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Wil smiled. She slid her hand up and pressed it against Katie’s sternum. “I like the idea I’ll spend Christmas with you.” Wil pulled away and kissed Katie on the mouth, just a short kiss. But it was anI like youkiss, and maybe that was the best one Katie had gotten so far. “Show me where to plug this in, okay? Your bedroom walls are mysteriously smooth.”
Katie led her back to the bedroom and showed her how the outlets were hidden. Wil set up Almond Butter’s cat bed and put out a dish with her nighttime snack after checking to be sure Katie’s cats wouldn’t get into it.
I love you.That was what Katie really wanted to say.The part of me that loves you has always loved you. I feel like it just keeps getting bigger, and pretty soon it will be all of me, all of me will love you for always, and I want you here with me for the rest of my life.
Katie couldn’t say any of that.
Not when April had all but secreted them to LA, when her mom had texted while they were in the car from the airport that the media still thought Katie was in Green Bay, when Katie knew that April had already spoken with Alison about casting and scheduled three other money meetings.
Katie had lived for so long with the feeling that she had to do one more thing and do it just right, do it to win the next thing, just so that the world would tolerate her fame another year, and thenanother. It scared her to try to imagine what it would take to spend another run of years like that with someone else. It made her feel like she would be sure to hurt them. Sure to hurt.
That was what her mother had said—lovingly, sadly—when Katie told her she would be taking Wil to Los Angeles for Christmas.
I love you both, and I don’t want you to be hurt.
Hurt was everything Katie had worked so hard to never feel again, and definitely not to do to another person.
To Wil, who was—who washer person.
“You’re sleeping in here with me, then?” Katie tried to make this sound casual, but her talents failed her, and it came out more like,You are sleeping in here with me or I will throw myself against the guest room door like a cat shut out of the bathroom.
Wil had stood up from petting her cat and Trois, because Trois had shoved herself into Almond Butter’s bed, and now Almond Butter was grooming Trois’s head.
“Of course.” Wil laughed, which meant Katie had sounded exactly as demanding as she thought she had.
“Good. Okay. Are you hungry?”
Wil laughed. “You saw how much I ate on the plane, right?”
“It was barely anything. I don’t want you to be hungry, even a little. I can have anything delivered you want. Korean barbeque? Tacos? Caramel corn?”
“Katie.” Wil put her arms around her. “I think you need to get into bed with me.”
Katie closed her eyes. “Was I too impulsive, bringing you here? I don’t know.”
“I invited myself here, if you’ll remember.” Wil took off her robe and climbed into the bed. It was extremely distracting. Katie hadn’t gotten a good enough look at Wil’s ass before, and Jesus Christ, it was the ass to end all asses, like an actual peach emoji,including the flushed color. Wil had two big dimples in her lower back where the swell of her backside started up. Katie was mesmerized.
“Are you staring at my butt?” Wil climbed in on Katie’s usual side, but that was okay, because maybe Katie’s imprint would soak into Wil’s body and cast a spell on her.
“How am I supposed to stop myself?” Katie slid into the unfamiliar other side of the bed. “I’m big spoon. You have to let me, because I want to hold all of your deliciousness in my arms, and also whenIam spooned, I feel like I’m suffocating.”
It was the first time Katie had overlapped her experience of being with Ben with being with Wil. It made her stomach drop a little, realizing how much there might be in front of her for her and Wil to navigate, to learn, to work out.
And what if it didn’t work out? The lessons she’d learned being with Ben were such hard ones.
But Wil just laughed, a low rumble that sounded to Katie like being liked, and she let Katie wrap herself around her from behind. Wil’s skin was warm. Katie put every one of her limbs around her, aroused all over again.
Wil fell asleep first, and as soon as she did, Almond Butter hopped up on the bed and made biscuits on Wil’s pillow until she was satisfied, then curled around Wil’s head. Trois came up next, and then Phil, confused to find a new person in the bed but happy to make his usual cat circle with Sue at the foot of the bed.
Katie reached for her remote and turned on the white noise machine with the timer. She just wanted an hour of the ocean. She could be a castaway with Wil and their four cats curled up around her. She could pretend they were alone here in the big dark world, with only the basic things to figure out.
She fell asleep wondering if she knew enough to build the life she wanted.
Chapter Seventeen
Wil woke up like she usually did, with Almond Butter snoring in her face, except when she reached up to gently move her away from the top of her head, it wasn’t Almond Butter snoring in her face.
It was Katie.