Veiled behind bleary eyes, layers of twilit darkness, and a throbbing headache from stress, the lakeside cabin had never seemed so inviting. Elise had barely shaken off her drowsiness in time to see the house appear, yet her heart sang at the promise of comfort that lay inside. Warm rooms, snug blankets, and an ample supply of high-quality coffee all awaited her within its walls. Ready to flop face-down onto a cosy sofa, Elise popped her seatbelt open and cracked the passenger door open as she looked across the cabin.

    A smile invited itself onto Cadence's face, and she removed a heavy-looking key from her jacket pocket. "Here. I'll hide the getaway car in the garage, while you, my fabulous co-conspirator, can get busy defrosting the house," she said, pressing the key against Elise's chest. Its dense metal pulsed with her body heat, and she dropped it into Elise's hold as she motioned towards the cabin. "The thermo-thingy's in Flo's study, remember?"

    "Like I could forget." Elise shuddered as the pattern of Florence's spattered blood glowed along the wall of her memory. At least that incident served as proof of how hot the cabin's dated heating system could get. "Want me to get you some coffee ready?"

    "Sure thing," Cadence said with a yawn, draping her arms over the steering wheel. "You can add some whisky while you're at it. And maybe skip the coffee part, too."

    A feather-light giggle parted Elise's lips on her way out of the car. "I'd have been surprised if you'd asked me to keep it in."

    The cold snap had hit less than an hour ago, yet its icy grip had already encircled the lakeside. The jetty sagged under the weight of the chilled air that sank down on it, and the absence of the water's audible trickle deafened Elise as she paused by the bank. Where the sloshing, depthless waters had once swilled spanned an uneven disc, a channel of frost coursing across its surface. A pair of slight birds landed on the brightest patch of ice, chirruped their confusion, then took off into the night once more. Elise raised a hand in a silent goodbye, then followed the birds' lead to approach the cabin.

    After a momentary struggle, the handle of the building's back door freed itself and opened its entrance. A fumbled flick of the light switch dispelled the invasive darkness from the cabin's interior, and Elise managed to rouse the boiler into action with a few speculative pokes of the study's thermostat. It was only as the first wave of roasted bliss tingled the tip of her tongue, however, that the shivers melted away from her body to leave a delicate calm in their wake.

    "Got the fire going yet, killer?" The back door jostled shut, and Cadence tossed her car key onto the kitchen table with a shudder. She spied the glass of golden liquid stood beside Elise's coffee on the counter and clicked a finger gun at her friend. "You could help yourself to one too, you know. My treat."

    "How generous of you to let me share in your mum's alcohol," Elise quipped, though the electric sparks that flew from Cadence's winking eye erased her inhibitions in a heartbeat. She popped the stopper from the bottle, slid a tumbler from the cabinet, and filled it more than a little over what her brain advised. The thick liquor burned her mouth with red-hot guilt, yet it also sparked the closest, cosiest log fire in her gut to settle her nerves. Noticing that her friend kept one arm fixed behind her back, she raised her glass to the static limb. "What's that you've got there?"

    Though subtle in the soft kitchen light, a faint blush drifted to the surface of Cadence's cheeks. "This? It's nothing big, just something I've been working on lately," she said as she revealed her graphics tablet. With a few taps, she stared at the warm glow that shone from the screen, then turned her device to share its contents with her friend. "What do you think?"

    A vast, detailed landscape piece lit up the tablet's surface. Beneath a cloud-flecked afternoon sky, pale sands meandered along the border of a cool, calm sea. One side of the image held the towering profile of a rocky cliff, the slight shapes of huts dotted on its winding path. Footprints tracked over the beach to lead Elise's eye to a pair of figures stood side by side, staring out over the water together. The people were small, yet they carried just enough detail to recall herself and Cadence.

    Elise lifted a hand to her chest. "Oh my gosh, Cade. It's beautiful," she said, swallowing down the lump that formed at the sight of her illustrated self. "I didn't know you did drawings like this as part of your course."

    "That's because I don't. I actually might've wanted to draw it as a present for you." Cadence fired her usual grin in Elise's direction, yet the soft stroke of her fingertips against her neck betrayed her nerves. "I based it on when we met at the beach, only without my bitchy attitude ruining the moment."

    "Please. My pushiness killed the mood just as hard," Elise replied, releasing an awkward laugh at the recovered memory of her crying as Cadence's car pulled away. The pain of that moment still resonated through some deep-lying part of Elise's heart now. "It's gorgeous, and I absolutely love it. But...why? You didn't need to go to all this trouble just for me."

    Settling on the counter beside her friend, Cadence folded her arms and shrugged. "I know I didn't need to. It just felt right to me," she said as she watched the awe strike Elise's features. "I was kinda shitty to you in the hospital, and I also owe you big time for helping to track Mel down, so...surprise?"

    The sunlit streaks across the illustrated sea mirrored the tears that glimmered in Elise's eyes. "No kidding it's a surprise! I don't know what to say," she cried, burying herself in Cadence's chest to hide her stunned face. "I feel bad for not having anything to give you in exchange. If I stay up all night, I might be able to write you up something to read over breakfast. Are you a cute and fluffy kind of girl, or more into hot and racy stuff?"

    "What, can't I have both?" Cadence said with a laugh, and the way her fingers twirled through Elise's locks drew a matching laugh from her friend. "Seriously, Ellie, it's chill. You don't have to do anything for me."

    "But I want to. Seeing the fruits of your hard work is getting me all inspired, Cadence Van Gogh," Elise answered, working her hands up the lapels of Cadence's jacket. "I guess I'll settle for thanking you for now, though."

    Without a sound, Elise's fingers climbed further and brushed against the curves of Cadence's neck. Her friend tilted her face, and her flushed cheeks amplified the vivid blush that bloomed over her lips. The lone lights of the kitchen cast the rest of the world into an even deeper darkness than had engulfed them in the classroom, and Elise had no intention of silencing her heart's desires again.

    Kissing Cadence was not the uncharted territory it had once been for Elise – it was better. Her lips found a home around Cadence's that Elise did not know they missed, and the solidity of the girl's weight under her fingertips filled Elise's heart with a reassuring peace. Yet she wanted more. She wanted more of the honeyed heat that lay on the girl's tongue, more of the yearning breaths that gasped between them, more of the electric energy that shocked through her fingertips at the touch of the girl's burning skin. When Cadence pulled her closer by her waist, she could not stop the strength fleeing from her legs.

    "Wait," Cadence said as she pulled back suddenly, her lips shining millimetres from Elise's face. "Are you sure, Ellie? Or are you just, you know..."

    Elise resisted the urge to dive back into her friend's sweet taste. "Just what?"

    Keeping a tight hold on her friend's waist, Cadence glanced down at the lack of space between them and shrugged. "Tired, tipsy, and way too touch-starved?"

    "Sure, the past few days might've been my fill of exhausting drama for one lifetime," Elise began, slipping the jacket from Cadence's shoulders and smiling at the first coloured traces of the girl's sleeve tattoo. "But I'm not that much of a lightweight. And I had enough self-control to push you away back at the uni, remember?"

    "I sure do," Cadence said, masking her sigh with a slow laugh. "Not to brag, but that might've been the first time I've struck out with someone I made a move on."

    "Sorry to break your streak, Casanova," Elise quipped as she planted a quick kiss on Cadence's exposed neck. "Don't worry, Cade. I want this. I want you."

    As her friend spoke, Cadence slid her fingers over Elise's sides and wrapped them around her wrists. "Me, or my comfy bed again?"

    Adjusting their bond to lock her fingers between Cadence's, Elise pulled her friend towards the doorway out of the kitchen. "Can't I have both?" she said with a half-decent impression of Cadence's voice.

    "You're such a dork," Cadence said, letting her friend lead her onwards with an exaggerated sigh. "How haven't I made out with you like this before?"

    Elise had asked herself the same thing from the moment she sank into the soft embrace of Cadence's lips. Halfway up the stairs to the girl's bedroom, however, finding an answer to that question was no longer important to her. All that mattered now was that she had Cadence close, and she had no reason to let her go again.

***

    Somehow, cuddling up with Cadence in her cosy bed amazed Elise even more powerfully than the sex that had preceded it. There was an undeniable thrill to laying herself open for Cadence, leaving her girl just as vulnerable, and letting their minds, bodies, and souls align in loving, yearning bliss. Yet with her arms linked around Cadence's shoulders and her face in the girl's neck, Elise's heart slowed to a calm, content rhythm. This was the peace she had sought.

    Her heavy eyelids begged to fall shut, yet Elise dared not take her eyes off the girl beside her for a moment. Even after so much exposure to her, Cadence's beauty still robbed every wisp of breath Elise had. The girl's bright hair and gleeful eyes lit up the darkest corners of their room, and her exquisite tattoos glowed against her pale skin to lead Elise's eye along her warm, firm curves. Every look the girl paid her and every touch she laid on her body left no doubt that she – beautiful, fascinating, incredible Cadence – wanted Elise just like Elise wanted her. For the first time, Elise dared to silence her doubts that the love erupting in her core had its twin in Cadence's vast, overflowing heart.

    "How's it going down there, killer?" Cadence whispered into Elise's hair, running a finger down her friend's spine to the base of her back. As the girl released a satisfied sigh, she caught it with a soft, slow kiss. "Thinking about one more round? And another?"

    "Like I could think about anything else," Elise said, placing a finger on Cadence's parted lips. "But we both need to sleep sooner or later, so we might have to stick a pin in that, punk rock."

    "Or we could stick something somewhere else," Cadence answered with a wink. She took hold of Elise's finger, kissed it once, then guided it beneath the shelter of their shared sheets. "Again."

    It took the blind touch of Cadence's red-hot thigh to pull Elise from her intoxicated freefall. Snatching her hand away, she pushed Cadence onto her back and pressed a single kiss onto her girl's chest. "You're the worst," she teased, taking one long look over Cadence's exposed body before turning to search the room. "Where did you toss my clothes?"

    Cadence's hand found Elise's waist as she looked around the dark walls. "I mean, I think I see one of your socks over by the desk there," she said, cracking a slight laugh at the sight of Elise's rolling eyes. "Just borrow some of my stuff. Or don't. For once, I'm not dying to dress you up."

    "Careful. You'll be running out of clothes soon if you keep letting me steal them." Shivering as soon as she left the reach of Cadence's warming touch, Elise willed her weary body towards the wardrobe.

    There was little choice in the wardrobe's contents beyond her girl's usual white vest tops, each one marked with rebellious tears and adorned with a different printed design. By her feet, Cadence's pants drawer was a crow's nest of baggy boxers and lacy underwear, both of which revitalised the heated blood that still lingered in Elise's face. "Should I even bother asking what you usually sleep in?" she asked, bundling a pair of boxers into a top and tossing it towards Cadence's unsuspecting face.

    With one hand peeling the crumpled clothing from her face, Cadence held Elise's gaze and shrugged. "The nude, duh. It's not like there's anything down there I haven't seen before," she said as she threw her bedsheets aside. "And nothing you haven't seen before either, my intrepid little explorer. We're under the sheets anyway."

    "Exactly. It'd just be weird to cuddle up to you with clothes on while you're still naked, so get dressed already," Elise answered with mock frustration. Her performance ended as the butterfly-printed vest fell over her shoulders, and the sheer comfort she found in the borrowed underwear erased the few remaining thoughts from her mind. Paused by the side of the bed, she tapped Cadence's thigh below the hem of her shorts. "Am I allowed back in?"

    "I'll have to think about it," Cadence said, her grin fading as she took in the sight of Elise's waiting body. "Jeez, Ellie. Are you ever not the most adorable?"

    Gripping one of her arms, Elise could only laugh at the lack of nervousness Cadence's gaze inspired in her. "Try catching me after a week of uni lectures and work talk," she groaned as she settled beside Cadence and let her girl wrap her arms around her shoulders. "We can't all be utterly gorgeous all the time like you, rockstar."

    "It's my burden to bear," Cadence said with a heavy sigh, planting a kiss on Elise's forehead as the girl cracked an amused smile. "And yours too, killer. Don't even try to argue, alright? You're stunning, and I'll say it more than enough for the both of us."

    "I..." Elise stuttered. Her mind ground to a halt, and her heart seized the opportunity to burst its dams of pent-up passion. "I love you, Cade."

    Her girl's fingers paused their roaming down Elise's back. "Ellie..." Cadence began, an avalanche of unspoken words faltering at the tip of her tongue. "That's...intense."

    A shiver cracked through the cabin's walls, and the sheets chafed against Elise's bare legs. "Oh my god. I'm so sorry," she said as she pushed herself away, too hot and flustered to hide in Cadence's embrace. "That was the worst way to say that. I never meant to just throw that out at you, I swear."

    "What did you mean to do? Give me three days' notice?" Laughs punctuated the space after Cadence's words, yet the glassy sheen to her eyes refused to budge. "It's okay, I really care about you too. And I meant it when I said I've got you, whatever happens. I'm with you, Ellie."

    "You are?" Elise whispered, gathering the little courage she retained to meet Cadence's eye. Her girl's hazel gems banished the surrounding darkness, and their lingering gaze pulled Elise closer with elegant ease. "I'm with you too, Cade, every step of the way."

    Releasing a long-held breath, Cadence pulled Elise into a tight hug. "Even after all the shit I've dragged you through?" she asked with a raised eyebrow before burying the girl's face in her chest. "You're either crazy or a keeper. Maybe even both, if I'm lucky."

    Elise ran her fingers along the tips of Cadence's hair, her eyes shut as the girl's soothing body heat washed over her. The peace she had found there before eluded her now, however, as her mind lurched out of its stupor. Cadence's presence felt just as comforting and reassuring as before, and Elise's heart still skipped at the feel of the girl's breath on her neck. Yet her mind refused to stop wandering. Despite how wonderful the moment felt, Elise could not forget that Cadence had said everything but the three words she wanted to hear most.