Page 33 of Our Secret Summer

“Can I ask you something?” Dylan didn’t know how Raffo would react, but she still thought it a fair question for their last night.

“Sure.” Raffo nodded.

“What if as soon as you’re back, Mia comes to see you and claims she made the biggest mistake of her life when she left you.”

Raffo scoffed. “Fuck that.” That, too, was such a Raffo response—economical with words even now. Still, Dylan gave her time to elaborate. Raffo looked into the fire again. “Maybe, one day, I will be able to accept that she fell out of love with me. Rationally, I know that is something that happens to couples all the time. That it can just be over like that. I can forgive her for that but never for how she handled it. For how she treated me.” Raffo shook her head. “It’s not going to happen, anyway, because she doesn’t love me anymore.”

But I do, Dylan thought, the words burning in her chest.I’m so stupidly, crazily in love with you.

When Raffo woke, Dylan was no longer in bed. She groaned as reality washed over her. Dylan was leaving today. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Raffo had suggested it, but now that it was about to happen, she wished she’d never proposed this particular compromise. Because their last night together hadn’t just been sensual and explosive and passionate—it had cracked something open between them, something raw and honest and terrifying.

Raffo would never get the image out of her head of a naked Dylan straddling her underneath the sheet, like some super-sexy ghost who couldn’t get enough of her, with breasts so improbably perfect, Raffo might just have to paint them all over again. Maybe that’s what she would do as soon as Dylan left. Paint her. A full-body work this time—completely naked.

She could already see it in her mind: Dylan stretched out on the lounger, sunlight playing across her skin, those knowing eyes fixed on some distant point across the lake. The painting would capture everything—her strength, her vulnerability, her impossible grace. But Raffo would have to keep it hidden away, like so many other memories of their time together. Another secret to carry home.

“Where are you?” she shouted, because, for one final minute, she wanted Dylan back in bed with her.

“I’m here.” Raffo couldn’t make out where Dylan’s voice was coming from, but she appeared in the room a moment later. “I’ve been awake for a while. Going home jitters. So much to pack.”

“Come here, please.” Raffo opened her arms.

Dylan was already fully dressed in crisp linen pants and a blue blouse that made her eyes look like pieces of sky—maybe that was for the best.

Raffo pulled her into a fierce hug. Because she didn’t know what to say she sighed deeply into Dylan’s soft, sun-streaked hair. They lay like that for long seconds, moments Raffo never wanted to end.

“It’s so hard.” Raffo breathed in Dylan’s familiar scent—expensive moisturizer, coffee, and something uniquely her—trying to memorize it. In a few hours, this would all be just another memory, like the way Dylan looked in the morning light, or how she laughed when Raffo said something unexpectedly funny. All these little details that had become so precious. “Why is it so hard?”

“You probably can’t imagine life without access to my breasts,” Dylan joked, but there was a clear sadness to her tone.

“That must be it.” Raffo held onto Dylan a little tighter. “Why are you Connor’s mother? Why can’t you be someone else?” It wasn’t a rational question. Nothing about this was rational. It was all emotion.

“Why?” Dylan’s voice was muffled because her face was pressed against Raffo’s neck. “Would you ask me on a date in LA if I weren’t his mother? Am I not too old for you?”

Raffo didn’t reply because it was futile, although she didn’t consider Dylan too old for her in the least.

“I will never forget our time in Big Bear. Thank you for everything. For all the meals and the excellent company and the mind-blowing orgasms.” Raffo loosened her embrace a fraction.

“Thank you for the amazing works of art.” Dylan pushed herself up and gazed at Raffo, her eyes all moist. “And for being my third woman.” Dylan swallowed something out of her throat. She swept at her cheek. “Sorry. I’m just, um—you made me feel good about myself again, Raffo. That means so much to me.” Tears streamed down her face. Dylan didn’t bother catching them any longer. “I’m going to miss you so much.”

“Me too.” The tears that pricked behind Raffo’s eyes soon rolled along her cheeks, onto the sheets of this bed where everything had changed.

They sat still, looking at each other, only the sound of sniffling between them. Then there was nothing left to say, though a thousand words pressed against Raffo’s lips. This was it. It was all over. The vacation. The time-out from life. Their red-hot and strangely restorative affair. Their secret fling in Big Bear and whatever feelings it may have produced. As soon as Dylan’s car rolled off the driveway, it was all over and done with.

CHAPTER 24

After barely holding it together in bed, Dylan had to get out of there. If she’d stayed any longer, she would have told Raffo how she really felt about her. She would have been in danger of blowing up her life, which was already so torn to pieces.

She glanced in the rearview mirror, watching Big Bear shrink behind her. Each mile seemed like another brick added to the wall she’d have to build between herself and Raffo. The lake house disappeared around a bend, and Dylan’s chest tightened so sharply she had to remind herself to breathe. Everything about the past few weeks—the painting sessions, the late-night conversations, the way Raffo looked at her like she was the most fascinating person in the world—all of it would have to be locked away somewhere deep inside her.

She banged her fist against the steering wheel. Why, of all the billions of people in the world, did she have to fall in love with Raffo Shah? With her son’s best friend?

It was hard to focus on the road, especially after the night they’d had. Dylan didn’t know how it was possible, but it had been a million times hotter than all the nights before combined.

“Are you into anal play?” Raffo had asked, long after midnight—the only appropriate time for a question like that. Dylan hadn’t known what to reply. It was a question she didn’t know the answer to because no one had ever asked her before.

Raffo had devoted a lot of attention to Dylan’s behind by then, her fingers gently skimming the sensitive skin there, but Dylan’d had no way of knowing things were headed in that direction.

“It’s okay if you’re not,” Raffo had said, in that matter-of-fact way that really didn’t suit the situation, but made it all the more thrilling. “But if you want the climax of your life, an orgasm to always remember me by, you should give it a try.”

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