Unraveling Secrets

Money and a smile. That's all they show the world. Three bedrooms, two women who touch when they think nobody watches, and Jadilica, sixteen going on starved. She holds her breath every time Ivi passes the table, watches the line of her hip cut under silk. Ivi feels it too. Night pours through the house. One door clicks shut, the other opens by inches. Fingers meet skin under the dining-room light, a palm sliding between heat and the edge of a stool. Quiet breathes turn ragged. Jadilica's mouth finds the soft swell beneath lace; Ivi answers with a low, hungry pull at the back of her neck. Every kiss makes the silence louder, every shiver stitches another knot in the lie they live. Nothing stays buried when the sheets still smell like both of them.