Chapter 3
The Pacific rolled in several yards away, its steady hush following Charlotte as she walked along the damp edge of the beach.
Sand shifted beneath her bare feet. She carried her heels in one hand while her purse hung from the other, the leather strap pressing into her palm.
A breeze moved through her silk blouse and slipped beneath her blazer, lifting strands of hair against her neck.
What the hell was she doing?
The question circled her thoughts like the foam circling her ankles. Twenty minutes ago she’d been sitting alone on that rock, nursing the last threads of gin-soaked loneliness, and now she was walking beside a woman who couldn’t be older than twenty-five. Maybe younger.
A knot tightened in Charlotte’s stomach.
She glanced sideways at Taylor, who moved with an easy grace beside her, flip-flops dangling from her fingers.
Even in the moonlight, Charlotte could make out the smooth line of her jaw, the way her hair lifted in the breeze.
Beautiful didn’t begin to cover it. And that voice—Christ, that voice had stopped Charlotte’s world mid-rotation.
She’d heard talented singers before, plenty of them, but there’d been something so raw and honest in Taylor’s performance.
Talent didn’t erase twenty years, though.
The sand dragged at her steps. When Taylor had been in high school, she had been building her career, establishing herself, becoming the woman who didn’t do things like this.
The woman who didn’t lean into strangers on moonlit beaches.
But she had. The memory of Taylor’s face inches from hers sent heat flushing up her neck despite the ocean breeze.
For one terrifying, electric moment she had felt gravity rewrite itself.
Taylor’s lips had been right there, close enough that she had tasted the salt air between them, and every rational thought had simply vanished.
Like she was twenty-five herself. Like she hadn’t spent the last two decades learning better.
The waves hissed against the shore, each retreat leaving dark wet sand behind. She focused on the sound, the rhythm that should have soothed but only reminded her of how her pulse had felt when Taylor had been close enough to kiss.
“You’re quiet,” Taylor said.
She swallowed. She couldn’t explain that she was cataloging her mistakes, adding up the years between them like evidence in a case against herself. She couldn’t admit that part of her—the part that had been dormant since Diane left—kept whispering that it wanted to forget the math entirely.
“Just thinking.”
She was a psychology professor, for God’s sake.
She knew better. She’d watched colleagues crash and burn in exactly this scenario—distinguished faculty members seen with women young enough to be their daughters, their reputations dissolving like sugar in rain.
The same sick twist now lived under her own ribs.
Except this didn’t feel like the same thing. The way Taylor had listened when she mentioned her divorce, the careful way she’d offered comfort without judgment—that landed somewhere deeper than Charlotte’s usual defenses, and the unfamiliar warmth made her stomach tighten even more.
But it didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter.
If she had turned down the woman at the bar because she was too young, why was she even entertaining the idea of kissing Taylor? The woman at the bar hadn’t been subtle, all glossy lips and eager confidence, and she had felt nothing except a tired wish to be left alone.
Taylor had only looked at her.
That had been enough.
“What are you thinking about?” Taylor asked, cutting through the noise in her head.
She exhaled through her nose. She tightened her grip on her heels and watched the tide pull a silver seam across the sand.
“I told you I turned down that woman at the bar because she was too young?”
Taylor glanced over. “You mentioned it.”
“Well, it’s bothering me that I nearly kissed you.”
Taylor stopped walking.
Charlotte took another step before she noticed. Sand dragged beneath her foot. She turned back and found Taylor staring at her, her face open with such startled disbelief that her own stomach clenched.
“Why would it bother you?” Taylor asked.
“How could it not? I’m probably twice your age.”
Taylor’s mouth curved with rueful patience. “I really doubt that.”
Charlotte lifted her eyebrows and waited.
“I’m twenty-seven.”
The number landed in her body before her mind could organize it.
Twenty-seven. She hated that she felt relieved.
Twenty-seven put Taylor closer to thirty than twenty, which was a ridiculous distinction and not one she could defend in any room with decent lighting.
Taylor was still young. Young enough to have been born after she had finished graduate school.
Charlotte didn’t know why she was still thinking about this. The moment had passed. They weren’t going to kiss. She had ruined it for the second time that night, first by pulling away and now by turning a walk on the beach into an ethics seminar no one had requested.
Taylor stepped into her space. The slow certainty of it made her stomach drop the way it used to when the elevator in her old building plunged too fast. The heels in her hand suddenly weighed ten pounds each, useless anchors dragging at her fingers.
Taylor reached up, warm fingertips brushing a wind-tangled strand of hair behind her ear.
The touch lit a live wire straight down her spine.
Her breath caught somewhere high in her throat.
“Why are you so worried about being with someone younger than you?” Taylor asked. Her voice had gone low, rough at the edges.
The question lodged in her chest. She should move. She should list every ethical reason, every statistical improbability, every lecture she’d ever given on power and projection. But Taylor’s hazel eyes held hers, steady and patient, and every scrap of theory in her head dissolved.
“Because I’m not far off fifty,” she heard herself say. The words scraped out. “And I don’t want to be a cliché.”
Something shifted in Taylor’s expression. Not pity. Not amusement. Just a slow, knowing curl at the corner of her mouth that made her knees feel suddenly unreliable. Taylor’s palm slid down to cup the side of her face.
“I think you really wanted to kiss me,” Taylor said, quiet, certain.
Her thumb traced the curve of her lower lip with agonizing patience, giving her every chance to pull back, to step into the surf, to remember who she was supposed to be.
“And I hate that you pulled away. Because I wanted to kiss you too.”
The words sank into her like warm oil. They didn’t argue with her age or her fears. They simply named the want that still hummed between them.
Charlotte’s heels slid out of her hands.
Taylor leaned in, close enough that she could feel the warmth of her breath against her own mouth. She didn’t close the distance. She waited—steady, confident, unbearably sexy in her stillness—until her own hand tightened on the front of Taylor’s shirt like it had a mind of its own.
The choice, suddenly, felt like it had never been a choice at all.
“Stop thinking for just one minute,” Taylor whispered against her skin.
The request slipped beneath her defenses before she could turn it into an argument. Thinking had always been how she kept herself intact. She could name the risks, identify the distortion, predict the regret waiting on the other side of this moment. She could explain every reason to step away.
None of it helped when Taylor’s mouth came closer.
Taylor closed the final inch, her lips pressing against hers.
The contact sent a fine tremor through her knees and into the hand she’d clenched against Taylor’s shoulder. An ache gathered beneath her ribs. Taylor didn’t take more than she gave. She waited there, barely touching, and that restraint loosened something she had held tight for years.
She turned into the kiss.
Taylor’s mouth softened beneath hers, and the small sound she made traveled straight through Charlotte’s chest. It carried no triumph, no expectation. Only surprise, followed by a warmth Charlotte recognized with frightening clarity.
She had missed being wanted.
And she hadn’t understood how much until now.