Charlotte’s expression, though, made the joking smile fall off of her lips.
Maybe it had been Charlotte who had figured out how to go back in time and slash Layla’s tires? That’s what her face was saying, anyway.
“You’re kidding.” Her tone left no room for confusion. She sounded angry. Angrier than Sutton thought she’d ever heard, even back then.
Unease and defensiveness skittered through her stomach, and she wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t really think that it’s a great joke.”
“It’s a terrible joke,” Charlotte agreed, “but I would have to assume you’re kidding for your wife to have cheated on you.”
“Well… my comedy chops aren’t that bad, I suppose. So that’s a good thing.”
“Your comedy chops are safe,” Charlotte assured Sutton, her eyes softening as she continued to look at her from across the room. “Did you two live here together? She gestured around them, and Sutton for a moment wrestled with whether or not she should answer.
This wasn’t professional.
But Charlotte was in her home and seemed so genuinely interested, and she’d had dinner with her daughter, and not talking to Charlotte about all of the things she had asked about in the last few weeks took effort. There was something so easy about talking to Charlotte that begged for Sutton to just share with her. Speak to her freely.
And fighting that tonight, when she had no armor—no makeup or nice clothes—on, in her living room, with her daughter sleeping down the hall, after they’d shared a meal together… was too hard.
“No. We had a house in Bethesda that she still lives in. I decided to move here to be closer to work, so it just… worked out.”
Charlotte stared at her, a stormy expression behind those eyes. “I just cannot believe she had this life with you and then cheated. Chose to have a life with someone else. How long were you together, again?”
Sutton blinked widely, surprised at the vehemence in Charlotte’s tone. At the utter emotion in a voice she’d come so used to hearing in the last decade on television, always composed. In the last month, she’d heard it in different tones, but it was always in control.
“I—we got married in 2024, after being together for three years. And everything happened quickly after that. We had Lucy, and two years later…” She shrugged as her tangled her fingers together. “Sometimes I think it should sting less, knowing that she didn’t leave me for just anyone, but for her high school and college sweetheart.”
That’s what she’d said to Regan and Emma and her mother, anyway.
“But, honestly, I think sometimes it’s even harder to know that while I thought she and I were the main love story, I was really just a footnote in hers. Theirs.”
Charlotte rolled her lips. “I’m not quite a fan of… Layla.”
Sutton shook her head, walking to where Charlotte stood, staring at the picture that had started this. “She’s not a terrible person.” Sutton did have several grievances with Layla to this day regarding Lucy, but she’d moved on from most of them. “Besides, she gave me the best thing in my life, so I can’t hate her. Honestly, maybe it’s just me.”
Charlotte arched a perfect eyebrow, incredulous as she stared up at Sutton. “What in the world do you mean by that?”
“I think maybe I just have a radar for falling for people who never quite fall the same way back.”
This was a conversation she would have with a friend; it was a conversation she’d had many times with her actual friends.
But… Charlotte wasn’t quite that, she thought in the silence that followed her words.
God, idiot, Sutton internally cursed herself. Really? Saying this to someone she’d fallen for so completely who had broken up with her? Yeah, even though it had been so long, it still wasn’t a topic she wanted to invite them to open up.
And she was positive Charlotte wouldn’t appreciate it either.
Swallowing hard, she diverted her gaze to the folder Charlotte had brought over with Sutton’s requested hard copy of her notes, which was sitting on her coffee table. She cleared her throat. “You know, we should really dig into these notes!”
Yeah, she cringed at her own enthusiastic subject change.
Before Charlotte could comment, before Sutton could allow herself to look into Charlotte’s gaze and get lost in any way, she instead reached for the papers. “Did you expand a bit on the gubernatorial race? I think that’s the bit of the outline I’d like to start touching on for part two of the outline. You’d been in the House of Representatives for four years by then.”
Professional. Moving on from that foot-in-mouth comment. Good.
“Yes,” Charlotte confirmed, even though it hadn’t been phrased as a question.
Charlotte had been elected in her initial run in 2020. When they’d broken up. Her smiling, victorious face was an image Sutton had never been able to forget while she’d still been nursing her wounds from their kind of breakup. Or whatever they could call it. And then Charlotte had been re-elected twice after that.
