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Kara stared at her phone, at Cat’s last message. The weight of the words pressed on her chest with crushing force as she read them over and over, unable to stop herself.
Don’t be naive, Kiera. It was a momentary lapse in judgment fueled by sleep deprivation, and while it was … adequate, it was purely physical. Nothing more.
It had been impulsive, something very heat of the moment, and the moment had certainly been heated.
Cat had forgotten something at the office, something she simply had to have before her 5 AM flight the next morning, and Kara had been called to retrieve it at well after midnight. She had woken to her phone’s muffled ringtone and had barely gotten it out from under her pillow and up to her ear before Cat was snapping instructions like Kara was still her assistant and it wasn’t one in the Rao-forsaken morning.
“Chop, chop,” had ended the call, and Kara had found herself grumbling all the way to CatCo, smacking her cheeks to stay awake throughout the drowsy flight and cursing the day she had interviewed to be Cat Grant’s assistant.
By the time she made it to Cat’s penthouse, however, all her grumblings had dissipated, and she was left speechless at the sight of Cat in leggings and a baggy t-shirt that hung off of one shoulder. Hair messy, face clean of makeup, eyes magnified behind the lenses of one of her trademark pairs of cat-eye glasses, and fingers curled around a tumbler of bourbon.
Cat had snatched the retrieved item from Kara’s hand after waving her inside, rolling her eyes, and saying, “Yes, I am actually human, Kara. I know, shocking. But I do enjoy comfortable clothes in the privacy of my own home. Did you think I wore designer dresses and heels to bed?”
“Um, yes?”
Kara didn’t have a clue how they ended up snapping at one another, a mere foot apart and practically shouting. There had been no worry of waking Carter, as he was with his father for the first two weeks of Cat’s temporary relocation to Metropolis, but Kara had still been timid about raising her voice. Something about the casual flick of Cat’s wrist, though, that well-practiced show of disinterest, pulled it right out of her.
Her heart had been racing as she shouted that Cat obviously didn’t give a rip about her company or the people she was leaving behind, knowing not a bit of it was true but unable to stop the words from jumping free. Chest heaving, she had watched Cat reel back briefly before stepping in even closer, her eyes a warning Kara didn’t heed.
“The company will be fine, Kiera.” She spat the name, deliberate like a slap to the face after having spent the last several weeks addressing Kara by her given name.
“Then what about me?” Kara couldn’t make herself stop. It had been a hard week, too many changes and too much loss pulling her apart from the inside out, and Kara was eaten up with it. Her hands were curled into fists that trembled, and her pulse was so loud in her ears that she could hardly even hear herself speak. “What if I won’t be fine, Cat? What if I need you?”
Kara could see the way the words knocked the wind out of Cat, could see the way she hesitated, gaped, the way her shoulders caved. Their eyes locked for one hard, heavy moment, and then Cat’s mouth was on hers in a whirlwind of movement, and Kara felt something click into place inside her.
When she woke in Cat’s bed to empty sheets and a generic, emotionless note about helping herself to the kitchen, locking up when she left, and taking care, Kara felt like she couldn’t breathe. She had sped around the penthouse, seeking out her discarded clothes to find her phone, and slammed her thumb over the contact at the top of her recent-call list.
Cat ignored her calls the entire day, and Kara was haunted by the little check mark under her text messages signifying that Cat had read them but couldn’t be bothered to respond. She was desperate to talk to Cat, to talk about what had happened between them, what Kara believed had been building between them for likely longer than either of them may have realized; what Kara now wanted with every fiber of her being.
One touch, one tender touch after another, and Kara had been sure. This, what they could be together, was what had been missing.
When Cat finally did respond at a quarter after eleven that night, it was cruel and dismissive, and Kara knew it was Cat’s way of pushing her away, of protecting herself, but it still hurt. It tortured. It gutted, and Kara felt her insides burn with the same sort of desperate fury that had led she and Cat to shouting at one another in the first place.
With one last look at Cat’s message, Kara made an impulsive decision. Impulse had gotten her this far, so she trusted her heart on this one.
When Cat whipped open the door to her suite to find Kara standing there in sweat pants and a t-shirt, glasses slightly askew on her face and hair windblown, the shock was clear in her expression.
“What the hell?”
Kara shifted on her feet, adjusted her glasses on her nose, and forced herself to lock eyes with Cat. “I …” She cleared her throat before straightening her back, summoning her courage. “I drove all night just to see what you look like when you break my heart.”
It wasn’t exactly true, but admitting that it had only taken her fifteen minutes to fly to Metropolis and that she had spent the last three hours stress-eating doughnuts from a 24-hour bakery on the corner and nervously pacing the helipad of Cat’s hotel, didn’t exactly have the dramatic flair she was going for.
Cat’s lips moved wordlessly for a moment, shoulders caving just as they had the night before, but then she stiffened. Her eyes narrowed and her jaw tightened, and her hand curled around Kara’s wrist in a death grip as she jerked her inside the suite and closed the door behind her.
She whirled on Kara, lips pursed for only a moment before she spoke. “Kier–”
“Don’t,” Kara said, cutting her off. “Don’t do that. Don’t talk to me like I’m someone you don’t care about, like we didn’t, like you don’t ….” Kara huffed and fidgeted in place. “Like we don’t mean something to each other.”
Cat planted her hands on her hips and held Kara’s gaze. “We don’t.”
“You know that’s a lie, Cat,” Kara said, shaking her head. “We meant something to each other even before, and what happened last night … it matters. I matter to you, and you don’t get to just brush me off like I don’t.”
Casting her eyes upward, Cat scoffed but Kara could see the way her throat worked around a thick swallow, the way her hands gripped her sides like she was holding on for dear life. “What is with this ridiculous millennial obsession with talking about your feelings?”
She said the word like it left a bad taste in her mouth, and despite the way Kara’s heart was pounding and her eyes were stinging, the expression tugged the corner of her mouth upward.
Stepping forward, Kara closed the distance between them. She hesitated, but when Cat didn’t show any sign of stepping back or stopping her, she timidly reached up and curled her fingers around the back of Cat’s neck. Her thumb traced along the line of Cat’s jaw, and Kara’s lips spread with a gentle smile when Cat closed her eyes at the touch.
“You realize this qualifies as stalking,” Cat huffed, leaning slightly into Kara’s touch.
An easy laugh slipped free as Kara leaned forward and pressed her forehead to Cat’s. “I prefer to think of it as checking in on someone I care about.”
Sighing, Cat reached up and rested her palm against the center of Kara’s chest, shoved her just slightly but not enough to actually push her away. “I don’t talk about feelings,” she said, and Kara nodded against her forehead.
“That’s okay. Just don’t pretend like you don’t have them.”
“You are insufferable.”
“Adequate,” Kara countered, the word from Cat’s earlier message still slightly stinging. She could feel the way Cat winced at having it tossed back at her. She didn’t apologize, though, nor did she defend herself. It simply wasn’t Cat’s way.
Instead, she opened her eyes, rolled them hard enough to hurt, and said, “I’m not stroking your ego, Kara.”
“Not yet.”
Cat raised an eyebrow and clucked her tongue. “Brazen.”
The word drew another easy laugh from Kara, and she pressed the sound to Cat’s lips, let it hum between them like the vibrant, nervous energy of a new beginning.
When they parted, Cat licked across her bottom lip and frowned. “You taste like sugar and grease.”
Kara flushed from cheeks to chest and adjusted her glasses. “I was a little nervous, and there was a 24-hour bakery on the corner.”
Cat’s amused smirk was worth the admission, and Kara had to look down at her feet to make sure she wasn’t actually floating as Cat pulled her in again.