Charlotte finished rinsing the dish as she murmured back, “I am, too.”
Still, as she reached out to turn the faucet off, the thoughtful look was back on her face, the one from earlier. The one that she’d worn since Sutton had found her. One that told Sutton that she was thinking about something important.
Sutton couldn’t help but ask about it. “Are you?”
Surprised light brown eyes moved to catch Sutton’s, Charlotte’s eyebrows crinkling in question. “What do you mean?”
Sutton worried at the inside of her cheek before she asked the same thing she’d asked earlier. “Who said something to you tonight? About…” How should she phrase this? How should she phrase the big thing between them that they didn’t really talk about? “The past,” she settled on.
She already disliked the idea that someone had said anything, but she disliked it even more now. She wanted this friendship, and her home by extension, to be a place for Charlotte to feel welcome and comfortable.
Charlotte turned to face her, staring intently up into Sutton’s eyes, before she slowly shook her head. “It… doesn’t matter.”
At least it wasn’t denial. Still, Sutton felt bolstered as she put her hands on her hips. “It matters tome. Regan or my mother,” she muttered aloud; they had to be the culprits. “I invited you here as my guest. My friend. And earlier, you looked…”
She struggled to find the right words. Remorseful? Guilty? Just plainsad?
“It truly doesn’t matter, Sutton.” Charlotte’s voice was firm and unyielding and yet somehow still coaxing. Like she knew she could get Sutton to see her point. “It doesn’t matter,” she repeated, “because they said something I needed to hear. And my apology was something I needed to say.”
The rawhonestyin her tone caught Sutton up in the moment. She could only stare down at Charlotte, desperately curious to know what she was thinking. She worried it would be something that might disrupt this peace they’d cultivated in the last weeks, but she was also unwilling to be the first one to speak and break the moment.
“I hurt you. Badly,” Charlotte began. “And I knew I was doing it, even though it was never my intention. I know we don’t talk about it and that it’s been a long time and that you got married and had a beautiful daughter afterward, but taking ownership of the things you’ve done to hurt people is the right thing to do.” Her tone was so sincere, so genuine, and her words were…
Well, there was a reason Charlotte was a popular speaker.
Sutton could admit she had fallen captive to Charlotte as a thinker and an orator just as much as anyone else who’d ever voted for her.
“And you, more than anyone, are someone I’ve never wanted to hurt,” Charlotte finished as she reached out to slowly, deliberately dry her hands, plucking the dishtowel from Sutton’s own. The dishtowel she’d forgotten had ever been in her grasp. “So I am. I’m sorry.”
Her heart had lurched in her chest, though, at the words her twenty-five-year-old self would have longed to hear, even if they weren’t the words she’d longed to hear. And maybe it was more than her body’s reaction to the words.
Maybe it was the reaction to Charlotte saying them andmeaningthem, so intently.
At the intense look on her face Sutton’s heart pounded harder. There was a reason they didn’t discuss this, she thought dimly; her throat was so dry, and her mind was moving a mile a minute.
Their past had been fraught withfeelings, at least on Sutton’s side, and their residual chemistry lingered. While it could often be managed, with the proper ignorance and care, it was best to not ever acknowledge it so directly.
Acknowledging this was… dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Thewhywas being so acutely thrown in her face in the moment. There were only inches between them, and they were breathing in the same air, and the second Sutton ever let herselffeelit was the second her control wanted to slip.
Especially because she recognized the look in Charlotte’s eyes right now. For all Charlotte Thompson was world-class in disguising and mitigating and hiding her emotions with her admittedly skilled poker face, Sutton knew when Charlotte wanted her.
That had been something she’d never had to doubt or second-guess, not after they’d started truly sleeping together back then. The look was the same one now, a hunger that stole over Charlotte’s features, her cheeks flushing just a bit, her voice falling ever so slightly lower.
She heard it as Charlotte murmured, “I know we’re beingfriends, I know that.” Dark eyes slid so slowly over Sutton’s throat, watching the way she could feel herself swallowing heavily, likely noting the way her heart hammered unstoppably at her pulse point. She knew it because she knew Charlotte was just as acutely aware of what Sutton looked like whenshewanted. After all, it had been Charlotte who’d shown Sutton what it was like to reallywantin the first place. “And I know that means I shouldn’t say this…”
She lifted her gaze to Sutton’s. “But I don’t think we were meant to beonlyfriends, Sutton,” Charlotte declared, and Sutton’s mind went reeling with the statement. “I wasn’t put on this earth to be your friend.”
God. Sutton didn’t know how to address this. She hadn’t been prepared for this. She resolutely didnotthink about this because it wasn’t what they were supposed to be doing here.
Yet she couldn’t brush it off. She wanted to. She wanted to tell Charlotte that she knew they couldn’t do this. That they both knew this would be stupid.
But her words failed her because… Suttonwanted.
She wanted Charlotte Thompson with a feverish ache that had never been replicated. She felt it clawing through her, desperate to be acknowledged after weeks of being forced into dormancy.
