Page 87 of Late Bloomer
But a nagging, clawing pang of anxiety shoots through me. What did we just do? What does this mean? Because things weresaidthat can’t really beunsaid. Or, if they are unsaid, my heart will be obliterated.
I shift as my pulse kicks into overdrive, and Opal pulls away, hands gentle and delicate as she moves them from between my legs, tracing the curve of my torso, up to my neck. She gives my earlobes a tiny tug, drawing my attention to her.
I look at her precious face and it feels like my heart will explode from every emotion battering it. She presses up to give me a soft kiss, then pulls away, adjusting her clothes.
I do the same, vision fuzzy and throat tight.
The sudden impulse to flee is too alluring to ignore, and I turn, making a beeline for the door. My pulse pounds at my temples, the world swirling. If I run, she can’t hurt me. She can’t reject me. She can’t use all these aching feelings I have for her to crush me. She can’t—
“Nice try,” Opal says, catching my arm, spinning me to her. She wraps her hands around my wrists, moving me until my back is pressed against the sweating glass of the greenhouse. “I’m not letting you run away,” she says, grip loosening, fingers slipping across my palms to tangle with mine.
The sigh I let out is so strong, my body moves to collapse with the release. Opal holds me up, holds me close.
And I let her.
I let her hold me, cuddle me, heart still racing and mind spinning and hope—terrible, wonderful, dangerous hope—swirling through me.
And then I do something I swore I never would. I let myself feel without diluting it with the threat of hurt. A few broken tears slip from the corners of my eyes. Opal doesn’t see them, her cheek pressed to my thumping heart.
And, for this moment, I let myself trust she actually wants to stay there.
“That was really fucking amazing,” she says after a while. It could be seconds, it could be hours. Time feels rather irrelevant right now. She pulls back enough to smile up at me.
With trembling fingers, I tuck one of the wild strands of her hair behind her ear. It bounces back, sticking straight out. “I didn’t know you were also a poet.”
Opal giggles, cheeks red and smile wide. She rolls her eyes, taking my hand and leading us outside. The summer sun feels like a relief after the heat of the greenhouse.
“I’m about to compare your vulva to flowers, give me a minute for the haze to clear,” she says with a cheeky wink.
“Make sure to throw in a few moon metaphors. Would hate for you to get too cliché.”
“Well, duh. All great sapphic poets do.” Opal giggles at her own joke.
And I giggle too, punch-drunk and giddy from the sun and the heat and the sex and… Opal.
It’s all from Opal.
But the giggling is cut short, Opal’s eyes shooting wideand mouth forming a perfectO. I jump when she grabs my shoulders. “Wait, Pepper!”
“What?” I say, pressing a hand to my heart. Poor muscle can’t take much more.
“The competition! Our design!”
“Yeah?” I say, a tickle of anxiety traveling down my neck at the mention of it. How behind we are. But Opal’s grin convinces me any task is possible.
“I have a brilliant idea.”
Chapter 29PEPPER
We’ve been constructing the base of our competition piece for the last week. All the kudos to Opal; the woman really does have range when it comes to various art mediums.
“If I were a superhero, I’d want my power to be that my hands are built-in nail guns so I wouldn’t have to lift this heavy thing,” she says at the end of a particularly busy day, dropping the power tool before slumping to the barn floor.
We’ve been waking up even earlier, doing some building before using the sunlit hours to harvest flowers, then back to construction well into the evening, collapsing into bed in a sore, exhausted heap.
Repairs on Opal’s room were finished a few days ago. She still spends every night in my bed.
“I’d want to be needle fingers,” I say, sucking on the pad of my thumb that I just stuck. Again.
