Page 26 of Wreckage and Rain

I get a hand between us and use my thumb on her clit and feel her start to break apart under me, and that is what ends me. I bury my face in her neck and let go and she is whispering something into my hair that I don't catch and don't need to, and we are completely alone in this house and this bed and this thing of ours.

***

Afterward, the sheets are tangled and her head is on my chest. The afternoon has gone to evening. Her finger traces a slow circle on my sternum.

"I miss this," she says. Quiet. "I miss us."

"I'm right here."

I pull her closer and press my mouth to the top of her head and breathe her in and don't think about anything for a long minute.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I glance at it. Reflex.

Cheyenne

Calloway confirmed for Tuesday. We got this.

I don't pick it up. I don't respond. I turn back to Summer and pull her closer and press my lips to her hair.

But I don't put the phone away.

And the screen stays lit on the nightstand a long time before it dims back to black.

Chapter 5: The Dinner Party

Summer

It has been three weeks since I found Colt with Cheyenne at The Butcher Block. What I learned in the dark that night about who lives in his sleep hasn't faded. I have carried it alone with nowhere to put it.

But tonight isn't about that. Tonight is a Bennet family dinner, which has its own special category of torture. Sonny and Vivienne host these quarterly. Eight to ten people. Charleston's inner circle. White tablecloth, heavy silver, the kind of multi-course meal that exists less for the food and more for the theater of eating it in the right order with the right fork.

I used to dread these dinners for the usual reasons. Vivienne's comments. Sonny's condescension. The slow-motion performance of being judged by people who decided I was insufficient the day Colt brought me home.

Tonight I dread it for a new reason.

Cheyenne is invited.

Colt told me yesterday. "Oh, Dad's including Cheyenne in the dinner Thursday. She's been killing it on Tidewater and he wants her to network with Calloway and the Charleston crowd."

My stomach dropped. I said, "Great." Because what else do you say. She's a colleague. She's important to the deal. The dinner is work-adjacent. Everything about this is reasonable if you don't look too hard.

I look too hard. It's what I do.

***

The Bennet estate is gorgeous and I have hated it since the first time I walked through the door.

The house itself is stunning. Antebellum, two stories, white columns, the kind of historic Lowcountry architecture thatshows up on postcards and home tours. What unsettles me is the energy of the place, the inherited expectation pressing in from every room. The portraits on the walls, the silver on the table, the unspoken rule that everything in this house, including the people, must be polished and positioned and appropriate at all times.

I'm wearing black. Not red. I don't have the energy for red. Black is armor without being a statement.

Colt and I arrive together, and he looks so good it actually hurts a little. The dark jacket, the stubble he didn't bother shaving, his hand finding the small of my back on the steps. Eight years, and he can still make me feel like I did at the start, off balance and a little stupid over him.

I don't want to be here. Vivienne's dinners are two slow hours of cream silk and cool smiles and being looked at like something that wandered in off the street. But he asked me to come, and his hand is warm against my back, and I love him too much to send him in alone. So I let him walk me up to his mother's door, telling myself I can get through anything as long as he's next to me. I usually can.

Vivienne greets us at the door. Cream dress. Pearl earrings. A smile like a closed gate.

"Colt, darling. You look wonderful." She air-kisses his cheek. Turns to me. "Summer. How nice." The pause before nice contains a full paragraph of unwritten commentary. "Black. Very sleek."