Page 24 of Guarded Knight

She shrugs off her cardigan and drapes it over the back of her chair.

Tank top clinging. Hard nipples pressing against cotton like they’re gasping for air.

I should be chasing leads. Instead, I’m now chasing the fact that she’s braless.

“Lara raises the big bucks,” Freya says, blowing on her soup.

I drag my attention off Lara’s chest and put my eyes back where they belong.

Freya laughs lightly. “I just make sure our speakers don’t show up drunk.”

Lara snorts. “That happened one time.”

“I still can’t believe that.” She shakes her head at the memory. “Anyway, I’m just a this-and-that girl.”

“You are not. You…” Lara doesn’t finish, clearly trying to find the right words.

Freya grins, unbothered. “I’m basically the poster child for what a cure for sickle cell could look like.”

Freya seems the picture of good health. Wide smile with white teeth, flawless brown skin, and curls that seem to spring with joy. She’s a decent poster child if there ever was one.

She continues, “It’s even in my contract that I can’t be intoxicated in public, just in case someone thinks a cure isn’t worthy of a degenerate. Which reminds me, we need a supply of wine in this place.”

That contract clause? Controlling. Extreme. Especially for a nonprofit. I looked Scarlet Hope up even before the ladies came here. Run by Kevin Demeter.

“Lara’s amazing at raising funds,” Freya adds. “This girl goes into a meeting, and she makes it rain.”

Lara looks down at her soup. “It’s a team effort.”

We eat in silence for a few minutes until we all finish. It’s not comfortable, but it’s not hostile either. Just the thick kind of quiet that fills the space when too much has gone unsaid for too long.

After dinner, I offer to do the dishes. Freya objects, but I’m already clearing the table, stacking bowls and collecting spoons. It gives my hands something to do, something other than gripping the edge of the table every time Lara moves just right. Stretches, arches, bends… that tank top pulls tight over curves that weren’t there when we were younger.

Freya dries while I rinse, and Lara busies herself unpacking a box labeled “essentials,” which appears to be mostly mismatched Stanley cups and lids, a Kindle, half a candle, and one of those clocks that light up like a sunrise instead of using an alarm.

Eventually, Freya sets her towel down. “I’m gonna FaceTime Kevin. I promised to prove we have plumbing in the sticks.”

Lara rolls her eyes. “I am so getting you some overalls and a piece of straw for your next call.”

Freya laughs and points at Lara. “Yes.”

Lara takes her Kindle in hand, and there’s a heavy beat between us.

“I’m going to bed,” she announces.

Freya stops in her tracks and lifts her brows at me. “You’re staying, right?”

Lara doesn’t look at me, but her body still tilts in my direction, and her milky shoulder calls to be touched. I’ve imagined Lara and I having sex before, many times. But never was it hate sex. So close to her, my body isn’t under my control anymore. It’s possessed by my twenty-year-old self, who was, for better or worse, obsessed with my best friend’s eighteen-year-old sister.

I’d do well to remember I’m here to watch the door and not obsess over the memory of the heat of her mouth or how she tasted like summer and salt and everything I was never meant to have.

Freya barrels on. “We’ve got a couch. It’s lumpy but better than whatever truck situation you were going to resort to.”

One more glance at Lara. I won’t stay if she doesn’t want me here, and she reads my raised brows.

“Do what you want. It’s a free country,” she concedes.

Freya starts fluffing a throw pillow like she’s preparing a guest suite at a B&B.