Page 20 of Fighting Gravity

She didn’t resent that the men she’d dated had respected her. She didn’t want to be treatedbadly. But secretly, she yearned to be pushed out of her comfort zone. She’d only ever voiced her wishes with her college boyfriend, Levi, but he’d just smiled and told her she was a queen and should be treated like one. What she should have told him is that sometimes a queen still wants to be screwed against a wall. Tate had given her a taste of baser pleasures, and the peek had been heady. She wanted more.

And that was a problem.

Despite how attractive she found Tate and how much she’d enjoyed their fevered kiss, she didn’t screw for fun. She was not that girl. She wanted to explore her more brazen side, but with a partner. Tate wasn’t her partner. He was her client.

But what a kiss. Tate had given her the most passionate, consuming kiss of her life, resonating through every atom in her body. His mouth had been an oasis after a two-year dry spell. The heat of that moment singed her so deep that it would probably sustain her for another two years.

“I was thinking about the common room. We need a selfie wall. A classy one.”

Rosie nodded, bringing her attention back to work. The types of people who would spring for two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar tickets to space were limelight people. A selfie wall would be a design feature they didn’t know they wanted.

The alarm on Gigi’s phone went off.

“What’s that for?”

Gigi grinned at her. Her hair was in twin buns today. With her crisscrossed legs and stack of chokers, she looked like the kooky college roommate Rosie had never had. She’d had Elle, who couldneverbe described that way. “It’s lunchtime. I knew if I didn’t set an alarm, you wouldn’t take one. Now I can make you.”

Rosie rolled her eyes, but she smiled. Gigi wasn’t totally unlike Elle; both were skilled at looking out for others. “Thank you for the reminder. And thank you for bringing your great ideas to OrbitAll.”

“I’ll work on a name for the hotel,” Gigi called after her as Rosie made her way to the small kitchen. “I’ll consult my tarot deck!”

Rosie chuckled as she pulled her grain salad out of the fridge, wondering what Tate would think about hotel names conjured from the astral plane. She brought her lunch into their smaller conference room and shut the door. Tate’s happy place was his cabin. Elle’s was work. Rosie’s was alone time with markers and some flimsy as she tried to solve the homelessness problem.

The idea had come to her in a dream. A row of eight connected tiny homes. Simply designed and able to be constructed modularly, connected tiny homes were a cheap and easy way to get people off the streets. She’d envisioned gabled roofs and faux shutters around the windows. Bright paint colors and areas for customization.

She took the large, detailed sketch of the units off the corkboard wall, spread it in on the table in front of her, and covered it with trace paper. What would make the houses cozier?

After a few bites, she picked up a gray marker and scribbled front stoops on each unit. People could sit outside and talk to neighbors. Add potted plants if they wanted. But infrastructure like cement porches was expensive and permanent. If for some reason the tiny homes needed to move, they’d be stuck with rows of stoops to nowhere. She crumpled up the flimsy and started again, picking up a green marker this time. A backyard was a very homelike solution, good for people and dogs. She sketched green patches behind each home and studied her work. If she was going to pitch the idea to the city of San Diego, or any other city, she needed to think through every argument they’d throw at her. Grass was hard to maintain, though not as permanent as stoops. No, the city wouldn’t want to maintain grass year-round. She crumpled that sheet up, too. Sighing, Rosie sat back and ate the rest of her salad with her mind flitting between tiny homes and large hands. Tate’s, specifically.

The strength of her attraction to him scared her. Leaning in meant you lost your power. Lost your focus. Lost the ability to see what people were capable of. Losing yourself in a person meant just that:losing. Failing to protect yourself.

She knew Selah would disagree. So would Elle, especially when it came to Tate. Elle thought all the good in the world orbited around the man in charge over there. She was an excellent judge of character, that was true, but she’d never been screwed over like Rosie had. She hadn’t experienced the pain that came from an ally, a lover and friend, twisting a knife in her back. Chad’s mask had never even slipped. Rosie had found out he was her betrayer after the fact.

She wasn’t ready for that risk. She needed to stop thinking about Tate’s kindness, about the way he seemed to care so deeply about those around him. She needed to stop dwelling on his mouth and hands, and the muscles hiding under his warm, golden skin.

Her phone dinged with a message. The number wasn’t recognized but could have come from only one person. Oneclientwho’d likely found her cell number on her email signature.

Being truthful, I haven’t stopped thinking about our kiss. I’ll never look at The Saloon the same way again. Can’t wait to see you Friday. We’ll talk about the hotel this time, I promise.

Well, crap.

Sighing again, she pinned up the tiny homes and tossed her lunch garbage. When she got back to her desk, her sister was sitting there.

Rosie felt the muscles of her back stiffen. Anxiety skittered across her skin. She did not like people in her workspace. Especially people she didn’t trust.

“Violet, what are you doing here?”

Her younger sister twirled in her chair, shrugging. She had redder hair than Rosie’s and green eyes where Rosie’s were gold. She kept her green-eyed gaze to herself as Rosie searched for any signs that her sister was slipping on her sobriety journey.

Their brunch a few weeks ago had been quiet and awkward. Rosie had left feeling entirely defeated, and it wasbrunch. The happiest of meals. They didn’t know how to talk to each other anymore, and Rosie didn’t know how to fix that rift. Some days she didn’t want to, considering all Violet had put them through.

Her sister’s twirling stopped abruptly, and Rosie followed her gaze to the purse she’d stashed underneath her desk. Not the Target purse she’d brought to brunch as a decoy, but the nice Tory Burch handbag she’d bought herself after Abode had signed its first client. The purse that had proven she’d made it.

Angry heat ripped through her veins. She knew her chest and cheeks were stained scarlet. “Violet?”

She was glad Gigi was out for her after-lunch walk around Balboa Park. She didn’t want her staff to see her as anything other than a steady leader. A quick glance around showed everyone else hard at work with AirPods in, or in Andrew’s case, on the phone.

Her sister spun the chair so she faced Rosie. Her cheeks were still too thin, her eyes not quite back to their normal brightness. Rosie didn’t know how long it would take for the physical impacts of her years of drug use to fade.

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