When You Least Expect It

by Haley Cass

She laughs. “You look cute.” It slips out, but it’s entirely true. “Oh.” Her cheeks color even deeper, and Caroline kind of loves it, her smile widening.

“I don’t know where I would be without you.”

She offers a cheeky smile. Which makes Hannah laugh. Disbelief covers her face, her laugh, and it’s all charming as she gives Caroline a soft look. It’s endeared, she thinks, and she has no idea the last time anyone has found her endearing of all things.

But mostly, she wishes that Hannah could look in the mirror every day and see that she shines as bright as the moon and has twice the gravitational pull.

She doesn’t mean to realize she’s in love with Hannah over chicken soup, while Abbie lays against them, snoring through her congestion.

Hannah is so very much like a sunset – with all of the layers that make her who she is, every single one of them different and absolutely beautiful, but sometimes concealing what else is in the sky – Caroline can’t quite read all of the emotions under that vulnerability.

Like in this moment, she understands why everything in the world – wars and songs and all of the literature – comes back to this. It makes her think that, for once, she understands what she’s been chasing for all of these years. She’s wanted love, and she’s thought she understood what it meant.

She didn’t mean to fall in love with Hannah at all. But here she is, curled up with a family that isn’t quite hers, and she’s never wanted anything more. So. Fucked.

“Caroline may have been my best, though. Definitely up there in my top three.”

She kind of still can’t believe she’d essentially had in-person phone sex with Hannah, because it sounds extremely unlike what she would ever intend to do in the sober light of day.

“For the record, I’m wearing the Suffolk law shirt you forgot here once. And my underwear. Goodnight.”

“I’m letting you guide us. I don’t want to… push you.” She’s trying so hard not to cross any boundaries, even though with every single day that goes by, she wants more. Hannah leans back against the door, her tongue sliding slowly over her bottom lip, and Caroline’s eyes trail after it, hungrily, before snapping to Hannah’s. “Push me,” she rasps.

“I want you and Abbie, every day. I want everything with you and that’s… a lot. I know,” she admits, the weight of it crushing. “I’m not asking for everything right now. I’m not asking for you to… to love me, to take a leap with me. I only want that when you’re ready. I’m just asking to know that you are really in this.”

I love her body. I can’t stop staring. I get it. The curve of her waist. The fullness of her breasts. Her hands. I just, get it. Desire. True, sheer desire.

“I just didn’t realize until I looked back that I didn’t draw you just like I drew other people. Like a building. I drew you… like I would draw a queen. Like I’m in love with you.”