was all Savannah Grace's fault. Winter homes in Vermont and outdoor hot tubs definitely wouldn't be happening in Rosalie's life if it wasn't for her.

"Did you have a good hike?" Savannah asked, smiling.

"It was fine." Cassidy shrugged. "Like it's pretty or whatever but I still don't know why you need a whole extra mansion to live in just for winter."

Lane rolled their eyes.

"You loved it." They ratted her out. "You took eleven hundred photos just of the view."

"To be fair," Kinsey said, "the views here are gorgeous." She looked directly at Rosalie as she said it. Rosalie couldn't tell if she wanted to roll her eyes or melt. Savannah poked her thigh deliberately under the water and she shoved her hand away, trying not to flinch.

"What do you think of the views, Rosalie?" Savannah asked her casually. Rosalie wanted to murder her.

"The trees," she said deliberately, "are lovely. As is the lake."

Kinsey smirked.

Rosalie lifted the hair off the back of her neck, starting to feel overheated. She raised herself up to sit on her knees, aiming for a little cool winter air on her skin and Kinsey stared. Rosalie glanced down and realized her move meant her own body was no longer fully hidden by the fizzing water, her dark green bikini top fully on view. Oh shit, did that seem like she'd done it on purpose? Her usually pale skin was flushed pink from the hot water and while her bikini was by necessity far less skimpy than Kinsey's, it was still a bikini, so she may as well have held up a sign saying would you like to see my breasts? Being that Kinsey seemed to have lost the ability to blink, the answer was apparently still very much yes.

Rosalie had a wildly inappropriate flash of memory, Kinsey's hot mouth licking and biting her nipples while she writhed against her, moaning. She wondered if Kinsey was remembering the same thing and pressed her thighs together against the agitated pulse of heat she felt at the thought.

Oh god. If this was how the first day was going, this was going to be an excruciating two weeks.