Chapter 10
The words left Taylor’s mouth before she could stop them, a raw scrape of sound that didn’t feel like her own voice.
Her throat had gone tight the instant she recognized the woman walking toward her, the same woman who had slipped out of her apartment before dawn without a word, without a note, without a last name.
Charlotte. Here. In the psychology department, carrying a briefcase and wearing a stylish navy blazer and slacks like she owned the place.
The folded yoga pants flashed behind Taylor’s eyes.
The rinsed wine glasses. The cold, empty pillow where Charlotte’s head should’ve been.
Three months of telling herself it didn’t matter, that it was just one night, that she’d been stupid to think it meant anything at all.
Three months of shoving the memory of Charlotte’s mouth on her skin into a locked box at the back of her mind and throwing away the key.
And now Charlotte stood three feet away, gray-blue eyes wide with the same shock that was currently detonating inside Taylor’s chest.
Taylor’s pulse thudded hard up along her temples, a sick, hot pressure that made the fluorescent lights overhead feel too bright.
Her palms had gone damp against her thighs.
She could smell Charlotte’s perfume, something subtle and expensive, the same scent that had clung to Taylor’s sheets.
The same scent she’d pressed her face into, pathetic and furious, before stripping the bed and shoving everything into the washing machine.
Charlotte’s mouth opened, then closed. No words came out.
Taylor’s stomach dipped, fast and sick, like her body had missed a step.
“I’m waiting for Professor Reid,” Taylor said, her voice tighter now, barely containing the tremor underneath.
She gestured at the nameplate beside the door, and Taylor watched Charlotte’s gaze flick toward it, watched the color drain from her face.
“Please tell me you’re not Professor Reid,” Taylor said again.
The silence that followed pressed in on her ears. She could hear the distant click of a door closing somewhere down the hall along with the rush of blood in her own head.
Charlotte’s lips pressed together. Her fingers tightened around the handle of her briefcase until the knuckles went pale.
Taylor’s jaw clenched so hard her teeth ached.
She’d transferred here for a reason. One year.
One year to finish her degree, to get the credentials she needed to work in social services, to help kids who were aging out of the foster system with nowhere to go.
She’d spent the summer working at a bar, looking for any paying singing gig she could find, saving every dollar, and when she’d packed up her apartment and driven here, she’d felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope, real, solid hope that she was finally on the right path. She’d always wanted to be a professional singer, but life just hadn’t worked out that way. So this was her plan now. Get her degree and help people.
And now Charlotte was standing in front of her, looking like a deer caught in headlights, and Taylor realized with a cold, creeping dread that she might have slept with her psychology professor.
The woman who would be grading her papers. The woman who held her academic future in those elegant, manicured hands.
The same hands that had gripped Taylor’s hips hard enough to leave bruises.
“Say something,” Taylor said, and her voice cracked on the last word. She hated how desperate she sounded, how young and stupid and exposed her voice was even to her own ears. “Tell me it’s not you. Tell me you’re someone else.”
Charlotte swallowed, her throat working. Her eyes, those intelligent gray-blue eyes that had looked at Taylor with such naked want in her apartment, were glassy with something that looked too close to fear.
Charlotte didn’t answer.
She just stood there, jaw tight, and then she turned toward the door with the brass nameplate that read Professor Charlotte Reid and slid a key into the lock. The click of the deadbolt retracting sounded impossibly loud in the quiet hall.
“Well,” Taylor said, and the word came out flatter than she intended, edged with something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I guess that answers my question.”
Charlotte pushed the door open and gestured inside. Her hand was steady, but Taylor caught the way her fingers curled too tightly around the edge of the door, the knuckles blanching. “Please. Come in.”
The professionalism in her voice hit Taylor like a sharp shove. Three months ago, that same voice had been ragged against Taylor’s throat, begging for more. Now it was calibrated to the exact temperature of a faculty meeting.
Taylor walked past her into the office, close enough to catch the familiar scent of Charlotte’s perfume again, and the collision of then and now made her stomach tilt.
The sensation was like stepping off a curb in the dark and finding the ground two inches lower than expected, that same sudden drop, that same jolt up through the knees.
The office was exactly what she would’ve expected from someone like Charlotte, and the realization made Taylor’s skin prickle.
Bookshelves lined two walls, crammed with textbooks and journals, the spines arranged with a precision that bordered on compulsive.
A small potted plant sat on the windowsill, its leaves glossy and well-tended.
Framed diplomas hung behind the desk, and Taylor’s eyes snagged on them despite herself.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Taylor didn’t sit. She turned in the middle of the room, her arms crossed tight over her chest, and watched Charlotte move toward the desk with the stiff, deliberate gait of someone forcing herself forward one step at a time.
The briefcase landed on her desk with a soft thump.
Charlotte pulled out the chair behind the desk and lowered herself into it, her movements controlled a little too carefully, like if she loosened her grip for one second she’d fall apart.
Terror sat in the tightness around her eyes.
It was subtle. Taylor had to give her that.
Charlotte’s face was composed, her posture erect, but her gaze kept flicking to the door and back, and the pulse at the base of her throat was beating hard enough Taylor could see it from across the desk.
Those eyes that had looked at Taylor with such raw hunger were now flickering with something closer to panic.
Taylor’s frustration crested. Heat gathered at the back of her neck.
This woman had spent hours exploring every inch of her body with her mouth.
This woman had made her come so many times she’d lost count, had held her afterward with a tenderness that had made Taylor’s chest ache, had looked at her like she was something special.
And then this same woman had vanished before sunrise.
And now she was sitting behind a desk like they were strangers.
It was so hard to comprehend.
Taylor dropped into the chair across from her. She didn’t bother crossing her legs or folding her hands in her lap.
“You’re enrolled here,” Charlotte said. It wasn’t a question, not really, but there was a tremor underneath the words, a thin crack in the professional veneer.
“I transferred from my local community college,” Taylor said.
“I just got here this morning, actually. So I’m a bit behind.
I wanted to meet each of my professors before classes really got going.
Explain why I missed the first week, introduce myself properly.
” Taylor heard how absurd the sentence sounded once it left her mouth.
“Obviously, this conversation won’t be like the other ones I’ve had today. ”
Charlotte’s throat worked again with another tight swallow.
The top button of her blouse sat open, just enough for Taylor to catch the pale line of her collarbone, and the sight sent a current straight down through Taylor’s stomach that had nothing to do with anger and everything to do with memory.
She hated her own body a little for that.
“No,” Charlotte said, her voice barely louder than the hum of the air conditioning.
“I’m in your class,” Taylor said, pulling at the hem of her sleeveless black top. “Psychology of Interpersonal Relationships. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, apparently.”
Charlotte’s spine locked as if something had snapped into place. “I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but I promise to treat you the same as every other one of my students. Please don’t ever doubt that.”
The fear radiating off Charlotte was almost tangible. Charlotte wasn’t just trying to cover her tracks. She was terrified. Her career, her standing, everything she’d built in this building was hanging by a thread, and she thought Taylor held the scissors.
The sharp edge of Taylor’s anger began to shift into something quieter. She’d moved here to earn a degree and get into social work, not to burn someone else’s world to the ground. Being bitter about a three-month-old one-night stand wouldn’t get her through her senior year.
She needed to be an adult here.
“I believe you,” Taylor said, keeping her tone level, stripped of the bite that had been there a moment ago. “And you don’t have to worry about me. Your secret is safe. What happened at the coast stays at the coast.”
Charlotte blinked, her eyes softening as she let out a long breath. Her shoulders dropped an inch, the rigid posture finally giving way.
“Thank you,” Charlotte said, her voice thick with genuine relief.
She lowered her gaze, her fingers reaching up to touch the delicate silver necklace at her collarbone.
“I’m sorry, Taylor. I’m so sorry for this whole situation.
And... for how I left that morning.” She swallowed.
“It was cowardly, and you didn’t deserve it. ”
The cool air from the overhead vent drifted over Taylor’s bare arms, prickling the skin exposed by her sleeveless black top.
Hearing Charlotte actually say the words, acknowledging the ghosting, calling it cowardly, pulled a sharp, tight sting from deep inside Taylor’s chest, leaving a hollow ache where her anger had been.
“It hurt,” Taylor said, keeping her tone grounded and steady. “I’m not going to pretend it didn’t.”
Charlotte closed her eyes for a brief second.
“I’m not bringing it up to make you feel bad,” Taylor continued.
“I’m just being honest. But I’m not going to dwell on it either.
We’re in a completely different place now.
You’re my professor, and I’m your student.
” She probably should have stopped there, but she kept going anyway.
“And honestly,” she said, letting out a faint breath, “if you hadn’t left that morning…
If we’d kept seeing each other and ending up starting something over the summer, we’d be in a lot of trouble right now. Real, career-ending trouble.”
Charlotte blinked. “We would be,” she said softly.
“So maybe it worked out the way it was supposed to,” Taylor said. She smoothed her hands over her gray pants. “It was one night. One amazing night. But that’s it. I came here to get my degree, and I can’t afford any distractions. I’m guessing you can’t either.”
Charlotte regarded her for a long, careful moment, and Taylor watched the change move through her face in slow motion.
The guarded composure Charlotte had worn since the door closed finally cracked open, and for a heartbeat it wasn’t Professor Reid standing in front of her at all.
It was the woman from the beach. The tenderness that surfaced in those dazzling gray-blue eyes made the hollow ache in Taylor’s chest pulse once, sharp and insistent, but she held herself perfectly still.
“You’re remarkably mature, Taylor,” Charlotte said, and the words came out softer than anything she’d said all afternoon, almost wondering.
Taylor let the compliment land and then let it go. She could feel the temptation to soften with it, to lean into the warmth of being seen that way by this woman, and she recognized the danger before it even fully formed.
Her body knew what her mind hadn’t quite let itself admit: staying close to Charlotte Reid would unravel every careful plan she’d built. So she gathered up the edges of her resolve and gave a single, quiet smile, the kind that drew a clean boundary without anger or cruelty.
“I know,” she said, simply as she got up. “I’ll see you in class on Tuesday, Professor Reid.”
The title landed exactly where she intended it to, a reminder and a wall, and Taylor didn’t wait to watch the effect ripple across Charlotte’s expression.