Shehadn’timagined Charlotte showing up on her doorstep with some grand romantic speech. She hadn’t imagined Charlotte calling in fake sick to work to think about their relationship. The Charlotte she’d known had to literally be forced out of the office when she’d been actually been ill!
And she certainly hadn’t imagined Charlotte looking at her, with those luminous doe eyes, beseeching Sutton to let Charlotte choose her.
Sutton… she’d tried.
She’d really, truly tried to face reality.
She’d spentmonthsmanaging to put in enough effort to hold herself back from Charlotte. Ever since the trajectories of their futures had merged—even before they’d been sleeping together, butespeciallythen—she’d been managing to hold on to her logic and reasoning, sometimes by a mere thread.
In all of their intimate moments, she’d managed to hold herself back.
But right now, in this literal moment, every thread that had been holding her sanity in place had been severed.
Let me choose you.
Sutton reached out, driven by this need inside of her, as she grasped the collar of Charlotte’s jacket and swiftly pulled Charlotte against her.
Charlotte put up no resistance. If anything, she was already moving to press herself against Sutton. Like she’d been waiting for this moment.
Maybe she was.
Because as soon as Sutton’s lips met Charlotte’s, she felt everything slide into place. Like maybe she, too, had beenwaiting. She hadn’t known it, but that’s exactly what it felt like.
Especially as Charlotte breathed a sigh into her mouth and Sutton felt Charlotte’s arms wrap around her neck, pulling her even closer.
Sutton let herself be pulled this time, still clutching one hand to Charlotte’s collar and holding her close as she used her other hand to cup Charlotte’s jaw. She stroked over the softness of her skin at the same time her tongue stroked over Charlotte’s.
She heard the whimper that left the back of her throat at the same time that she felt it leave her. Unlocked from somewhere deep in her soul, the place that truly had beenwaitingfor this.
It felt sogood, to feel Charlotte’s soft lips brushing against hers. To take Charlotte’s bottom lip between her own, with no rush. To just let herself feel it.
Sutton melted into it. Giving into the touch, into the wanting.
Not in the frantic, hot, needy way they’d been giving into one another for the last couple of months, but the way that just spoke of familiarity. Intimacy. Comfort. Yearning. The wanting ofmorethan physical, in the way that just made the physical things feel even better—this deep, slow kissing included.
“Oh my gosh!” Lucy’s squeal cut into the evening air.
It also cut right through that deep, liquid melting feeling that had slid through Sutton’s bones, that was absolutely certain.
Immediately tensing, Sutton tore herself away from Charlotte, breathing heavily as she turned to see her daughter standing at the end of the hallway on the other side of the mudroom, clutching the glitter-filled painting she’d clearly been coming to show Sutton with both of her little hands.
“Oh mygosh!” her daughter shouted again, her mouth falling open as she stared between them, before landing her attention squarely on Charlotte. “You’re kissing my mama!” Then she looked at Sutton, her eyes wide, eyebrows high on her forehead. “You’re kissing Charlotte?”
Sutton did her very best not to blush in the face of her daughter catching her, indeed, kissing Charlotte, as she lifted her hand to subtly wipe the lingering moisture from her lips.
“Honey—”
“Are you two girlfriends? Are you like Arianne to my other mom?” Lucy asked, pinging her attention back and forth between them. “Does that mean—um!—does—are you gonna move in, like Arianne lives with my mom?!”
Her voice grew louder as she continued her questioning, and that easy, slow feeling inside of Sutton quickly subsided as she was so acutely reminded of why losing herself in Charlotte had been something she’d resisted. And why it most likely was so not a good idea.
Charlotte, for her part, looked much more collected than Sutton felt. Her hair was still a little tousled from the wind outside, her collar askew from Sutton’s hands, her lips plump and red from their kiss. And she didn’t look nearly as “caught red-handed” as Sutton felt. No, Charlotte looked cool as a cucumber, if a little uncertain what to say.
Especially as she locked questioning eyes with Sutton, very clearly leaving the answers up to her.
God, Sutton would love to resent Charlotte for being so calm under pressure.Everykind of pressure. She always had been.
And yet, if anything, it made Sutton feel the opposite.