Page 21 of Make Her Mine

Esme was floating. The bubble surrounding her and Nora was warm and happy, a pink haze of bliss. After all their time apart, despite the uncertainty of the future, this moment was a perfect one. She smiled up into Nora’s beautiful blue eyes, tilted her mouth up for a sweet kiss. Nora’s body covering hers, her warm hand resting on Esme’s waist…Esme had never felt closer to another person in her entire life.

Nora smiled, a lovely, warm smile that Esme adored seeing, because it softened all the sharpness of her face, made her seem like an entirely different person than the designer-clad, serious-minded real estate tycoon Esme had first met.

They lay together, smiling, in silence. Nora reached up a hand and brushed hair away from Esme’s face, a tender gesture that touched Esme’s heart with a quick finger of light. Then she opened her mouth and looked like she wanted to say something?—

“What the absolute fuck is going on here?”

Sasha’s harsh shout ringing from the mezzanine stairs shocked Esme out of her reverie, shattering the warm pink bubble of bliss. She pushed herself up and out from under Nora, trying frantically to pull her dress down, tidy her hair up, pull herself together. Of course, she knew it was hopeless as she did it all. Her face was flushed, her hair impossibly tumbled about, her lips swollen. What they’d been doing was stamped on her and Nora as unmistakably as a fresh tattoo.

Sasha stalked over from the stairwell, more furious than Esme could ever remember seeing her in their years of friendship. Even the day they opened the Lounge and discovered that the walk-in freezer had malfunctioned overnight and everything had to be thrown out—Sasha had been on a near-murderous rampage that day, and even that paled in comparison to this moment now.

It seemed more alarming thanks to the silence that radiated from her as she walked forward. Esme couldn’t help herself from shrinking back into the couch, pulling her legs up and her long dress over them. Vaguely, she felt Nora wrapping a protective arm around her. “Sasha,” she began.

“Save it, E. Whatever excuses you’re about to make, just don’t.” Sasha shook her head, lip curled in disgust. Her furious dark gaze slid over towards Nora for a split second, and she snorted. “I knew something was up the last few weeks, but I just thought you were worried about the building sale.”

“I was… am…” Esme didn’t know how to get any words out.

“So worried that you’ve been fucking this one?” Sasha gestured towards Nora, even that movement laced with contempt. “She’s going to shut us down, she doesn’t give a shit about us or the Lounge, and you sleep with her? Her? Of all people, Esme, how could you?”

Nora’s arm tightened around Esme’s shoulders. “Back off, okay? Stop lecturing her for a minute, let her think.”

Sasha scoffed. “Oh, I don’t even want to hear from you.”

“Leave her alone, Sasha,” Esme managed to get out. She swallowed hard. “Why are you here?”

“Not that I should be the one answering questions here, but I forgot my Airpods in my apron pocket.” She held up a tiny red case. “Got halfway home, stopped for gas, realized I didn’t have them when I looked in my bag for my wallet. And I wanted them; they need to be charged. So I came back.” Sasha’s lips pulled back into an almost feral expression. “There. A full and complete answer. Your turn. What the fuck were you thinking, Esme?”

Esme took in a deep breath and stood up, feeling Nora’s arm drop away from her shoulders as she did. “I am an adult, Sasha. I can make my own choices, good or bad.”

“There’s good, there’s bad, and there’s fucking disastrous, Esme!” Sasha gestured around to take in the Lounge. “This is our space, our safe space that you built, and this greedy asshole is going to throw us out on the street. And you’re fucking her! In the space she wants to destroy! Are you dumb? I never thought of you as dumb.”

“Enough!” Esme squeezed her eyes shut and held up her hands. “Enough! Stop it. It’s nothing! It’s just sex! That’s it! I’m allowed to fuck who I want, Sasha!”

“Yeah, it didn’t look like just sex when I got up here. It looked romantic. Intimate. You made a goddamn picnic, Esme.” Looking down, Sasha waved at the blankets and the rapidly cooling Chinese food. “This looks like it was a date. The eye contact you two were making looked like even more than that.”

“Well, you’re reading too much into it. And I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to keep talking about this now. Emotions are high.”

Shaking her head, Sasha let out a bitter laugh. “Sure. Fine. Whatever, Esme. Looks like you made a huge mistake betting on the Nora Hartley horse, though. She can’t even stand by you at a time like this.”

“What?” Esme spun around and looked at the couch. Nora was gone. In the distance, she heard the heavy back door of the Lounge clang shut.

Nora hit the back door of the Lounge at a near sprint and dashed for her car, blinking back furious tears. In what felt like seconds, she had the door to her Audi unlocked, wrenched open, and she all but fell into the driver’s seat, gasping for breath. She knew she shouldn’t drive upset, but she needed to get far away from here, quickly.

She peeled out of the back-alley parking lot in a screech of tires and zoomed up the street towards the 110 that would take her home. With some effort, she got herself to slow down within a couple of blocks. The last thing she needed was LAPD pulling her over. Nora didn’t think she could maintain her cool through a confrontation with cops and getting arrested for slapping one wasn’t exactly on her bucket list.

As she made her way back to Pacific Palisades, Nora couldn’t stop herself from replaying the night in her head. Especially that moment.

It’s nothing! It’s just sex!

With what they’d shared that night, Nora had thought she and Esme were on the same page at last. That the push and pull would stop, that there would be no more uncertain snappish moments that left Nora reeling. She’d always understood why Esme’s emotions were so mercurial, of course she’d be conflicted and anxious all the time.

But this. This, she hadn’t expected. Perhaps she should have, but… she just hadn’t. To Nora, it was clear that Esme’s anxious, biting responses came down to an emotional conflict within herself. That meant that she had some kind of positive feeling about Nora that came into direct opposition to her anger over the building sale. Something was there. Not nothing.

Except, Nora guessed, it might have been nothing after all. Thank God she hadn’t managed to take off any clothing before she pounced on Esme. When Esme had been dismissing their relationship as nothing, Nora had been able to slide off the couch and take the stairs down two at a time, gripping the railing to keep herself from tripping through a blinding haze of tears.

Even splitting up with Leah hadn’t hurt like this, this uncontrollable wrenching pain in her chest. No one had ever made her feel like this, like she was nothing, worthless. She’d never granted anyone the access to do so, hadn’t intended to give it to Esme. And yet here, she reflected, wiping tears away as she steered towards the highway, here she was. Hurt beyond measure, tears streaming down her face, driving home in the middle of an LA night, alone.

What a huge mistake she’d made, getting involved with Esme Bloom. But there was one good thing to come out of this awful night—she was going to quit stalling on the Fairchild deal and wrap it up as soon as possible. And just to be the bigger person, she was still going to provide Esme with a list of relocation options and even give her six months to move out.

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