Page 4 of Sweet Surrender
Barra moaned loudly. Her body stilled. Her fingers let the strands of Allie’s hair go as her body collapsed against the wall. Allie tasted her orgasm. And when she stood up, she didn’t wipe her mouth. Instead, she kissed Barra and let her taste herself. “Should we get out of here?” Allie muttered against Barra’s lips. “We can go back to my hotel. I’m just ten minutes away.”
Barra nodded. “I’ll call an Uber,” she said breathlessly.
Chapter Three
Barra couldn’t believe she was doing this. Honestly, it would’ve been more believable if Antoni Gaudí had phoned, asking for her help to design a new chapel in Montjuïc. For the record, Antoni Gaudí had been dead for nearly a century.
“Why do you look like you dropped your phone in a pond?” Gabi asked, pushing a latte into Barra’s face.
Gabi was Barra’s oldest friend. They’d met in college before Gabi had dropped out and moved to Los Angeles. She’d decided designing buildings was too boring and her true talents were better used making jewelry that no one could afford. And she’d been right. Gabi had started a line of elegant, heirloom-worthy pieces called Lumen. Barra was wearing one of her signet rings right this minute.
“Thank you,” Barra muttered, accepting the coffee with both hands. “And I look like this because I can’t believe I’m going to spend the next four weeks eating beans and rice again.”
“That’s if you win again,” Gabi pointed out as she led them toward the nearest row of airport lounge chairs. They were at LAX and in a few minutes, Barra would pass through security and board a plane that would take her toOutlast Her’snewest destination. “You might not even make it past the first three days.”
Barra shot her a glare.
Gabi smiled, unbothered, and plopped down in the seat next to her. “Well, I think it’s a great idea that you’re doing this. You’ve always wanted to go to Costa Rica.”
“Yes,” Barra said, stretching out her long legs. She was dressed in charcoal sweatpants, a faded navy hoodie with GSAPP—Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation—printed on the front, and her hair, which had grown a few inches longer over the winter, brushed the hood. “To see the Iglesia de la Merced or visit the Cartago ruins. Not to live on a desolate beach fending off crabs and spiders and waking up every morning wondering who was trying to stab me in the back.”
The thought was honestly like volunteering to be slowly sandblasted. She couldn’t believe she’d said yes when Elise Mercier had called her three months ago with the theme for next season. Winners vs. Newbies. Was that supposed to be catchy? Apparently yes. Elise predicted the ratings would go up tenfold.Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains had once been ranked number one by fans and critics, and Elise believed that was solely due to villainess Sandra Diaz-Twine winning the entire game for a whopping second time. That was frankly unheard of before that season. Previous winners were underdogs, the ones everyone expected to get voted out first because the newbies were terrified of them. Or desperate to make a name for themselves by eliminating them.
Barra hadn’t found the season theme as appealing as Elise did, yet she’d emailed her without a second thought.I’m in.She suspected now that the reason she’d said yes was that she was lying on her sofa, doomscrolling through Dominique’s delayed honeymoon content. Dominique and Kiara had gone somewhere in the Maldives. In one story, they were clinking sweating glasses of gin and tonics under a striped umbrella with their bare legs tangled on a daybed. In another, they were swimming in water the color of aquamarine.
“Maybe you’ll be paired up with someone great and fall in love with them,” Gabi said. “Then you’ll forget all about Dominique. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Barra slowly lifted her hand and flipped her off.
Gabi chuckled and sipped on her cinnamon spice latte with two pumps of vanilla. She was as predictable as cheese, which was why Barra had felt comfort in asking Gabi to drive her to the airport. Instead of dropping her off at departures, Gabi had insisted she walk Barra into the airport and buy her an overpriced latte. “Fine,” she said, raising up a free hand in surrender. “That was too soon. My bad. I’m a terrible friend.”
“You are,” Barra shot. Though that was as far from the truth as the Earth was to the Moon.
Gabi had flown all the way from LA to stroke Barra’s hair two weeks after the finale when she perpetually looked like she’d been run over by a truck. She’d filled Barra’s fridge with groceries—fresh berries, a loaf of sourdough, and ten different ready-made meals from that fancy organic place in the West Village that packaged everything in compostable cardboard. And she’d even stayed for an extra week when she’d caught Barra staring blankly at a wall like some Victorian widow.
Which was funny, right, because Barra was theUltimate Outlast Her. She was a million dollars richer, minus tax, of course. But somehow it still felt like she’d lost something.
Barra was suddenly and viciously yanked from her thoughts by the sight of dark, wavy hair with the slightest auburn highlights moving through the crowd. There, at the other end of the terminal, above the heads of a school group in matching navy polo shirts and identical backpacks, Barra spotted someone she knew. Briefly. Intimately. Someone with smooth, buttery skin. Someone with rosy lips. Someone she didn’t think she’d ever see again.
Barra immediately sank into her chair.
Gabi looked at her with one eyebrow raised and one depressed. “What’s going on with you?” she asked. “Why are you sitting like you lost your spine?”
“Nothing,” Barra replied, staring down at her scuffed Nike Airs. She even yanked at the strings of her hoodie, pulling the fabric forward so the hood drooped a little lower over her face. Unfortunately, not enough to hide completely. “I’m just resting.”
“Resting?” Gabi asked. “You’ve got a six-hour flight to rest. I didn’t skip my morning yoga and matcha to drive you all the way to the airport to watch you rest.”
But Barra was barely listening. She couldn’t stop wondering what Allie was doing here. In LAX. Was she going on holiday? Was she about to solo backpack through Europe or island-hop through the San Juan Islands? Though that didn’t seem quite her scene. Everything about her screamed five-star hotels and fancy Mediterranean yachts. Maybe she was moving overseas. Yes. That was exactly it. Allie had decided California was overrated, and she was relocating to Barcelona or Normandy, or some charming coastal town where people drank wine at lunch and never once ran into former reality show winners they’d hooked up with in wedding venue bathrooms.
Or... Barra didn’t even want to consider the possibility that Allie was flying to Costa Rica, to a remote slice of the Osa Peninsula where rainforests swallowed the sky, and the beaches were only accessible by boat or small plane. It was very possible that Allie was going to be a contestant on Season Seven ofOutlast Her: Winners vs. Newbies.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t as unrealistic as Barra desperately wished it were.
Not only had Barra drunkenly promised to email Elise and recommend Allie for the newOutlast Herseason, but she’d actually sent the message. Right there in that bathroom whileGet the Party Startedby Pink had drummed outside, and Allie had nibbled on the skin of Barra’s neck.
The very next morning, while Barra had battled a headache as severe as a jackhammer in her skull, she’d checked her messages and seen the email that she’d sent Elise.You have to cast this woman on Outlast Her. Her name is Allie Chen, and she’s amazing. You’ll regret it big time if you don’t. She also saw the reply from Elise.
Barra had stared at the email for a full thirty seconds, at Elise’s response that she’d take the suggestion under consideration. Then she’d clapped a hand over her mouth and run for the bathroom.
