Chapter 25
The last student shuffled out of the lecture hall, and Charlotte didn’t move. Her fingers stayed curled around the edges of the podium, knuckles white, as if letting go might send her toppling forward.
Outside, the campus would be buzzing with end-of-year energy—laughter, goodbyes, the thump of a bass line from someone’s open car window—but in here, Charlotte was already feeling restless, wondering what she was going to do with her summer.
She’d given her final lecture, and Taylor wasn’t her student anymore.
That should’ve been a relief. Instead, it felt like the ground had vanished beneath her feet.
Five months. Five months of watching Taylor sit in her class, spine straight, eyes fixed somewhere just past Charlotte’s shoulder during discussions about attachment theory and emotional vulnerability.
Five months of hearing Taylor’s voice during Q&A, calm and measured, while Charlotte’s own throat tightened.
She’d done the right thing. She knew that. Protecting Taylor’s degree, her own career, the fragile order of her life after Diane—it had all demanded the sacrifice.
But the cost sat heavy in her chest, a constant, dull ache that pulsed behind her ribs with every breath.
This misery was deeper than the divorce.
With Diane, it had been a slow erosion, a shared failure.
This was self-inflicted. She’d tasted something real, something that had lit her up from the inside after years of numbness, and she’d walked away because she was scared.
Charlotte finally unclenched her hands. The skin on her palms tingled as blood rushed back in.
She gathered her notes, her movements automatic, her mind elsewhere.
She thought of Taylor’s hands on her, that first night on the couch—how they’d been both gentle and sure, mapping the planes of her back through the thin silk of her blouse before sliding inside to find bare skin.
The memory of Taylor’s mouth on her, the focused intensity as Taylor had watched her come apart the first time, deliberately drawing out every shudder made Charlotte’s stomach clenched now.
She could still feel the ghost of Taylor’s teeth grazing her inner thigh, the wet heat of her tongue.
But it was so much more than sex.
Charlotte knew that she had real feelings for Taylor, and if she didn’t want to live the rest of her life with regret, she was going to have to do something about that.