Her Reluctant Wife: A Lesbian Age Gap Romance

the air between them like a blade. “This is too much.” Her

tone was so much softer. “It’s all too much. I’m sorry. We can

talk about this later.”

Coralyn was sorry too. She left silently, with a nod, hating

herself. Hating what she’d become. She hated it all the way to

the hospital in Giana’s borrowed car. The thing was so new it

still smelled like the factory. It was spotless. Flawless. It had

to cost more than her mother’s necklace was worth. The

necklace that they’d sold which made her father’s care

possible. Giana made that possible, in a way.

Coralyn was thankful for the lunch bag and the mug to

grasp as she walked into the hospital. At least it was

something to hold her down. Something with some substance

and some weight to it. She needed that more than anything.

She slipped into her dad’s room and was immediately

disheartened to see that he looked the same way he did before

she’d left to get changed and head to Giana’s house, thinking

she could still call the whole thing off. She had her chance.

She’d blown it quite spectacularly to cover her tracks.

One of the same nurses who had been there on and off since

her dad had come to the palliative care ward, Jennifer, came in

a few minutes later. She hovered near the end of the bed, but

she wasn’t checking a chart or doing vitals or anything else.

Coralyn eventually looked away from her dad’s face and up

past the set of blue scrubs to a kind smile.

Jennifer was pretty, like a lot of the nurses. Young. She

looked fresh out of school too. She had a neat French braid in

her highlighted blonde hair. She wasn’t tall or short, and her

looks weren’t more than what other people would probably

call run of the mill, but to Coralyn, she was beautiful because