Page 14 of Say You Want Me
What if Charlotte had slept with her student?
No. No. That was so unlikely. This was all just a misunderstanding.
There had to be some mistake, some simple explanation that would unravel this knot of dread coiling in her stomach.
This was just a coincidence. It had to be.
Taylor could be here for any number of reasons. She could be visiting a relative that works in this department. Right? Something logical and harmless like that.
Taylor stood, slow and deliberate, her body unfolding from the chair with the same effortless grace she’d had on the beach.
The air thickened in Charlotte’s throat, Taylor’s scent wrapping around her—sun-warmed skin, the clean bite of detergent on her clothes. It flooded her nostrils, her lungs, pulling her under like a riptide back to that night—the weight ofTaylor’s hips against hers, the sharp gasp against her collarbone, the way her name had cracked in Taylor’s voice when?—
“Please tell me you’re not Professor Reid.”
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 toobright. 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.
