“Forever Yours”

A Lesbian Romance

Christine L’Amour

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This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if you are under the age of 18. Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-changing decisions about sex in real life.

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images and are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.

Edition v1.00 (2020.11.11)

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Table of Contents

Chapter One

Alessandra sat with her hands curled daintily on her lap, her spine straight and her black hair a spill of sweet-scented ink over her shoulder. Her mother liked to gloat to the other mothers—and fathers, and aunties, and every friend—that Alessandra was the perfect daughter: poised, clever, and obedient.

“You’re a bit quiet today,” Alexander murmured vaguely, like he was bored and hadn’t managed to find anything else to comment on. He was peering into his empty cup of tea as if it held any escape from this shitty, stifling brunch.

“Ally was up all night helping me with—oh, let’s not talk about work,” Alessandra’s mother said, dimpling at Xander with her smile. Her eyes cut to Alessandra briefly in warning not to contradict her. Alessandra had stayed up all night listening to music and thinking about brunch today, not helping anybody. “She’s very dutiful, you know. Alexander, do tell your parents I missed them, and to come next week when we meet. They must come see my daughter.”

Xander smiled. It looked empty to Alessandra, but she was probably wrong. Her mother wouldn’t stay quiet if he tried to be cocky and stupid enough to be patronizing to her.

“It has been a while since they last met Ally,” he mused, and took the tea from Alessandra to pour some for her mother. She smiled at him, pleased at the good manners, and glanced at Alessandra again. “They are just so busy… You know I try to talk to them, Aunt Ju, but I can’t bear to argue with them. They’re my parents.”

“You’re a dutiful son as well,” Alessandra’s mother praised with a smile.

Alessandra looked down at her tea so as not to catch her gaze again. This was a game she was tired of, though she knew she would have to play it for an awfully long time still. Her mother wanted her to marry Xander. He was a good man, and quite successful, and together they could give her mother little perfect grandchildren who could go on to inherit the company in the future.

Alessandra’s father was sitting quietly beside her, his expression pleasant for all that it looked like it was carved onto him. He hadn’t spoken once. When people commented on it, her mother said he was just a thoughtful man.

Alessandra had her mother’s thick black hair, and her dark eyes too. She looked nothing like him.

“Ally,” her mother called sweetly, “why don’t you show Xander around the house, show him the latest renovations we have made in the upper floors?”

I did that last week, Alessandra thought.

She smiled instead. “Of course,” she said, and stood up.

Xander stood up as well. He smiled at her, both of them fake, but at least she knew, and she knew he knew, and it felt more like they were playing the game together than like she was a puppet in her mother’s hands.

***

“You must take Xander to see your cousin’s exposition this week,” her mother said, softly like it wasn’t an order. They were putting dishes away while the maid washed them, and the kitchen felt like a dark grotto for all that it was all white and open spaces and glass. “You know he has poured a lot of money into making those paintings and organizing the expo. Your aunt expects that he will make a few million at least. If Xander buys a painting, surely that will be beneficial to all.”

“Of course,” Alessandra said, not looking at her mother as she set a cup daintily on its spot. She liked the tea set they had used today. “His family would benefit from growing closer to ours, and Xander is smart. He will know that when I take him to the expo, we will all expect him to make a purchase.”

Her mother didn’t do something as base as slamming the plane she was holding onto the table. She set it gently down. But when she turned to Alessandra, there was something hard like steel behind her eyes. She glanced at the maid. Alessandra looked down. Her mother didn’t like it when Alessandra was so open and brutally honest about these matters.

“Apologies,” she said. “What I meant was: I would love to take him, Mom.”

“He’s a good man,” her mother said, turning back to the dishes. “A dutiful son, a charming boy. You really should appreciate his friendship more.”

“Of course,” Alessandra said quietly.

Nobody in the family hid their expectations that Alessandra would marry him. Alessandra didn’t want to marry him, or any other man—but telling her family she was gay was completely out of the question. Telling them anything about herself was out of the question. They already didn’t like her; imagine how much they would hate her if they actually knew her?

“You’re too much like your father,” her mother muttered, not letting any vitriol bleed into her voice in front of the maid. The poor woman was keeping her head down and pretending pretty hard that she wasn’t there.

“I will try to be better,” Alessandra told her with a smile.

Her mother didn’t turn to look at her. That was fine, since the smile was fake anyway. Alessandra almost sighed. She knew her father thought she was too much like her mother, too—and her father was right.

She would go to the stupid expo with Xander, and she would probably indeed marry him in the future. But meanwhile, she wanted to talk to the man about his parents’ company, a longstanding partner of her family’s own company and about the latest client they were sharing. Her mother insisted on keeping her out of company business as if she didn’t understand anything about any of it.

She was going to show them how competent she was. She would even marry Xander in the future, once her mother stopped giving her hints and started giving her orders, but she had time before then. She would show her mother she had a place in their company.

***

Alessandra forgot about the stupid high school reunion up until the very last week before it would happen.

She really had more important things to be doing. She sat in front of her laptop in her room and sighed. She had been checking her inbox when the email arrived, which was the only reason she had seen it; her eyes were long used to glazing over notifications from senders whom she didn’t deem important.

She had to attend. She had to show all her stupid little classmates how far she had come from ten years ago. It was a ritual, and if she didn’t go, there would be gossip, and unfortunately, since many of her ex-classmates were involved in the same business as her family or were rich enough to walk in the same circles as them, the gossip had the potential to reach her mother.

Alessandra tapped her fingers on her laptop.

She didn’t want to go. It would be boring and vapid and a useless waste of her time. She would be made to take Xander with her, even though officially they weren’t dating, no matter what her mother wanted.

She thought about Cheyenne.

She hadn’t thought about Cheyenne in a long time. She wasn’t the sort of person to go to this kind of reunion—well, she hadn’t been ten years ago, the last time Alessandra had seen her. But the thought of seeing her again made Alessandra droop with a feeling she didn’t want to call relief.

Cheyenne had probably not missed her. Cheyenne had probably not thought of her in a long time, like Alessandra had made herself not think about Cheyenne. Their lives were too different; they hadn’t been friends. Alessandra had been busy networking and Cheyenne had been the bullied scholarship weirdo, and what kind of networking was there to be done with someone like that?

They hadn’t been friends in high school.

They had been friends for one summer that year when they had been just children, when Alessandra’s parents had rented a beach house and she’d played with Cheyenne all day nearly every day. They had bothered crabs, swam and played beach volleyball, pet and fed street cats, and made a general menace of themselves. Cheyenne had been a cheerful, grinning child, chubby and blond like an angel under all that sunlight.

Alessandra hadn’t heard from her again until high school, and by then Cheyenne had grown stoic, silent and bitter; all Alessandra knew was that something had happened with her parents.

She supposed she had grown silent and bitter as well.

She sighed and let herself sprawl back onto her massive bed, her hair spilling over her pillows. If she closed her eyes, she knew she would fall asleep in a second; the bed was too comfortable not to. She stared at the ceiling instead.

Back in high school, even already worrying about networking and what her mother would think of her befriending a scholarship nobody, Alessandra had still thought that she could become an architect in the future. She had still thought that if she did well enough—if she did everything right—then she would be allowed it.

She wasn’t, of course. Officially she held an important position in the company’s HR department.

She wondered what Cheyenne had done with her life.

Chapter Two

Cheyenne liked Thursdays the best, because it was the one day of the week she allowed herself to bring Jason with her to work.

Technically, as the CEO of her small company, she could bring him any time she wanted. But she wasn’t the sort of person who would give herself different allowances than those made to her employees, and she did not want every single person in the building bringing their children with them.

But on Thursdays, Jason came with her.

They walked into her office with their hands linked, waving to people as they went. She sat at her desk and Jason went to the corner of the room, where he had a desk and a few shelves of the bookshelf to himself, and started to pull papers from his small backpack.

“I hope that’s homework and that you’re not planning on just coloring,” Cheyenne said placidly, looking at her own laptop instead of at him, a smile tugging at her lips.

Jason paused, then pulled a book from his backpack as well.

“You watched TV yesterday during homework time because you said you would do homework today,” she continued.

Jason looked up at her and lifted his book higher, a look on his face that said look, I’ve got homework right here, you don’t have to keep talking. Cheyenne smiled and turned to her laptop. She had a lot of work to do—since Thursdays were the days Jason was here, it was the day she had no meetings, and she dedicated her time to work that always got buried under the meetings.

She checked her emails, even though she really didn’t want to. The thing she was most looking for in retirement was not having so many goddamn emails to read. She spent a solid ten minutes just organizing the new emails into their proper folders before she started reading.

She immediately got concerned.

She called her secretary.

“Pam?” she said. “Did something happen this week? I’ve just checked my inbox and I have a lot of emails about… oh, no. Has Sérgio made a mistake again?”

This was highly inconvenient. She would have to fire Sérgio now, which would be a hassle, and he really was so competent, hard-working and good, on the good days. But the not so good days had given them far too much trouble.

“You should call Sérgio,” Pam told her in a sympathetic voice. “I’m not sure exactly what happened…”

“Alright,” she said. “I’ll talk to him. Thanks.”

She hung up and sighed. Jason walked up to her, book clutched in his arms, a curious look on his face.

“Did he not send important documents again?” he asked.

Cheyenne rested a hand on top of his head. Jason’s hair was very thick and black, unlike her own thin blond hair. He was so tall, now; he was eight, not the little four-year-old she had adopted anymore.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He’s done something. Or one of his people, but his job is to check all this, so—” She paused, then shook her head. “Go do your homework, Jay. You don’t need to worry about this.”

“If something’s wrong, I can help,” he argued.

“You don’t have to. You can help me by finishing your work.”

Jason sighed like he was forty instead of eight and went back to his desk. Cheyenne picked up her phone and sent a text off to Sérgio, arranging a meeting for her meeting-less day after all.

***

Thursdays were also the only day she had lunch at restaurants instead of ordering something to eat at the office, since she had Jason with her. They walked into the restaurant she had chosen—more a diner than a restaurant, honestly—and saw that Maya had already arrived. They walked up to her.

“Hey,” Maya greeted, and managed to smile at Jason for a moment before her smile dropped. She was a serious sort of person and not prone to smiling at all, but her seriousness had scared Jason at first, so she did her best for him. Despite her opinions on Cheyenne’s adoption of him.

“Hello,” Cheyenne said, and Jason repeated it. They both sat down. Jason immediately lifted the too-big menu and started choosing his food. “I’m sorry we’re late. I had to have a talk with Sérgio again.”

Maya gave her a forbidding look. “You’re only five minutes late, that’s nothing. What has that wretched man done now?”

Cheyenne smiled. “More of the same. Suffice to say I can’t justify keeping him employed for much longer.”

“You’ll lose his connections.”

“We’ll lose his decades of experience in the area, his connections, and possibly some people who will quit with him if he leaves. It’s not ideal. I mean… it’s not like it’s the end of the world…”

“Stop,” Maya said. “Fire him. He deserves it.”

“Everybody makes mistakes.”

“This man has made mistakes enough for half the company.” Maya suddenly softened and looked away. “You’re too good, Ann. He doesn’t deserve the five million second chances you’re giving him. Your company is going to get in trouble one day if you don’t stop being so soft-hearted.”

Cheyenne looked down and didn’t answer. She also didn’t glance at Jason, even though she wanted to.

Maya thought she was too much of a pushover. This was what had ended their relationship four years ago when Cheyenne’s father had shown up with Jason at her door, saying the kid was a cousin whose parents had suddenly thrown him at them, but that they couldn’t take him in and he needed somewhere else to stay for a while. Maya had thought Cheyenne should have raged against her parents for shoving a child at her with no regard to her life and her choices, for not taking care of him themselves when they were both retired and had time.

Cheyenne had taken him in and then adopted him instead. But how could she regret it; regret being soft and an optimist, when it had given her Jason?

“You know I didn’t—” Maya started, then stopped and sighed explosively. She looked down at the menu and forcibly changed the subject, smiling tersely at Cheyenne. “I’ll buy you some dessert.”

“Me too,” Jason said decisively.

“For you too, yes,” Maya said, rolling her eyes. “Why don’t you go to the bathroom and wash your hands, kid?”

Jason gave her a bland look. It was a look that said I know you’re just sending me off because you don’t want me to hear your conversation.

Maya gave him a look back. It said that’s obvious. Now scram.

Jason left. Cheyenne watched him go and tried to mask her sadness. Despite her reservations, Maya was so good with him. Once, Cheyenne had thought they would raise him together.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” Maya said.

“Like what?” Cheyenne asked, looking down at her menu. She didn’t want to talk about it, truly. “That’s in the past, Maya. I know you weren’t talking about my choice to keep him.”

But she was still talking about Cheyenne.

“Someone’s going to take advantage of you and what are you going to do then?” Maya argued, leaning forward in her seat. “Ann, you know what I think about your parents—”

“They’re barely my parents,” Cheyenne said with a sigh. “Uncle Kiren raised me.”

“That makes it worse,” Maya said flatly. “You realize that makes it worse, Ann.”

“Why are we talking about my parents?” Cheyenne asked, lifting the menu to cover her face. “Hm, I think I’ll order some pasta.”

“Someone’s going to take advantage of your good heart and I won’t be able to do anything to help you,” Maya continued. “Like this Sérgio. You should have fired him long ago. Something smells fishy about this.”

“There’s nothing fishy about a man being incompetent,” Cheyenne said lightly. “That’s just how men are.”

It managed to drag a laugh out of her best friend.

“No, come on,” Maya groused, getting her laugh back in control. “You can’t dunk on men to distract me from this conversation, it’s not fair. Ann—”

“I’m an adult, Maya,” Cheyenne said softly. “I know what I’m doing. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Maya stared at her, then sighed. “You’re doing it right now. You could be angry at me for badgering you about this, for not trusting your judgement, but no. You’re reassuring me.”

“You don’t have to worry,” Cheyenne repeated, smiling at the other woman. “I’m doing fine, aren’t I?”

Maya grumbled because it was true. Too trusting or not, Cheyenne was a successful businessowner.

“Let’s have lunch,” she said, then looked around the diner until she spotted Jason. The boy was glued to the dessert display. She sighed. “You really will have to buy him dessert now.”

“Eh, kid deserves it. He doesn’t have enough indulgent aunts.”

Jason had no one but Cheyenne, really.

***

Cheyenne didn’t read bedtime stories for Jason anymore, since he now liked to stay up reading his own things past the time she would go to bed. She still tucked him in every day, like she was doing now, smoothing his blanket over him and tucking its corners under his mattress so it’d stay put during the night.

She was very tired. It had been a full day. Now it was dark and she still had some work to do before she could sleep.

“Ann,” Jason said, dragging his hand from under the blanket to hold her hand. His voice was quiet. He was generally a quiet child. She worried, sometimes. “Can I go with you tomorrow too?”

She squeezed his hand. “Don’t you want to go to school and see your friends, Jay?”

“I just want to spend more time with you.”

“Thursdays are our days and tomorrow is Friday. But we can go out Saturday morning,” she said, smiling down at him. “I have that high school reunion in the evening, but we could go to the movies before lunch.”

“Alright,” he said quietly. He still wasn’t looking at her, but a small smile was curving his lips, and that was enough.

Cheyenne kissed his hair and stood up.

“Night, Jay.”

“Night, Ann.”

She turned off the light and walked back to the living room. She sat down heavily on the couch and set her laptop on top of her lap. She worked for all of ten minutes before her mind started to wander too much for her to be productive at all.

Truth was, she had kind of forgotten about the high school reunion before she had mentioned it to Jason. She wanted to spend time with him, but even though a high school reunion wasn’t the sort of event she would ever like to go to, she…

It wasn’t that she wanted to go. But she did want to see Alessandra.

She stared at her ceiling, head thrown back on the back of the couch.

She wondered how Alessandra looked now. She missed her, in a way, and felt stupid for it, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t even miss the Alessandra she had known for four years in high school, who had been popular and fake and bitter, but the little girl who had been her best friend for that one summer when they had been children.

Alessandra had already known how to best act to get the reactions she wanted out of people, but back then she had acted shy to get more candy out of stores and polite to get Cheyenne’s uncle to agree to let them play more.

Maya would say, again, that Cheyenne was too forgiving, too much of an optimist, but… she couldn’t help but wonder: maybe now Alessandra would be different, would have grown kinder or at least more polite. Maybe now, for this one night, the woman wouldn’t pretend not to know her.

Cheyenne wanted to see how she was doing. If she had become a huge architect after all.

“Silly,” Cheyenne told herself.

But she couldn’t help it.

Chapter Three

Alessandra’s mother sat her down and braided her hair like she was twelve instead of twenty-five.

Alessandra suffered her ministrations with a blank, polite face, her hands folded neatly on her lap and no pain showing in her expressions. Her mother tugged at her hair unceremoniously. In the mirrors, Alessandra could see the hairdo would be beautiful: a loose French braid with other smaller braids adorning it, with several golden pins and flowers woven into it. Alessandra felt more like a bride than like someone who was going to suffer one evening of a shitty high school reunion.

“Xander is already waiting for you,” her mother admonished as though the lateness were Alessandra’s fault and not her own. “Remember to make a good impression on the Chibalte children and specially on Hank LeBlanc.” She raised her eyes took look at Alessandra through the mirror. “He’s your age, but it’s said that his father is already planning on making him CEO of their company next year. He is a good friend to reconnect with.”

“Yes,” Alessandra said obediently. “Talk to him, but be subtle, and stay with Xander. It would not do to give people the impression that I was abandoning my date to chat with others.”

Her mother nodded, seemingly satisfied, and a part of Alessandra loosened with relief.

It’d be alright. Alessandra would get through the night and then buy herself some ice cream as a reward, and she would even get to see Cheyenne, if from a distance.

“Don’t embarrass us,” her mother ordered, straightening up.

When have I ever? Alessandra thought, but what she said instead was: “Yes, Mom.”

***

The reunion was in the school gym, which, by virtue of Alessandra’s old school being huge and expensive, might as well have been the luxurious ballroom of a hotel. She wasn’t the most well-dressed—overdressed, she would say—person in the room, but most others looked like her: like this was a luxurious ballroom indeed.

Her hand was at Xander’s elbow, and he led her into the room.

A part of her couldn’t help but glow with pride and a bit of smugness. This was the school she had gone to, that had helped her grow, and it was decorated in golds and pearls. Now she would get to rightly show off all her accomplishments and her rich, well-done-for life. She didn’t care about the others and didn’t care about listening to their accomplishments, but it was the sort of dance a situation like this was made for.

She didn’t have time to lead Xander to a group of ex-classmates before the ex-classmates made their way to her. Alessandra only remembered people’s names because it was useful for her networking; she hadn’t retained a single friend from this place.

And the evening began.

It took her a solid twenty minutes to catch sight of Cheyenne.

Not because Cheyenne wasn’t there, or because she had somehow started to blend in with the rest of their group when in high school – she had always been different from everybody else – or even because Alessandra hadn’t been looking, because she had. It was just that something about her was so different that Alessandra’s mind took some time to realize that the woman she kept catching sight of was Cheyenne.

She was tall. She was as tall as Alessandra was right now—maybe taller—but she wasn’t wearing heels. She was wearing dress shoes and a suit—a light grey and white and blue suit that made her shoulders look wide and square and her legs look long. She was, unlike everyone else, even Alessandra, graceful and confident even though she wasn’t wearing an expensive watch, diamond cufflinks, make up that took hours to apply, or a complicated hairdo. Her hair was short, cropped close to her head.

She looked graceful and confident without those things because she didn’t need them. Because they came from her, not from any adornments. Her face was fair, her smile came easily, and her hands were sure. Her eyes were blue like the sky around the sun at noon, so blue they looked grey.

She was looking at Alessandra.

Alessandra’s face moved automatically, sending a polite smile at her. Something about Cheyenne’s expression seemed to soften, but Alessandra didn’t know if it was relief or regret doing it. She smiled back, waving a hand, and didn’t look away, but didn’t walk closer to her.

She wouldn’t talk to her, Alessandra realized suddenly. They hadn’t been in good terms through high school. Cheyenne wouldn’t approach her by herself, and if Alessandra let it be, they wouldn’t talk at all after ten years not seeing each other.

Alessandra’s feet started moving. She left all the important people she should be buttering up behind—left even Xander behind—and made her way to Cheyenne. It wasn’t a conscious effort. She didn’t realize she had moved until Cheyenne’s hand caught her arm.

“Hello,” the woman said.

Alessandra unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth, hoping she looked graceful and put-together.

“Hello,” she greeted back. She looked Cheyenne up and down, pretending it didn’t make her mouth suddenly go dry, and raised one eyebrow. “You’ve changed.”

“Ah, I guess the haircut does make me stand out,” Cheyenne said with a smile, lifting a hand to card her fingers through the short strands of her blond hair. Alessandra followed the path of that hand and tried not to find it so attractive. “You haven’t aged a day, Ally.”

The nickname made her feel like something squeezed her chest. Cheyenne hadn’t called her Ally in high school… but she had, that summer.

“I didn’t mean you looked old,” Alessandra said, looking at her from under her eyelashes. “You look good in a suit, with short hair.” She raised one bold hand to tug at the hair by her temple. “Though it does makes things rather obvious, doesn’t it?”

Cheyenne swirled wine around the glass she was holding and didn’t break eye-contact with Alessandra. Slowly, a smile bloomed on her face. It looked relieved, now, and—amused.

“You have changed,” she said, and didn’t step away from Alessandra.

“You mean I’m not acting like a bitch like in high school?” Alessandra asked, quirking an eyebrow again.

Cheyenne lifted her glass and drank instead of answering, for all that her smile was clear through the sheer glass, like she wanted to agree but didn’t think it was polite.

“I thought you might not come,” Alessandra admitted.

Cheyenne shrugged, looking around the room. Alessandra felt so strangely nervous, looking at her, and it rattled her that Cheyenne looked so put together and relaxed. Alessandra thought about how they didn’t get along, the things her teenage-self had said, how quiet and bitter Cheyenne had been, and Alessandra too—she felt disquieted, guilty, and annoyed at feeling guilty for something stupid ten years in the past.

Cheyenne, though, just stood there like it was all water off a duck’s back.

“I knew you would be here,” Cheyenne said simply, then looked past her shoulder. “Your man is missing you, it seems.”

Alessandra glanced back. Xander was looking pointedly in their direction, but he didn’t look bothered or jealous. He looked curious. He smiled at Alessandra when their eyes met and lifted his glass as if in a toast.

The people around him, though, looked very interested.

“He’s not my man,” Alessandra said, turning back to Cheyenne. “He’s just a friend.”

Cheyenne gave her an amused, unimpressed look.

“Though my mom has been planning the wedding for years now,” she admitted with a sigh.

Cheyenne hummed as if in agreement, then cocked her head. “Do you have to go?”

Alessandra looked down at her own glass.

The truth was… yes. She was here to show off and network and to hang from Xander’s arm like a very pretty thing. She had wanted, selfishly, to see Cheyenne, and she had gotten her wish and then more. She had to go back before the rumor mill started chatting about how she let go of her date to go hang around Cheyenne, who stood out so much—who wasn’t hiding that she was tall and butch and not straight from anybody.

“What’s the alternative?” she asked Cheyenne.

Cheyenne’s smile widened, blue eyes turning squinty. Why was she so attractive? Alessandra didn’t want to find little, bitter, bullied Cheyenne attractive.

Cheyenne held her arm and led her away.

***

They left the gym through an out-of-the-way door that nobody was using, half-hidden behind some thick fabric the decorators had hung around to try and hide the more high-school-gym-like characteristics of this high school gym. Cheyenne grabbed more glasses of wine on the way and handed one to Alessandra.

“You really have changed,” Alessandra said quietly, sipping her wine and not looking at the other woman. “I didn’t think you would want to talk to me, after the way I acted back then.”

“We were children,” Cheyenne said as if it were that simple. “And you were never the worst. The worst you ever did to me was ignore me, really.”

“I egged them on. The others who didn’t ignore you,” Alessandra said, arguing against herself she didn’t even know why.

Cheyenne turned to her. Alessandra kept her eyes away and drank her wine.

“Did your mother make you come to this?” she asked.

Alessandra felt the question like an arrow to the heart—because she knew this was also a comment on their previous subject. Yes, Alessandra had always been an obedient daughter; yes, her mother had been the one to forbid her from talking to Cheyenne, who taught her to be distant and unkind, back then.

To this day, Alessandra was very much her mother’s daughter.

“I don’t know why she would send you,” Cheyenne continued, then laughed quietly. “You’re not suited to this kind of thing at all. You were obviously so bored.”

Alessandra winced, then straightened up as if she hadn’t.

“That’s not true,” she said. “I’m not so transparent.”

“Well, it was obvious to me,” Cheyenne said, for some reason sounding charmed. “You were tapping your fingers against your thigh just like you did back then. You know, at the beach.”

Alessandra couldn’t have stopped herself from looking at Cheyenne then if she had tried.

Cheyenne looked back at her. There was something so solid about her. Alessandra was and had always been her mother’s daughter, but Cheyenne had grown and changed so much. Couldn’t Alessandra, too, for just one night?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was cruel of me to ignore you when it was clear you wanted to talk.”

“Thank you,” Cheyenne said, smiling, as if it were that simple.

“What about you, Ann?” Alessandra asked, stepping closer, as if continuing a conversation. “Did you come with anyone? I don’t see anyone on your arm.”

“I came alone,” the woman answered, pink dusting her fair cheeks as she watched Alessandra’s approach.

“No girlfriend?” Alessandra asked quietly, thumbing at the corner of Cheyenne’s jacket, as if saying something like this out loud didn’t terrify her.

“No.”

They looked at each other, so close that Alessandra had to employ each molecule of her self-control not to think about kissing her.

“I have to go,” she said, stepping closer until the space between their bodies was less than that of a hand. “I’ll give you my number.”

She would be brave this once. She wanted to get to know this Cheyenne who was confident and sure, who called her Ally and remembered her little tells. She wanted Cheyenne, who accepted her apology so easily, to like her.

“Alright,” she said, tucking a strand of Alessandra’s hair behind her ear.

Alessandra gave her number to her and left, lips tingling even though they hadn’t kissed.

***

“Who is that woman?” Xander asked, quirking a curious brow at where Cheyenne was now sitting and chatting with a waitress.

He still didn’t sound jealous, and unlike everyone else they had been speaking to, he didn’t sound disgusted either. He seemed just curious, like he was aware Cheyenne was standing out proudly and wanted to know all the gossip about that.

“An old classmate, like everyone in here,” Alessandra said, not turning to look at Cheyenne. It wouldn’t do to look to interested. She cast her eyes about the room, looking for someone else her mother had told her she should speak to.

“An old friend?” Xander asked. “I was surprised you came back so soon. You can catch up with her for a while longer if you want, darling.”

Alessandra smiled at him very politely. “Why don’t we go talk to Hank LeBlanc, who looks very lonely by the buffet, instead?”

Xander shrugged as if he didn’t care about it either way, but he was still looking at Cheyenne.

“She’s a brave one,” he commented. “Even with the short hair, she could have worn a dress instead, to blend in more. Oh, but that blue looks beautiful with her eyes.”

“Don’t let anyone hear you talking about another woman like that,” she told him, annoyed but not letting it show.

“Of course not,” he said easily. He led her towards the LeBlanc man slowly, like he too wasn’t at all looking forward to the bland conversation that would follow. “If anyone asks, I will say the masculine way she is wearing a suit—with no jewelry, the nerve!—is positively monstrous. But you think too, don’t you, that she looks beautiful?”

Alessandra didn’t flinch at the word monstrous because she had trained herself out of it by the age of ten. She kept smiling at him.

“If anyone asks, I will change the subject.”

He laughed. “Ally, you know, I see right through you.”

What a fool he was. All she wanted was to let go of him, who said monstrous so casually, and go to Cheyenne, who was alone and looking around like this place brought back memories, and not any she was very fond of.

Chapter Four

Cheyenne had Jason to focus on when Sunday arrived, but nothing could help how distracted she was when Monday came. She arrived at work and barely said hi to people as she walked to her office. She sat at her desk and gazed at her phone for a solid two minutes before snapping out of it and booting up her laptop. She innocently logged in to some social media websites and had to wrestle with her self-control for a long time not to go looking—

Not to go looking for Alessandra.

Cheyenne sighed at herself, drooping where she sat. She should be focusing on her job. Alessandra would call or she wouldn’t and there was nothing Cheyenne could do about it. She forced herself to place her phone screen-down beside her laptop, breathed in deeply, and opened her emails, where she had no doubt she would have no shortage of work to do.

Which was then her phone started to ring.

Cheyenne startled like a rabbit and snatched her phone off the desk.

“Hello?” she greeted, just slightly out of breath.

“I know you’ve probably just gotten to work, but do you have a minute?” Maya asked her with no pause for pleasantries like greetings. “I’m two minutes away from a meeting with a super important client here but I can’t find the email where he—”

“Hello,” Cheyenne interrupted brightly, refraining from sighing with the sheer weight of her disappointment. “Are you having trouble with your email folders again? Hm. How are you, my dear friend? I’m doing quite well. Tell me,” she added before Maya could say something, “have you had any breakfast yet?”

“I don’t have time to go out for breakfast,” Maya said mournfully. “If you could just help—you know my damn email folders better than I do.”

Cheyenne talked Maya through finding the right folder where the email she needed would be stored.

“Thank you,” her best friend said fervently.

“And just in time for the meeting, right?” Cheyenne said.

“Well, I have five minutes,” Maya said, then waited.

Cheyenne pursed her lips and stayed quiet.

“You want to tell me why you answered the phone literally the second I called and why you said hello like some sort of sighing Victorian maiden?” Maya asked, voice dry like a desert. An amused desert. An asshole one, also.

“No reason,” Cheyenne answered vaguely, staring out her window. The day was beautiful. She wondered if Alessandra would call.

“Nothing related to that high school reunion you just had this weekend?”

“None at all. Thanks for the chat!”

“Jason texts me sometimes, you know,” Maya added sweetly before Cheyenne could unrepentantly hang up on her.

Cheyenne sighed and let her forehead fall to a hand.

“He said you were acting funny,” Maya continued. “Distracted. That you keep sighing and checking your phone. Come on, I have a few moments before the meeting starts.”

“Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, saying hi to whoever you’re meeting, having some coffee—”

“It’s an online meeting.”

“I met an old friend, Alessandra,” Cheyenne told her, defeated. “She was just… different. Not like I expected.”

Seeing Alessandra hadn’t been surprising; the woman had been as beautiful and radiant as Cheyenne had imagined. But seeing Alessandra walk up to her, and more, get away with her for a few scant minutes, had been a shock. Alessandra had apologized.

Cheyenne wasn’t used to being apologized to. She wasn’t used to asking for apologies, and was someone content with not getting them. But—

She felt like her heart was fit to burst, after that apology. Like Alessandra had looked up at her with those dark, dark eyes, and really managed to fix things between them, where normally Cheyenne would settle for a state of resigned, slightly bitter contentment.

“—hot woman and you get like this,” Maya was saying.

Oops, Cheyenne thought.

“She said she would call, which is why I’m like this,” Cheyenne said instead of trying to pretend she had been listening to Maya.

“I thought you hated everyone from high school,” Maya accused.

“Hate is a strong word. We had all been children, Maya.”

“And children can be assholes. Alright,” she added before Cheyenne could scold her for that, “I do have to go now. You will talk to me about this later.”

“Fine,” Cheyenne said, rolling her eyes. “Good luck on your meeting.”

“Good luck on that crush you’re growing. Though I doubt anyone from that shitty high school can change much,” Maya said meanly, and hung up.

“I don’t have a crush,” Cheyenne muttered to herself. “And people do change.”

Maya held grudges much more easily than she did. Maybe Cheyenne shouldn’t have told her about her high school days. She and Alessandra probably wouldn’t get along at all.

If they ever had opportunity to even meet, that was. If Alessandra ever called.

“Focus,” Cheyenne told herself.

***

Cheyenne managed to focus, more or less, the rest of the day, mostly because Sérgio had fucked up again, and Sérgio’s fuck ups did tend to sharpen one’s attention. Mostly because they were always so stupid but also so destructive.

He sat with her in her office as they tried to fix it. The whole day long. At least, Cheyenne told herself, her usually easy smile becoming just a bit strained, Sérgio always tried to fix his mistakes instead of trying to pin them on somebody else, or God forbid, hide them.

“I’m sorry,” Sérgio said, miserable, without looking at her. He was hunching in his chair as if weighed down by the weight of his shame. “I don’t see how I could have done something like this. I didn’t…

He didn’t mean to, she knew. But he still had done something like this: he had sent not one but three very, very important contracts to not one but two people who definitely should not have access to their contracts. Cheyenne had spent many hours on her phone, calling people and begging for meetings, trying to make sure those people not only understood the mistake, but also deleted their contracts from their servers, at the face of (gentle!) threats of (polite!) legal action.

Aside from a few other documents he had sent as well, the contracts were her priority.

“I understand,” Cheyenne told him. “But we will need to talk about this, Sérgio. I can’t right now because I’ve had to push off many, many important tasks to help with this, but perhaps in a couple of days—”

“I understand,” the man parroted morosely.

Cheyenne sighed to herself and tried to ignore the voice in her head that told her she was too forgiving. It sounded awfully like Maya. She walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, Sérgio,” she told him with a smile. “We all make mistakes. Don’t worry too much. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. If it does, I will have to do something.”

He looked up at her with huge, relieved eyes.

“Okay,” he said.

He quickly went back to his own department after that. Cheyenne closed the door to her office and sat down heavily on her chair. She had had to postpone two important meetings to take care of this—she didn’t even want to think about how her schedule would look tomorrow.

She should call Maya to vent about this. Maya would be angry on her behalf, which was always therapeutic.

She picked up her phone. A notification flashed on the screen.

1 new text.

Cheyenne remembered Alessandra and her heart punched itself against her ribcage. She almost dropped her phone in her hurry to unlock it, palms suddenly sweaty. She breathed in deeply and tried to focus on her screen. She wasn’t going to be anxious about this. She told herself to stay calm.

Unknown: It’s Alessandra. I was wondering if you’re free for dinner tonight.

Cheyenne, whose face was fit for small, gentle smiles, grinned wide enough to make her cheeks hurt.

***

The restaurant Alessandra chose was a huge, fancy thing, of course. Somehow, the fact of it made Cheyenne feel amused and relieved instead of more nervous, and she was glad to go to a place where her suit jacket wouldn’t look out of place. Alessandra had stopped answering after Cheyenne said she would gladly go and that the restaurant was fine with her, but that was okay.

“We’ve never been here,” Jason said in a quiet voice as she parked the car, looking around.

“No,” Cheyenne agreed. “I know you don’t really like new places, but neither does she. Let’s indulge her today.”

Jason looked down, thoughtful, then looked at her.

“Dessert,” he said imperiously.

Cheyenne smiled and carded her fingers through his messy black hair. “Alright. You can pick whatever you want.”

He nodded. They got out of the car.

They walked into the restaurant, gave their names, and a hostess showed them to the right table. From the other side of the room, Cheyenne could see that Alessandra was drinking wine and gazing distractedly out of the window instead of doing something as base as watching the door to see when she’d arrive, which almost made Cheyenne laugh. Alessandra really hadn’t changed… not where it mattered.

Though her gaze surely snapped to them when she caught the sight of two people instead of one from the corner of her eyes.

“Good evening,” Cheyenne said cheerfully, then helped Jason sit down.

“Did I keep you waiting?”

“No,” Alessandra told her evenly.

She looked at Jason, who looked blandly back at her, then at Cheyenne. She barely blinked. Cheyenne’s smile curled into something awfully entertained as she waited. Alessandra stared at her and pointedly did not ask, the way she got when she thought she was owed an explanation and wasn’t going to lower herself into asking for it.

Cheyenne finally sat down as well, resting a hand behind Jason’s chair.

“Jason, this is a friend of mine, Alessandra.” She finally took pity on Alessandra. “Ally, this is Jason, my son.”

Alessandra nodded slowly and looked at the boy again.

“He looks nothing like you,” she said, dare Cheyenne say, meanly.

“I’m adopted,” Jason said easily. “Ann, where are the menus?”

“They’ll be brought over in a second,” Cheyenne told him.

“Your child calls you Ann,” Alessandra said.

Cheyenne shrugged easily.

“I’m adopted,” Jason repeated, eyes narrowed with annoyance. “Ann is my cousin. Her parents ended up with me and they gave me to her. And she decided to keep me.”

Alessandra tapped a finger against her wine glass. “No other parent, then?”

“I don’t need another parent,” Jason said very loudly, in a tone of voice that said I know this is a date and you are on thin ice with me.

Cheyenne did her best not to laugh. It wouldn’t do to encourage him. And this wasn’t really a date. Neither of them had said so.

“I did say I’d have to bring him, Ally,” she said, smiling at her. “But you stopped answering my texts. We can reschedule, if you’d like, of course.”

“No,” Alessandra said quickly, then drank her wine so Cheyenne couldn’t see the annoyance in her face at having answered so embarrassingly quickly. Of course, Cheyenne caught it anyway. “He can stay. If he behaves. I thought your parents were dead,” she added out of nowhere.

Cheyenne felt confused. “Why?”

“I knew something had happened with them around high school…”

“Ah, no. I was just very stressed, it was high school, after all. What happened with my parents was years before then,” she said. “My Uncle sued them for custody of me and won. They weren’t very fit to be parents. But they’re alive.”

“I didn’t know,” Alessandra said softly.

They were interrupted by the arrival of the menus, which thankfully distracted Jason, who promptly lifted his own so it covered his entire face.

“So your uncle took you in,” Alessandra said, looking at the menu instead of at Cheyenne even though Cheyenne was feeling the weight of her attention on her, “and you decided to follow in his footsteps and take a relative in as well?”

Cheyenne paused.

It was a soft pause, one caused by surprise and wonder. She blinked at Alessandra.

“I’d… never thought of it like that,” she said.

“How had you thought of it, then?” Alessandra asked, cocking a head.

Cheyenne smiled and shrugged. “I’m a very forgiving, easy-going person. Too much so, some people say.” She thought about Maya. “How could I see a boy who needed a home, when I had a home, and not take care of him? Even though he was such an ugly child,” she added with a sigh.

Jason peeked at her from over the menu and kicked her shin.

“When people ask, that’s what I say to explain why I have no baby pictures of him,” Cheyenne continued cheerfully to a visibly confused Alessandra. “I say that he was such an ugly baby, I didn’t want to inflict pictures of him upon the world—”

“Liar,” Jason said loudly.

Cheyenne grinned at him and ruffled his hair. He smiled at her behind the menu, where she could barely see it.

“I’m joking,” she said. “He was adorable. I took him in because I already loved him. I hadn’t thought of it like that,” she repeated softly. “That I was following in Uncle’s steps. But I like it.”

She really liked it.

Alessandra said nothing and went back to looking at her menu… even though Cheyenne could see that her eyes were still; she was thinking about something, not actually reading the thing.

“I think about children, sometimes,” she said at last. “My mother expects me to marry Xander and give her perfectly round-faced, rose-cheeked, angelic little grandchildren, of course.”

Cheyenne didn’t know whether to widen her smile or cry a little bit at the words. She had wished—though she wouldn’t say she had expected—that Alessandra would have gotten away from her mother after so long.

“Well,” Cheyenne said, chin in hand, looking at Alessandra for all that the woman wouldn’t look at her, “I suppose the question is of whether you’ll obey or not.”

Alessandra finally looked at her. They stared at each other for a few moments.

“I am going to the bathroom,” Jason declared, giving Cheyenne a look that said deal with this adult nonsense before I’m back.

Cheyenne ruffled his hair and smiled at him as she went. Alessandra sighed.

“Smart kid,” she commented.

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t my place to say something like that.”

“Perhaps,” Alessandra said, though she looked pleased that Cheyenne had pointed it out. “But that doesn’t mean you are wrong. I haven’t started dating Xander, even though my mother’s wishes are obvious.” She tapped her long, perfectly manicured nails on the table. “Not yet anyway.”

Cheyenne gave her a look and didn’t patronize her by pointing out she was an adult and could do whatever she wanted.

“I don’t want to date him. For obvious reasons,” Alessandra continued, looking away again.

“Obvious reasons?” Cheyenne asked with a smile, cocking her head.

Alessandra gave her a scathing look.

Cheyenne shrugged. “I won’t pretend to know anything about your situation,” she said, even though she did know some things from what she knew of Alessandra in their past. “And I surely don’t know you as well as I used to when we were small, so I won’t try to say things it isn’t my place to say.”

Alessandra waited. Cheyenne smiled.

“And?” Alessandra asked, impatient.

Her annoyance was charming. Cheyenne didn’t know why, but it made her smile widen a bit.

“You are rich and smart and gorgeous,” Cheyenne said simply, tapping her fingers against her temple. “What’s stopping you from doing whatever on Earth you want? Surely your mother will be angry, but surely you can also work things to your favor.”

“I’ll never be able to work being a les—” Alessandra stopped and sighed.

She looked away. Cheyenne bit her bottom lip and looked down at her menu as well. Alessandra apparently couldn’t even say the word lesbian out loud. Cheyenne didn’t know how to call what that made her feel: like there was a small pin inside her heart, just big enough to poke her a little bit every time she breathed, making her bleed.

“She will never accept me,” Alessandra said simply, like it was no big deal.

Cheyenne managed a laugh. “Ah, Ally. Your mother is an idiot.”

Alessandra’s mouth fell open with shock at her words. Was someone insulting her mother so incredibly strange to her? The corners of Cheyenne’s eyes crinkled with her smile.

“And a huge bitch,” she said, delighted when it brought a red flush to Alessandra’s face. “Honestly, it baffles me. It’s clear you’ll kill Xander with a machete within the year if you marry him. The woman must be blind, Ally. Or perhaps—”

“Stop,” Alessandra said, eyes wide, grabbing Cheyenne’s wrist and digging her nails into her skin. She covered her mouth with her other hand. “Oh my God, Ann. Just—shut up. What are you saying? Stop saying words.”

“You want me to stop talking about how stupid your mother is?” Cheyenne said loudly. “Or that she is a fool? Or—”

“Shhhh!” Alessandra gripped her wrist higher, eyes widening even more. She had such beautiful dark eyes. Her face was red all over now, as well as the tops of her ears. She looked so charming. Unguarded. Surprised. Cheyenne felt so charmed.

Cheyenne pursed her lips shut, widening her eyes right back at Alessandra.

“You can’t just say those things,” Alessandra scolded her, but as she relaxed her hand, Cheyenne caught the small, incredulous smile she was hiding.

“You mean that your mother is—”

Alessandra kicked Cheyenne’s shin with all the strength of her ridiculously expensive and also very sharp high heels. She lifted her menu over her face, like Jason did, and Cheyenne laughed.

“Let’s order,” Alessandra said, sounding completely composed and also like the last few minutes had not happened at all.

Cheyenne laughed again and kicked her shin back, but softly, and left her heel hooked over Alessandra’s ankle. Alessandra didn’t lower the menu to look at her, but didn’t dislodge her hold either.

“Alright,” Cheyenne said, feeling very much cheered up. “Let’s order.”

Jason came back the next second, almost as if he had been waiting around for their conversation to end. Cheyenne gave him an indulgent look and pretended she didn’t catch his you will talk to me about this later look.

Their not-date went well, though they didn’t kiss. But that was okay with Cheyenne. She was a patient woman.

Chapter Five

“Ally,” her mother exclaimed as if finding Alessandra in her own room after work hours was a surprising thing. “How wonderful that you are here. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while, but we’ve all been so busy, right?”

“Yes,” Alessandra said, turning around to her. She was in front of her mirror, brush halfway down her long hair. She crossed her legs. “I’ve been talking to the LeBlanc boy. I think he’s close to accepting a deal on—”

“Yes, yes,” her mother interrupted, waving a hand, and smiled widely at Alessandra. “Turn around.”

Alessandra gripped her brush tightly… then turned. She looked at her mother through the mirror as the woman approached her. She stood behind her and took the comb from her, and started to brush her hair.

“I’m very pleased with how you approached LeBlanc and some others too,” her mother said, yanking at her hair. Alessandra sat perfectly still and pretended it didn’t hurt. “However! I did hear some interesting things about the reunion that you didn’t tell me about.”

“Oh?” Alessandra asked, looking at her own eyes in the mirror instead of at her.

Though she knew what her mother would say.

“You didn’t say anything about your little private chat with Cheyenne Lourdes. I thought that was very odd, since she is in a business very much related to ours. We deal with insurance and she deals with reinsurance—and she is the CEO! Would you care to comment on this oversight of yours?”

Alessandra kept her posture loose. “Because I didn’t talk to her about business, Mom,” she said with a sigh. “She refused to. She only wanted to reminisce about our school days, even after I tried to get her into an isolated place.”

“Yes, I did hear about that too,” her mother said sweetly. “Ally, you should know better. We don’t want those nasty rumors popping up again, do we? And Cheyenne Lourdes is so obviously…”

Different, Alessandra thought. Odd. Monstrous.

“Masculine,” her mother settled on, which was far more generous than Alessandra thought she would be. Cheyenne was masculine; there was nothing wrong with it.

There’s nothing wrong with us, Alessandra thought to herself. She believed it, most days. When her mother wasn’t standing at her back like this, staring at her through the mirror.

“Of course,” Alessandra said. “I was only approaching her for business. Ike you said, she’s the CEO of a reinsurance company.”

“Don’t worry about her anymore,” her mother said, putting the comb down to card her fingers through Alessandra’s hair one last time. “That particular company is handled.”

Alessandra froze.

She didn’t mean to. She shouldn’t have. Her mother caught it, holding her by the shoulders and squeezing them in warning, and gave her one last warning smile before she walked out of her room. Alessandra kept her spine straight but tried not to look so tense, and watched her mother as the woman walked out of the room. When she opened the door, a man was standing there, waiting for her.

He was younger than Alessandra’s mother, dark-haired and light-eyed and utterly unremarkable—but Alessandra recognized him. Sérgio Watanabe, her mother’s loyal informant.

Alessandra didn’t know what her mother was scheming, but she was already goddamn tired of it. She had no idea how Sérgio factored into her plans for Cheyenne’s company. What she thought of instead was something Cheyenne had told her the day before:

What’s stopping you from doing whatever on Earth you want?

Alessandra wanted something different so badly. She wanted to be able to get what she wanted as easily as Cheyenne thought she could get it.

***

Alessandra drank her tea as daintily as she had been taught to and watched the people walking outside the window instead of looking at Xander, who was sipping his coffee and staring at her over the rim of his cup.

She hated this café, truly. Alessandra was the type of person to have opinions about everything, which was a shame; her life would be so much easier if she could be ambivalent about things like this instead. As it was, she came to this café because she knew Xander liked it, and instead of feeling bored or content, she was just fucking annoyed at having to be here.

“You look like you’re deep in thought,” he remarked.

She shrugged lightly without turning to him.

Honestly, she was deep in thought. She was thinking about Cheyenne’s words and about her mother this morning, and about how much she was itching to do something stupid. But wasn’t Cheyenne right? Couldn’t she do whatever she wanted? Couldn’t she acknowledge, just for a moment, this game that they were all playing, that her mother hated when she acknowledged it out loud, and be frank with this man?

She was expected to marry him, for all that she wasn’t dating him, barely knew him, didn’t want him.

I suppose the question is of whether you’ll obey or not, Cheyenne had said.

Alessandra didn’t know. She wanted her mother’s approval, her pride. But—

“I suppose I do have a lot on my mind,” she said to Xander.

“Do tell,” Xander prompted.

She turned to him. His legs were crossed and his eyebrow was quirked like he knew Alessandra had the latest bit of gossip and he was trying not to reveal just how much he wanted to hear about it.

“Do you wonder sometimes what our future will be like?” she asked him lightly. “I was thinking about children the other day. Babies are horrid little things, but I think I don’t mind children who are past that stage.”

His eyebrows climbed up to his hairline. “That’s forward of you, Alessandra.”

She just looked evenly at him and waited. Slowly, he smiled. Alessandra blinked with surprise.

“I was wondering when that straightforward streak of yours would make an appearance,” he told her, seemingly pleased. “The way my father talks, I was expecting you to have come to me to talk about this the day we met.”

“Talk about what?”

He laughed. “These games we play. These patterns we go through. It feels silly not to acknowledge them, does it? To keep getting coffee together like this, pretending neither of us knows that our parents have planned our futures down to the number of great-grandchildren we’ll give them?” He snorted.

It was a singularly unattractive noise, that snort, but Alessandra found herself fucking loving it.

“Are you serious,” she asked. “I could have brought this up any time before now and you would have just… snorted? Alexander, maybe you’re not the idiot I thought you were.”

“I am much smarter than I look,” he told her with a grin. “I could tell from the start that we wouldn’t work out in a million years, darling. What with your…” He winked.

Alessandra froze. The smile she had been thinking about letting out wilted and disappeared.

“My…?” she asked frostily.

He winked his other eye, as if that had been the issue. He rolled his eyes when she had no reaction—since when was Xander so expressive and free with her?—and mouthed a word.

Ho-mo-se-xu-a-li-ty.

Alessandra drank her tea and looked out the window. She didn’t let herself tense. So Xander knew. Alessandra didn’t have to make a huge deal out of it. He hadn’t told anyone. Probably.

She looked at him with the side of her eye.

“Don’t worry,” he told her with a smile. “Like recognizes like, after all.”

Alessandra set her cup down so forcefully she was briefly afraid she would break it.

She didn’t know what she was feeling, just that it was a mass of black and blue lodged inside her chest. Was it relief? Was it nerves? Was it dread? She couldn’t tell.

“You’re…”

Bi-se-xu-al, he mouthed, then grinned, as if not having the courage to say the word out loud was, for some reason, funny.

But she couldn’t be angry with him. She couldn’t be annoyed. Not now that she knew.

Xander was like her.

Xander wasn’t some idiot, vapid, egocentric, greedy little shit she’d have to marry eventually even though she didn’t want to. Xander, sitting in front of her… could be a friend.

He knew, and he didn’t hate her, because he was like her.

“You know,” she said, “I think we could even be happy together.”

He laughed, then kept laughing, as if that were completely hilarious.

“We could,” he agreed. “We’d be friends, and each have a lover on the side, and have exactly one child just to appease the grandparents, and it wouldn’t be hateful at all, would it?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she muttered. It would be bearable, she thought, but not hateful at all was too much of a stretch for her. “And you’d be the lover. Don’t flatter yourself.”

He rested his chin on a hand, looking interestedly at her.

“Or,” he said, “we could say fuck it to it all and elope with our respective lovers, never to be seen again.”

Alessandra would have scoffed if his words didn’t feel so much like a slap.

“She would find me,” she muttered.

“Your mother?”

The truth Alessandra hid deep within her heart made her let out a shaky sigh now. The truth was that Alessandra didn’t only feel contempt towards her mother, or bitterness, or this desperate wish for approval. More than anything, Alessandra was afraid.

“Come on, I’ll get you a muffin,” Xander said. “Sorry for joking with this kind of thing. You’re not a funny person at all, Alessandra. Let’s be serious now, and talk of serious things. Tell me, what was it your mother said that you absolutely had to bring up to me during this date of ours?”

It brought a smile out of her. Yes, she thought. Xander can be a friend.

She widened her eyes innocently. “Say, Xander—how is the newest hire at your parents’ company, some man named Jacques, doing so far? I’m only curious, be assured; we have nothing invested in learning this information at all.”

He grinned at her.

***

The next time Alessandra met Cheyenne—because of course they met again—was at a café nearby Cheyenne’s house, away from Cheyenne’s company or anywhere else Alessandra’s family, or anyone they knew, spent their time. It had been two days since Alessandra had talked to Xander and she was still riding the high from that, from finding someone like her, someone in the same circumstances as her who knew what it was like and who could be her friend.

She arrived after Cheyenne, which she was grateful for, because that meant she wouldn’t have to wait at all. She walked in strides over to the other woman, who beamed when she caught sight of her, and sat down beside her instead of in front of her, close enough they were touching from shoulder to knee.

“Well,” Cheyenne said, blinking at her, then said nothing else. Was she speechless because of how close Alessandra was? The thought felt dizzying. Everything felt dizzy with possibility now.

“I followed your advice,” Alessandra said.

“Oh?” Cheyenne said, distracted. She was looking at Alessandra’s lips, and it made Alessandra smile.

“Yes,” she said. “I did whatever the fuck I wanted, and found out Xander isn’t an idiot, and might actually be a friend. You were right.”

“Who is Xander?” Cheyenne asked, for all that she was smiling like she was proud of Alessandra.

So stupid. Proud, and because Alessandra had decided to be selfish and reckless instead of patient and clever and obedient and—it worked, didn’t it? It worked.

“The man my mother wants me to marry,” Alessandra said.

“I guess friendship is a start.”

“I don’t want to marry him,” Alessandra said, grabbing Cheyenne’s hand. “Shut up and pay attention to the actual thing I’m trying to say.”

“What is it?” Cheyenne asked patiently.

Alessandra would like her to be less patient.

She swallowed nothing. “I’ve decided to do whatever I want. That’s what’s important.”

Cheyenne cocked her head and smiled, clearly amused. She was waiting, Alessandra realized, even though Alessandra was trying to get her to take some goddamn initiative.

Alessandra would never admit to feeling—just a bit, just slightly—shy.

Cheyenne squeezed her hand. “Alright,” she said.

Alessandra cupped her face with a hand and kissed her.

Cheyenne sighed against her lips and kissed back, a fact which made Alessandra feel breathless with relief and nerves. She cupped Alessandra’s cheek as well, palm warm and soft against her skin. Alessandra gave herself to the kiss, opening her mouth to deepen it.

She hadn’t kissed in such a long time. She hadn’t kissed anyone since she had kissed a classmate on a dare almost ten years ago. Cheyenne kissed like she knew what she was doing—but then, the woman oozed confidence. Cheyenne just was like that.

Cheyenne was the one who leaned away, and she leaned away with a smile.

“So this is something you wanted to do?” she asked, eyes squinting. Why was she so attractive? Oh, Alessandra was so lucky. She had kissed her. “I’m glad. Does that mean we can go on an actual date now?”

“You’d want to date me, even with—everything,” Alessandra said skeptically, leaning away until they weren’t literally breathing the same air.

“Yes,” Cheyenne said with a laugh. “I told you I’m not upset about high school, Ally.”

Alessandra smiled, and she hoped Cheyenne didn’t look too deeply into it. She hadn’t just been talking about high school, but about her parents, her mother, about the whole thing with Xander… and about herself. Alessandra was an unkind person, greedy and bitter. She was too much her mother’s daughter.

But Cheyenne said she should go after whatever she wanted, so she would take Cheyenne for as long as the woman tolerated her. For as long as Alessandra could pretend to be better than she was.

Cheyenne wouldn’t like her if she really knew her.

Chapter Six

Cheyenne was in a very good mood when she arrived at her office the next Monday.

Alessandra had kissed her. Cheyenne couldn’t even believe it. She had to keep stopping herself from touching her lips every time she thought of it. She could still taste Alessandra’s lip gloss. She remembered being all of ten years old and holding Alessandra’s hand as they walked along the beach picking up shells, how clammy her hands always got, sweaty with nerves. How afraid she had been that Alessandra would hate her if she dared tell her that she liked her.

Alessandra seemed to like her back.

She greeted everyone with a smile and was too much in the clouds to notice the tense silence that had settled around. She entered her office and sat down, and barely got distracted with her phone before she opened her emails.

She was promptly buried under a veritable barrage of emails with very, very alarming subjects. She stared at her screen. Before she could click on any of them, her secretary called.

“Cheyenne, can you, uh, pass by my desk for a moment?” the woman said. “Something’s just happened and—”

“I can see that,” Cheyenne said, keeping her voice even. “I’ll be there in a second.”

She stood up and went without taking a look at the emails; she trusted Pam to talk to her about the situation. She walked into the woman’s office, which was adjacent to hers, and felt the last of her giddy happiness leave her when she noticed the expression on her face.

“Ah,” Cheyenne said. “It’s bad.”

“It’s bad,” Pam said sadly.

Cheyenne pinched the bridge of her nose, then straightened up.

“Alright. Tell me what happened.”

“Remember when Sérgio sent contracts to the wrong emails a couple of weeks ago?” Pam asked, zeroing in back to her computer. Cheyenne sat beside her and leaned forward, trying to keep up with the sheer speed with which her secretary was changing tabs and pointing at things.

“That’s all taken care of—or so we thought. You called everyone, but then I was combing through things and organizing it all yesterday just to make sure that everything was taken care of when an email from Sérgio arrived—to, like, my personal inbox, and—” She sighed. “Just read it, Cheyenne.”

Clara opened the email. Cheyenne read it.

Cheyenne didn’t grow red with rage because she just wasn’t that sort of person, but she considered doing it very carefully.

“Where is he?” she asked quietly. “He says he’s resigning, but his two weeks—”

“He’s gone,” Clara said fretfully, shaking her head. “Look at this—he hasn’t said anything incriminating, but it’s obvious that this is all his fault—”

“What exactly is his fault?” Cheyenne asked, putting a hand on her shoulder. “What’s happened? If it were just that the contract issue weren’t resolved, I wouldn’t be getting emails from everybody and their grandmothers.”

“He leaked a bunch of information to our competitors,” Pam said, eyes wide. “Clauses, specifications, the names of our clines—details about our projects—we don’t even know all the people he sent a bunch of sensitive information to.”

Cheyenne nodded slowly and carefully and didn’t grow red and didn’t curse. Cheyenne, who was pissed, who was enraged, who wanted to find Sérgio and kill him, put a hand on Pam’s shoulder and smiled. Cheyenne was confident. She was a fixed point. Around her, everyone else would be able to do their jobs.

“It’s okay,” she told Pam gently. “I’m going to deal with this.”

***

Cheyenne wasn’t surprised, exactly, when she found the Luccesi family fingerprints all over this mess.

She stayed in the office until late to try and fix this mess; late enough for the next day to start, for her to catch a quick nap in her armchair, and to stay until everyone else was gone away.

Instead of feeling loopy and tired, Cheyenne felt wired. She started compiling evidence—for all that it was circumstantial—that the Luccesi family had poked their pointer finger into the pie of her business, and she couldn’t not think of Alessandra. She might really like the woman, but she wasn’t an idiot. This was Alessandra’s family.

But she’d never spoken to Alessandra about business, and neither had the woman ever come to her office. The question was: even so, did Alessandra know about Sérgio? Had she known and not told her anything?

Could Cheyenne even find her too guilty, if her only crime had been silence?

She didn’t know precisely what her relationship was with that mother of hers. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. It didn’t sound good. It never had—

When her phone ringing interrupted her thoughts, she picked it up without even looking. She was staring at some papers she had just printed; it was only tangentially related to this, being a group of emails someone had exchanged with one of their clients, but it was a client whose contract had been leaked, and Cheyenne could almost see why—

“—daydreaming and let us in. Let us in. Ann!”

“I’m here,” Cheyenne answered automatically. “Sorry, Maya. I’ll buzz the door open. I was just distracted; I found this email—”

“Just buzz us in.”

“Us?”

“I’m not babysitting for another goddamn second,” her best friend said flatly. “I’ve gotten us all dinner, then you’re going home with your kid.”

Cheyenne paused. “I guess I already haven’t gone home yesterday. I’m sorry, Maya. I shouldn’t have put this on you—”

“I’m not angry that you left Jason with me for so long,” Maya complained, then only continued when she stepped into Cheyenne’s office a moment later. “I’m angry about you throwing yourself into work like this. Go home, get some rest, or you’ll soon become useless.”

“You know I get more productive when I’m sleep deprived,” Cheyenne countered, then smiled. “Hey, Jason. Sorry about just leaving you with Maya like that. We’ll be going home tonight.”

Jason didn’t look at her, but walked forward until she could wrap her arms around him in a tight hug.

“Right,” Maya said, and sat down heavily on the armchair. “Tell me about it.”

“I thought we were going to have dinner,” Jason said quietly.

“Well, your mom isn’t going to be able to focus on dinner until she’s got all this out of her system,” Maya told him. “Sit with me, kid, and let’s listen.”

Cheyenne sighed. “Alright.”

She told them the whole story. Maya was, predictably, pissed.

“So Sérgio probably works for your Alessandra, and she—what a bitch,” she cursed, and acted like she didn’t see the pointed look Cheyenne sent Jason’s way. “She was using you! I can’t believe it!”

“We don’t know that,” Cheyenne argued. “I told you that the Luccesi family was involved, not that Ally—”

“Ally Luccesi,” Maya spat out, leaning forward with blazing eyes. “She’s obviously taking advantage of your feelings for her! All this corporate bullshit—I told you, you should have chosen to open a café instead of getting involved with the shitty, reinsurance broker world.”

“You’re throwing accusations without proof,” Cheyenne said evenly, beginning to get annoyed. “Neither of us has all the facts, and it’s not like Sérgio came to work here after I met Ally again.”

“I don’t like that woman,” Maya seethed. “You told me how she acted in high school, how she treated you. People don’t change that much, Ann. Not when they are as rich as she is.”

They stared at each other.

Maya eventually sighed explosively and looked away.

“You know I just worry about you.”

“Does this mean the person you like is a bad person?” Jason asked quietly.

Cheyenne really wished Jason hadn’t been here for this mess.

“No, sweetheart,” she said softly. “We don’t know what’s happening. And people aren’t bad or good. They do bad or good things. I’ll talk to Ally about this and we’ll figure out what’s really happening. But it’s nothing you have to worry about. I got this.”

He relaxed minutely, looking away. “Alright.”

“Will you talk to her about this?” Maya asked, arms crossed.

“Of course I will,” Cheyenne said. “I may be soft-hearted, Maya, but I’m not a fool.”

***

When Cheyenne finally got home, she felt exhausted enough to fall down in bed and sleep for a solid two days, but of course she couldn’t. She couldn’t because she had work in the morning—that was, in a few hours—and because her body simply wouldn’t relax enough. She did everything she was supposed to: she took a shower, drank tea, put her softest pair of pajamas on.

Yet here she was, lying in bed with Jason conked out beside her, staring at the ceiling.

She kept trying to close her eyes to give herself a chance to rest, but it just wasn’t working, and the worst thing was: she was so, so bored. Especially after so long focusing on work. Surely it wouldn’t help with going to sleep, but she couldn’t be blamed for getting on her phone for a while.

She went straight to check out Alessandra’s page. She knew all her social media accounts were probably controlled by her family—by that mother of hers—but it was too late to call or text her and Cheyenne suddenly missed her. She wanted more than anything to talk to her and get things straight, to learn that Alessandra had nothing to do with it and that Cheyenne didn’t have to stop seeing her.

She wanted to see her.

The first picture she came upon was one of Alessandra smiling softly as she hung on that man’s arm. Xander, Cheyenne thought she remembered, the man she had gone to the reunion with, and to whom her mother wanted her to get married. They looked good together, Cheyenne had to admit.

They were both pale and tall, with very dark hair and eyes. Like a matching set. Cheyenne could imagine their children: two or three angels, round-faced and pink cheeked and dark-eyed, ringlets in their dark hair.

Cheyenne wondered, more than anything, if Alessandra was okay.

Chapter Seven

Alessandra held her margarita close to her chest and laughed.

She hadn’t laughed truly, it felt, in so long, but things felt so easy with Xander these days. It didn’t matter that her mother was a table away and definitely keeping an eye on them; Alessandra was being obedient and giggling along with Xander like a lovestruck fool, but she also felt like laughing. It didn’t feel like the sacrifice it had always felt like.

Xander had been telling her a bland story about what some colleagues at work had done the week before, but he had his back to everyone important and in between his bland words he was mouthing some very nice complements to the story.

“Then Carlos told me to file the document in the wrong folder, acting all high and mighty like he knew more than me,” Xander told her with a smile, and then mouthed: Carlos is the one I had an affair with months ago. He is such a dumb bitch.

Alessandra just couldn’t avoid letting out a pearl of laughter at the term dumb bitch. She was used to hearing the terms in her own mind, when she dared, but here Xander was saying this to her in broad daylight, so close to her mother and their families, a glint in his eyes like her joy was very amusing.

Xander was a good friend. It was good to have a friend. Even one chained to her by her mother, one she couldn’t completely trust. But well, she’d get to that when she got to that.

She wished she could be like this with Cheyenne, out in the open.

The thought dampened her mood some.

Are you thinking about your girl? Xander asked, raising one eyebrow at her.

Alessandra shrugged lightly and got her phone. It felt stupid, having to text him under the table when he was right there, but she wouldn’t chance anyone listening to this conversation.

It was midway through typing something that she remembered her mother had access to her phone and often checked to see what she was doing. She sighed and let her phone fall.

“I think my mother has something planned for her,” she said lightly, lips barely moving as she spoke.

He leaned close to her to hear better.

“Well, your mother has plans for everyone and their grandmother,” Xander said back, just as low, still amused. Did anything break this man’s good mood?

“There’s just nothing I can do,” Alessandra said with a sigh, and downed her margarita. “I hate that my mother makes me feel so powerless.”

“So you’re upset about feeling powerless, but not about how your girl might be screwed?” Xander laughed. “Heartless woman.”

Alessandra rolled her eyes, trying to hide how much his comment had hurt. “It’s not like I can do anything about it. And…”

“And?” Xander asked, raising his eyebrows.

She sighed. “Someone good and kind like Ann won’t last with me and this family. I know we’ll break up anyway soon, so I’m trying not to worry and enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Wow, why are you so certain?”

Alessandra smiled sharply. “I’m heartless, aren’t I, dear Xander? Cheyenne will see it eventually, and that’ll be that.”

***

Alessandra didn’t want Cheyenne to see it eventually, or at all.

“You look pensive,” the woman said, chin resting on a hand. The gesture was a bit childish, like Cheyenne was curious about something and wanted Alessandra to know it without having to say anything, and Alessandra felt charmed by it.

The table was very small. They’d just gone for a stroll in the mall and were now perched on a very tiny round table in the very corner of a café, as far away from the windows as could be, since Alessandra just couldn’t bear to think that somebody who knew her might pass by and see what she was doing. It didn’t matter just how unlikely to happen that was.

Cheyenne was kind. She indulged Alessandra’s paranoia. It also charmed Alessandra.

“You’ve been quiet,” Alessandra countered instead of answering her. She lifted her coffee to her lips and didn’t look away, because that was something guilty people did, even though she kind of felt like hiding her face away.

“That’s true,” Cheyenne said, tone of voice like she knew exactly what Alessandra was doing and was amused by it.

Alessandra sipped her coffee. It was too sweet; she’d been distracted looking at Cheyenne and poured too much sugar into it. Honestly, how old was she, thirteen? She was like a teenager with a crush.

Cheyenne was just so close.

“I suppose I have been thinking about us,” Alessandra said slowly, trying out the words to see how the other woman would react.

Cheyenne just blinked, slow like a lazy cat. “Yes?”

Well, Alessandra hadn’t actually meant to start a conversation about this. She didn’t want to say something like well I have been thinking about what a bad person I am and how you’ll surely end up hating me and how I really don’t want that to happen.

“Do you remember when we met?” she asked instead, finally looking away.

“Yeah.”

Alessandra stared at her own reflection in her black, black coffee.

“I wonder what those children would think, if they knew who they’ve grown up to be,” she murmured—and ah, the words almost hurt. Alessandra didn’t like bearing her heart. But she didn’t know anything else that could truly distract Cheyenne from what Alessandra had said.

Cheyenne hummed in thought, then said: “They’d be disappointed we haven’t married and run off to the Netherlands or something like that.”

Alessandra snorted, then looked at Cheyenne, who was smiling at her like that had been her goal.

“I’ve been thinking about us too,” Cheyenne said, then straightened up. Amusement and contentment slid off her face and left her just looking seriously at Alessandra.

Alessandra had a bad feeling about this.

“I actually wanted to meet you to talk about this,” Cheyenne said with a sigh, “but I suppose I couldn’t help but steal some time with you before talking about this.”

Goddamn it, Alessandra thought. She set her cup down and looked evenly back at Cheyenne. The expression fit her more than it did Cheyenne; Alessandra was an unhappy, serious person, not someone smiling and kind like Cheyenne.

“Something happened,” Alessandra said, cursing her own stupid mouth; she shouldn’t have said anything to Xander about how she thought her mother was meddling with Cheyenne, like her saying it made it happen somehow.

“So you do know about it,” Cheyenne said, voice even though Alessandra noticed her shoulders drooping with disappointment.

Alessandra tapped her fingers on the table; hopefully Cheyenne was too busy trying to stare her into honesty to notice the nervous gesture.

“Not really,” she said. “But I’m not surprised. My mother wasn’t happy with me sneaking away with you during the reunion. She probably sped up her plans for you out of spite.”

Cheyenne’s lip curled slightly. Annoyance? Anger? Alessandra told herself firmly that she could not tap her fingers again, or else the other would really notice.

“What plans?”

“I don’t know,” Alessandra said, giving a small shrug like it was of no interest to her at all. “I work within our own company. She doesn’t trust me to sabotage competitors yet.”

“We’re not truly competitors. We’re reinsurance brokers and you’re insurance brokers,” Cheyenne said, then frowned. “Yet?”

“The woman doesn’t think I have it in me,” she said, unable to stop a roll of her eyes. “As if I don’t obey her to the letter like a goddamn dog.”

She watched as Cheyenne visibly filed that away, addressing it to another day. Alessandra didn’t want to address it ever, which soured her mood even more. She looked away, but truly they were in such a corner that there was nothing to look at but walls. Alessandra had her back to the rest of the café, since she’d been afraid of people seeing her face. It was very inconvenient. Alessandra did her best to find anything interesting about the spot above Cheyenne’s shoulder.

She was sweating a bit. She tried not to pay attention to it. She wasn’t afraid. She was just… apprehensive. Wary. She just didn’t want Cheyenne to hate her so soon, and not even for something she did, but because of her stupid mother. Couldn’t she at least get to fuck up her relationships herself? Her mother had no faith in her, but Alessandra was very certain she could manage this on her own.

“So you don’t know anything about this?” Cheyenne asked slowly. “I mean, specifics about my situation aside from just your mother sabotages competitors so this is probably her.”

Alessandra thought about Sérgio waiting right outside her door. She looked away.

“What do you know?” Cheyenne asked, and Christ, why did she suddenly sound kind? What was wrong with her? What was that for—pity?

Alessandra’s apprehension—not fear—was replaced by annoyance, which was a much more bearable feeling. She crossed her arms and pointedly didn’t glare, in that way that made it obvious she wanted to.

“You really want to start this game?” she asked. “You want me to expose my family? I won’t become a stupid spy or anything like that for you. Look—I can’t help you, Ann. I’m sorry. That’s not how it works.”

The words clearly made her unhappy.

“So you know something,” she murmured. “But did you know it was going to happen? Did you distract me on purpose? Did your mother put you up to this?” She waved a hand between them.

Oh, it hurt.

It hurt because it was a valid question. Because it was something her mother would do. Because Alessandra would obey, if it had been asked of her. And it hurt that Cheyenne was asking her something like that, her expression smooth like she didn’t want Alessandra to feel this was an insult to her, that Cheyenne wouldn’t be furious or miserable if it were true.

Cheyenne just looked at her, like she just wanted to know the answer.

It was infuriating.

“You’re clearly a lesbian, Ann,” Alessandra said cuttingly. “My mother wouldn’t let me touch you with a ten foot fucking pole, much less make me approach you. No, this is all my own stupidity at work.”

Cheyenne’s eyes squinted a bit, just enough for Alessandra to understand with sudden clarity that Cheyenne had somehow found her words charming.

This was when Alessandra realized something very important.

Cheyenne was a goddamn idiot.

“My mother is going to eat you alive,” she muttered, picking up her coffee again.

“Why do you say that?” Cheyenne asked, and she finally let her face melt into amusement again.

“What are you doing?” Alessandra demanded to know, knuckles white around her cup. “Why are you letting me change the subject? Ann, stop smiling,” she hissed. “You’re a CEO, you need to be smarter than this. Stop—stop smiling, Jesus Christ.”

“Sorry,” Cheyenne said, obediently dropping the smile but still generating a general aura of happiness, which just—didn’t make any sense. Alessandra had officially lost her marbles, or at least her footing in this stupid conversation.

Alessandra waited.

Cheyenne picked up her own cup of coffee and looked expectantly at her, like she was waiting too.

“Is that it?” Alessandra asked, literally glaring holes into Cheyenne’s skull.

Cheyenne hummed, pensive.

“I believe you,” she said at last, and smiled.

The smile and the words filled Alessandra with such relief that her ears rang for a moment. She thought Cheyenne was an idiot for forgiving her that easily, for being so easy-going and soft-hearted, but it meant Cheyenne didn’t hate her yet; Alessandra was selfish, and she would take all she could get.

“If you weren’t involved in what’s happening at the company, with what Sérgio did—” Alessandra almost flinched at the name; of course it was that man who was screwing with Cheyenne. “—and if you don’t even know what’s happening aside from, I know my company sabotages others… there’s no reason for me to be angry or upset.”

She took a sip of her coffee. Alessandra kept staring at her. Cheyenne’s smile dimmed, like she knew Alessandra was still… spooked. Not afraid.

“I like you very much, Ally,” Cheyenne said like it was easy to say, like it didn’t make Alessandra feel like Cheyenne had scooped her heart out of her chest. “And don’t tell me I’m too forgiving, I hear it enough from Maya. And you were right—it’s a difficult position you’re in.” She sighed. “I don’t even want to think about what your mother would do to you if she found out you told me anything.”

Alessandra had an inkling of what her mother would do if she found out—not that Alessandra was tattling about their plans, but that Alessandra was making friends she didn’t know, where she couldn’t see; that Alessandra was spending time with a woman like Cheyenne; that Alessandra was in a relationship like this.

“It will happen again,” Alessandra said quietly. “You will try to talk to me again, and I won’t do anything, and you’ll end up hating me.”

Cheyenne set down her coffee and reached for Alessandra’s hands. The touch was comforting—Cheyenne’s skin was smooth and gentle, her thumb swiping over her knuckles—but Alessandra didn’t know what to do with it.

“Do you remember when we met?” she asked again.

Alessandra gave her a look. She’d already answered that. Cheyenne smiled at her.

“We were young,” she said. “You hadn’t really learned yet to keep the things your mother did under wraps. I remember too, Ally. I won’t ask you to poke her for me.”

Alessandra’s hands turned to stone under Cheyenne’s.

Unfair, she thought, keeping her face stoic and telling herself she was not going to cry, she was not that pathetic—but it was so fucking unfair. That Cheyenne could be so kind, so understanding, that she could say those things so easily when they meant the fucking world to her… when Alessandra knew Cheyenne would still end up hating her, and blaming her, and leaving her.

Her mother always won in the end, awful woman she was. And Alessandra was too much like her; she was her mother’s daughter.

“Alright,” Alessandra said, looking down at their hands instead of at Cheyenne. Then: “Is your son at home?”

“He’s with Maya,” Cheyenne said, cocking a head.

“Good,” Alessandra said, then sighed. “Ann, take me home.”

Cheyenne caressed the back of a hand with a thumb, slow and sweet.

“Alright,” she said.

***

Alessandra kissed her the second Cheyenne closed her front door behind them. She didn’t care about the house, about taking a look around, just about how beautiful Cheyenne looked.

She kissed her back, hands going to Alessandra’s waist. She let Alessandra press her against the door, Alessandra’s weight pressed fully against her body. Alessandra framed her face with her hands and kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her.

“Bedroom?” Cheyenne asked after a moment. Her face was flushed with exertion and her voice husky with heat. She was very close. Alessandra gave in to the urge to kiss her again.

“Yes,” she said, then flushed, too. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Well, there’s a first time to everything,” Cheyenne said, grinning at her.

They separated, but only enough that they’d be able to walk quickly to the bedroom, laughing and kissing on the way there. Cheyenne led Alessandra by the hands, then crowded her against the bed. Alessandra let herself fall down to the mattress, her hair a spill of ink around her head.

Cheyenne went down with her, kissing her. Alessandra pulled at her until they were both fully lying on the bed, heads on the pillows.

She felt so nervous that her hands were shaking slightly as she pulled at Cheyenne’s jacket. But she was also… excited. Alessandra had never been with a woman, and had never tried to dwell on the fact that she would probably never be with a woman. But here she was, and with Cheyenne. She smiled up at her.

“What now?” she whispered.

Cheyenne huffed out a laugh and kissed her again, lips and tongue moving against Alessandra’s with maddening slowness, like she wanted to savor the taste of her. Alessandra grew boneless under her, flushed from hairline to navel and feeling melted.

Cheyenne slid a hand along her sides, down her hip and thigh. Alessandra’s breath hitched at the touch… then hitched again when Cheyenne slid that hand under her skirt.

“Alright?” she murmured.

“Yes,” Alessandra said. “Yes. I’m not made of sugar. Just—go on.”

Cheyenne huffed out a laugh, kissing her cheek, then her jaw and her neck. Her mouth was hot against Alessandra’s skin, and Alessandra’s pulse was hammering under Cheyenne’s lips.

Cheyenne hooked her fingers around Alessandra’s underwear and pulled it down. Alessandra’s legs fell open automatically, giving her space. Cheyenne slid a finger around her opening, then massaged around her clit, and Alessandra sighed deeply.

Cheyenne took her time. She kissed Alessandra like there was nothing else she’d rather be doing, and used her fingers slowly, slowly, like she had all the time in the world and wanted to enjoy it, touching her everywhere, making her become almost unbearably wet. Then before Alessandra could finally snap at her to stop teasing, she slid a finger wetly into Alessandra, then another.

Alessandra gasped, back arching minutely off the bed.

She grasped at Cheyenne’s shoulders with both hands, pulling her down into a kiss, and lost her patience.

“Do it,” she urged, rocking her hips against Cheyenne’s fingers and not caring about looking wanton or desperate, “come on, Ann—”

Cheyenne kissed her harshly and started moving her fingers in an unrelenting rhythm. Alessandra moaned loudly, then bit her teeth into her lips to stop herself; it just felt so good, Cheyenne’s fingers inside of her and her palm against her clit, Cheyenne’s weight on top of her and her lips on Alessandra’s neck—

Her orgasm came to her all at once, a wave of heat that engulfed her and left her heard pounding in her chest and her feeling breathless.

“You’re so beautiful,” Cheyenne whispered, looking down at her like she was something precious.

Alessandra swallowed nothing and kissed her, then tugged at her trousers.

“Come on,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. You have to show me.”

Cheyenne leaned away from an unbearable moment so she could unzip her trousers and chuck them off her legs. Alessandra curled a hand at her hip and felt like she was living a dream, getting to touch Cheyenne like this.

“Here,” Cheyenne said, holding Alessandra’s hand in hers and guiding it to the space between her legs. She sighed deeply when both of their fingers parted her hairs, then slid inside her.

Alessandra felt clumsy and unsure, but Cheyenne didn’t seem to mind her lack of experience. Her fingers guided Alessandra’s as they moved, her hips rocking against their touch without any shame. She lowered her forehead to Alessandra’s, so sweet, and Alessandra couldn’t help but surge up and kissed her.

Cheyenne came in a sweet release, throwing her head back, and Alessandra felt her body grow hot all over, looking at her.

Cheyenne rode the wave of her release, then kissed Alessandra again, slowly and unhurriedly.

“Now,” she said, and grinned, “let’s try something new.”

She threw off her jacket and unbuttoned her shirt. Alessandra looked at her amazing breasts and the lacy, expensive bra she would get to touch, and laughed.

“Alright,” she said, and they enjoyed each other for the rest of the night long.

Chapter Eight

If Cheyenne had a chiropractor, they’d be about to have a vein burst in their brain. As it was, it was Thursday and she had Jason there with her, and he took it upon himself to stab her mercilessly on the side whenever he realized she was bent at a 90 degree angle over her desk and dooming herself to a lot of back pain once she finally relaxed.

“You’re working too much, Ann,” he told her, eyeing her judgingly as she straightened up and groaned.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” she said apologetically. “I promise I’ll go home earlier today. You’re with me, I wouldn’t leave you to sleep over at the office like I’ve been doing. Then we can… maybe watch a movie?”

Jason frowned slightly. “I don’t mind. But you’ve been working too much. You’ll get sick. You need to sleep.”

Cheyenne smiled at him, fond. “Are you worried about me?”

Jason made a face, like it was obvious and he didn’t see why she had to ask and expose him like that.

“I need to sort all this,” Cheyenne said softly, gesturing at the screen of her computer, where a million tables, files, emails, chat windows, and documents were open. “It won’t last forever. And I’ll rest today, when we go home. It’s already late—I just have one more meeting, and then we’ll go, okay?”

“Alright,” Jason said, then went back to his little desk.

Cheyenne went back to work. A moment later, a man walked into her office.

She looked up at him and blinked. The man very carefully closed the door behind him, then turned to her with a very anxious look on his face. He was a mousy man—not in appearance, but in the way he stood, hunched, and the way he looked around the room, nervous.

Cheyenne looked down at her phone. Her secretary hadn’t said anything.

“Did you just… walk in here, just like that?” she asked, confused. She picked up her phone.

“Don’t call anyone,” the man begged, walking up to her desk. His eyes were wide and he was strangely familiar. Something about the shape of his mouth. The color of his hair. “I just need a minute. I have to talk to you. I’m Boris Luccesi.” He swallowed nothing. “I think you’ll want to hear me.”

He was Alessandra’s father.

Cheyenne looked at him for a moment. He looked honest, and like he’d sneaked in here even though he was clearly afraid—ah, Cheyenne though, he really was familiar. He was afraid like Alessandra was afraid, even if more obviously. Probably for the same reason. That awful mother.

Behind the man, Jason raised up his phone and cocked his head in question. Do you want me to call someone? Cheyenne shook her head.

“Alright,” she said, leaning back against her chair. “You have a few minutes. How did you just walk in here?”

He laughed a nervous laugh. “I lied, and, uh, tried to look confident?” He shook his head. “Look, Cheyenne, I know you and my daughter are…” He looked away and waved a hand. Cheyenne raised an eyebrow. “You need to stop seeing her. Cut your losses and stop this now. I don’t know what they’re planning,” he rushed to say when Cheyenne opened her mouth. “I don’t know, my wife doesn’t tell me anything about what she does with other companies, she doesn’t trust me—but I know they’re planning something. They always are.”

“I know your company likes to poke its fingers into other people’s businesses,” Cheyenne said. “It’s not surprising they have something planned for us.”

“It’s more than that!” the man exclaimed, then winced, as if afraid she was going to grow angry at him. “If she set our daughter on you—they’re planning something bad. If you cut contact with Alessandra now, things might be okay.”

Cheyenne frowned. “She’s your daughter.”

He laughed without humor. “She’s more her mother’s daughter than she ever was mine,” he said, sad and resigned. “I needed to warn you. I don’t know what they’re planning, but if Alessandra of all people approached you—if they’re willing to risk rumors of a relationship like this spreading around—they must be planning something big.”

Alessandra’s own father had no faith in her. He thought Alessandra had approached her to meddle with her company.

Had Alessandra lied to her?

Cheyenne didn’t think so. Alessandra didn’t look like she’d been lying. She looked terrified that anyone would find out about them. Had that fear been a lie?

Cheyenne wanted to trust her, but this was her father. The man knew her way more than Cheyenne did.

He put doubt into her heart, and Cheyenne truly hated him for that.

“Thank you for the warning,” she said, standing up. “Now get out.”

He was clearly surprised by the abrupt dismissal, but he took one look at her face and whatever he saw there made him turn to the door and leave without another comment. Cheyenne lips thinned. He was so afraid. Like Alessandra, he was nervous, trying to find hints to her humor in the slightest movements of her face, like he was straining his ears to try and hear a bomb before it went off.

“Are you going to break up with Ally?” Jason asked, still looking curiously at the door.

Cheyenne was surprised into laughing. “No, baby. I wouldn’t do something rash like that,” she said, even though her heart felt like it was folding over itself with pain and confusion, even though she felt like she couldn’t trust Alessandra anymore. “We don’t know this man, after all. We have no reason to trust him.”

“So… you trust Ally,” Jason tried.

“I trust myself,” she said. “And I trust facts.”

She sat back down.

It was time to be more proactive about this.

It was time to do some goddamn research.

***

Cheyenne had to wait before she could do the goddamn research, though. She had just promised to leave work early and spend time with Jason, and she wouldn’t break that sort of promise, not when Jason spent so long in his youth bouncing from house to house, certain that he was nobody’s priority.

He was her priority.

So she held her son’s hand and left work early even though her mind was churning, thinking about what Boris had said and what it meant and Alessandra and research… They got home and had a nice dinner, then they watched some TV, Jason stuck to her side like a limpet. And since Cheyenne always did her best to keep her promises, she did her best to stop thinking about work and be present, and let herself rest.

She fell asleep on the couch. Jason didn’t seem to mind, even though the movie had barely started.

What he did seem to mind was when she finally woke up, and by then it was a bit past midnight, and didn’t prepare to go to bed. He looked at her with the slightest annoyed pout in his mouth, which was just adorable; Cheyenne ruffled his hand, tucked him in bed, and told him she had rested and now had to work.

Then she sat down with her laptop and her mini printer and started on that research.

A scant half hour later, Maya called; she was obviously annoyed with Cheyenne’s plans, and said that Jason had sent her a text about it all. She offered to help; at least then, things would go a bit faster and Cheyenne might get a few hours of sleep before the next day began.

And the night went.

By the time the sun came up, Cheyenne was buried under so much paper she was feeling guilty about her possible impact on the environment, had so many tabs open on her laptop that her computer was a second away from having a stroke and crashing, and had drunk so much coffee her bladder was about to give up on her and quit.

“Oh, look—” she was telling Maya, voice hushed but intense; she shuffled the papers around her on the couch to try and find one and ended up finding it under a cushion on the floor. She leaned forward to grab it, and her phone slipped from between her shoulder and her cheek. She made a mad grab for it.

“—say look and then just disappear!” Maya was scolding, annoyed, when Cheyenne put her phone to her ear again.

“You were just talking about how you found out that there’s a Luccesi kid—a cousin of Ally’s—working with a competitor of ours—uh, Oucean Corp.,” Cheyenne said as if Maya hadn’t said anything at all. She shook the paper in her hands even though she was alone. “You’re sure it’s Oucean Corp. specifically, and not Oceanus—”

“I’m sure,” Maya snapped. “Why do they have such similar names anyway?”

“One branched out from the other. Anyway! If it is Oucean Corp., then I have a paper here—it’s nothing concrete, but I found an old post in the social media account of a guy who’s also Ally’s cousin but by marriage—”

“How big is that goddamned family,” Maya groaned.

“—from like a year ago—you said Oucean Corp. Luccesi kid was hired six months ago?” Cheyenne rallied on. “The post, from a year ago, is about how the Luccesi company’s partnership with Oucean Corp. fell through, but that they still had, and I quote, cards in their sleeves, and were sure they’d get what they wanted in the end.”

Maya stayed silent, thoughtful.

“Not very incriminating by itself,” she said at last. “Though that last bit there—goddamn, those people are smug bastards, aren’t they?”

“They are! And get this—” Cheyenne said, excited, rummaging around for another piece of paper. She groaned when she couldn’t find anything and turned to her computer—and aha, found the right tab. “Luccesi cousin and Luccesi cousin-by-marriage and Sérgio used to work for the same department in the Luccesi company.”

“So what do those people want with you?” Maya asked, irritated; Cheyenne head ruffling, as if her friend were rummaging through her own papers. “Sérgio’s fuck ups don’t seem to be related to making a partnership with the Luccesi, and he didn’t fuck up enough that you’d be forced to sell to them either.”

Cheyenne chewed on her bottom lip and thought, eyes burning from how hard she was staring at her screen.

“Is cousin-by-marriage still at the Luccesi company right now?” she asked Maya.

“Uh—no. He’s that same guy I mentioned a while ago, who’s been hired by another insurance company, uh… Kriplin’s.”

Cheyenne chewed on her bottom lip even more, teeth biting into her skin.

“Kriplin’s and Oucean Corp. are companies Sérgio leaked our info to,” she said, slow like she was forming the idea as she spoke, and it was very important that it come out right. “They are also currently competing with us to win some clients. The Luccesi don’t need to control all companies; if they fuck us over so Oucean will end up with our clients and they have an in with them, they’ll profit immensely.”

“And if they have several companies in their pocket…”

“Who are our competitors…”

“If they fuck you over, they’ll profit in about four different goddamn ways,” Maya growled. “And this is your girlfriend’s family.”

“I don’t know how Ally is involved in all this,” Cheyenne said with a sigh, rubbing her face with both her hands. “I think I should tell her that her father came over…”

“You can’t just show your hand like that!” Maya said, exasperated. “Look at this clusterfuck! Your girl is right in the middle of it!”

“What do you want me to do?” Cheyenne asked, frustrated. She glared at her phone; sue her, she was exhausted and hurt and not even she could stay amiable and easy-going forever.

“Her father was right! Stay away from her, Ann. It’s not worth it! She’s just a girlfriend, you barely know her!”

“I know her,” Cheyenne snapped.

“Ann, you were children,” Maya said, voice gentling. Maya was exhausted, too; she couldn’t stay fired up and angry forever. “People change.”

They had been just children.

“I have to think about all this,” Cheyenne murmured. “I do think I should talk to her. I know she said she wouldn’t talk about company business with me, and I understand why—no, Maya, don’t interrupt me, I know more than you about this—I understand why. But this… this is huge.”

“Let’s go to sleep,” Maya said with a sigh. “When I’m not so tired I can shout at you until you grow some goddamn common sense.”

Cheyenne closed her eyes and let herself lean back against her couch.

***

Cheyenne felt absolutely destroyed the next day, having pulled such a frantic all-nighter after several days of overworking. Thankfully, it was Friday. She worked as best she could—her secretary looked at her with pity and cancelled a few meetings without a word. Cheyenne was so thankful she felt a bit sick, and started considering giving the woman a raise—and kept her eye on the clock, waiting for when she could go home.

She had lunch at her desk, less because she wanted to keep working and more because the thought of going out to a restaurant felt exhausting. She poked at her tray of sushi, desk a mess in front of her, and couldn’t stop glancing at her phone.

Maya had been too tired to shout at her until she grew some common sense. Cheyenne hadn’t texted Alessandra yet; she was so tired and confused and hurting.

Was Alessandra working with her mother, did she know about all those things Cheyenne and Maya had found? Was her father right? Was Maya right—wouldn’t it be simple to just break up with Alessandra? It wasn’t like they were married. They really had been just children. Maybe Cheyenne didn’t know her like she thought she did.

But: Cheyenne remembered Alessandra at that café, the isolated, hidden table she chose, her back to the world, the tense line of her spine, her anxious eyes.

Alessandra was afraid of her mother. So much so that she treated a coffee date like it was a goddamn military mission, just in case, so word of it wouldn’t get to the woman.

If Alessandra were working with her mother and knew all those things Cheyenne and Maya had found and was tricking Cheyenne and actively working against her and lying… Cheyenne couldn’t fault her. Cheyenne sighed and dropped her face to her hands. She just couldn’t find it in herself to fault Alessandra for anything she did to try and appease that mother.

She grabbed her phone and fired off a text before she could change her mind.

Cheyenne: Hello. I’d like to talk to you. Do you have time tomorrow?

She blinked in surprise when a reply arrived almost immediately:

Alessandra: Hi, Ann. My family organizes brunch for a few friends every couple of weeks and we will all gather this Saturday. Do you want to come? :)

Cheyenne stared at her phone.

What the fuck, she thought.

She had just been thinking about how Alessandra was afraid of any word of their relationship getting to her family, and now the woman was inviting her to brunch with not only her family but also “a few friends”?

Cheyenne realized with suddenly clarity that she had no idea what was happening.

Cheyenne: Are you sure? I thought you didn’t want this.

Alessandra: Didn’t want what, my family to meet my friend? Haha, don’t be silly! Everybody will be here and they’re all in the business, so of course you should come as well. We always have a good time.

Cheyenne tried to make her exhausted brain work. Alessandra’s parents had access to her phone, she remembered, so obviously this was more for their benefit than hers—but then, what was Alessandra trying to tell her between these lines?

Had her mother found them out? Had her mother put her up to this? Why would the woman do that, though? Alessandra had said she didn’t want Alessandra interacting with Cheyenne at all.

But if it came from Alessandra—it didn’t make any sense.

Cheyenne didn’t know, and didn’t have enough clues to figure it out.

But if Alessandra were inviting her, she would go. And if Cheyenne was at the Luccesi house, well… she might as well snoop around. Who knows what else she could find?

Cheyenne: Alright, I’ll go.

Chapter Nine

This was possibly the worst idea Alessandra had ever had in her life. In a list of things she should never, ever do, this was probably somewhere at the top: inviting her lesbian girlfriend to family brunch.

She had no clue why her mother had agreed to it. She had no clue how she gathered enough courage to ask her about it. Of course, she didn’t ask if she could invite her lesbian girlfriend to brunch, just dropped into conversation that there was no easier way to see how Cheyenne and more importantly her company were doing than to just chat with her about it.

Her mother had looked at her evenly for a solid minute where Alessandra’s soul nearly left her body out of sheer nerves, then smiled and agreed as if it were no big deal.

So, there Alessandra was, answering the door to Cheyenne, who looked like a dream come true in a cream and blue suit, unapologetically butch, but whose image Alessandra couldn’t enjoy because she was too busy having a series of consecutive heart attacks.

“Hi,” she said, smiling politely at Cheyenne like she was a friendly acquaintance and not the woman who had lovingly fucked her a bare week ago. “Please, come in. You’re early, you’re the first guest to arrive.”

“I wouldn’t want to be late,” Cheyenne said as friendly and politely, thought that was more because being friendly and polite was the baseline for Cheyenne than because she was trying to put up a front. Her eyes roamed around the house—huge, white, golden—as if expecting the devil to jump out of a corner.

“I’m glad you didn’t bring Jason,” Alessandra whispered, taking advantage of how she had her back to her parents. “I forgot to tell you it was better not to.”

Cheyenne didn’t answer, eyes veering to Alessandra’s parents, but widened her smile slightly.

Then her eyes widened.

“I didn’t know you were invited!” Xander exclaimed, visibly delighted. He wound an arm around Alessandra and reached out for a handshake, smiling at Cheyenne like she had just made his day. “Do you remember me?”

“Yes. You were Ally’s date at the reunion,” Cheyenne said. She didn’t look unhappy about how close Xander was standing to Alessandra, but she had a general aura of sadness about her.

Alessandra pursed her lips.

“He’s a dear friend,” she said, like the idiot she was, because her mother was somewhere behind her and definitely listening. Xander tightened his fingers at her waist in warning. “Nothing’s official yet,” Alessandra added in a whisper, as if sharing a joyful secret. It felt like ash in her mouth.

“I see,” Cheyenne said politely.

“Come in, come in,” Alessandra said. “I’ll show you to the parlor where we brunch.”

***

When they walked into the parlor, Cheyenne did not react in any way that hinted at the fact she might not be used to such levels of richness, either by becoming impressed or intimidated, which Alessandra could see made Xander smile and her mother look disgruntled.

They sat down; Alessandra’s father, who had been focused on something on his phone, finally looked up and caught sight of Cheyenne.

He paled.

Alessandra stilled. She didn’t narrow her eyes because it wasn’t the done thing. Her father smiled at Cheyenne and sent a desperate look to—Xander? Xander blinked in innocent surprise.

Alessandra was going to have to talk to Xander and his goddamn secrets.

“Hello,” Cheyenne said with a polite smile. “I’m Cheyenne Lourdes.”

“Ahh, yes,” her father said, laughing awkwardly with relief. Relief? Alessandra looked at Cheyenne instead. Maybe she was going to have to talk to Cheyenne about her secrets. She didn’t think Cheyenne would have secrets that could pertain to her father. What was going on? “You were in high school with Alessandra…”

“I was the scholarship student of that year,” Cheyenne said, as if being friendly and reminding him of a simple fact that could help jog his memory, and not like she was dropping a bomb into the conversation that was making Alessandra’s mother visibly rethink why on Earth she had let Alessandra let Cheyenne in.

Alessandra exercised a Herculean effort and managed not to kick Cheyenne on the shin.

“Wow, and Ouya is notorious for how hard it is to get in, even without having to apply for all the extra steps needed for the scholarship. You must either be very intelligent or very diligent,” Xander said, impressed. He turned his face slightly, so half of it would not be visible to Alessandra’s mother, and winked at Alessandra.

It took even more effort not to kick him. But she was grateful. Having Xander on her side, even if he was a good-for-nothing, lazy little shit, was a huge advantage.

“Thank you,” Cheyenne told him amiably.

“Ouya has stopped offering scholarships these past few years, you know,” Alessandra’s mother said, smiling at Cheyenne like she was hiding knives behind her teeth. “Research indicated that most scholarship students ended up having below-average grades, and that scholarships were, in the end, a meaningless effort that did not have the so-called expected effects.” She sighed as if deeply saddened by this.

“Yes, I’ve heard of that,” Cheyenne said, bland and polite like they were talking about the weather. “Scholarships really do tend to go nowhere,” she continued, and Alessandra blinked in surprise. What was Cheyenne talking about? Why was she agreeing with Alessandra’s stupid prejudiced mother? “After all,” Cheyenne said, sighing as if deeply saddened by this, “it’s common for schools to offer scholarship spots not to get backlash for the lack of them, and then do their best to drive the students out once they’re in. Like you said, a meaningless effort.”

Goddamn, Alessandra thought, doing her best not to allow any pleased shock to show in her face. Cheyenne had grabbed the reigns of that conversation and turned it around, and nobody could argue with her because she, as someone who had gone through this process and had personal experience, obviously knew more than any of them.

“Wow!” Xander said, more and more delighted by the minute.

Alessandra wished Xander didn’t act like her life was a goddamn soap opera made for his personal enjoyment.

The corner of Alessandra’s mother’s mouth ticked. Alessandra breathed through her nerves. Alright: her mother was annoyed, but that didn’t mean she was annoyed at her. And her mother had no way to punish Cheyenne for anything.

Outside of the fingers she had in Cheyenne’s company, anyhow.

Her mother laughed. Alessandra caught her father’s pained gaze; it was a gaze that seemed to ask what on Earth Alessandra thought she was doing, bringing Cheyenne here. Alessandra widened her eyes minutely in an effort to make him stop being so obvious with his thoughts and feelings at the table.

“Don’t be silly—drive students out. Are you not living proof that the truly hard-working and intelligent ones succeed not only at school, but after that, in life?”

Ouch. Using Cheyenne’s success as a point against Cheyenne’s own argument. Alessandra was very glad she was not actively participating in this conversation.

And still Cheyenne kept her composure. Alessandra felt calmer just looking at her. Her back was straight, her gaze was even, and her small smile still present. She was, in a word, steady. Steady and kind, no matter what.

Cheyenne was good. Her father was right—what had Alessandra been thinking, bringing someone like Cheyenne into this pit of vipers?

She had no way to help her, though.

This—allowing Cheyenne to meet her mother and see her personality and scheming in person—was the best Alessandra could do. And she had tried to find some way to help, after that conversation at the café, after that night, after Cheyenne had been so understanding and trusting. She’d tried.

“Thank you,” Cheyenne said. “Though I am also living proof of how administrations try to do away with students like I was. One of the teachers approached me at the end of freshmen year, you see. He told me he would help me study and receive fair grading, as he knew scholarship students were graded on a different set of rules than the rest of the students, specifically to make things harder for them. You must keep your grades up to keep the scholarship, after all. Or else you lose it, and open a spot for a transferred student who will pay tuition.”

“He’s a brave man, for just spewing it to you like that!” Xander exclaimed, leaning towards Cheyenne as if he found her words utterly interesting. “If that were true, would the administration not try to shut him up?”

Cheyenne turned to him. “Supposedly,” she said, then paused. “For no related reason, he quit in the middle of my second year. Strangely, my grades tanked, even though I was putting in as much effort as before.” She laughed, as if this weren’t a very serious issue. “I almost flunked out. It was a very stressful time.”

Alessandra remembered Cheyenne in high school: the lonely, stressed girl she had been.

“But you still managed to graduate,” Alessandra’s mother said. Alessandra could tell she was displeased, though her face was still a pleasant mask. Displeased, Alessandra thought, but also impressed.

Cheyenne managed to impress her mother.

Wow.

“I did,” Cheyenne said. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but can I use the restroom? I came here straight from work…”

“At Saturday morning, before brunch?” Xander asked, chin on a hand.

“No pain, no gain, etc.” Cheyenne said, waving a hand.

“Well, I’ll show you around,” he said, and winked at Alessandra again. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything too foolish.

“Then excuse us,” Cheyenne said, and the two of them stood up.

***

“Was she a hard-working student, back then?” Alessandra’s mother asked her.

They were in the bathroom, side by side, reapplying lipstick after it got smudged, perfect red imprints left on their glasses of mimosa. They looked nearly identical, standing together like this.

“As far as I know,” Alessandra said. “I didn’t often interact with her. But the teachers always praised her.”

“And yet you made a beeline towards her at the reunion,” her mother said lightly, smacking her lips together.

She wasn’t looking at Alessandra, but she felt the weight of her attention anyway.

“I’ve told you why,” Alessandra said quietly. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask me to approach her then,” she braved, glancing at the woman from the corner of her eye.

“She’s a charming woman,” she said, turning to Alessandra. She grabbed her face, nails digging into Alessandra’s cheeks, and terror traveled from the touch down to Alessandra’s fingertips. Her mother pulled her closer. “She could easily corrupt a stupid girl like you into her ways. Make you her little pet. Turn you into something disgusting like her. I don’t want that to happen to my baby girl. You understand?”

“Yes,” Alessandra answered, a bit strangled.

Her mother let her go.

“Because that wouldn’t be my baby girl anymore,” her mother continued easily, turning back to the mirror and her lipstick while Alessandra swallowed nothing and tried to her get breathing in order. “And someone’s who’s not my daughter would not live in my home, or receive any inheritance, or be part of the family at all. She’d be out in the cruel world completely alone, no family, no roof, no money, no food.”

Alessandra’s stomach stopped, even though she already knew all these things. She knew her mother was being thorough, was poking her to see her reaction, that this didn’t mean she knew about her and Cheyenne—but what if?

Alessandra was an idiot. She should have kept her head down and do as told.

She’d never win against this woman.

“But if you really want to approach her and, well, help our family business…” Her mother smiled. “Maybe I was being overprotective. If you say you can do it, you can. Do you best, hm, Ally?”

“Yes,” Alessandra said.

Her mother left. Alessandra stayed frozen still, standing like an idiot in the middle of the stupidly big bathroom.

She turned and looked at herself in the mirror.

She had done this to herself, really. And she knew she would break Cheyenne’s heart eventually, anyway. Why not try to please her mother? Why not do her best? All she had ever wanted was for her mother to be proud of her.

Not that doing her best had ever worked. Alessandra leaned against the counter and laughed. Not that not being disinherited had ever helped her achieve what she actually wanted—the thought of architecture was so far away, nothing more than a childish dream.

“You really did this to yourself,” Alessandra murmured, eyes closed, and left the bathroom as well.

Chapter Ten

Cheyenne was doing something very important, but she couldn’t focus on it.

There were two lawyers and another three very important people sitting in front of her; they were at a meeting room, discussing the details of Cheyenne’s research—and what Cheyenne’s legal team had dug deep into and discovered after they were given this research—plus the things Cheyenne had discovered after a very fast round of snooping around Alessandra’s house—and what it meant for the company.

Cheyenne was very tired. It had been many days of working too many hours and sleeping too few hours. It was a struggle not to hunch down or rub at her eyes every five minutes, and her gaze kept being pulled towards her phone.

Her chat history with Alessandra was open.

Cheyenne: Thank you for inviting me, last weekend. I still want to talk. When are you free?

Alessandra: You’re welcome :)

Alessandra’s pointed silence taunted her. She knew her mother had access to her phone. Was that why she wasn’t saying anything? But she had invited Cheyenne to brunch with the family. Surely getting a coffee somewhere would be considered innocent after that, right?

“—protect us from future sabotaging—Cheyenne, what’s been done to the man who caused all this?”

Cheyenne blinked up and tried to get her bearings.

“Sérgio quit,” she said. “I haven’t managed to get in contact with him since then.”

“And starting any legal action against him could very well make all of this blow up,” one of the layers said, pensive.

“You said that at the Luccesi house, you managed to find documents that helped you figure out what project precisely they were targeting—what was it?”

“The reinsurance deal for the construction of a new subway line in town,” Cheyenne said with a sigh. “It’s one of our biggest projects and a lot of money will come in if we manage to settle everything—I should have known. Even though nothing Sérgio leaked was about it, it was one of the projects he was working on.”

“Alright, so if we talk to the people who were working alongside Sérgio…”

They spoke on about how they could manage the damage done and protect themselves from future attacks like this. Cheyenne looked down at her phone again and again, tired and distracted, and felt like they were going nowhere.

***

Cheyenne got out of the bathroom with her eyes half-shut and mostly asleep, toweling her hair dry and trying to get to the kitchen. There was nothing like a warm shower to make her tiredness crash down on her like a train.

The kitchen was very bright. Cheyenne groaned. Jason looked up from what he was doing, which was pouring microwaved mac-and-cheese into two bowls for them. He was such a good kid. Cheyenne walked up to him and hugged him to her side.

“Uncle Kiren called while you were in the shower,” he said.

Cheyenne snapped suddenly awake.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is he still on the line? Or did he ask me to call him back?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Jason said, tugging at her shirt so she’d focus on him again. “He said he heard what’s happening at the company and that he wants to talk.”

“Oh,” Cheyenne said, drooping down with relief all at once.

Uncle Kiren never called, except when something awful happened, like that time two years ago he was hit by a car. Or, well, when her parents started making trouble, though they only did that when she dared to transfer them some money a bit later than they’d expected.

“Maya said Ally’s family is the one who is messing with the company,” Jason said, leaning against her side.

“That’s true,” Cheyenne said with a sigh.

“So shouldn’t you break up with her? All that stuff her dad said…”

“Maybe,” she said quietly. “But I don’t want to be the kind of person who wouldn’t trust her. And anyway, if something I told her is used to cause us problems, I’ll know it’ll have been her fault, and I’ll know where to find her to confront her about it.”

Jason picked up one of the bowls and hugged it close to his chest.

“It sounds like you don’t trust her, though,” Jason said.

Cheyenne thought about it for a moment. She didn’t know how to tell him that she didn’t trust Alessandra’s family, that it was complicated, that she didn’t want to be a fool about any of this.

The doorbell rang before she could organize her thoughts. Jason made a puzzled face at her and she sent it right back, because they weren’t expecting anyone and hadn’t ordered anything. Jason sat on the couch with his dinner and Cheyenne answered the door.

Alessandra stood there, looking serious and as put-together as if the day had just started, instead of being almost over, as if she’d been summoned by their conversation.

“Ally,” Cheyenne said, surprised.

“I hope it’s not a bad time,” Alessandra said quietly. “Sorry for not asking. I just… wanted to see you.”

Cheyenne felt her heart warm with affection. She let Alessandra in. She waved at Jason, who waved back, and stood awkwardly in the middle of the living room, like she had no idea what to do.

Had something happened? Maybe Alessandra didn’t want to talk about it in front of Jason.

“Jay, I think we need some privacy,” Cheyenne said. “Can you eat dinner in your room? I’ll give you my phone to play with if you want.”

He looked from her to Alessandra, chewing on his bottom lip like maybe he should stay and protect Cheyenne from her girlfriend. Cheyenne loved him very much, the silly boy. Eventually he shrugged and slipped off the couch, snatched her phone from the coffee table, and went to his room.

Alessandra only sat down once she heard his room click shut. She sighed.

“Sorry,” she said. “I am terrible with children. I have no idea what to do with him.”

“He doesn’t need you to do anything,” Cheyenne said, amused, and sat down beside her. “Did something happen? Did you want to talk about anything?”

Alessandra bit her bottom lip, not looking at her, and shook her head.

“I just wanted to see you,” she repeated, then turned to her and smiled. “How are you, Ann? You seem so tired these days. Is it because of what’s been happening at the company? How are you guys dealing with all that?”

Cheyenne blinked at her.

She thought about what she had just been talking about with Jason. She chose to trust Ally.

“I’m alright,” Cheyenne said, catching Alessandra’s hand in hers, and started to explain: “I met with my legal team today…”

Chapter Eleven

By the time Alessandra got home, it was nearly midnight.

Cheyenne had talked to her about the things she had found and some thoughts her people were having about how to fix the damage that was done and how to protect the company from future sabotaging with a loving look in her eyes and her fingers twined with Alessandra’s. At one point, she paused to get herself a bowl of mac-and-cheese, but she was so tired that she ended up nodding off on the couch, bowl on her lap.

Alessandra spent a few good minutes just looking at her, then.

Cheyenne was utterly beautiful.

Cheyenne was making a mistake, telling her all of that.

Alessandra got home and went straight to the kitchen. Her mother was there, enjoying some tea and waiting for her. She poured some for Alessandra too, and Alessandra forced herself to drink it through the knot in her throat because her mother would be angry if she didn’t, after she’d poured it for her.

And Alessandra told her everything Cheyenne had told her.

The words were like ash in her mouth. She felt guilty. She didn’t want to feel guilty. Things only got worse when her father walked into the kitchen, tired and just getting some water, and froze when he saw both of them. Her mother acted like the man didn’t exist. Alessandra’s father looked at her and looked and looked and turned around and left.

That was to be expected. She knew her father didn’t like her.

“Good job, Ally,” her mother said, something pleased about the curl of her mouth—like Alessandra had just passed a test.

Alessandra held onto the words like a child would trap a firefly—carefully, gently, afraid to cause damage but afraid to let it escape. It was hard. She wanted so badly to feel good, to feel proud, that she had done something right, that she had passed her mother’s test.

Alessandra just felt really tired, and really small.

“You’ve really helped us,” her mother said, patting her shoulder.

Alessandra looked down at her tea, seeing her reflection; she really was identical to this wretched woman.

***

Thank God she ended up befriending Xander, Alessandra thought, power-walking through the park towards where he was sitting near the lake, and thank God her mother wanted her to spend time with Xander, so she could come and talk with him with no problem.

She sat down heavily beside him, out of breath from having rushed.

“What’s the rush, darling?” he asked, lifting one eyebrow, but didn’t look away from the lake. It did look beautiful, sparkling in the sun.

Alessandra rubbed both hands over her face, then just left them there, covering her eyes.

“Xander, I don’t know what to do,” she said, and did her best not to cry. “I shouldn’t have brought Cheyenne for brunch—I thought it was the only way to help her, but my mother started making me spy on her and—and I did it, I couldn’t not—I wanted to! I want to make my mother proud! But Cheyenne doesn’t deserve this, and I just—”

Xander hummed disinterestedly, like what she was telling him was old news.

She took her hands away and glared. “Can you at least pretend to be sympathetic?”

“Sorry,” he said, then focused on her and widened his eyes. “Go on.”

“Why are you such an asshole?” she said, voice breaking and showing her upset even though she had just meant to sound annoyed. “Don’t mock me like that! I’m not an idiot, I’m not—it’s not wrong of me to want to please my mother, and you have no idea what she’d do to me if I disobey her! It’s not my fault she does this to me, if it were up to me, I’d—I’d have gone to architecture and I’d have my own office and I wouldn’t have to see her ever again! But I can’t do anything.”

Her mouth snapped shut right after. She hadn’t meant to let so much out, but the words bubbled out of her out of her control.

Even after baring her heart, all Xander did was nod slowly in an exaggerated way, still mocking her.

“I don’t know why I thought you were a good friend,” Alessandra hissed, standing up at once.

Xander sighed, grabbed her wrist, and tugged her down.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding a bit more truthful this time, but no less amused or judging. “Look, Alessandra, you need to stop being so shitty to yourself and figure out what you really want. Do you want to make your mom proud because she’s your mom and you love her, or because you think it’s the only accomplishment you can achieve that doesn’t involve being disinherited?”

“It’s not being disinherited that’s the problem,” Alessandra snapped, wrenching her wrist from his grip. “You wouldn’t know—”

“I see the way she treats you, Ally, I’m not blind. You’re so afraid of her. Would it really be so bad if she disinherited you and you never had to see her again?”

“She’s my mom,” Alessandra said, looking away. “I don’t want to lose her—I don’t want to lose my family. My father already hates me. But I could still get her to like me…”

“That’s not how it works and you know it,” he said, out of patience. “Like I said, you need to stop being so shitty to yourself. Figure out what you want and go get it! She’s never going to like you.”

He might as well have stabbed Alessandra in the heart. It would have heart less than hearing those words.

“Your family’s business will no doubt implode sooner rather than later,” he added, gazing back at the lake. “You should get the hell out of dodge, Ally. You don’t deserve to suffer what they’re going to suffer for everything they’ve done.”

“You don’t know anything,” Alessandra said icily, and stood up again. “You need to shut your fucking mouth about things you don’t understand—you don’t know how it is between my mother and me. You don’t get to tell me something like that. You’re an asshole and a fucking idiot, Alexander.”

She marched away; she heard him sighing as she went.

***

Alessandra stayed around the park for a while before heading home, or her mother would ask why her “date” with Xander had been so short. Thankfully, she managed to get home and go to her room without meeting either of her parents. She threw herself into bed, the room dark, and tried her best to think of nothing at all.

She failed.

She knew Xander was right. She knew she would never meet her mother’s expectations, that it wasn’t fair to herself to make herself try anyway, that this wasn’t how this worked. Her mother would always keep her on her toes. Keep her wanting. Keep her feeling like she was falling short so she would be so easy to convince to do as she was told.

The one thing that could truly make her mother proud, Alessandra thought to herself, hugging a pillow to her chest and looking at nothing, was if Alessandra handed her Cheyenne’s company on a silver platter. If she went over and beyond, if she proved how deeply her loyalty to her family went, if she put to rest any doubt that she could be charmed by someone like Cheyenne and abandon them.

(Her mother knew she wasn’t straight. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t make such pointed comments; she wouldn’t push her at Xander so hard.)

She thought of Cheyenne.

Did Alessandra really want to ruin her life?

If Xander truly was right—if her mother would never be proud of her or like her… what would Alessandra want?

(She thought of Cheyenne. Of the company she built. Of how strange things were with her parents, whom she never mentioned—but how happy she was anyway, without them. How kind she was.)

Alessandra deserved her mother’s pride.

But did Cheyenne deserve to suffer so that Alessandra might get it?

No, Alessandra realized with startling clarity. No, definitely not.

Alessandra could ruin her, but… she didn’t want to be someone who would ruin someone kind like Cheyenne. And she wouldn’t do it.

She wasn’t going to do it.

Her anger swept over her like a tidal wave, making her skin break out in goosebumps as it travelled through her body.

She hated Cheyenne, suddenly, for doing this to her; for making Alessandra love her enough she would choose her over her family, even though she knew Cheyenne wouldn’t choose her back. Cheyenne wouldn’t forgive her faults, she knew. Cheyenne would hate her, and leave her utterly alone in the world.

But Alessandra loved her, and wouldn’t hurt her.

Chapter Twelve

Cheyenne was at her office, chewing on her bottom lip and answering some very important email, when Valdir, one of Sérgio’s old colleagues on that very important project, burst into the room.

“We have a problem,” the man said, wide-eyed panting with exertion.

Oh, no, Cheyenne thought.

***

“I swear I didn’t tell anyone,” Valdir tried, clutching a cup of coffee to his chest.

Cheyenne had managed to get him to sit down. She hadn’t managed to do the same with herself; she was standing in front of him, leaning back against her desk, and trying hard to keep her composure.

“I’ve gotten an email from Mirian, you know, the representative of the insurance team we’re trying to work with—”

“I know,” she said, waving a hand.

“She warned me that her team was informed that we have been having security issues and problems with an employee leaking important information and that they are now apprehensive about working with us,” Valdir said all at once, like he just wanted to get the words out of him. “I swear I didn’t say anything to anyone! You know me and my team have been doing our best to keep things smooth after Sérgio, that snake—”

“Why would you think I’d blame you?” Cheyenne asked, resisting the urge to cross her arms because that would probably scare the man half to death.

“Because one of the information she mentioned they received is sensitive information only me and my team have—aside from you, of course,” he said, fretting.

Valdir and the team, and Cheyenne and the lawyers, and Alessandra, too.

“Don’t worry, Valdir,” she said quietly. “I know it wasn’t you. Take a break—make your lunch hour now. Calm down. I’ll deal with this.”

He drooped down like a puppet with its strings cut with sheer, visible relief.

“Alright,” he said, clearly glad that this wasn’t his problem anymore.

He left. Cheyenne sat down at her desk and calmly didn’t think of anything. She waited until Valid closed the door behind himself, picked up her phone, and dialed up Maya.

She stared at the wall as the phone rang. She needed to keep her cool. She needed to be clear-headed. She needed not to focus on the black hole of pain and betrayal that was caving its way through her chest.

“We have a problem,” she told Maya as soon as the call connected.

“Oh, God, what’s happened now,” Maya asked. “You better fucking pay me from how much work I’m putting into damage control for this—”

“Ally is working for her mom, after all,” Cheyenne told her, closing her eyes. “I spoke to her about the company about a week ago and another bomb’s gone off because of it. It had to be her. I—” She laughed, humorless. “I told Jason I’d know whether she was good or a liar or… I’d know, if something I told her came back to bite me in the ass.”

Maya was quiet for a moment, and then she started shouting.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Ann, you moron! What on Earth were you thinking, telling her anything? She’s a Luccesi! You’re the one who’s always talking about how much she’s wrapped around her mother’s little fucking finger! I told you not to trust her!”

“I know,” Cheyenne said, sounding hollow.

“I tell you you’re too kind, too trusting! I fucking tell you, Ann, you need to grow a fucking spine—you wanted to be the bigger person and look where it got you now!”

“It got me Jason,” Cheyenne said quietly.

“You could have gotten Jason without letting your parents steam-roll over your life,” Maya argued, clearly pissed enough she wasn’t stopping even though Cheyenne was clearly not okay. “And I know you still send them money—why do you do this to yourself? What the fuck has Ally done? You were talking about the subway project—”

“I have to arrange about five hundred meetings to deal with what Ally has done,” Cheyenne said. “But that’s not. Why I called.”

Maya was quiet for a moment.

“You need to stop thinking about that woman,” Maya said, angry. “I told you to break up with her.”

“But I love her,” Cheyenne said, voice breaking. She covered her eyes with a hand and willed herself not to cry. “It’s not fair. I gave her every chance. I did everything right. Why did she have to do this to me?”

“You shouldn’t have given her every chance,” Maya snapped. “She didn’t deserve it.”

Cheyenne didn’t feel that was right, but right now she couldn’t argue.

***

Cheyenne prided herself in the fact that she was a sensible, grounded person, and despite her soft heart, that she was no fool.

But today she locked her office, sat down curled up in Jason’s armchair, and did something very foolish.

She called Alessandra.

“Hi, Ann. I thought you were at work.” Alessandra’s voice sounded strange, low and raspy like she had been crying, and she had answered strangely fast. Cheyenne didn’t know what to do with these facts.

“I am,” Cheyenne said. “Something funny happened today, actually, and I’m pretty sure it’s all your fault.”

Alessandra was quiet for a moment.

“I see,” she said, and she sounded utterly exhausted.

“How much of it was a lie?” Cheyenne asked, by some miracle managing to keep her voice even and bland. “No—don’t answer that. I’m being stupid again, aren’t I? I can’t trust whatever answer you give to that question. How silly of me, to still wish that at least you hadn’t lied, then, when you said your mother would never want you talking to me and that at least our relationship wasn’t just a fucking means to an end.”

“It wasn’t!” Alessandra said, like Cheyenne’s words had woken her up all at once. “She made me—this was retaliation for trying to help you by bringing you by for brunch—I don’t want to do this, Ann—”

Cheyenne laughed. “Help me? How do I know your invitation wasn’t part of some plan, too?”

“Ann,” Alessandra said, broken. “I may have made mistakes, but us wasn’t one. Even though I always knew you’d hate me in the end, I… I love you.”

The words were like a fucking knife.

“How can you be so fucking cruel?” Cheyenne asked, feeling gutted, and hung up.

***

Cheyenne sat up on her bed and felt like shit. It was very late but she couldn’t sleep.

Jason was snuggled up beside her, thin arms wrapped around her waist and nose shoved in the space between the bed and her body; he was such a good boy. He had noticed as soon as she got home that something was wrong and had stayed beside her all night long, quiet and steady. She saw something of herself in him and couldn’t feel prouder. He’d insisted on not letting her sleep alone.

Nothing that led Cheyenne to getting Jason, to having him in her life, to having the privilege of raising him, could be wrong. Maya couldn’t be right. This was something Cheyenne had held close to her chest any time she ever doubted herself. If every problem her trusting nature had ever brought her was the price to pay for getting Jason, it was worth it.

But holding onto this felt like trying to hold onto smoke.

What if Maya was right?

What if this was just some way she tried to rationalize things to herself—what if she could have gotten Jason anyway, without being like this, without letting her parents steam-roll her and—every other thing that she brought upon herself because she was too easy-going, too forgiving, too trusting—

She did it to herself, really; broke her own heart and fucked up her own company.

What if all along Cheyenne had just been a fucking idiot?

She closed her eyes and pressed her palms against them until they burst with color. She always had such a tight rein on her temper, on her posture, but now she was powerless to stop the anger that started banging its fists against her chest like some beast trying to escape a cage.

How dare Alessandra do this to her?

How dare Alessandra make her feel like this, like it was her fault for trying to be good instead of Alessandra’s for tricking her? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, fucking shame on you still, because you’re still the asshole going around screwing with people.

Maybe the problem wasn’t that Cheyenne was too trusting, but that Cheyenne kept standing by while other people messed with her life.

“The best defense is a good offence,” Cheyenne murmured to herself, the words unbearably loud so late at night.

She should stop trying to fix the damage the Luccesi did to her company and start thinking about how to make them pay for it.

If they were so corrupt and unethical, if they kept interfering with other business, if Cheyenne had proof of it in the things they had done to her own company, then she could fucking expose them for it.

Maybe she could talk to Alessandra and see what she’d say. Maybe she could use Alessandra like she had used her.

… maybe if Alessandra truly loved her, she would help.

Chapter Thirteen

Alessandra went to Xander again, even though she was still pissed with him, because she had literally no one left.

They were in his apartment now; she was sitting at his huge, barely used kitchen island and staring morosely at her empty cup of coffee; she’d had three already and he refused to pour her another. He was currently whistling as he scrambled some eggs with the clumsiness of someone who had no idea what they were doing in a goddamn kitchen, uncaring that Alessandra felt like she was at the very bottom of a pit of despair.

She had lost Cheyenne. It’d finally happened.

Her father hated her, God knew what her mother would do once Alessandra told her she wouldn’t do her bidding anymore, and Cheyenne had finally figured out Alessandra was an awful person.

Alessandra had no idea what to do.

“She asked me how I could be so cruel,” she said, voice hollow.

“Because you betrayed her?” Xander asked easily, as if the word betrayed didn’t feel like a punch to the face.

“Because I told her I loved her,” Alessandra said. She wanted to let go of the cup and put her head in her hands, but she felt frozen still.

“Ouch!”

“Ouch,” Alessandra parroted.

Xander sighed long-sufferingly. “Alessandra, remember what I told you about forgetting your witch of a mother and figuring out what you want in life? Is this what you want in life? To sit and be miserable?”

“You really can’t scrounge up an ounce of sympathy,” Alessandra said, too tired to be too angry at him.

“I do feel sympathetic,” he said, “I just don’t want to let your misery make me miserable. You need to look at bright side of things.”

Alessandra pondered it, then said: “I guess when I tell my mother I don’t want to help her destroy other people’s lives, she’ll be offended I dared to stand up against her and kill me.”

Xander rolled up a magazine and used it to hit her head. She glared up at him, lifting a hand to touch her hair.

“Don’t joke about things like that,” he said, more serious now than he had ever seen her.

“There is no silver lining!” she snapped. “I’m going to lose everything! I lost Ann! And there’s nothing wrong with being miserable—you’re the idiot who’d rather I pretend everything’s alright when it’s not!”

“Ally, this is good,” Xander said, frustrated, as if he’d gotten tired of waiting until she figured something out and so had decided to just tell it to her straight. “You’re planning to stand up to your mother after years of being too afraid of her to do it, and you might get disinherited, you might not see your family again—but you still had great schooling, you have an awesome resume, you have your own money, and you still have me.”

“But Ann hates me,” Alessandra said, and she wanted to be angry but she just started crying instead. “I’m so stupid! I’m too much like my mother—Ann’s right to hate me, and I knew she would—but I didn’t want this. And I chose to be good for her, but not early enough, and now—I’m nothing without my family, Xander. I’m nothing without my mother—”

“Your mother is evil for making you think like this,” Xander hissed, angry lines marring his usually jovial and perpetually cheerful face. “You’re nothing like her.”

“You don’t know anything,” Alessandra muttered, looking away.

“You’re stupid,” Xander retorted, then turned around and went back to his eggs, which were surely unsalvageable by now. “Stop wallowing and go try to fix things.”

Alessandra stared at her empty cup.

There was no fixing things, she knew. But maybe… she could talk to Cheyenne. Maybe she could make Cheyenne understand why she did the things she did.

***

Cheyenne wouldn’t meet her for lunch, or coffee, or at a park, or at her place. She finally agreed once Alessandra, frustrated and not entirely serious, asked if she wanted to talk in Alessandra’s place.

Cheyenne said yes. Alessandra had no idea why, but she was too relieved and also feeling sick with dread to try to argue, even though her place was where her mother lived. They scheduled a time where her parents would be out of the house, though that didn’t make Alessandra feel any less sick.

When she answered the door to Cheyenne, she braced herself for an imposing figure, to be faced with disgust and anger and betrayal. But Cheyenne standing there looked as polite and friendly as she had looked at brunch, her face a mask of competent pleasantness that gave nothing away.

She was treating Alessandra like she had treated her mother, then.

Alessandra would rather have had the anger. Anything but this.

“Come in,” she said, voice even; she was keeping up a mask of serious politeness, too. How hateful.

Cheyenne walked in.

***

She figured out why Cheyenne had agreed to meet here as soon as they walked into her room.

Alessandra sat down on her bed, but Cheyenne refused to. She looked around the room with critical eyes and Alessandra felt stripped bare; this was the only space she had that was entirely hers, and Cheyenne’s presence there felt like an intrusion. Like poking a wound. Like Cheyenne had meant to unsettle her, standing straight and unforgiving in the middle of Alessandra’s space.

“I know you said you wanted to talk, but I don’t really want to hear,” Cheyenne started, and Alessandra’s eyes widened. “I have my own piece to say.”

Alessandra blinked. “Wait, I—I wanted to talk to you about why I—”

“I told you I can’t trust anything you say,” Cheyenne said apologetically, politely, and Alessandra hated it. “I have been very understanding, Ally. It’s time I stop and it’s time you listen instead.”

No, no, no, this was not how this conversation was meant to go! Alessandra stood up and took a step forward. She had to explain to Cheyenne, or else the woman would keep hating her, and Alessandra couldn’t live with that.

“Ann, you know how my mother is,” Alessandra rushed to say before Cheyenne could interrupt again, trying to get all the words out before it was too late. “If I don’t obey, she’ll take everything from me—and I won’t work against you anymore, even if she’ll be angry—”

Cheyenne raised a hand, eyes closed. The line of her shoulders was slightly sloped; tired.

“I don’t want to hear,” she repeated.

“But…” Alessandra tried, desperate.

“Enough. We’ve decided to go on the offensive and expose the Luccesi company for its crimes,” Cheyenne said, and the words made Alessandra’s heart legitimately stop beating for a solid three seconds. “We would be sure to succeed if you helped us. If you want to show me you regret it, that’s what you’ll do.”

Alessandra stared at her for a long moment as the words sunk in.

“What? No,” she said. “You want me to—help sabotage my own family? Have them—they could be arrested. I can’t do that to my own family.”

Cheyenne’s composure finally snapped.

“You did it to me!” Cheyenne shouted, hands curling in fists.

Alessandra’s eyes widened. She took a step back.

“You helped sabotage my company, you broke my heart, you betrayed my trust, you made me feel like a goddamn idiot!” Cheyenne listed, each point of hers like a bullet in Alessandra’s heart. “Now you can’t do that to them? To your mother, that stupid, evil, controlling woman?”

“I can’t do that,” Alessandra argued weakly. “She’s my mom. It’s my family.”

“I’m tired of being so understanding,” Cheyenne snapped. “I know your mother is controlling, I know the way she treats you, the way she micromanages your entire life, but right now I’m giving you another fucking chance and telling you there’s a way for you to get away from her and from all this, and all you have to say is she’s my mom?”

“Ann,” Alessandra tried, reaching for her—but Cheyenne stepped back. “Everything is so complicated. If you’d just listen—”

“I tried,” Cheyenne said. “I’m done, Alessandra. Don’t call me again. I don’t want to see you again.”

She left, slamming the door.

Alessandra stared at that closed door, then slowly sat down on her bed. Alone.

***

Alessandra startled when not a moment later, the door clicked open. She looked at it with wide eyes, hope tight like a noose around her neck. Had Cheyenne come back?

Her mother stepped into the room.

Terror swept through Alessandra in a wave, but she was too numb for it to catch on anything and drag her with it. She felt it flow past her and leave numbness in its wake. It wasn’t like she didn’t know this conversation was coming. She would have to tell her mother she didn’t want to help her anymore.

Her mother walked forward and sat beside her on the bed. She drew Alessandra to her side and pulled Alessandra’s head to her shoulder, patting her hair. She hadn’t done something like this in years. Since Alessandra had been very small, and her mother had still loved her like a mother should.

“What are you doing?” Alessandra murmured. “You were listening, weren’t you? You know everything now.”

“You made some mistakes,” her mother said, cheek against her head. “We’ll talk about them later. But what I just saw was you staying loyal to your family despite all of them. You chose to protect us. Good job, Ally.”

Cheyenne was the best thing that ever happened to Alessandra, and Alessandra had broken her heart and fucked up her own life. Now her mother was proud?

Alessandra knew then she had made a huge mistake.

Chapter Fourteen

Cheyenne sat cross legged in front of her coffee table and tried to be productive so she wouldn’t have to pay attention to her heart slowly crumbling to dust.

In front of her, she had dozens of stacks of papers. She had files her legal team had organized about Sérgio and his actions and how they could go after him for what he did; she had documents upon documents from Sérgio’s colleagues from the subway project talking about what effect his abrupt departure had, documents from other projects he was working on that talked about his conduct, and files from the teams that were dealing with the fallout of having the documents and contracts from their projects leaked; she had her own research with Maya about the Luccesi company and family and their actions interfering with many other companies, as well as the notes she and her legal team and others had made about it all.

Jason was sitting at a perpendicular to her, eating a hamburger and looking pensive.

Cheyenne did her best not to start ranting to him about all this, no matter how much talking about it all would help her organize her thoughts. Jason was just a kid. So she kept her mouth shut, her face blank, and her fingers lightning-fast on the keyboard of her laptop, trying to gather ever last scrap of relevant information she could.

“What happened?” her son asked eventually, when his hamburger was almost gone.

“There have been some complications at work,” Cheyenne told him, trying to smile reassuringly at him.

“You’re sad,” he said quietly, and then: “Ann, don’t lie to me.”

Cheyenne’s fingers stilled. She tried really hard not to break down in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, putting a hand on his tiny shoulder. “That wasn’t a lie. It’s just… remember our conversation about Alessandra? The complications are her fault. I shouldn’t have trust her, in the end.”

“Is that why you’re ignoring Maya?” Jason asked, holding his knees to his chest.

“She’s angry at me for trusting Ally even though she had told me not to,” Cheyenne admitted, glancing at her phone. It was on silent, but now and then it still lit up with a new text or call from Maya. “I just… I want to get this done without her screaming at me.”

“So, whatever it is you’re trying to do,” Jason started, looking at her computer and then at all the papers around them, and then back at Cheyenne—and she knew she looked exhausted and miserable, despite her best efforts. “Can you really do it alone, Ann? You’re the one who says it’s okay to ask for help.”

Cheyenne had asked, though.

Alessandra had said no. Alessandra, despite everything, still wanted to protect her family.

Cheyenne knew everything would be hard without the woman’s help. It’d all be hard without Maya’s help, too. She just…

“I’ll call Maya,” she said quietly. “But not now. It’ll all be okay, Jay.”

“Alright,” he said, though he didn’t seem convinced.

***

Cheyenne was in the kitchen hours later, having finally caved in to the demands of her empty stomach, when she reached her limit with her phone. She couldn’t bear to keep looking at it light up, and go dark, light up, and go dark. She snatched it from the counter while she microwaved some leftovers and brought it to her ear.

“Maya, I thought not answering calls for a few solid hours would be an obvious indication that I don’t want to talk to you right now,” she said, tired.

There was silence on the other side of the line.

“I’m not Maya,” Uncle Kiren said.

Cheyenne almost dropped her phone to the floor.

She stared at it instead. There it was, the caller ID she hadn’t looked at, Uncle Kiren written in unforgivingly big letters.

She didn’t want to talk to him. He raised her, she loved him, but things between them hadn’t been perfect, ever since she had come out and he hadn’t reacted well. They’d only gotten more strained after she adopted Jason; he agreed with Maya that she shouldn’t have simply stayed quiet instead of confronting her parents about dropping a kid on her doorstep like a stray kitten. But he had also thought that Jason wasn’t her responsibility, wasn’t her duty, and she shouldn’t have adopted him at all; shouldn’t have brought a child into her life when it hadn’t been in her plans.

“Uncle Kiren,” she said evenly.

“I can call again later,” he said, obviously reluctantly, as he knew there was a chance she would simply not answer. It touched her that he offered anyway.

“No, it’s fine.” She sighed. “Did you need something?”

“I spoke to Jason a while ago. I heard about what’s been happening at the company…”

“Still keeping tabs on me like I’m 12, huh,” she said.

“You’re my kid.”

Cheyenne sat down heavily on one of her kitchen stools. “I didn’t mean anything bad by it,” she said. “Yes, the company’s been a mess. The woman I was dating ended up being a corporate spy for a big competitor, on top of everything else. These have not been my best days.”

Her uncle was quiet for several moments, clearly struggling with what he could possibly say to something like that.

“Who was it?” he asked at last.

“Alessandra Luccesi,” she told him, because why not?

“From the Luccesi family? The Luccesi company? How did you not know she was a Luccesi if it’s right there in her name?” he asked, baffled.

“I knew she was a Luccesi,” she told him, even though she knew he was going to scold her just like Maya had. “I decided to give her a chance. I knew her in high school. I thought I knew her…”

Cheyenne knew her before high school—she knew Alessandra young, afraid of her mother but not yet having learned to hide it, before she became so serious and miserable. That one summer they had been children together had been the best summer of Cheyenne’s life. They had been inseparable, she and Ally, and Cheyenne knew that if she hadn’t had that one beautiful, dream-like summer with Alessandra, she wouldn’t have been able to handle what happened later: the mess with Uncle Kiren confronting her parents about their neglect, the fight for her custody, her whole world turned upside down.

“I thought I knew her,” she repeated tiredly. “Don’t scold me, Uncle. I know I’m too trusting, that I shouldn’t think the best of everyone, etc., Maya’s said it all.”

Her uncle sighed. “It’s not that you shouldn’t think the best of everyone, that it’s wrong to do it or that it makes you stupid. But sometimes, the weight of your expectations is heavy, Ann. Some people would rather you just think of them as they are.”

Oh, she thought.

“You sound very tired,” he continued before she could answer. “We can talk later—if you promise to answer the phone, stupid child. Go to sleep.”

“Alright,” she said, and he hung up.

She lowered her phone. She stared at the floor in front of her, not noticing that the microwave beeped.

Some people would rather you just think of them as they are.

How would she think of Alessandra Luccesi?

Alessandra was rich and spoiled and ambitious under all that misery, stifled under her mother’s control, and mostly unkind.

But she wasn’t bad, Cheyenne realized. She could call Alessandra many things, most of them unflattering, but Alessandra was not a bad person.

Chapter Fifteen

“I’m guessing the conversation didn’t go well,” Xander told her, voice a whisper so low she could barely hear it.

Alessandra and Xander had been sent to the kitchen by winking parents to gather up the mimosas for brunch. There were many people there, all talking so loudly they could hear them from here. Now and then her mother’s laughter rang above the conversation; she was still in a good mood, delighted at Alessandra.

“It made everything worse,” Alessandra said, holding a glass so tightly she was afraid of breaking it.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“It feels like we’ve talked about it so many times. It never goes anywhere.”

Xander sighed. “I promise to pay attention and not mock you and not act all judging.”

Well, what else could she do? She had nobody else. And honestly, she was feeling so miserable that she wasn’t even upset with him anymore. Maybe he was right and she was wrong.

“I wish I was a different person,” she murmured, instead of telling him anything that actually happened in her talk with Cheyenne. “I’m a terrible person. I ruin everything I touch.”

“How dramatic,” Xander said, but he sounded soft, not joking. He stepped up to her and hugged her to his side, and Alessandra sunk into the warm hug like someone who hadn’t received proper affection in years, aside from her girlfriend.

“Ann’s better off without me,” she said quietly. “I knew she didn’t deserve to suffer me. Now she’ll be better off.”

Xander hummed thoughtfully. “You know, terrible is an adjective. It’s something you are. But you say you ruin everything—to ruin is a verb, Ally. And to fix is also a verb. You should focus less on what you are, and more on what you do.”

“I’m terrible because I ruin everything,” she argued, dropping her head to his shoulder.

“Then you won’t be terrible anymore if you try to fix things,” he said, like it was that simple.

Oh, she thought.

***

Alessandra didn’t know where her feet were taking her until she found herself standing in front of her father’s office, staring at the closed door.

It was a small room—when you compared it to the rest of the house, at least—and out of the way, like he wasn’t there to work, but so he wouldn’t bother anyone with his presence. Truly, Alessandra barely saw him around the house. She barely spoke to him at all.

She didn’t quite know what she was doing here.

She knocked on the door anyway.

Her father’s voice, when he told her to come in, was tired and low, and it made Alessandra smile. He sounded like how she felt. Maybe she was a little bit like him, after all.

He blinked in shock when she stepped into the room.

“Alessandra,” he said. “Uh. Did your mother ask you to fetch me for something, or…?”

“No,” she admitted, standing in front of him feeling helpless. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

He stared at her like he had no idea what to do with that.

“Alright,” he said at last.

She looked around the office. It was cramped and dark. It was like he’d been left in a hole.

“Why haven’t you divorced her?” she asked suddenly. She didn’t turn to look at him, eyes on a picture of her parents as teenagers hanging on the wall.

He laughed awkwardly. “Haha… why would you ask something like that?”

“You know why,” she said quietly. “Why haven’t you left?”

He was quiet for a long moment.

“I don’t know,” he said, and suddenly he sounded utterly exhausted. “She’s my wife. I don’t know what I’d do, if not this. I can’t… I can’t just leave.”

Alessandra laughed. He looked at her like she’d gone insane.

“We always talk about how I’m truly my mother’s daughter,” she said, then turned to him, “but apparently, Dad, I’m just like you instead.”

He looked shocked, and then sad. Of course he was sad; he was a truly unhappy person, and now she’d just told him she was the same. But she didn’t want to be like him, she realized. She didn’t want to stay stuck in an unhappy situation and not even know why.

Maybe she thought she was a terrible person and it’d take a while for her to change her mind. But maybe Xander was right. Maybe this didn’t mean she had to do terrible things. She could choose to be good.

She could choose to help Cheyenne.

“There’s no reason you couldn’t leave,” she continued. “What is really stopping you? You’re miserable. You don’t like your own family.”

“If I could leave, then so could you,” he retorted, lashing out because he didn’t want to hear the truth in her words. He was trying to spark a fight, so make her annoyed, to make her argue against her own point.

“I suppose so,” she said, quiet, instead.

***

Alessandra almost ran to the park bench where Xander was sitting, feeling almost manic with the need to do something after so long feeling morose and miserable.

“You need to get back with your girlfriend. You have too much free time, we’ve been hanging out far too much,” he said, sounding tired and annoyed for all that he was watching her approach with curiosity in his eyes.

“I’m going to do it,” Alessandra declared, sitting down heavily beside him. “I’m going to help Cheyenne.”

He blinked at her. “Wow, have you really changed your mind that fast? You agree that your mother deserves to be exposed and arrested and all that?”

“Oh, no,” she said, “not really, I don’t want to see her getting arrested, I’m terrified—”

“So why…?”

“She probably deserves to be arrested,” she admitted, even though saying the words made her feel fucking terrible. “I mean—I know, logically, that she deserves it. That she’s done some bad things. And Cheyenne deserves my help, after I betrayed her. I need to fix what I’ve done. I mean—” She laughed, a bit desperately. “—I mean, you’re right, why does it matter if I never see my family again? My father dislikes me and is as miserable as me, and I honestly don’t think my mother would go looking for me if I ever went missing.”

“Why would you ever go missing?” Xander asked, a bit worried.

“Not the point,” she said, shaking her head. “She doesn’t care about me. She doesn’t love me. You’re right. No matter what I do, she’ll never like me.” Her voice broke on the word never, and she looked away from him.

Xander pulled her to his side, a smile blooming on his face.

“Oh, Ally. I’m so proud of you. You’re doing what’s right, you know?”

“I’m fucking terrified, that’s what I know,” she muttered, glad that he was hugging her, glad that he had been right: Alessandra had made a close friend in Xander, and if she lost everything, she would still have him. Xander knew her—how her mother was, that she was a lesbian, that she was afraid all the time—and was still her friend.

He laughed. “You’ll feel safe eventually. I’m just glad you’re not choosing to side with your mother and your family’s company anymore. I told you: things will implode sooner rather than later.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s awfully optimistic of you, Xander. In my experience, Evil isn’t its own downfall. Evil just keeps on doing whatever it wants and getting richer from it.”

“Oh, it’s not going to implode because of the nature of evil or whatever,” Xander said, seemingly delighted, like a child with a secret who was finally getting to tell it. “It’s going to implode because I’ve been working to make it.”

Alessandra leaned away from him and stared at him.

“Oh my God,” she whispered; everything was suddenly clear. “You’re a corporate spy.”

Xander laughed. “My parents are good people. They’d never force me to marry anyone, Ally, much less anyone from your wretched family. No offense meant.”

“None taken,” she said honestly, too thrown to feel anything but shock.

“Your mother has messed with our company in the past,” he told her, “and we decided to do something about it. I’ve gotten some pretty good info, talking to your mom. She really does like me, doesn’t she?”

“A lot,” Alessandra told him. “Are you really… you’ve been planning this from the start?”

He winked at her.

“Oh my God,” she said, feeling something crawl up from the bottom of her heart and fill her chest, something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. “Oh my god, Xander, you’re such a snake.”

She grinned at him; the feeling was delight.

Chapter Sixteen

Cheyenne was so tired after a long week of sleeping little, working a lot, and being heartbroken, that she gave herself the next Friday to rest. She slept most of the morning, ordered sushi for lunch instead of cooking anything, didn’t look at her phone once, and thought very hard about nothing at all.

By the time her sushi arrived, she was feeling ravenous. She picked up her wallet and went to answer the door.

Alessandra was standing there.

Cheyenne considered slamming the door on her face, then sighed. That just wasn’t her. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” Alessandra said.

“How did you know I was home instead of at work?”

“I passed by the office and your secretary told me you were taking the day off,” Alessandra admitted.

“I said I didn’t want to see you again,” Cheyenne said quietly.

“I’m going to help you,” Alessandra declared.

Cheyenne stared at her. She shouldn’t trust that, she thought to herself. She should slam the door in Alessandra’s face.

But…

“Alright,” she said, sighing. “Come in.”

***

Alessandra walked to the living room, then didn’t sit, just stood there with her hands in fists, eyes roaming around the room like she didn’t want to look at Cheyenne but didn’t know what else to look at.

“Explain,” Cheyenne said, sitting down heavily.

Alessandra opened her mouth and closed it again two times before she spoke: “I’m going to help you,” she repeated.

“So you said,” Cheyenne said. “The last time we talked, you were very adamant that you wouldn’t.”

Alessandra closed her eyes and seemed to brace herself. She opened them again and looked straight at Cheyenne.

“She doesn’t control my whole life,” she said. “Even though it feels like it. I mean, she… does. She’s very… You know how she is.” She waved a hand. “She’s very controlling. But she doesn’t control me. I don’t have to stay stuck in that house, doing everything she says.” She swallowed nothing. “I’m deciding to help you.”

Cheyenne bit her bottom lip hard enough to hurt.

She knew what a big deal it was for Alessandra to say something like this. She was happy for her. And now Alessandra would help her? Cheyenne didn’t know what to feel, really.

“She heard our conversation,” Alessandra said, like the words hurt to say. “She was standing outside—I didn’t know,” she rushed to say. “I thought she was out of the house. But she heard it. Then she walked in and hugged me and said she was proud of me. Because I stayed loyal to the family.”

“I see,” Cheyenne said slowly.

Alessandra sat down heavily, like she couldn’t bear her own weight anymore.

“I don’t want her pride anymore,” she said, sounding gutted. “That was terrible. It was awful. I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have been loyal to the family. As if it means anything. And she was proud. Because I was an idiot and protected her even though I hate her.”

“Alright,” Cheyenne said, a bit helpless.

“I’m going to help you,” Alessandra repeated, visibly grabbing the reins of what she was feeling and making herself sound calm again. “You’re right that I’d be a huge help to the case you’re trying to make. And there’s Xander—Xander’s been making a case against my parents this whole time. If all three of us pool our information…”

“Wait, your boyfriend Xander?” Cheyenne asked, baffled.

“Not my boyfriend,” Alessandra said, then laughed. “My mother loves him! She wants me to marry him! And all this time he’s been buttering her up to destroy her life! God,” she said, then pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. It’s been one hell of a week. I know I’m all over the place. I just came here to—to schedule a time for us to meet up with Xander. So we’ll all be on the same page. You know.”

“It’s okay,” Cheyenne said, and found, even to her own surprise, that it was true. “Ally, I’m… I’m happy for you.”

Alessandra looked at her with suspicion.

“I’ve hoped you’d get away from your parents for years,” Cheyenne told her, leaning forward. “That you’d just be able to live your own life, like I have. I’m glad, Ally.”

It took visible effort for Alessandra not to cry. Cheyenne let her have a few minutes to compose herself and went to get her some water.

“I know you hate me,” Alessandra started after Cheyenne handed her the glass.

“I don’t hate you,” Cheyenne interrupted.

Alessandra shrugged. “I know you—you—you’d be right to hate me, Ann. But I really did only start working with my mother against you after you came over for brunch,” she said. “It was the only way I could think of to help you, to have you meet her, so you could see what she’s like, but… well, you know where that ended.”

If that were true… if their whole relationship really hadn’t just been part of a scheme…

It hurt to hope. Cheyenne tried to get a hold of herself.

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s set up a meeting with Xander. Let’s just… focus on that.”

“Okay,” Alessandra said.

***

Maya insisted to go as well. The meeting was less a meeting than some coffee at Xander’s apartment, who answered the door for them with a delighted smiled on his face, like he was overjoyed at the fact that he had so many people to play host to, or at the fact that his sabotaging plans were moving forward so nicely.

It was hard not to smile back.

“You didn’t say she would be here,” Maya said very loudly as they walked in and spotted Alessandra sitting on the couch.

“I didn’t say she wouldn’t be here,” Cheyenne countered blandly.

Xander looked like her answer was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“Ally, you have to get back with her,” he told Alessandra, sprawling beside her on the couch.

Maya glared at him. Cheyenne caught Maya’s elbow and led her to the second couch, and they sat down as well.

“So you’re the guy who’s been spying on the Luccesi,” Maya said, looking up and down at Xander critically.

“Yep,” Xander said. “I mean, somebody had to, but nobody was doing it. And anyway, Ally’s mother loves me.”

Maya nodded slowly, then smiled. “You played her.”

“Like a fiddle,” Xander agreed, and now the two were grinning at each other with identical malevolent grins. “I mean, all I had to do was be very polite and very rich and to agree with her on everything! Pride really does come before the fall.”

“Alright, I like him,” Maya declared, then turned to glare at Alessandra. “You, on the other hand, are a piece of shit.”

“Maya,” Cheyenne scolded. “I didn’t let you come so you’d start picking fights.”

Alessandra gave her a confused, but grateful look.

“Why are you here?” Xander asked Maya, raising one eyebrow.

“I’ve helped Cheyenne gather all info she has, I know as much as her,” Maya said, crossing her arms. “Also, you guys are going to make a plan to bring that woman and her entire company down. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Then let’s plan,” Alessandra said.

“Let’s plan,” Cheyenne agreed, and the two traded a firm look.

***

And plan they did.

***

By the time she had to leave—she had to pick up Jason, and honestly so many hours had passed that she felt like her brain had turned to mush—Maya and Xander had all but legally adopted each other as siblings, and Alessandra had gone through a cycle of being quiet, shouting about how fucked up her mother was, and then being quiet again about four times.

She was obviously going through a lot. Cheyenne wished, despite everything, that she could be there for her. But things between them weren’t perfect. They had to talk. Just… not now.

Alessandra did walk her to the door, glancing at the living room to see if Maya had noticed her follow Cheyenne out; she hadn’t, too busy ranting to Xander about a movie both of them liked.

Cheyenne crossed the door, then turned to Alessandra.

“Our case is all but closed,” she said. “I’ll bring all of this to my legal team and put them in touch with Xander’s. We couldn’t have done this without you, Ally.”

Alessandra nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“I spoke with my Uncle a while ago,” Cheyenne said. “And he told me something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. He said that it’s not wrong of me to see the best in everyone… but that some people would rather I see them as they are instead.”

“What does that mean?” Alessandra asked.

“It means,” Cheyenne started, reaching out to squeeze Alessandra’s hand, “that I think we should talk. Not now. Give me a couple of days. I’ll text you and ask you to come over. So we can really talk. Alright?”

Alessandra slowly squeezed her hand back, as if she didn’t think it was allowed.

“Alright,” she said.

Chapter Seventeen

It took Cheyenne a full week and a half to send Alessandra that text, and by then Alessandra felt absolutely fraught with nerves. She knew Cheyenne hadn’t meant to make Alessandra’s days a living hell by making her unable to think of anything else but the fact that Cheyenne wanted to talk and had held her hand and had possibly, somehow, forgiven her, or about the fact that at any point now Cheyenne could send her that text.

When her phone finally buzzed with a text from Cheyenne, Alessandra startled so much she dropped the bowl of popcorn she was holding.

“You’re cleaning that for me,” Xander said darkly, looking at the mess she had made of her couch.

“Later,” Alessandra said, standing up at once. “It’s Cheyenne—I need to go. Right now.”

“Christ, finally,” Xander said with a sigh. “Fine, I’ll let it pass this once, just because I think even I was dying of impatience.”

“I have to go,” Alessandra repeated, not moving an inch.

“It’ll be okay,” Xander said, patting her arm. “Good luck.”

“She said she doesn’t hate me, but… I still tricked her and betrayed her,” Alessandra said quietly.

“Guess you’ll have to trust her judgement of you,” Xander said with a sigh.

That made Alessandra blink.

That sounded like something she could do. Cheyenne was good. Alessandra could trust her judgement.

***

Cheyenne answered the door quickly, which made sense, since she had clearly been expecting her. She looked good, Alessandra thought: she had clearly just taken a shower, her hair wet and stuck to her forehead and her neck, her clothes simple and comfortable. She looked as good as she did in a suit.

“Hi,” Alessandra said.

“Hey,” Cheyenne said, smiling slightly. “Come in.”

Alessandra walked in. Cheyenne led her to the living room and sat down, and Alessandra sat down as well, on the other side of the couch.

“How have you been?” she asked.

“Okay,” Alessandra told her. “And you?”

“I’m not being polite,” Cheyenne said, raising one eyebrow. “I do want to know.”

Alessandra looked down at her hands, folded tightly around each other on her lap.

“Strained,” she said. “It’s hard, being at home. But it’s not like my mother has any reason to suspect I’m doing something like… well, like what we’re doing. I mostly stay in my room. My father’s been odd,” she added thoughtfully. “I see him walking back and forth across my bedroom door like he wants to talk to me about something, but he never walks in. I guess our conversation had an impact on him.”

“You spoke to him?”

“I asked him why he never divorced mom and left,” she said, “since he’s clearly unhappy with the life he has. Like I am. I guess he was surprised to hear that.”

“That you’re unhappy?” Cheyenne said, smile slipping away.

Alessandra shrugged. “I’ll try to make my own life from now on, I guess,” she said, then smiled hesitantly at her. “Like you, the way you said. And you’re happy, right?”

“Yes,” Cheyenne said, putting a comforting hand on her arm. “He visited my office a while ago, you know. Said I couldn’t trust you. I decided to trust you anyway, and then…” She sighed. “I felt like a goddamn idiot.”

“I’m sorry,” Alessandra said, swallowing tears. “I couldn’t not obey her. I didn’t want to cause you harm—I hated it, and I wanted to stop—but by then I’d already done it. There’s no going back. You’re not an idiot, Ann, never, I’m the idiot for doing that to you. You’re so good. I can’t believe I was the one who made you think something like that.” She looked down; she didn’t want Cheyenne to see her tearing up. “That I was the one who made someone good like you doubt yourself.”

“I thought something like that,” Cheyenne said, lifting Alessandra’s chin with a finger, then smiled. “Though maybe I should be a bit more… how do I say it…”

“Malicious?” Alessandra tried.

“Something like that,” Cheyenne said, smiling again. “My uncle is right. I should stop expecting the best of everyone, and start to expect them to be good within the limits of who they are. Ally… I’ve always known things with your mother were complicated. I still feel hurt about you betraying me, but… I know things aren’t that simple. I know how controlling she is.” She cupped Alessandra’s face with a hand. “I know you felt like you had no choice. I understand.”

Alessandra started to cry.

“I still did it,” she argued, voice warbled by tears. “I betrayed you, and you were so hurt—”

“Yes, well,” Cheyenne said softly, “I’m choosing to be trusting again. One last time. Okay?”

This couldn’t be it, Alessandra thought. It couldn’t be this easy.

But she’d chosen to trust Cheyenne’s judgement. If Cheyenne was forgiving her everything, then she was doing it for a good reason.

If Cheyenne wanted to trust her again, Alessandra would take it. And she would never betray this trust again.

“Okay,” Alessandra said, lifting a hand to close her fingers around Cheyenne’s wrist.

Cheyenne exhaled in relief like a weight had suddenly disappeared off her shoulders, then surged forward and kissed her.

Alessandra kissed her back, grabbing the collar of her shirt to pull her as close as physically possible.

Neither of them hesitated for a second—they had missed each other too much, and they needed comfort too much. Alessandra swung a leg over Cheyenne’s knees and settled on her lap and Cheyenne wound her arms around her waist, pulling her close enough to make her feel out of breath, and they kissed hotly, wetly, for a long time.

When they finally separated, Alessandra framed Cheyenne’s flushed face with her hands.

“Please,” she whispered.

Cheyenne kissed her again, then picked her up and carried her to her bedroom just like that. Alessandra laughed in delight, though she was feeling too hot and bothered for it to come out anything more than a breathless huff.

She sat Alessandra down on the bed, pulled her skirt and her underwear off her legs, and knelt between her parted knees. Alessandra felt her heart beat like a drum in her chest at the sight of it. She curled her hands at Cheyenne’s shoulders.

She moaned loudly, unashamed, when Cheyenne put her mouth on her.

Her lips were soft and full, and her tongue wicked, and she used them to lick and mouth at Alessandra, sliding into her and then sucking harshly on her clit, driving her crazy, until Alessandra could do nothing but rock against the touch and moan.

She let her body fall down to the bed, unable to hold her own weight up anymore. Cheyenne moaned against her at the sight of it, hands digging into her thighs.

Alessandra had spent so long missing Cheyenne, feeling pent up, that it didn’t take long for her release to come crashing down on her. She threw her head back and called out Cheyenne’s name, hands clutching at her shoulders.

She grew boneless on the bed, breathing hard. Cheyenne quickly stood up and undressed, uncaring that her clothes were falling everywhere on the floor.

“Come here,” Alessandra said, reaching for her, “come here, Ann.”

Cheyenne lowered herself to the bed. Alessandra pulled herself over Cheyenne and kissed her, settling between her open legs, then moved down Cheyenne’s body until she could return the favor.

Cheyenne moaned when Alessandra licked at her, even though the touch was hesitant, like just the fact that it was Alessandra touching her was enough to make her hot. Alessandra felt emboldened, and started doing everything Cheyenne had done to her—she licked at her, tongue flat and strong, and closed her mouth around her clit. She sucked, and Cheyenne gasped and closed a hand like a shackle around Alessandra’s hair.

Good, Alessandra thought.

“Come here,” Cheyenne said, breathless. “I want to kiss you.”

Alessandra couldn’t deny her anything. She surged up and kissed her, their mouths sliding wetly against each other, and reached down with her fingers instead. She slid three of them at once into Cheyenne, she was just so wet, and worked her like that instead, moving her hand until her wrist was aching and Cheyenne was panting, until Cheyenne dug her fingers into her and came.

Both of them held onto each other for a long time after that, kissing languidly and falling asleep, utterly glad to be together.

***

Cheyenne woke up before Alessandra did; she left a note saying she had to go out to pick up Jason, and went.

The night was cool and quiet, and during the ride over, Cheyenne enjoyed the breeze and the relief of no weights on her mind. Alessandra was back home, sleeping soundly on her bed, and the two of them were just fine.

She parked her car by Jason’s school and waited, and it only took a few minutes for the boy to come running from the school and get into the car with all the grace of a newborn gazelle. Cheyenne helped get his backpack off him, threw it on the backseats while he put on his seatbelt, and then drove off.

“What happened?” he asked after a few minutes. “You look happy.”

She smiled. “I am happy. I had that talk with Ally I said I would have, and things between us are okay again.”

“Oh,” Jason said, then sat in thoughtful silence for a moment. Then: “Are you going to marry her?”

Cheyenne felt a blush rise to her face.

“It’s too soon to talk about things like that,” she told him. “We need some time—we’re just dating. Why?”

“You said her family sucks, like ours do,” he said. “I mean, not us, obviously. But your mom and dad and mine, and all that. And we have each other. And she could have us, too. I think we’re a pretty good family.”

Cheyenne felt tears prick her eyes.

“I think so, too,” she said. “I love you, Jay.”

“I love you too, Ann,” he said easily, giving her a rare, small smile. “Uncle Kiren called again, by the way.”

“What? When?”

“This morning, when you were in the shower,” he said. “I didn’t want to say because you seemed worried about your convo with Ally and all that.”

“You should have told me,” she said. “I promised him I’d call back.”

“I miss him,” he said. “Could we visit him soon?”

“Yeah,” Cheyenne said, because things weren’t the best with her uncle, but she couldn’t help but think that they could talk about it, and grow closer again. “Sure. I’ll talk to him.”

“Nice,” Jason said. “I’m glad you two are working things out.”

“Me too.” Cheyenne smiled.

She was glad everything was working out. Her legal team had almost frothed at the mouth with sheer excitement when she spoke to them about their plan to bring down the Luccesi. Maya had become attached to Xander very fast, and was over the moon that she now had two people to shout at. Uncle Kiren hadn’t batted an eye at Cheyenne mentioning a girlfriend, and they could visit him.

And that girl—that wild haired girl, pale and round-eyed ambitious little girl she had met years and years ago on the beach, who picked up shells with her and talked about her mean mother and her distant father and her dream of building houses loudly and with no fear—that girl who spent a whole summer building sand castles and wading into warm water with her—

That girl Cheyenne had wanted more than anything to stay by her side, but who had been pulled away from her by her family, who she hadn’t seen again in years and years and years…

Cheyenne would get to keep her.

Epilogue

They watched it all go down at Cheyenne’s house, about three months later, all of them focused on the TV like they were watching a game of soccer instead of the news.

Xander arrived tipsy and proceeded to make everyone tipsy as well by insisting on pouring wine for everyone. Maya and his parents were talking loudly about big concepts like justice and revenge and how ugly the news anchor’s hair was. Alessandra was sitting on the couch and very quiet, but her eyes were bright and her spine was straight. Jason was cuddled to her side, attached to her from shoulder to knees, eyes glued to the TV even though he couldn’t really understand what was going on.

Cheyenne made some popcorn and sat down beside Alessandra, drawing an arm around her shoulders and pulling her to her side.

“Oh, this is in poor taste,” Alessandra muttered, but still snatched up from kernels and started to eat. “This isn’t a game of sports. We’re watching a woman get arrested.”

“We deserve to celebrate,” Cheyenne argued, eating the popcorn with a grin.

On the TV, Alessandra’s mother tried to keep her composure as she was led to a police car in handcuffs, her path lined with so many reporters and journalists shouting questions so loudly that it was hard to hear anything at all.

Xander laughed and proposed a toast, but Cheyenne wasn’t paying attention.

“You okay?” she asked Alessandra in a low voice.

“Yeah,” Alessandra said, then smiled up at her. “I’ll never have to go back to that house. I’ll never have to see her face again.”

Cheyenne kissed her, too full of emotion not to. On Alessandra’s other side, Jason made a disgusted noise, obviously playful, then smiled at them.

“Does that mean you’re moving in soon?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Alessandra said, eyes going soft as she looked at him. “You’ll have to suffer with seeing me every day.”

“I’ll be happy,” Jason argued, smile dimming. “You make Ann happy.”

Alessandra blushed at the words. Cheyenne laughed and kissed her cheek.

“Welcome to the family,” she told Alessandra, who turned and smiled at her like the sun.

And Cheyenne thought of Jason’s words not so long ago; and wondered how soon it really was for Cheyenne to ask for her hand, because why did time matter, when she already knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with Alessandra?