Page 73 of 10 Days to Surrender

But I knew from the first thrust in the taverna that I messed up. You can’t keep sex out of love or love out of sex. They’re two peas in one fucked-up pod.

My thighs still ache, even though it’s been hours since he left. Another night of slipping in, fucking me silently with his palm over my mouth, then slipping right back out.

No puns intended.

A knock startles me upright in bed. “You alive in here, o sister of mine?”

I yank the duvet up to my chin like Jasmine will see the evidence written on my skin. “Awake, yes. Alive, less so.”

Jasmine nudges the door open with her hip, two steaming mugs of tea in hand. Her gaze flicks to the mangled sheets, my underwear on the floor, all the things that of course she would instantly catalog and understand. “Rough night?”

“Bite me.”

“Looks like someone already did.” She sets a mug on the nightstand. The ginger fumes make my nose wrinkle. “Really, though—you doing okay, Ari?”

I blow on my tea. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“Don’t deflect.”

“I’m not.”

“Are, too.”

“Fine.” The ceramic scalds my palms. “I’m just, like… Ish.”

“Ish,” she echoes, lips pursed thoughtfully. “What kind of ‘ish’ are we talking here?”

“Unsettled-ish, maybe.”

“Ah. The technical term.” She tucks a wild curl behind my ear, her touch lingering like Mama’s used to. “Want to unpack that?”

I look at my reflection in the black puddle of the tea. “It’s nothing. Just… hormones. Sasha being Sasha. The usual.”

Her gaze flicks to the rumpled sheets. “The usual involving midnight calisthenics, I see.”

“Jas—”

“You don’t have to tell me.” She squeezes my knee through the duvet. “But you can’t outrun it forever, you know. Whateveritis. Ish or not-ish.”

“Oh, I beg to differ. I’m the queen of outrunning. Olympic gold champion.”

Jas flicks me in the ear. “Outrunning your feelings, maybe. Outrunning me? You wish, Miss Ish.” She stands, sunlight catching the silver streaks in her hair. “I need help with something out back. Get dressed.”

“What kind of something?”

“The kind that involves sunlight and not brooding in your stank-smelling cave all day long.” She tosses a pair of Kosti’s old overalls at me. They land with athwap. “Wear these. You’ll thank me when the rat snakes show up.”

The “something” turns out to be a quarter-acre of weeds behind the villa that Jasmine has decided, in her infinite optimism, will become a vegetable garden. Does it matter to her that we’ll be gone in ten weeks and therefore will not be here when these things bear fruit? No, it does not. Does she care that yardwork sounds miserable? Not one bit.

“This is hell,” I say, hacking at a thistle with more violence than strictly necessary.

“This is character-building.” Jas yanks a root ball free with a grunt. “And also, free childcare prep. Twin toddlers will make this look like a spa day. You will long for fields of weeds and the silence in which you once tended to them.”

The sun crests the villa’s clay-tiled roof, baking the sweat down my spine. I’m ankle-deep in topsoil and actually, dare I say, maybe even starting to enjoy myself, when boots crunch gravel behind us.

“Where’s the fire?” I ask without turning.

Sasha’s shadow stretches long over my shovel. “Elsewhere.”

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