“Perfecter?” Laine says through a smile I can hear.
“When you’re already in the realm of perfect, and yet there’s more to delight.” I stand and reach over the barrel’s edge until I find the bottle of my mother’s red. “Perfecter.”
She nods. “Consider it entered into the Laine Lexicon.”
The cork comes off with a satisfyingthunt, and the rich, almost leathery smell of tannins long mellowed fills my nose. Laine’s eyes roll back in her head as she takes a deep pull of the aroma.
“This is going to beso good,” she says when her irises reappear, then scrambles to sit up properly, giddy. I’m glad she recognizes the gravitas of this situation and is appropriately thrilled.
I for one cannot speak. Opening a bottle of this wine is as close to a religious act as I get. The tawny garnet slides down the bell of each glass, glazing it in a smooth, jewel wash of red. As it pours, its rich aroma lifts around us—black cherry and tart red plum, the smooth, mineralish air of crushed gravel, followed by cedar and cream. And the taste is more than the refined balance of acid and sugar, of heady tannins long tamed and spicy oak, and it’s more than the feel of its serene swim down my throat, the heat efflorescing through my cheeks. It’s the taste of summers long gone, spent in the shade of my mother’s favorite tree. It’s her fingers in my hair, braiding the strands back while I read The Boxcar Children and pondered whether I could survive on my own, too, not knowing how soon I’d be forced to do just that.
I close my eyes and let the wine loll across my tongue, bringing me back in time as it always does. It’s the smell of my mother’s clothes after a long day in the winery, pressed against my nose in the first hug after school. It’s the sound of my father’s unburdened laugh, the scent that lingered in his tickling mustache when he kissed my forehead good night. This wine is from better days I no longer have access to. From seasons past, made by hands that no longer create. It is finite. A portal to my family’s happiness that closes more with each swallow.
I open my eyes and find Laine’s.
“Do you feel it, too?” The words come out choked. “The magic?”
Laine puts her glass down and takes my face in her hands, brushing the tears from my cheeks with her thumbs. “It’s amazing, Zoe. Unreal. Perfect, perfecter, perfectest. Like you.”
And she kisses me, the memories traveling between our lips, bitter and sweet with a full, luscious body all its own. When she pulls away breathless, she touches her forehead to mine, hands still cupping my face. “What are you so afraid of, baby?”
A million things. But most of all: “This,” I answer, too tired to be anything but honest. I rest my cheek in her palm. “Needing you. You leaving.”Like everyone else, I think. “And at times, Rachel.” We both huff at that, but the joke doesn’t wash away the truth of my admission, or the unfettered view of my intense vulnerability it provides.
“I can’t imagineeverleaving you,” Laine says softly, brushing a stem from my hair. “This is all I want.” Her finger skims lightly along my jaw, desire flowing through the small, simple touch.
“How can you know that, though?” I laugh a little through my swollen throat as her finger traces its way down it. “This just began.”
“No, it didn’t,” Laine says. “It began fifteen years ago. It’s just now getting interesting, is all.”
I want to believe her, but flowing beneath these feelings swirling between us is a deep current of fear that refuses to be banished overnight.
But maybe, with time, itcould.
“Now.” Laine’s voice turns all business as she leans back against the barrel, then taps both hands to her chest, indicating for me tocome here. She gives me that wicked smile.
“Shut up and sit on my face, boss.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
My eyes fly open, the primal terror at being awoken by a foreign soundin your lairsluicing through my veins. Someone’s in my cottage. Did I lock the door?
I clutch fistfuls of sheets in both hands, as if I could defend myself with bed linens. The fear drumming in my ears turns into something else—the rhythmic patter of water.
The shower’s on. Someone’s … humming?
I suck air in through my nostrils, exhale a shaky laugh.
Laine.
I’m not being murdered, I’m beingmorning aftered. I prop myself up on one elbow to peer through the door to my bathroom, and yes, that’s definitely Laine’s voice. Singing … Willie Nelson?
Well, this is a first. People have stayed over before, sure, but no one’s ever partook of thefacilities. It’s usually a quick kiss to the cheek and a promise to text later, the words half cut off by my front door swinging shut. It’s the only practical option, really, since my cottage is so small. If you only have room for yourself, you can’t notice how there’s no one else.
The knobs squeak off, and Laine steps out, her singing unmuffled by the shower curtain. A smile quirks up the side of my mouth.
She soundsterrible.
“Good morning.” Laine steps into my bedroom wrapped in a towel that’s too small. My hair towel, I realize. It takes me a second to place it since it’s currently revealingher pussy.
