Page 58 of Our Secret Summer

As an artist, most of the time, Raffo knew how to get out of her own head—because it was the only way to get where she truly wanted to be. She’d done it in Big Bear when her feet had led her to the landing in the middle of the night, Dylan not exactly waiting for her, but close enough. She’d done it the other night after visiting Mia, when she’d driven to Connor’s house without thinking—because thinking was irrelevant at that point—and because she knew in her bones what she had to do. Most of all, she felt it when she was painting a picture of Dylan. And she sure as hell knew it now.

“I missed you so much,” Dylan whispered in her ear. “God, the thought of never doing this again.” Raffo felt Dylan’s lips stretch into a smile against her cheek and it lit her entire being on fire. She’d missed Dylan’s smiles the most because they’d been the hardest to forget. Because they were so dazzling and intoxicating and so quintessentially Dylan.

Raffo leaned back to take in this particular smile, and it was just as glorious and arousing as she’d expected. But Dylan’s captivating grin didn’t blind her to the fine lines around her eyes or the creases on her forehead. Dylan wasn’t just Connor’s mom; she was also significantly older than Raffo, making her an unlikely candidate to fall in love with, at least by rational standards, yet that was exactly what Raffo had done.

It had happened months ago, in Big Bear—maybe even on that first day. Or maybe it had transpired more slowly, over the course of the weeks they’d spent together, Dylan simply being Dylan making it impossible for Raffo not to fall for her, despite all the logical arguments against it.

But Raffo was in love. Seeing Mia—hearing her hollow words—had only crystallized that truth. The first few weeks in Big Bear, Raffo’s head had still been filled with Mia-Mia-Mia, until all those thoughts had been replaced with Dylan-Dylan-Dylan. And maybe there was something unhealthy about that, something a bit too escapist, but Raffo’d had plenty of time since returning to LA to question what she really wanted.

Falling for Dylan in Big Bear had been wonderfully distracting but coming back and having to face Connor most certainly hadn’t been. This wasn’t just lust. This was love. That, too, was as clear as daylight to Raffo. This, too, she felt in every last cell of her body when she got out of her own head. When she let herself.

Dylan led the way up the stairs, into her bedroom, where Raffo’s first—scandalously topless—painting of her hung on the wall.

“Wow,” Raffo exclaimed, not because she was impressed with her own work, but because of the impact it must have had on Dylan all this time. “You’ve basically been sleeping with yourself for weeks.”

“I sure have.” Dylan tugged at Raffo’s shirt. “Thinking of you for every single second of it. You and me in Big Bear.” Too impatient to undo the buttons, Dylan hoisted Raffo’s shirt over her head. “I’ve been meaning to ask.” She flashed one of her smiles. “Do you have any self-portraits? I’d love one of those.”

“I don’t do self-portraits,” Raffo replied. Whenever the thought had occurred to her, or someone had suggested it, she’d dismissed it as ridiculous. Why would Raffo paint herself when there was an infinite number of much more interesting subjects to paint?

“That figures,” Dylan said, “but you should really reconsider.”

“I should, huh?” Raffo grinned at Dylan. “And who’s going to make me?”

“Maybe you can start with a portrait of the two of us together to ease yourself into it.”

Raffo chuckled but quickly lost interest in this topic. She knew exactly how to make Dylan stop talking nonsense. She kissed her gently on the lips and allowed herself to relish in the feeling—in this moment she’d been so afraid to dream of.

Raffo wasn’t sure they’d be having this divine moment now if Dylan hadn’t come back for her last week. If Dylan hadn’t gotten out of her own head—bypassing the grievances of her own son—and driven back to Connor’s house to kiss her.

But none of it mattered, because they were here now. It was impossible to predict how Connor would react when he saw them together—reallytogether—for the first time, but that was for later. Connor had given them the gift of tonight and the possibility of a future and, right now, that was everything.

They fumbled with their clothes in between kisses, in between the magical touch of Dylan’s lips against her. Because there was something magical about it. This entire night had been magical. From the moment Raffo had spotted Dylan at Min-ji’s, and the energy in the restaurant had transformed, there had been magic in the air.

Wasn’t it magic that they stood here in Dylan’s bedroom now? Wasn’t it magic that they had ended up together in Big Bear? Two different people both looking for their own kind of peace of mind, for something they had lost—and while searching for that unquantifiable, seemingly impossible thing, they had found each other.

Every lonely night that had passed since, Raffo had relived that insane, hard-to-believe moment when Dylan had confessed that it had been more than just sex for her. Raffo hadn’t been able to believe her then, not fully, because it was still impossible, and their feelings for each other too implausible, but there was nothing implausible about tonight. About how she felt. About how crazy she was about Dylan French.

Raffo wasn’t as good as Dylan at expressing how she felt, but the words simply burst out of her now.

“You make me lose my mind,” she whispered in Dylan’s ear. “Utterly and completely.”

In response, Dylan maneuvered them onto the bed until she lay on top of Raffo.

“I’m so in love with you.” Dylan looked straight into Raffo’s eyes. She swallowed slowly, as though she was overcome by her own words. “I’m not letting you go again.”

Raffo folded her arms around Dylan’s neck a little tighter. She pulled her close, until their noses touched.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

“Good,” Dylan whispered, then kissed her again. First on the mouth, but her lips soon drifted to the sensitive skin of Raffo’s neck, driving Raffo even more crazy.

Raffo ran her hands over Dylan’s soft skin, wanting to feel all of her. She held onto her, because she’d lost her once before and she now totally understood what Dylan had said about not knowing how to recover from Raffo’s touch again. It made perfect sense to her now as Dylan’s lips trailed a moist path to Raffo’s breast and she wrapped them warmly around her nipple.

Dylan’s hand meandered between Raffo’s legs, teasing her above the flimsy fabric of her panties. Dylan gazed into her eyes and Raffo couldn’t look away if she tried.

If someone had told her at the beginning of summer, at the height of her heartbreak, and before Connor had pushed her into her car to Big Bear Lake, that Raffo would feel like this about another woman, that she would fall head-over-heels in love again—with her best friend’s mother, no less—she would have laughed hard in their face. She might have even called them a few names. She surely wouldn’t have taken a word of it seriously because of the sheer improbability of it.

And look at her now. Her break-up from Mia that had so devastated her, that had left her heart—and her life and her art—in total shambles now just seemed like something she had gotten over—or was very close to being over. In fact, before she got out of her head completely, before Dylan hooked her fingertips under the waistband of her panties, Raffo knew exactly what to do with the money from the sale of her and Mia’s house. The sale she would no longer dillydally on. She’d done that long enough.

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