A Little Too Late

by Staci Hart

  “Tell me,” he said through his teeth. “Is it him?”

  “Yes,” I answered with more strength than I felt.

  Everything about him hardened—his eyes, his jaw, his lips, his fingers digging into my arm. “So, you cock-tease all your bosses, is that it?”

  “Do you harass all of your au pairs?” I shot.

  “No, only you.”

  I twisted away, but he grabbed my other arm like a vise, holding me still.

  “Let me go.”

  “I wonder what the agency would think about you and your new boss.”

  “Go ahead and tell them,” I spat. “Just leave me alone.”

  And I was so overwhelmed, so wholly focused on my escape, that I never saw him coming.

  Charlie

  I didn’t think—there was no time.

  The second I saw the way he had ahold of her, when I caught a glimpse of that tall bastard with his hands on her, with my kids between them, I snapped, panic and fear and anger boiling up in me like a furnace.

  I bolted toward them, reaching them before either registered my approach. But when he did, his face flashed in surprise, and he loosened his grip enough for Hannah to rip one arm away.

  I wedged myself between them, looking down at him with so much rage, I thought I might combust.

  “Get your goddamn hands off her.” I bit out the words, my nerves firing and fists squeezed tight.

  The minute he let her go, I shoved him away from her with enough force to send him wheeling back a few steps.

  When he found his footing, he straightened up, smoothing the front of his suit coat.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked, shielding Hannah and the kids with my body.

  He smiled, a smug, cruel expression. “Hannah didn’t tell you about me? Before she was with you, she was with me.”

  Fury flared hot and desperate, betrayal crackling at the wavering edge. “Hannah, take the kids and leave.”

  “Charlie—”

  My eyes were on his. “Hannah,” I warned, and I felt her step back. “Now, what the fuck do you want?”

  He watched her; she hadn’t left. I could feel fear radiating off her and knew she wouldn’t go without me.

  “Just wanted to see our girl here,” the asshole said when he finally looked at me. “Things haven’t been the same without her. She does that to a man. Know what I mean?”

  My stomach heaved, my lungs emptying like I’d been hit.

  “I didn’t, Charlie. I never—” she stammered from behind me.

  “You know,” he kept going, his voice hard and body squared, “Hannah and I bump into each other all the time. I can’t believe she didn’t tell you about me.”

  Realization washed over me, pulling me under.

  And he saw it in my face, his smile widening as he goaded me. “She’s too pretty, too sweet, too innocent for me to let her go without a fight. She’s irresistible, just like her cakes and cookies. I know I couldn’t help myself; it’s no wonder you couldn’t either.”

  Two steps, and I had him by the shirt. “Shut the fuck up,” I hissed, the words wavering.

  But he laughed. “Sorry, Charlie. You’re not the first. I doubt you’ll be the last.”

  With a roar, I cocked my fist and let it fly, connecting with his jaw with a crunch of my fingers and a smack of skin.

  He reeled back, hand shooting to his face. The burning in my hand traveled all the way up to my elbow, every bone in my fingers screaming.

  “You stay the fuck away from her,” I shot, punctuating the command with a jab of my finger.

  He held his jaw and spit a gob of blood on the ground.

  “Why are you doing this?” she cried at him from behind me.

  His eyes moved to her and changed, darkened, pinned her down. “I’m not accustomed to being told no.”

  I took a step toward him. “Well, get used to it. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  He stood for a long moment, sizing me up as I fumed, chest heaving, nostrils flaring, my blazing hand begging through the pain to hit him again. And he must have seen it.

  He rolled his shoulders to adjust his coat, as if it were a board meeting rather than an assault on the street. And with a last look at Hannah—a look that sent an icy chill up my back and to my hackles—he turned and walked away.

  I waited until he was across the street and half a block away before I found the will to turn around. The heat of my anger had burned down, leaving nothing but cold ashes.

  Hannah was crying, and so were the kids.

  I bent to Sammy and pulled him into my arms. “You okay, bud?”

  He nodded. I stood, holding him into my side, reaching for Maven.

  I didn’t touch Hannah.

  “Are you all right?” I asked flatly. “Did he hurt you?”

  She shook her head, her eyes down and guilty.

  “You lied to me.”

  “Charlie, nothing happened.”

  “Have you seen him? Since you left?”

  She nodded. “Twice. He seemed harmless. I swore I would tell you if I saw him again.”

  I took a long breath, my face tight, chest tight. “You’ve shut me out for not telling you about Mary, and now I find out about this? You weren’t home when I came home from work early, so I thought you might be getting the kids. And that was what I found.”

  He was touching you. He’d touched you before.

  I knew the look on his face because I’d worn it. I knew desire for her because I’d felt it.

  I raged on. “Not only did you keep the truth of why you’d left your last job from me, but you also kept the fact that he was stalking you to yourself. I don’t know if you trust me any more than you believe I trust you.”

  Pain lit her face. “Charlie, I—”

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  She jerked back like I’d slapped her, her face paling. “I can’t believe you would ask me that.”

  “That’s not an answer,” I snapped. “Is this some sort of game to you? Am I a pattern? A conquest? What?”

  “Of course not,” she blustered. “I didn’t sleep with him.”

  I looked into her eyes and I wanted to believe her. Deep down, I might have. But in that moment, I could only think of how familiar it all felt. I’d been here before, and it was a place I never wanted to be again, a place I never thought I would be in with Hannah.

  Yet here I was.

  “Please, tell me you believe me,” she begged, her eyes shining with fresh tears.

  “What am I supposed to think, Hannah?”

  “You’re supposed to trust me.”

  “Like you were supposed to trust me?” I volleyed, my lungs burning and aching. “It’s no wonder you didn’t tell me.”

  The blood climbed up her pale neck and to her cheeks. “Like you didn’t tell me about all the times your wife came to see you?”

  “That’s different. I wanted to protect you from her.”

  “So you say, but you wouldn’t be the first married man who wanted more from me. How am I to know you haven’t been seeing her? She came to the school again today, did you know? She waited for me, humiliated me. She wants you, and she thinks I have you, but now, I’m not so sure.”

  It was my turn to be shocked. “I can’t believe you’d say that. I can’t believe you’d think I could want anything to do with her after what you’ve seen, after what she’s done.”

  Tears spilled down her cheeks, her voice broken. “I can’t believe you don’t believe me when all I’ve ever done is try to make you happy. She hurt you, and I never would. And you know it. You know it. I’ve done nothing but be accepting of your circumstance, but at the first sign of trouble, you accuse me of the worst, jump to conclusions—”

  “I’m not jumping to anything. He said—” I tried to say over her, but she didn’t stop.

  “It’s not fair, Charlie. I asked you to trust me, and you can’t. Not with Mary, not with this. You’ll believe whatever you want, and maybe it’s j
ust because she broke you beyond what I can mend. But I won’t defend myself against this. Not this.” She took a shuddering breath. “Do you trust me or don’t you? Do you believe I’ve slept with someone else, that my feelings for you are anything but what I’ve said, what I’ve shown you?”

  And in my hurt and rage and confusion, I said the last thing I should have. “I don’t know.”

  Her chin trembled, brows bent from the weight of her sadness as she drew in a breath. “Then, that’s all there is to say.”

  “I guess so,” I said coolly and turned my back on her, my children in hand, leaving her standing on the sidewalk behind me, watching me walk away.

  19

  Strangers

  Hannah

  I watched Charlie walk away through a sheet of tears, my heart split and spilling.

  He’d cut me open. The pain and shame of what Quinton had done wasn’t enough; Charlie had had to accuse me of the very thing I’d tried so hard to escape.

  I couldn’t follow him. I couldn’t go home because home wasn’t home anymore.

  So I turned on feet that didn’t feel like my own, unable to find the will to stop myself from crying, my face streaked with heavy, fast tears, sobs caught in my throat.

  I didn’t stop until I was at Lysanne’s door. I wasn’t embarrassed when her employer answered the door and ushered me in. I wasn’t relieved when Lysanne rushed into the room and took me into her arms. Because there was nothing to be done, no way to go back.

  She took me into her room and sat me on her bed, coaxing the story out of me. And once I started speaking, I couldn’t stop, not until it was over, the words pouring out of me like my tears.

  All the while, I pictured Charlie’s face, the hard glint in his eyes and the set of his jaw. The betrayal and anger, his disappointment and disgust. After being hurt by Mary and then Quinton, I never thought he would hurt me too.

  And that cut had been the deepest of all, the one that had emptied the reserve of my will, the pain so deep, I could barely breathe. I pressed my palms to my chest as if I could stop the bleeding, but it was no use.

  Lysanne pulled me into her, smoothed my hair, whispered,Shh, offering me no words of comfort because there were none.

  And so I cried until I was empty, until my breath evened and my temples ached.

  “What will you do?” she asked quietly as she rocked me.

  “I … I don’t know. I have nothing with me, none of my things. I … I can’t go over there.” My panic rose again, filling the empty space in my chest. “I can’t. I can’t see him right now. How am I supposed to see him? I can’t … I can’t—” I choked on a sob.

  “Shh, it’s all right. You don’t have to see him. I’ll go get your things, okay?”

  I took a shuddering breath and nodded.

  “And what will you do after?”

  I pulled away and looked down at the tissue in my hands. “I want to go home.”

  She sighed, her hand on my back and her face sad. “I thought you might.”

  “I never should have come here. I never should have left home. Because I don’t belong here, and I never did, no matter how I felt for a moment that I might. I just … I can’t believe …”

  “I know,” she offered. And I knew she did. “I think … I think maybe you should file for a restraining order against Quinton.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t matter for you, but what about the next girl?”

  I met her eyes, pleading, “Please, I can’t talk about this right now.”

  She swallowed, nodded, bowed her head. “I’m so sorry, Hannah.”

  But I couldn’t speak. Because I was sorry too, sorry for things I could never change, sorry for things I’d lost, knowing I would never get them back.

  Charlie

  Two hours passed.

  Hannah didn’t come home.

  I didn’t want her to.

  The betrayal ran deep, too deep to measure, the pain of being lied to—especially about this—overwhelming and final.

  It was a cardinal sin, the ultimate breach of faith and trust. And I couldn’t see her. Not yet.

  Calm resolve wound itself through me, a resoluteness I knew wouldn’t be relieved without some amount of time, if ever. And I had no idea how we would face each other or what either of us would say.

  I wasn’t ready to find out.

  I’d come home with the kids and turned on the television, sitting with them on the couch—Sammy tucked into my side and Maven in my lap. The fact that my children had been present for all of that was salt in the wound. They were both shaken and subdued. Sammy was silent and still, which in itself was a testament to how he’d been affected.

  I stared through the television, my mind turned inward and my nerves shot. She felt like a stranger to me, and I was a stranger to myself.

  When the doorbell rang, we all jumped.

  Hannah, was my first thought. My second was that it couldn’t be her—she had a key—followed by a conflicting wave of relief and disappointment.

  I left the kids in the living room, not expecting who I found when I opened the door.

  It was a girl, a tall girl with long chestnut hair and impatient, accusing hazel eyes.

  “I’m here for Hannah’s things,” she said curtly with a Dutch accent.

  My heart stopped. “Lysanne?”

  She nodded once, her eyes cutting through me.

  I stepped out of the way to let her in, and she rushed past, heading for the stairs.

  “Let me show you down,” I offered.

  “I’ll manage,” she shot.

  I followed her anyway. “Is she … is she all right?”

  Lysanne wheeled around, her face full of wrath and fury. “I’ll not speak of her. Will you please leave me to do this alone?”

  I took a step back, straightening up. “Of course.”

  “Thank you,” she spat and hurried down the stairs.

  I watched her go and ran a hand over my mouth.

  It was then that I realized it was probably over. If you’d told me yesterday that I wouldn’t be completely beside myself at the prospect of losing her, I would have said you were insane. But now, after she’d lied to me, after that man had said what he said, I found myself too full of doubt to fight the feeling.

  So I walked back into the living room and sat with my children until I heard Lysanne struggling up the stairs with Hannah’s suitcases.

  I made my way over to help, but she shot me a look that would have been enough without her telling me that she had it.

  And as she wheeled them toward the door, I found myself asking the one thing I needed to know.

  “Is she coming back?”

  Lysanne turned to pin me with her hazel eyes and said, “No, Charlie, she’s not.”

  And then she was gone, and so was my future.

  20

  Gone, Baby. Gone

  Hannah

  “I hate this,” Lysanne said sadly from where she sat on her bed, watching me pack the few things I’d unpacked the day before.

  “So do I,” I answered simply, honestly. “I think we can both agree that this isn’t the career path I was meant to take. It’s time I go home and put all of this behind me.”

  Lysanne shook her head. “But what will you do at home?”

  “For a while, maybe nothing. I need to sort through what happened. And then maybe I can figure out what I want, what I want to do, who I want to be. Being here was supposed to help, but it’s only made things harder, and now … now I’m more lost than ever.” Tears burned the corners of my eyes and the tip of my nose. “This has been too hard, too much, and I don’t want it anymore. I never should have come here.”

  She slipped off the bed and to my side, taking one of my hands in both of hers. “Don’t say that,” she said gently.

  “But it’s true. Nothing good has come of this, only pain.”

  “Charlie wasn’t all pain, was he?”

>   “No, but that’s why losing him is so much worse. It would have been easier if he’d been like Quinton. It would be easier if I could hate him. But I don’t hate him at all.” I tried to take a breath, but it hung and skipped in my chest. “Even after he hurt me, I can’t hate him. I think because … because …” I looked down at my hands.

  “Because you love him.”

  I nodded, the tears I’d wanted to keep away filling my eyes. “And he’s not wrong. I should have told him just as much as he should have told me about Mary. I asked him for honesty I couldn’t give to him and demanded trust I couldn’t return.”

  She frowned. “You not telling him about Quinton isn’t the same as him keeping Mary from you.”

  “But it is, in its way. This is why he doesn’t trust people. She hurt him that badly, betrayed his trust in the most unforgiving way. And as far as he believes, I did something too close for his comfort.”

  “You’re making excuses for him.”

  “No, I’m not,” I insisted. “I haven’t forgiven him for what he said and did. I only mean that I understand him. But there’s nothing left to say. I’m ready to go home—I was ready before I met Charlie. I don’t belong here, Lysanne. All I have left for me here is you, because I’ve lost Charlie. What am I supposed to do? We hurt each other too badly to go back.” I shook my head. “I’m through fighting. It’s time to be done with it.”

  “But what if he was sorry? What if he tried to make it all right again? What if he told you he didn’t mean what he said?”

  “How could I believe him? He told me the truth. He didn’t know if he could trust me. He lied to me about Mary, kept his meetings with her from me. He accused me of seducing him and Quinton, took Quinton’s word over my own. That’s what hurts the worst, and, now … now, I’m just tired. We’re a dead end, Charlie and me.”

  “I just … I wish things were different.”

  “So do I. But Charlie looked into his heart and couldn’t see the truth. I know he’s been hurt, but I never did anything but give him everything he’d asked for. And all I asked for was this one simple thing—trust that I’d proven to him I was worthy of—and he couldn’t give it to me.” Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, and I swiped at them, hating them, hating the gaping hole in my chest and my aching heart that sat inside.