Chapter 8
Adeep, heavy throb settled into Taylor’s lower back, radiating through her inner thighs every time she shifted. Her muscles felt bruised in the sweetest way possible, her skin a little sore where fingernails had dragged down her hips in the dark.
She blinked against the morning light cutting through the bedroom’s sheer curtains, her eyelids scratchy, her throat dry.
She closed her eyes and dragged a hand over her face. They hadn’t stopped until past four, tangled in sheets that ended up half on the floor. Sweat dried against their skin, only for another touch to ignite everything again.
Her body still hummed with the ghost of it all. She couldn’t even count how many times Charlotte had made her come, how many times those elegant, capable hands had pinned her to the mattress while that clever mouth made her forget her own name.
The chemistry between them hadn’t just been good—it had been the kind of electric, all-consuming connection that left Taylor’s nerves singing for hours afterward. Every touch, every whispered word in the dark had unraveled something deep inside her.
Standing on the beach, Charlotte had seemed so cautious, so bothered of the twenty-year gap between them, but once she came back here, she had given herself over completely.
Taylor just had to hope that this was the start of something real. That Charlotte would forget about their age difference and give them an actual chance.
Wait… Where was Charlotte?
Taylor turned her head, somehow already knowing that she wasn’t there. The white top sheet lay kicked back, but the pillow was completely flat. The canvas and cotton had gone cold, with no warmth left in the fabric.
She held her breath and listened. The apartment was dead quiet. No water running in the bathroom. No faint scrape of a coffee mug against the kitchen counter.
Her pulse thudded against her ribs. She swung her legs out of bed, her knees trembling slightly as her feet hit the hardwood. She grabbed her fleece robe off the wooden peg on the bedroom door, shoved her arms into the sleeves, and pulled the belt tight around her waist.
“Charlotte?”
No answer.
The bathroom door stood wide open. Sunlight spilled over the empty porcelain tub and the dry pedestal sink. No steam clouded the air. The hand towel hung folded on the rack, untouched.
Taylor turned and walked out into the living room, her chest tightening until she felt lightheaded. Her clothes, the crumpled jeans and shirt from last night, were still scattered across the rug where Charlotte had peeled them off her. Charlotte’s clothes were gone. The tailored blazer, the slacks.
Then Taylor’s eyes landed on the coffee table.
Sitting right in the middle of the dark oak was the pair of black yoga pants she had lent Charlotte the night before. They weren’t just tossed there. Charlotte had folded them neatly.
A metallic taste rose in the back of Taylor’s throat. Her stomach churned.
The wine glasses from the night before were gone from the side table. She walked into the kitchen and looked into the sink. Both glasses were there, rinsed clean of red wine and drying upside down on the plastic mat.
Charlotte had crept around in the dim light of dawn, gathering her things, cleaning up, folding borrowed clothes like a polite guest erasing every trace of a mess before slipping out without a goodbye.
Disappointment slammed into Taylor’s chest, knocking the air straight out of her lungs. She stared at the kitchen, her throat constricting.
Then the second wave hit her, sharper and far more brutal.
She had no way to call her.
Taylor stumbled back into the living room, her hands shaking as she started turning over loose papers near her guitar stand, checking the edges of the coffee table. A napkin with a scribbled number. A business card tucked under a coaster. Anything.
But there was nothing. Just smooth wood beneath her searching fingers.
She stood in the middle of her apartment, stunned, her breath coming in shallow pulls.
She didn’t even know Charlotte’s last name. She’d never said it, and Taylor had been too swept up in the magic of the night together to ask.
Last night had been the most extraordinary night of Taylor’s life, and she had to face the flat, agonizing reality that she would probably never see Charlotte again.
The disbelief turned sour, curdling into anger that settled in the pit of Taylor’s stomach. She hated her for leaving so coldly in the dead of night, treating what they shared like a shameful mistake that needed to be sanitized before sunrise. But more than that, Taylor hated herself.
She had done it again.
She’d fallen headfirst for another older woman who was completely unavailable. She’d let herself believe that this one was different, maybe because of the way they met.
But she was no different than the rest of them.
Taylor was just a secret, a thrilling distraction, a piece of young, warm skin to make a recently divorced woman feel alive for six hours before she ran back to her neat, respectable life where Taylor didn’t fit.