Page 29 of Falls From Grace
When Cole was sleeping with every woman in every town, she’d become an expert in keeping her feelings - and her awareness - buttoned down tight. If she didn’t look at it directly, maybe things weren’t as bad as she deep down suspected they might be.
For the last few weeks with Brynn, Savannah had employed the same tactics. Don’t look too close. Don’t think too much. Don’t lie awake at night wondering. But yesterday, some combination of Brynn’s smoldering eyes, fierceness and the way she kept making herself vulnerable for Savannah… a barrier had been kicked down. She could no longer deny that something had been growing within her and thanks to her conversation with Coral, she could now admit that something was lust.
She wanted Brynn. Coral’s advice to just enjoy the pleasant friction of wanting someone you couldn’t have would have been great if it wasn’t for the complication that she also found she was starting to really care about the other woman. If Savannah let herself, she could find she wanted her in more than just physical ways. This was bad news.
She knew what it was to be cheated on. Even if Brynn ever returned her feelings - and Savannah was far from sure she did - there was no way she would ever cross a line that would harm Noah the way she herself had been harmed. It was a hard and fast boundary for her, of that she was sure.
Brynn was only here for a matter of months at the most. She could hold it together that long. But if Savannah was going to come out of it without getting hurt, she was going to have to shut something down. Losing the friendship - the tenuous but growing connection between them - felt like the worst part to lose. And it was the part Brynn herself seemed to be fighting for. Savannah recalled the low timbre of Brynn’s voice as she spoke her name and her forceful tone as she straight up refused to join Savannah’s payroll. The shiver down her spine that followed was quickly chased by a flood of warmth. Brynn wanted this connection with her every bit as much as she did. Enough to turn down cold hard cash.
Okay, the physical attraction then. She was not an animal. She could shove that back, deep down, in a little box inside her, just like she’d shoved down far more powerful feelings before. This she could do. She’d turn it off like a switch.
The next morning, when Brynn arrived to take care of Tucker, Savannah gave it a go. No big deal, just a beautiful woman at her door. Smiling at her with dark pretty eyes, and bending down to swoop Savannah’s thrilled, giggling child into the air. Ignore the flex of her forearms, the easy strength of her shoulders, that’s none of your business. Just smile and offer her coffee and don’t look too close. Don’t think.
She kissed her son goodbye and - with noticeably less of a pang than usual, in light of his excited face and Brynn’s easy warmth - she left him to go meet with Noah in the band room.
She brought with her a new song idea, something that had started low in her belly this morning when she’d opened the door to Brynn. In the heartbeat before she remembered to shut it down, all she’d wanted was to lean in and bury her face in the other woman’s neck, inhale her scent and pull her close. Then, just as quickly, she remembered sharply that it could never happen. It was a feeling she couldn’t quite put into words just yet, but she could just about hum the first verse.
They worked for hours, Noah pulling together a few prescient lines that only served to remind her they currently shared the same muse. The melancholy and guilt that realization brought to her added a deeper nuance to the song, but the real hooks and a chorus continued to elude them.
They took a brief break, sitting side by side by the fire upstairs, with a drink and a small cheese plate, and whether it was to help her resurrect a barrier or just to torture herself, she asked him to tell her about how he met Brynn.
His fond grin as he recounted how Brynn had saved him from the sea made her stomach churn. She felt the first real stirrings of true jealousy, imagining what it would have been like to have been pulled up out of the salty ocean to your first view of sparkling dark eyes and freckles.
She fought off the feeling. She didn’t want to be jealous of Noah; he too was starting to feel like a friend. And besides, jealousy whispered unhelpful things in her ear, like maybe Brynn was a little bit wasted on the beautiful man in front of her, that despite the clear fondness between the couple, there seemed to be an absence of any kind of genuine spark. She’d never even seen them kiss, she realized. Sometimes things could start to fizzle out in long-term relationships, she knew that, but oh god how she’d kiss her if Brynn were hers.
Feeling more ashamed and conflicted than ever, she reentered the studio where they tinkered around a bit more, a few more melancholy longing lines coming to the surface, but the heart of the song still escaped them. They called it a day, and after Noah left, she stood for a long minute in the solitude, taking deep breaths and solidifying her resolve to turn off any non-platonic feelings for Noah’s wife.
She reentered her suite to silence.
“Brynn?” she called. “Tucker? I’m home.”
Nothing. She frowned, kicking off her shoes and padding down the hall.
“Shhhhh!” she heard from a short distance away. Curious, she followed the sound to the playroom and looked through the open doorway. The room looked empty. Tucker’s giggle rang out.
“Hiding, hiding, hiding!” His gleeful voice was coming from the small blanket fort she’d erected in the corner for him.
“Buddy, have some chill.” Brynn’s low voice from the fort was amused, the wry note making Savannah smile automatically.
“Hmm,” she said out loud. “I wonder where they are? I’m sure I left them both here this morning…”
Tucker giggled again, the blanket fort rippling as he wriggled.
“Maybe they’re in the toy cupboard?” she mused, opening the door. “Oh! Not in there…”
She pretended to check under the table and under the rug before Tucker ran out of patience and shouted, “inna fort Mama!”
She pulled back the blanket to see her son’s excited face from his perch on Brynn’s lap.
“I found you!”
“I found you!” he cried back.
She opened her arms for him to come hug her but instead he demanded, “Mama in! Mama in!” his voice rising when she tried to protest.
Carefully, she squeezed into their little fort. Brynn was sitting cross-legged, an excited toddler bouncing on her lap. She looked perfectly content, despite the roof of the blanket fort being at the same height as the top of her head, the static cling wreaking havoc on her smooth locks. Tucker looked as happy as she’d ever seen him, waiting for her to cram herself in opposite them before leaping onto her lap.
“Hug!” he shouted, wrapping his arms around her neck. She squeezed him close and smiled across at Brynn, who was only a few inches away.
