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Charlotte cleared her throat, folding her hands over the napkin in her lap. “It’s going well; we’ve gotten up to two thirds of the way through the initial proposed content. Sutton’s been amazing.”

Katherine nodded in agreement at that, at least. “I always love when she writes; such incredible talent.” Still, intense blue eyes ran over her face. “What exactly is the schedule like? I’ve never approached writing for this sort of project.”

Charlotte couldn’t help but feel like she was walking into a trap, though, to Katherine’s immense credit, she couldn’t quite see where her feet were about to be yanked out from under her.

She answered cautiously. “Well, we meet in my office twice a week, generally Tuesdays and Saturdays. Review the contents, timelines, anecdotes, that sort of thing?—”

“Not always in your office!” Lucy interrupted. Charlotte had no idea when she’d started paying attention to them rather than being immersed in a conversation with her uncle about video games.

“Lucy, sweet, manners,” Katherine gently admonished her granddaughter.

Lucy looked sheepish for all of three seconds. “Sorry.” She paused, before saying, “’Scuse me… not always in your office!”

Charlotte would not blush.

“Oh no?” Katherine asked, looking at Charlotte, but it was Lucy who answered.

“Nope! Sometimes, um, sometimes Charlotte came here for dinner. And we got lunch out at a café! And Charlotte met us at the park once?—”

“Yeah, and wasn’t the park on a Thursday afternoon? Not Tuesday or Saturday,” Regan interjected from farther down the table, tapping at her chin in “thought.” Emma’s arm, draped around Regan, tightened, but there was a small smirk on her face.

Clearly, since they’d gotten together, Emma found Regan’s commentary more entertaining than she had back in the day.

Charlotte maintained her smile even as she could feel the strain of it. She could do this. “You’re right,” she acknowledged.

And it was true. Two weeks ago, she had met Lucy and Sutton at the park for a half hour. The weather had been unseasonably warm, and they’d been only a ten-minute walk away from where she’d been having her afternoon meetings.

“Ah, I see.” There was a look in Katherine’s eye now, like this had always been her line of questioning.

Oh, why had Lucy been with them? If this was a professional relationship, why did it so often break into other parts of their lives?

Charlotte should have seen it coming, and she felt foolish for not having done so. She wasn’t sure if she thought Katherine Spencer was evil, a genius, or both, for having brought it up under the guise of casual conversation among everyone else.

Likely both, she admitted to herself, with a grudging respect.

She steeled herself for whatever would come next—she was no stranger to answering to intimidatingly strong women, having essentially been raised by one—though it, admittedly, was not what she’d been looking forward to today.

Sutton, in that moment, walked out of the kitchen, pie carefully held in her hands. Though she was in conversation with her father, she locked eyes with Charlotte and smiled brightly at her. Charlotte felt that smile in her chest, hitting and landing so warmly around her heart at the same time that it gave her that feeling in her stomach, the feeling she didn’t quite know how to describe, that only felt with Sutton.

And that, she acknowledged, was why she was here.

She was saved from further questioning as Jack and Sutton retook their seats, and the conversation began to revolve around the food.

“Though the pies are delicious,” Charlotte started, toward the end of the dessert, facing Sutton as she did, “No lemon cakes?”

Sutton flushed extremely appealingly as she shrugged. “Those are going to be just for me. And maybe some for Lucy.”

Winning, yet again.

Charlotte avoided another interaction with Katherine immediately after dinner. Her saving grace came in the form of Lucy, who insisted Charlotte play her in a game of Chutes and Ladders. She’d never played the game in her life, but she was more than happy to oblige. And then obliged to play Go Fish. And checkers, which had personally been her favorite?—

“My grandparents brought me this,” she said as she held out the box to Charlotte, having tugged her by the hand to the dining room after everything had long been cleaned up. “But I dunno how to play.” She looked up at Charlotte. “Do you?”

Charlotte smiled indulgently at the pout on Lucy’s little face that appeared as she didn’t know what to make of the game presented to her. “I do. Do you want me to teach you?”

Lucy nodded enthusiastically, and as they set it out, Charlotte found herself saying, “When I was a little younger than you, my grandmother taught me checkers.” She bit her lip, smiling at the memory. “Granted, she did it to get me ready to play chess, but still.”

She could remember her grandmother telling her how to think strategically, even before Charlotte could properly say the word. And she remembered wanting, more than anything, to impress her grandmother. To win. Then she’d bought Charlotte a chess board at seven, and their games evolved.

“What’s chess?” Lucy asked, staring at the board.

“It’s… similar to this. The boards are the same. Only all of these little pieces”—she held up a checker—“look different. One is called a queen, one a king. One is shaped like a horse. And they all move differently across the board.”

“I want to play the one with the horse!” Lucy exclaimed, lifting her little hands full of the round pieces as if she could trade them in.

“We can work up to it,” Charlotte had answered with a chuckle.

She was saved yet again when she was subsequently drawn into a conversation with Ethan about green energy. This was a true surprise to her, but it was apparently something he was very interested in.

She tried to find Sutton then, after having been separated from her for the few hours since they’d eaten. First, Sutton had been whisked away by Regan when Alex’s boyfriend—name still unclear; Charlotte had yet to hear him truly speak—and Ethan had started cleaning up. She’d then been having an intent discussion with her father.

Charlotte didn’t find Sutton when she stepped into the kitchen. She did, however, find?—

“Charlotte! Just who I’ve been wanting a word with.” Katherine Spencer caught her before she could duck back out of the room. Her tone was somehow genial steel; in an alternate universe, Charlotte might have enjoyed spending enough time with her to learn how to emulate it.

Her luck could only take her so far, it seemed, but Charlotte Thompson didn’t run from a difficult situation.

She nodded, straightened her spine, and walked into the kitchen. “Ah, yes? Do you need… assistance?” She peered around; if she knew Sutton—and she did , she knew she did—the kitchen would be getting deep-cleaned as soon as this was all over.

“I was just starting the second load for the dishwasher,” Katherine elaborated, bumping it closed with her hip.

Charlotte nodded. And waited. She might as well.

“Why did you ask my daughter to write your biography?”

“You’ve said it yourself; she’s very talented,” Charlotte shot back quickly, evenly.

Still, Katherine’s look was unwavering. “She is, very much so. And yet, for a project like yours, you could have gotten many other writers. Ones with more experience writing political biographies. It seems like a very… personal choice to make.”

Charlotte swallowed back an easy rebuttal; she had many that she’d given to her publisher. They’d worked, too, to get them to this point.

Instead, she drew in a deep breath and latched onto her fortitude. “It was personal. Yes. I wanted Sutton because she knows me. And I think she will write a fair portrayal of me.”

“And it had nothing to do with anything more personal?”

Charlotte’s stomach twisted in revolt at the sharpness of her voice, the inquiry of something so, yes, personal to her. “I’m not really certain that’s any of your business, if I’m being honest.”

“It may not be my place to say this much,” Katherine acknowledged easily, “but I think that you are a woman who would appreciate a direct approach rather than to dance around anything, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t tell you that I have concerns.”

Charlotte bit at her inner cheek as she nodded slowly. “I do appreciate a direct approach.”

In a situation like this, yes, she did. No games were really needed here.

“The reality, Charlotte, is that as an individual, as a human, I think you are lovely. I’ve followed your career, and I find you a very impressive woman. In that way, I always have. I don’t think you’re a bad person, and, as a matter of fact, I think you are in many ways quite a decent one.”

Charlotte knew she didn’t hide her reaction well. Her eyes had widened because that was definitely not what she’d expected to hear. “Thank you… I think the same of you,” she returned honestly but cautiously.

“But you shattered my daughter’s heart.”

Her own heart sank, quickly and sickeningly, at the words. They were not angry, not loud, but impassioned and hurt, almost as if she’d somehow broken Katherine’s heart along with Sutton’s.

Charlotte swallowed hard at the reminder. It didn’t matter how much time had passed; she could still see Sutton’s heartbreak clear as day.

“And that… that makes it very, very difficult to like you on this personal level. It’s difficult not to be wary of you because I have seen her be hurt, time and time again. I know you do not have children, but watching your child, no matter how old they may be, be devastated like that…” Katherine rolled her lips, a pained expression sliding over her own features. “It’s difficult to watch.”

It was impossible for Charlotte, then, to hold on to her own feelings of this being none of Katherine’s business. Especially as her words twisted so deeply into Charlotte, achingly so, as she admitted, “I don’t want to hurt Sutton. It’s the last thing I want to do.”

The rawness in her voice, that was the utter truth. It surprised even herself to hear how pleading she was.

Katherine’s eyes widened, too, before she firmed her mouth into a line. “You never did want to hurt her, though, did you?”

The reality of that struck Charlotte with unerringly painful accuracy, twisting inside of her along with everything else. She swallowed hard against the newfound feeling. “No. I didn’t.”

“I know. Because I was there ,” Katherine stressed, her eyes boring into Charlotte’s. “Even the one night I met you in person, I could see it. I knew how you looked at her; I know you didn’t hurt her because you didn’t care.”

“That was a long time ago,” she pointed out. She aimed a measured look at Katherine before taking a deep breath to attempt to level out the unexpected hurt from this reality check that was now lacing through her. “And Sutton moved on.” The living, breathing, Lucy-aged proof was part of that.

Katherine didn’t elaborate on Sutton’s state of being, though. What she said was far worse.

“It doesn’t seem, however, that you did,” she stated quietly, knowingly, in a way that made Charlotte’s heart race and a heat creep up the back of her neck.

Being so seen like that, by a woman who hardly knew her, was extremely disquieting. Charlotte didn’t have the words to respond.

Katherine nodded slowly. “It may not be my place, but I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity while I have it. Sutton may be as soft as a person can be, in a great deal of ways, in the best of ways”—the words were said with utter affection—“but my daughter will do what she wants to do and with whom she wants, as she also has a determination that I admire. She knows what she wants, and no matter what I could say or think—or anyone could say or think—she is going to partake in her own actions, and she should.” She nailed Charlotte with a final look. “I would very much just like you to truly think about yours.”

Charlotte’s heart pounded in her chest as Katherine seemed to take her first true, deep breath all day—having successfully stolen Charlotte’s ability to—and stepped around her, through the doorway and out of the kitchen.

It was only when she was gone that Charlotte allowed herself to reach out and brace her hand against the counter. She leaned on it heavily, gathering herself.

Katherine Spencer, on one hand, didn’t think she was a terrible person. Which was great. She did, however, know likely every detail about how Charlotte had made Sutton feel back in the day, and, worst of all, she could read Charlotte’s feelings for Sutton like a fucking book.

A low whistle sounded from behind her, and she squeezed her eyes closed, breathing deeply for a second to pull herself together before she turned to see Regan.

Charlotte couldn’t help herself from lifting her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. “I suppose let’s do this all at once, then?” At the very least, there were no more disingenuous niceties that could possibly be in play.

Regan approached her with a smile, though, one that seemed very genuine as she stood shoulder to shoulder with Charlotte in their corner of the kitchen. That alone was a little disconcerting, if she was being honest.

Because Regan was just as strong a protector of Sutton as Katherine was, if her memory served, and one who was far more… openly volatile.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a dressing-down from her like that,” Regan commented.

Ah. That explained the smile, she supposed.

“That makes me feel very special,” Charlotte drawled, biting at the inside of her cheek, as she, hopefully unnoticeably, rubbed her hand over her stomach to settle the twisted-up feelings there.

“ Brutal ,” Regan stressed.

“It won’t be my favorite holiday pastime.”

“Yeah, but… I mean, in-laws can suck, right? That’s why there’s a whole, like, trope about it.” Regan shrugged.

Charlotte opened her mouth to agree before what Regan said really registered to her. “In-laws?”

Regan’s smile was slow and a little devilish, if she was being honest. “I’m not Sutton’s mother ; I know everything that’s happening between you two.”

Charlotte raised her eyebrows, staring Regan down. “Then you know that we are only friends.”

“I know you are both currently deluding yourselves into that, for now, yeah.”

She wasn’t even going to argue the point. Because she was now positive that she wasn’t hiding anything, from anyone. Except maybe Sutton herself.

“Perhaps you would like to make your vaguely threatening commentary now. I vividly recall you were good at things like that.”

Regan didn’t walk into the opening she gave her, though. Instead, she hit Charlotte with a much softer look than she’d ever seen on her in the past. “No,” she said, simply. “Because, like Katherine, I was there, too. Every single day. And I really saw how you looked at Sutton.”

Charlotte refused to be embarrassed by these statements about the past. Refused . She told the heating of her cheeks as much.

“And honestly, she was right: It’s still here. But if I’m being honest? I’d rather have Sutton be falling back into something with someone who looks at her that the way you do, than anything else. Even Layla didn’t get that same… look. Ever.” Regan scowled as she stated the name.

Jesus, was Charlotte going to have to have Autumn photograph her when Sutton walked into a room to discover this look?

“Regardless of what happens as a result of it, I’m not as worried about it this time around. That’s all I’m saying, so you can take that for what you will.”

It really shouldn’t have meant as much to her as it did. Truly. And yet…

“Thank you.” The words rasped out of her honestly.

Regan shrugged. “A best friend’s duty.” She nodded her chin out to the other room. “By the way, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is about to be played. Tradition. You should join.”

“Maybe,” she murmured. She desperately needed a minute.

Regan shrugged again before she took a step toward the door.

“Do your in-laws…” She swallowed, clearing her throat, but she was unable to help her curiosity. “Are you speaking from experience? About Emma’s family?”

Regan crowed with laughter. “As if! They fucking love me.” That cackle followed her out into the living room.

Charlotte would lie if she said it didn’t lift her spirits in some way.

She remained there, in the kitchen, for she wasn’t sure how long, replaying both conversations in her mind. She tried to sort them, organize them, and figure out how they made her feel and then what to do with it all.

A warm touch landed on her wrist, dragging her out of her introspection, and she turned to face Sutton.

“Hey.” A big, genuine smile washed over Sutton’s face, lighting her up at the same time that it shot right through everything inside of Charlotte. “We’re watching a movie in there. Tradition.” A quiet, uncertain look filtered over her face. “Do?—”

The thoughts that had been circling everything Katherine had said came to the forefront of her mind. “Sutton, I…” she began, “I want to tell you that I am so sorry. For the past. And I hope you know that.”

You shattered her heart . The sentence echoed in her ears, and she didn’t want to be that person. She didn’t want to be the person who had shattered Sutton Spencer’s heart, even if she already was.

A flurry of emotions moved over Sutton’s face—surprise, confusion, contemplation, and then, finally, a flash of irritated exasperation. “Who said something to you, and what was it?” Her hand squeezed gently, encouragingly at Charlotte’s wrist. “Was it my mom?”

Charlotte shook her head. “Honestly, it’s not important.”

“It is , because I invited you here. Because I want you here. And I don’t want someone to say something that makes you look like—like that.” Sutton gestured at her face. “Like you’re sad.” She slid her hand up Charlotte’s arm, stroking it.

The touch was comforting, bafflingly so. Reassuring. And still, she latched onto it.

Still, she shook her head. “Really, darling, it’s fine.”

She realized as she said it that she meant it.

At the end of the day, Charlotte had no intentions of leaving Sutton’s life, in whatever capacity Sutton was ready to allow her in it. If Katherine needed to air her grievances, Charlotte would take it. She wasn’t someone who wilted down; she could handle whatever came her way.

“I just… we have never properly talked about it. And that’s all right. But I hope you know,” she repeated quietly.

Sutton was quiet, too, taking her in, her own expression somber as she whispered, “I know.”

Sutton slid her hand down to Charlotte’s and laced their fingers together. When she squeezed, Charlotte felt it. In her chest, in her stomach, everywhere.

“Come. Watch the movie,” Sutton coaxed, tugging her hand.

She wouldn’t say no. She’d never say no to this.

To the time she got to spend with Sutton in any capacity. To the feeling, the lightness, Sutton inspired in her. It was addicting and beautiful and the best she had ever felt.

And it certainly was not friendship, in any way.

As it happened, Charlotte wasn’t entirely positive how long she could continue to act like it was.