“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 andgave 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.
11
The entire month of September had felt like slow torture, but stepping out of the psychology building into the cool Friday evening air brought a sudden, welcome looseness to Charlotte’s shoulders. October had arrived with a sharp drop in temperature, smelling faintly of eucalyptus and damp cedar. Her briefcase felt heavy, loaded with unread essays she had no intention of touching until Sunday afternoon.
Surviving the last four weeks had required an embarrassing amount of planning. TeachingPsychology of Interpersonal Relationshipsthree times a week while Taylor sat somewhere towards the back of the lecture hall wasn’t something any textbook had prepared her for. Standing at the podium, moving through slides on attachment theory and relational boundaries, Charlotte had lost her train of thought more times in the last month than in her previous twenty years of teaching combined.
Every time her eyes accidentally caught Taylor’s gaze, the exact wording of her lecture vanished from her short-term memory, leaving her staring blankly at the bright projection screen while her pulse hit her throat. She always managed to recover or at least that’s what she thought. She doubt any of the students noticed. But she did.
She had ended up training herself to look exclusively at the emergency exit sign above the back door or the bright yellow hoodie of a junior in the front row just to keep her voice steady.
Charlotte hated how persistently her mind kept returning to Taylor. It didn’t make a bit of sense. Taylor was twenty-seven, a few years older than the rest of the undergraduates, but age alone didn’t explain the pull. It was the absolute lack of pretense. Taylor didn’t squirm under scrutiny or try to prove herself during class discussions. She possessed a quiet certainty that Charlotte hadn’t felt in her own skin since before her divorce, the same unbothered presence that had drawn Charlotte in on the beach four months ago.
Charlotte cut across the brick courtyard toward the faculty parking lot, her heels clicking a rhythmic beat on the pavement.
“Charlotte!”
Sam Harte stood beside her dark blue sedan, leaving her purse and laptop bag on the passenger seat. Her raven-black hair glinted in the golden light, her silver hoop earrings catching the sunset glow.
Charlotte shifted her briefcase to her other hand and angled her path across the asphalt. “I thought you went home an hour ago.”
“Got held up by a second-year trying to negotiate a new deadline,” Sam said, closing the door. She leaned back against her car, folding her arms over a rich burgundy blazer. “You look like you just survived a marathon.”
“It was a long week,” Charlotte said. The muscles at the back of her neck were tight, but the crisp October breeze felt good against her skin.
“Then you’re going to say yes to what I’m about to propose,” Sam said. “Let’s go to The Blackwood for a few drinks. Around seven?”
The offer hit Charlotte right in the center of her chest, an immediate, physical relief. “God, yes. I need a drink.”
“Great,” Sam said, unbuttoning her blazer as she moved around to the driver’s door. “I’ll see you in a few hours then.”
“See you later.”
Sam flashed a brief grin, slid into her car, and pulled out toward the street.
Charlotte walked the remaining twenty feet to her own Volvo. She really did need that drink after the month she’d had. She had convinced herself that once she got over the initial shock of seeing Taylor in her lecture hall, the attraction would fade into the background. Professional boundaries would take over and that would be that.
Instead, the distance only made her hyper-aware of everything. She couldn’t deny that she was still intensely attracted to her.
The denial had become impossible, a laughable exercise in willpower that Charlotte, with her decades studying human behavior, knew better than to entertain. This wasn’t some passing attraction she could rationalize away—it pulsed through her like a low current, disrupting her thoughts at the least convenient moments. The memory of Taylor’s hands had taken up residence in her nerve endings, surfacing when her guard was down: Taylor’s fingers tracing the curve of her hip, the warm press of her mouth along Charlotte’s collarbone when she should have been grading papers. At night, those memories burned brighter, making her skin feel tight and restless beneath the sheets.
What cut deeper than the attraction was the guilt that gnawed at her whenever she saw Taylor. It lodged under her ribs like something sharp, flaring every time she caught sight of Taylor’s bowed head taking notes, or the way Taylor would absently tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. The memory ofthat beach town apartment—sunlight spilling across rumpled sheets as she’d gathered her clothes with shaking hands—was seared into her with horrifying clarity. She’d been a coward, slipping out before dawn like she’d committed some unforgivable crime rather than shared a night with a woman who’d looked at her like she was something extraordinary.
