Page 23 of The Forbidden Fling

Faye laughed. “Oh! Here.” She reached into her bag and pulled out Diana’s phone. “I meant to give this back.”

“Thank you. I hope the pictures were helpful.”

“Yeah, thanks. I was pretty chuffed. The flowers were the endemic Sazorina bellflowers. I checked in my book.”

The horizon stretched before them, heat blurring the tips of the ocean waves. Her feet throbbed in her new sandals, but there was no way she was going to walk barefoot. “Have you always been so interested in plants and animals?” Diana asked.

“Yeah, I guess so. You never know what people are thinking. Animals and plants don’t really lie.” A slow smirk pulled at Faye’s mouth. “I mean…squirrels can pretend to bury nuts in places to keep other squirrels guessing, but people, in my experience, are rarely ever honest. It’s hard to know where you stand.”

Diana nodded. “The human psyche is complex. New research reveals a different theory all the time.” She frowned, the pressure from Leanne to write descending for a moment. “The field is always evolving.”

A light breeze tickled the hair around Faye’s face. “Do you think it would be easier if people always told the truth?”

“Hmm. Yes and no.” Diana pursed her lips, letting the question swirl around her brain. “Even if humans became incapable of lying, the obligation to speak the truth doesn’t force confessions. We could still conceal information, choosing what we want to disclose. But always telling the truth would make things more black-and-white. We’d quickly discover which friends are true friends and which are not. Societies might benefit from the trust, particularly the government, but such honest bluntness might cause a lot of instability and trauma too.” She frowned. Molly and Jason were already loose-lipped with their words, and that was bad enough.

“I guess so. But I hate not knowing, not having answers.” Faye paused to pluck a smooth stone from the sand, running a thumb over it before dropping it back to the beach. “I try to be honest, so it sucks when someone isn’t quite who you thought they were, you know?”

“Sadly, I do.” The sun dipped lower in the sky, glinting off the edges of the waves as they rolled up the shore.

“Look at the petrels.”

Diana’s breath caught as Faye leaned across her, pointing to a group of birds soaring above. Her vanilla scent pulled her back to that lift. Her sweet wine-tinted breath. Her unapologetic hands and hot tongue. Her stomach dipped; their bodies suddenly too close to be considered friendly.

The birds flapped and dove before vanishing out of view, and Faye turned to her, eyes sparkling like she’d witnessed something magical.

Diana felt the same, but admittedly for different reasons.

Whatever this was, she couldn’t entertain it. She didn’t have time; she had more pressing matters to attend to. These three weeks were for Molly and for her proposal—not to lure her libido out of hibernation.

So why could she think of nothing else than the taste of Faye’s lips?

She composed herself, squashing her expression into something neutral. The two fell into step with each other again, a cool breeze lifting hair along her bare arms. Sunbathers and swimmers had dispersed with the sinking sun, leaving stretches of perfect white sand. The beach soon gave way to the dusty steps, leading them back to the courtyard and cabins.

They continued to chat as they climbed, taking turns to admire the natural beauty of Sandy Springs. Conversation flowed easily, but Diana’s mind kept snagging on their earlier topic. In particular, the sadness of Faye’s statement. She wanted to know who had hurt her, but her curiosity would only open more doors she shouldn’t look behind.

The courtyard was empty save for a few birds resting on the wooden canopy. The fountain trickled in the quiet as Diana sidestepped a few bees buzzing around the flowers.

“Oh my god. Goats!” Faye ran to the far side by the stone wall, clicking her tongue and cooing into the field.

A few white goats raised their heads, trotting over to see the commotion. Faye held out her hand and giggled as they nibbled at her fingers.

“Ooh, you’re lovely,” she cooed, scratching the head of a smaller one with patchy fur. She glanced at Diana, who was still standing some distance away. “Don’t you want to say hello?”

Diana raised her hand, scrunching her nose at the smell of urine and hay. “Hello.”

Faye laughed. “Not a fan?”

“My dad worked on a farm,” she said, as if that would explain her reluctance. When the words left her mouth, she frowned. That time of her life wasn’t something she liked to talk about. “The smell never comes out of clothes,” she offered, hoping it would be enough. “And this is a nice dress.”

“It is. And I can’t say their odour isn’t…pungent.” Faye gave the goat one last scratch behind the ears before returning to her. “But working on a farm is cool. Did you spend a lot of time there?”

“I used to. I don’t like to think about it.” When Faye stayed quiet, giving her the space to continue, her voice quieted. “As a kid, I loved it. Running around the fields in the summer, playing in the barn with the farmer’s children. We’d have the best games of hide-and-seek.” She smiled. Once, she’d hidden in one of the horse’s empty feeding sacks for an hour without being found. Her mum had pulled hay from her hair all night. The feeling soured, and she blinked the memory away. “After my mum passed…I never went back.”

The words sounded loud in the quiet. So loud, Diana wished she’d never said them. The ache in her heart flared, the way it always did when she thought about that time of her life.

But then Faye took her hand. “Diana, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “It was a long time ago.”