Her Collateral Bride: A Lesbian Age Gap Romance

Jenny ever been in love before? Was that longing in her voice?

Had she ever had options? Was there someone she’d left

behind? Someone she wanted, and thought about, regretted,

and dreamed of?

“Do I?”

Jenny nodded. She turned back to the window, back to the

dark water and the rolling yard, the small strip of beach. “You

do.”

“How ridiculous would I be? A thirty-five-year-old woman

falling for a twenty-one-year-old girl after a lifetime of denial,

of keeping myself in check, in control?”

“I’d say,” Jenny whispered softl

y, “that sometimes things

are beyond our control, even when we seem to have an

ironclad will. Sometimes we do things because we can’t stop

ourselves from doing them. Sometimes they’re wrong, but that

doesn’t really matter. Sometimes we feel things and that can’t

be stop and won’t be stopped. I would say that if she feels the

same way, it’s not ridiculous at all. Tough? Yes. Going to be

difficult to get through? Probably. Tons of obstacles in your

path? Absolutely. Impossible? Not impossible.”

Why did it sound like she was talking to herself and not to

Claire at all?

“Not impossible,” Claire echoed. She was talking to herself

too. Convincing herself. She shivered when she thought of a

future, not the way she’d imagined it. Now when she thought

of it, it looked so different. Like the water. So much the same

on the surface. So mysterious beneath.

“You still up for eating that omelette?” she asked Jenny, a

new lightness in her being that felt very much like