🔥 Borrowed Sunshine — Bonus Chapter

This bonus chapter takes place six months after the events of Borrowed Sunshine. It contains explicit sexual content and is intended for readers who have finished the novel.

Still Here

Six months after the epilogue.

December.

The house smelled like cinnamon and wine and the specific, combustible combination of three women who had been drinking since noon.

Junie Park had arrived on Friday for her second visit — the first had been the October weekend, the towel inspection, the interrogation, the tearful approval. This was the victory lap. She’d come bearing gifts: a bottle of Sancerre, a cashmere throw for Evelyn (“because your couch deserves better than that IKEA blanket”), and a framed photograph of Mara at age seven in a Halloween costume that was, apparently, a “sexy cat” because seven-year-old Mara had understood the assignment.

“I’m burning that photograph,” Mara said.

“You’re framing it,” Junie said. “Evelyn, where’s the mantle?”

Evelyn, to Mara’s horror, pointed.

They’d spent the day the way Junie-visits went — loud, warm, chaotic, full of stories Mara hadn’t heard and wine she probably shouldn’t have finished. Junie told Evelyn about Mara’s college phase (“She had bangs, Evelyn. Thick bangs. I have photographic evidence and I am not afraid to use it.”). Evelyn told Junie about the paprika incident (“She opened the cabinet and said ‘good cumin’ with the same reverence other people reserve for religious relics. I knew I was in trouble.”). Mara sat between them and drank and watched the two most important women in her life become friends and felt her chest do the thing it did now — the expanding thing, the warm thing, the thing that used to terrify her and now just felt like breathing.

By nine o’clock, Junie was fading. She hugged them both — bone-crushing, Junie-standard — and went to the guest room.

“I love her,” she said from the doorway. “Both of you. Individually and together. You’re disgusting and I’ve never been happier.”

“Goodnight, Junie.”

“Use protection!” The door closed. A pause. It opened. “That’s a joke. I know you don’t need — I mean, there’s dental dams, I guess, if you’re—”

“GOODNIGHT, JUNIE.”

The door closed. Mara pressed her face into Evelyn’s shoulder and shook with silent laughter until she couldn’t breathe.

Eleven o’clock. The house was quiet.

Junie was asleep — the freight-train snoring audible through the wall, which Mara found comforting and Evelyn found architectural. (“Does she need a specialist? That sounds structural.”) Toast was on David’s chair in the hallway, his nightly post, his small orange kingdom.

Mara and Evelyn were in the bedroom. The door was closed. The lamp was low.

“Shower,” Mara said. Pulling her sweater over her head.

“Shower,” Evelyn agreed.

The bathroom was small — original to the house, not renovated, the kind of bathroom that belonged to a 1970s craftsman home and had the tile to prove it. The shower was a glass-doored stall, not huge, not designed for two people. They’d discovered this early on and decided the spatial constraint was a feature, not a bug.

Mara turned on the water. Let it heat. Undressed — the rest of the way, sweater already gone, the bra and jeans and underwear joining it on the bathroom floor with the carelessness of a woman who was not thinking about laundry.

Evelyn undressed behind her. Mara watched in the mirror — the reflected image of Evelyn unbuttoning her blouse, slipping it off her shoulders, reaching behind to unclasp her bra. The body she knew by heart and still caught her breath. Six months of touching and the sight of Evelyn naked still hit Mara like a freight train. The lean lines. The silver hair falling around her shoulders. The strength in her arms and the softness of her belly and the small, fading tan line on her ring finger where the band had been.

“You’re staring,” Evelyn said.

“I’m admiring. There’s a difference.”

They stepped into the shower.

The water was hot. The glass fogged immediately. The stall was exactly as small as it had always been, which meant their bodies were in constant contact — slick skin against slick skin, the water running between them, the steam closing the space until the world contracted to the dimensions of two wet bodies and a rainfall showerhead.

Mara pressed Evelyn against the tile wall. The cool surface against Evelyn’s back, the hot water on Mara’s shoulders, the contrast making them both gasp. Mara kissed her — the wet kiss, the open-mouthed, water-running-between-their-lips kiss that was unique to shower sex.

Evelyn’s hands found Mara’s hips. Gripped. Pulled her closer until there was no space, no air, just the slide of wet bodies. Evelyn’s thigh slipped between Mara’s legs and Mara groaned into her mouth — the friction, the heat, the slippery, relentless pressure.

“We need to be quiet,” Mara breathed. “Junie’s in the next room.”

“Junie snores like a diesel engine. She can’t hear anything.”

“Then I’ll cover your mouth.”

Evelyn’s hand came up. Pressed against Mara’s lips. Not rough — firm. The flat of her palm sealing Mara’s mouth, muffling the sounds, and the dominance of the gesture sent a bolt of heat through Mara that had nothing to do with the water temperature.

Evelyn’s other hand slid between them, between Mara’s legs, and she touched Mara with the precision and confidence of six months of practice. Direct, focused, the exact pressure and rhythm she’d cataloged and refined with the systematic thoroughness of a woman who treated her lover’s pleasure like a discipline she intended to master.

Two fingers inside her. The stretch, the fullness, the curl that Evelyn had perfected — the motion that hit the spot that made Mara’s vision dissolve. Evelyn’s thumb on her clit, circling, the coordination so precise it was almost clinical, except there was nothing clinical about the look on Evelyn’s face — hungry, intense, predatory.

Mara came against Evelyn’s hand. Hard. The orgasm ripped through her and she screamed into Evelyn’s palm and the sound was muffled but not silent — a choked, desperate sound that echoed off the tile.

“Good girl,” Evelyn whispered. Against Mara’s ear. Under the water. The two words she’d learned to wield like precision instruments.

“Your turn,” Mara said. When she could speak.

She sank to her knees.

The shower floor was hard. The water cascaded over her shoulders, streaming down her back. She looked up at Evelyn — who was looking down at her from above, the water hitting her chest, running in rivulets between her breasts, her silver hair plastered to her shoulders, her eyes dark and wide and wanting.

“Lean against the wall. Hold the handle. And try not to scream.”

“I don’t scream.”

“You scream every time.”

“I vocalize. There’s a—”

“If you say ‘there’s a difference,’ I’m getting out of this shower.”

Mara spread Evelyn’s thighs. Pressed her mouth against her — the first contact, tongue flat, the slow stroke she’d learned was Evelyn’s favorite way to begin. The full, flat press of her tongue through swollen, sensitive flesh.

Evelyn’s head fell back against the tile. Her hand found Mara’s hair — wet, tangled, gripping. The sound she made was not a vocalization. It was a moan. Low, long, shuddering.

Mara worked her slowly. She used her fingers — two, sliding in from below while her mouth stayed sealed on Evelyn’s clit. Evelyn’s thighs clenched around her head. The water poured. The steam was blinding.

“You’re so good,” Mara said. Against her. Into her. The words vibrating through the most sensitive part of Evelyn’s body. “You’re perfect. Come for me. I want to taste it.”

Evelyn came. She screamed. A raw, full-throated cry that bounced off every tile surface in the bathroom and definitely woke Junie, who would have opinions about it in the morning. Her body bowed forward, her hands gripping the shower handle and Mara’s hair, her whole body seizing in waves.

Evelyn slid down the wall. They ended up on the shower floor — both of them, the water raining down, their bodies tangled, laughing and gasping and completely wrecked.

“That was not quiet,” Mara said.

“That was your fault.”

“Junie heard that.”

“Junie heard that in Portland.”

They sat on the shower floor and laughed until the water started to cool. Then they stood, turned off the water, stepped out. Toweled off.

The bathroom mirror was fogged. Evelyn drew a line through the condensation with her finger — a heart. Simple. The kind of thing a teenager would draw. The kind of thing Evelyn Hart, former composure champion, grief organizer, paprika sub-categorizer, would never have drawn six months ago.

Mara added something inside the heart. Two words, written backward in the fog so they’d read correctly from the front: still here.

“Still here,” Evelyn said.

“Still here,” Mara said.

They went to bed. Naked, damp, the December chill chased away by the shower heat and each other’s bodies. Mara pressed her face into Evelyn’s neck and breathed and felt the pulse — steady, slow.

“Junie told me something today,” Mara said quietly. “When we were in the kitchen, before you came in. She said, ‘She looks at you like you invented color.'”

Evelyn was quiet for a moment. Her hand moved on Mara’s back — slow circles.

“She’s not wrong,” Evelyn said. “You did invent color. My world was grayscale before you. I thought that was fine. I thought grayscale was all there was. And then you walked in with your suitcase and your cat and your terrible sticky notes and everything went saturated. Full spectrum.”

“I love you,” Mara whispered. Into Evelyn’s neck. Into the pulse.

“I love you,” Evelyn whispered back. “Every day. At every o’clock. In every room of this house. Everywhere, Mara. Everywhere.”

The house was warm. Toast was purring in the hallway. Junie was snoring through the wall. The garden was sleeping under frost, waiting for spring.

Mara closed her eyes. Felt Evelyn’s heartbeat.

Still here.

Both of them. After everything.

Still here.

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