Sheltering Dunes by Radclyffe

muttered.
    “Yeah,” Flynn sighed. “That might be why I never get laid.”
    Mica laughed. “You are some kind of weird chick.”
    “I think you told me that already.”
    “So you’re not looking to get laid?” Mica cut Flynn a disbelieving look.
    “No, I’m not.”
    “So what do you really want?”
    There it was, the question she’d been trying to answer ever since she’d left the seminary. What did she really want? Some things she knew for certain. She needed to feel useful. She needed to know that her life meant something. The best, the finest way she knew of doing that, was to make someone else’s life a little better. She’d grown up believing from as far back as she could remember that the way for her to serve was to minister—to provide a safe place to speak, to listen without prejudice, to guide without judgment—that had been her goal. She had never felt the need to convert others. She believed people came to God in their own way, in their own time. Her mission was to help, and if she was truly lucky, to heal. In the months since she’d left the seminary, she’d cared for the body instead of the soul. She should have felt more satisfied. She should have felt if not peace, at least solace. But she didn’t.
    They’d slowed until they were barely moving. People streamed around them, laughing, talking, making plans, living. Irrepressible humanity. Flynn tried to remember the last time she’d felt like she was living, and she remembered Allie in her arms. She took a deep breath.
    “I’d like some company,” Flynn said. “I don’t feel like being alone right now.”
    “Wow, your lines really do need a little work. That doesn’t exactly make me want to let you jump my bones.”
    Flynn laughed. “I was thinking we’d have a late dinner and then I’d walk you home. Like we agreed.”
    Mica chewed her lip, glanced behind them, and lifted her shoulder. “Sure. Why not?”
    Why not? Strangely lighthearted, Flynn decided not every question needed an answer.
     
    *
     
    Allie leaned against the corner of Vorelli’s restaurant, shielded by passersby, and watched Flynn and Mica carry on a conversation in the middle of the street as if nothing else was going on around them. Flynn had a way of doing that—zeroing in on you until you felt like the entire world disappeared and all that mattered was what was happening in that instant between the two of you. Allie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to church, but she remembered what it felt like to confide in Flynn, to expose herself. To let herself be comforted. She’d felt safe. Flynn must have been an amazing priest.
    Flynn had given her shelter. No one had ever made her feel quite that safe, not personally, not in her heart—except Ash. Allie could easily have given her heart to Flynn if Ash hadn’t already owned her, body and soul. Still, a little bit of her heart tugged every time she saw Flynn. She didn’t want to sleep with her, she didn’t want to claim even a little bit of Flynn’s heart, but she wanted to see her happy. She loved Flynn like she loved Bri—like she loved few people—all the way deep down inside.
    Every time she saw Flynn, she wondered what could have possibly made Flynn give up being what she must have been so good at. That was a question she was going to get answered one day soon. But right now, she wondered what the hell Flynn was doing. They bumped into each other regularly on shift and off, and she’d never seen Flynn pick up anyone before. She’d had to make the moves the few times they’d gone out. And now Flynn was getting all tangled up with exactly the wrong kind of girl.
    Even if she hadn’t known Mica was hiding something, she wouldn’t have wanted Flynn to hook up with her. Girls like that played girls like Flynn—teasing them, stringing them along, using them. That little dark-haired cutie was a hardcore badass, and if she wasn’t in trouble with the law already, she was headed that way.