“It’s not magic. It’s just caring.” June shifted, careful not to disturb Lila, which brought her fractionally closer. In the candlelight her eyes were very dark. “The same things you do. You’re just too exhausted to see it.”
“I don’t feel like I’m doing anything right. Not with the bill, not with Lila, not with—” Melissa stopped.
“Not with what?” June asked.
“Not with you.” The words came out quiet, honest. “I keep thinking about what you said. About not wanting to be a secret, or an experiment. And I’m terrified that’s exactly what I’m making you. That I’m being a coward, and you’re going to realize it, and you’re going to leave.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“How can you be sure?”
June was quiet for a moment. In the low light her face was half in shadow, and Melissa wanted so badly to close the distance between them that it was a physical effort not to.
“I’m not,” June admitted. “I don’t think anyone can be sure about anything, really. But I know what I feel. And I know that when I’m with you—both of you—I feel more like myself than I have in a long time. Like I’m not pretending anymore.”
“I feel that too.” The words came out rough, unpolished. “When I’m here, in this house, with you and Lila… I feel like I can breathe. Like I don’t have to be Senator Brandt every second.”
“Who is that? The real you, without the title?”
Melissa considered the question. “I don’t know. I’ve been defining myself by my work for so long, I’m not sure what’s left underneath. Someone tired. Someone lonely. Someone who’s made a lot of mistakes and is probably going to make a lot more.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It doesn’t?”
“No.” June’s voice was soft. “It sounds like someone I’d want to know.”
They lay there in the darkness, Lila sleeping peacefully between them, the rain steady and soft outside now. Melissa could feel June’s hand in hers, warm and steady, and the space between them felt charged with everything they weren’t doing—all the wanting held carefully in check by the small sleeping body between them.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Melissa admitted. “With any of this. With the bill, with my career, with you. I’ve always had a plan. I’ve always known the next five steps. And now—”
“Now?”
“Now I just want Lila to be happy, and I want you. Those are the only things I’m certain about.” She pressed a kiss to June’s knuckles, felt June’s breath catch across the small distance between them. “I’m not confused about you. Whatever else is a mess, whatever else I’m failing at—wanting you isn’t a question.”
“Melissa.” June’s voice was careful, the tone of someone exercising a great deal of restraint. Her thumb traced a slow circle against Melissa’s palm.
“I know.” Melissa felt the heat of it, the promise, the anticipation of a door that would open later. “I know.”
Neither of them moved. Neither of them could. But June’s thumb kept moving, that slow deliberate circle, and Melissa lay in the amber dark and felt the wanting hum through her like a held note, patient and insistent and entirely focused on the woman on the other side of her sleeping daughter.
“We should sleep,” June said finally, and her voice was not entirely steady.
“Yes,” Melissa agreed, and made no move toward sleep at all.
The candles burned lower. Outside, the rain had gentled to almost nothing, just the soft drip from the eaves. Lila’s breathing was deep and even between them.
This is what peace feels like,Melissa thought. But it was peace with an edge to it, a warmth that had nothing to do with the blankets, a patience that was not quite patience—more like anticipation with its hands folded in its lap, waiting for the night to shift.
She closed her eyes. June’s fingers were still laced through hers.
She didn’t sleep for quite some time.
Chapter 16
The Article
June
