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Finally, Simone dabs the corners of her eyes with a tissue and lets out a long breath. “Wow,” she says. “I think we need to call the girls over.”
“No,” I answer…meaning the exact opposite.
Simone already has her phone to her ear. Before I know it, there are plans for charcuterie boards and wine and company. I barely have time to put the empty bottle of wine in the recycling bin before the doorbell rings and a coven of forty-somethings descend on my home.
Fiona’s the first to arrive, her dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She’s closely followed by Candice and Trina, sisters, who rode here with charcuterie-board-carrying Jen.
Excuses are made for Nora, who’s out of town to look after her mom, and Iliana, who’s at home with her child.
They take over the kitchen, huddled around the island where the food and drinks are set out. Jen produces phyllo-wrapped brie and pops it in my oven, which somehow magically preheated while I wasn’t looking. My cabinets are opened and hunted through, wine is poured, and chatter fills the space.
When the pastry-covered brie emerges from the oven, appreciative sounds echo around the lively kitchen. I mostly stand aside until Simone lifts her wine glass for silence (her other hand is balancing gooey cheese on a dangerously overloaded cracker) and says, “Let’s get down to business. Sebastian Finch kissed Georgia tonight, and she’s not handling it well.”
If Simone had told them the world was ending in three minutes, the ladies in my kitchen could not have been more shocked.
Before I can open my mouth to deny Simone’s accusation, someone pounds on my door. It’s so loud it could be a sledgehammer crashing against the tall timber entrance. The whole house seems to shake, like a giant is standing on my front porch rattling the frame.
“Georgia!” a booming male voice calls out. “Open the door, Sweet Peach. We’re not done here.”
Wide eyes turn to me, and every inch of my skin grows hot and itchy. I grip the edge of the counter while my legs do their best imitation of two columns of Jell-O.
I know that voice. I know that drawl. I feel those thumps on my door like they’re knocking on my ribcage.
Bang. Bang-bang-bang.
“Georgia. Get out here and talk to me!”
“Oh my God,” I say, inconsolable.
“Oh my God,” Simone answers, giddy.
2
SEBASTIAN
I waseighteen and dumb the last time Georgia walked away from me. Now I’m forty-three and not much smarter, but I’m sure as hell not going to let her smack me around and wiggle that heart-shaped ass at me without having something to say about it.
“Georgia!” My voice comes out harsh, impatient, because that’s exactly how I feel. “Open the damn door, woman!”
“Excuseme?” a haughty, husky voice answers, and there she is in the open door, lifting a dark eyebrow at me and staring down her nose like I’m dog shit on the bottom of her shoe. I rememberthatlook, too.
More beautiful than she was at eighteen. More ruthless than she was when she left me.
My woman.
Kissing her was like wrapping my hand around an electric fence and clinging on while my socks got burned to ash. Being slapped across the mouth a second later was almost as good.
“Do not refer to me as ‘woman.’”
“That’s what you are, ain’t it?”
“You need to leave.”
The woman doesSnow Queenlike Hans Christian Andersen used her for inspiration. And she’s right—I do need to leave.
But what’s holding me back is one thing. One moment.
Earlier this evening, I kissed her, and before her brain got in the way of something good, there was a moment. A couple of seconds that turned back the clock twenty-odd years, an instant in time that breathed life back into this dry husk of a body I’ve been wearing.
