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“I’m sure they can handle it without me.”
“Who says I can?” I joked. “What if Erica tries to accost me? You know, she seems very concerned about where I disappeared to last night.”
Sophie’s eyes widened briefly, her shoulders visibly tense through the thin fabric of her blouse, as if she was caught in the middle of a lie.
“Don’t worry,” I quickly added. “I told her I had a migraine. I don’t think she even noticed you were gone.”
Sophie’s shoulders dropped only slightly. “I doubt that. She seems like the type of person who knows exactly what’s going on at all times.”
"You're probably right. So, what do you say? Save me from Erica and that scarf around her neck before she ties me up with it? Who knows what kind of fetish she's into? Something tells me she isn't as innocent as she looks."
Sophie chuckled. It was strained, not brightening her face like it usually did, but it was something. A step in the right direction.
Except it wasn’t.
She took a step back, as if she was ready to leave, and shook her head. “Sorry, Alex. Can’t help you there. Just tell her that you don’t like cats. I overheard her telling Dr. Christa that she’s got four of them at home, each one named after a US president.”
Reluctantly, I nodded, knowing exactly where this was going. Sophie was leaving, and I wondered if I’d ever see her again. “Good advice. I’ll take it.”
She held my gaze for one more moment, her gray eyes the color of steel, and then turned toward the car. She had just reached for the handle when I said, “Wait, Sophie. Can we just talk for a minute?”
“About what?” she muttered, her hand hovering in the air, though the recognition in her eyes was clear. She knew exactly what I wanted to bring up, but she also looked extremely unwilling to talk about it.
“You know what. Last night.”
Sophie flinched, and I could see the words stacking up in her mind, the inevitable confession that whatever we’d done last night was a horrible mistake, a momentary lapse of judgment.
And even though there was a smidgen of truth in those words, it would still be hard to hear, a bruise to the ego, a knock to the character. Especially when she was the one to admit to such a thing first.
“I was drunk,” she muttered, stepping back and talking to her feet instead. “Youwere drunk”—I would hardly call drinking half a glass of Chardonnay drunk, but I didn’t correct her—“We weren’t thinking clearly. It was a mistake.”
“That wasn’t what it felt like—“
“But it was,” she said tersely, her voice like a knife slicing through the air. “And that’s alright. It happens . . . But it won’t happen again.”
“So, what, you’ll leave here and that’s it?”
“Exactly,” she said, her voice shaky, sounding anything but confident, as if she too didn’t believe that whatever spark we had, whatever had happened last night, should end with complete and utter silence. “I’ll get my insurance to call you. Probably this week . . . ” she glanced over my shoulder at the lodge and then latched her gaze onto mine one last time. “Bye Alex.”
The wind picked up, blowing strands of hair across her face. She wiped some away, but a rogue strand curled over her cheek, and I felt a deep urge to tuck it behind her ear.
“Sophie,” I said, but she was already slamming the car door shut. The engine started and the car reversed, and I had lost my chance for a last word.
“Everything alright?” came Erica, walking out the door, a plate of pastries in each hand.
“Perfectly fine,” I said, forcing a smile, not daring to glimpse back over my shoulder to the car growing smaller with every passing second.
CHAPTER 7
Sophie
“My sister’s a slut,” laughed Danny, bringing a glass of bubbles to his lips and slugging down at least half of it. “I knew you had it in you. All this time and you’ve been acting like such a little angel. Good on you, Soph, for finally enjoying a one-night stand—”
I reached over the puffy armrest of the massage chair and pinched the skin on his forearm, hard.
"What the hell was that for?" he yelped, smacking his arm to his chest and holding it protectively with his other hand as if my next attack was going to be far worse.
If we weren’t sitting in a room bound by zen and tranquility, clouded with the smell of sandalwood incense while humming ocean sounds floated from the speaker, I would pinch him again or poke him hard in the ribs.
