Undeniable You (Sapph in the City #4)

Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

Jo

I’d done my best to keep my distance and it had been awful. Now I was home again, but all I could think about was Larison. How had her day been? What progress had she made with the bookshop? I especially wanted to know how the interview had gone.

But I had to set some kind of boundaries if I was going to get through this job. And that had to start now.

It was the right thing to do, so why did it feel so fucking horrible?

I had to fight myself not to send her a message for the rest of the night. All I wanted was to reach out to her somehow and reignite our connection.

It would get easier. It had to get easier.

It did not get easier.

As the week went on, I struggled to maintain my distance from Larison. Every moment I had to fight the urge to look at her and smile at her and talk to her and sit on the couch and make her dinner and ask her if I could braid her hair.

At night, sleep was elusive, and it made me more irritable during the day. I got short with Juniper a few times and had to take a moment to collect myself before I apologized to her.

It sure felt like I was crumbling, but Larison hadn’t said anything. I knew she’d been confused at first, but as my detachment continued, she seemed to accept it and almost curl in on herself too. She was still bright and enthusiastic with Juniper, but the tone in her voice when she spoke to me had changed and I noticed it. This was the week the murals were being painted on the walls. She’d been looking forward to this for a long time and she should be giddy, but the minute she saw me, she would kind of wilt.

It couldn’t be because of me, right? I wasn’t being mean or rude or anything toward her. Just…distant. Professional.

At least, I thought I was. I’d been doing my job and trying to give Larison respect.

On Friday she came in and something shifted when I tried to scoot past her to leave.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. My head snapped up and I made intentional eye contact with her for the first time in days.

“Yeah, everything is fine,” I said, nodding and almost choking on the lie. I hated the way it felt in my mouth. I wasn’t a liar.

Larison stepped closer. “Are you sure?”

It was harder to breathe the closer she got, and I couldn’t look away from her face. I hadn’t really looked at her in days and I was starving for it.

My eyes greedily drank her in.

“Juniper, why don’t you go play on your tablet in your room for a few minutes,” she said, not looking away from me.

I expected Juniper to protest, but she didn’t. Her little feet pattered across the floor and I heard the sound of one of her tablet games.

Larison went and shut the door.

Shit. What was happening?

“What’s going on, Josephine?”

Fuck fuck oh my fuck .

How was I supposed to answer that?

I let out an incoherent sound and then she took another step closer to me. “Something has changed between us and I want to talk about it so we can figure it out.”

Right. Okay. Fuck.

I couldn’t lie, but how could I tell her the truth?

“I just…I felt like, um, that I was getting too close. And that I needed to make sure I didn’t. Get too close. So I pulled back.” There. That was true.

She watched my face so closely, tracking every single movement. I could not lie to this woman.

“What do you mean? Getting too close?” She said the words slowly. Or maybe everything was just in slow-motion and I was having a stroke or something.

“I, um…” I gasped like a fish out of water. How the hell was I going to get out of this with my job and my dignity intact? I shouldn’t have pulled back so severely. Should have done it more gradually. She’d known that something was up and now here we were, and I was about to lose my job.

“Jo?” she asked, which was almost a relief. At least she hadn’t used my full name. I would have folded like a soggy deck of cards if she had.

“Oh god,” I blurted out. Why couldn’t a random portal to hell just open up beneath my feet and swallow me up? I’m sure I could figure out how to deal with the heat and the demons.

“What is it?” She seemed genuinely concerned. Maybe I was having a stroke.

“I felt like I was getting too close. To you.” There. I was going to have to drop out of school and get a regular job that was going to suck out my entire soul. Maybe I’d have some time to volunteer to teach literacy on the weekends?

If I hadn’t been spiraling before, I definitely was now.

Larison watched me and I could feel one of my eyes twitching.

“And it would be bad to get close to me,” she said slowly.

“I mean, yes. You’re technically my employer. And I need this job, Larison. I can’t go back to school in the fall without it.” Fuck, I was getting fired. The panic set in and I could hear my breathing accelerating and my hands were shaking.

“Hey, whoa, hold on,” Larison said, taking both my hands, jolting me with the contact. “You’re not going to lose your job.”

I was going to need her to repeat that at least ten more times before I’d start to believe it.

“I don’t…I need to go,” I said.

Larison and I both jumped as Juniper burst out of her room.

“Mama, my game isn’t working!” Excellent timing, kid.

“Okay, baby. Can you give me and Jo a few moments?”

“I’ve got to go,” I said, using Juniper’s interruption to make my escape. I absolutely had to get out of here.

“Jo—” Larison said, but Juniper tugged on her shirt.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, diving through the door and slamming it behind me, running down the stairs as if she was going to chase me out to my car.

Fucking hell. That was bad.