Her Collateral Bride: A Lesbian Age Gap Romance

always changing, always there. It wasn’t just pretty to look at.

The water represented something to her that she was missing

in her life. It was soothing. Peaceful. Quiet. Mysterious.

Strong. Haley had asked her about it in the car that day and

she’d said nothing. She wanted to tell her now. She wouldn’t

because it wouldn’t make sense.

“But you would have probably quit anyway,” Haley said

quietly. She swiped at the tears that spilled over and trickled

down her ashen cheeks.

“Maybe,” Claire whispered, her voice stolen away. She

needed to be strong for just a little while longer. “Or maybe I

would have found good people to run things. The restaurant

wasn’t just my dream. That’s not what hurt the most. It was

the betrayal of friendship. Your dad had nothing when I met

him. It was my family’s money we used to finance the

restaurant. It was both of us together that made the place what

it was. His ambition and his greed were worth more to him

than our friendship. I was used and discarded when I wasn’t of

value.”

“If you knew what he’d done, why didn’t you ever say

anything?”

Claire shrugged. “What did it matter, and who would have

believed me? Maybe if I didn’t have so much else going on, I

would have been stronger. I would have fought. It took me

years to get back on track. Years of therapy to deal with what

happened in my marriage. I came out to my mom and sister,

and to the rest of the world, though by then it didn’t really

matter to anyone. I learned how to have a healthy attitude

toward sex, even if what I wanted was what other people

would consider depraved. I needed to be the one in control. I