Best Kept Secrets: The Complete Series

by Kandi Steiner

  “Where is he taking you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell him no,” I said without hesitation, as if it was the only solution. “Say you don’t want to go. Say you want to be with me, instead.”

  “I can’t,” she said on a sigh. “I told him I would go already. I promised him I’d give him this chance.”

  Her eyes met mine then, and they were hard again, like the eyes I’d seen the first day I’d been in town, only this time they weren’t empty. They weren’t dead.

  They were alive with a fire I knew I’d lit.

  “And, honestly?” she said. “I don’t want to be with you right now.”

  “Don’t sleep with him.”

  Charlie’s mouth popped open, and she blinked several times, as if she’d imagined what I’d said. “You’re joking.”

  “I’m as serious as an obituary. Don’t sleep with him.”

  “Wow.” Charlie adjusted her bag on her shoulder, shaking her head. “Fuck you, Reese.”

  With that, she was out the door, on her way home, on her way to him.

  And there was nothing more I could do.

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  Charlie

  How was it that I’d managed to wake up in someone else’s life?

  I flipped open the top of my old suitcase with that thought on repeat, my fingers running the intricate stitching on the sides. I hadn’t touched the suitcase in years, since before I’d been pregnant. There were no vacations happening once we’d found out, and definitely none that were even considered after we’d lost the boys.

  That suitcase had been a wedding gift from my parents, one I’d opened with an unmatched joy as I thought of all the places it would see. I imagined it stuffed under a plane on its way to Paris, loaded in the back of our car for a weekend getaway, packed to the brim with souvenirs from a new city we’d see each year.

  And that suitcase had seen a lot, at least, in those first few years of our marriage.

  It’d touched down in Las Vegas the night Cameron and I flew there on a whim, and it had seen the beach when Cameron and I spent our honeymoon in Hawaii. It had even lost a zipper at the old cabin we booked with Graham, Christina, and my parents for Christmas three years after we’d married.

  It had seen nothing but the inside of our closet since that trip.

  But, here I was, cracking it open after years of it collecting dust, my clothes and shoes piled on the bed around it as I tried to figure out how to make it all fit. And all I could think as I packed was that I must have somehow slipped into someone else’s life, because I knew it couldn’t possibly be mine I was living.

  It couldn’t possibly be me, Charlie Pierce, caught in a confusing web of lies and truths, trying to decipher it all and make what seemed like an impossible decision.

  It couldn’t be me in love with two men. It couldn’t be me with two men doing all they could to have me.

  But it was, and I wished I could break down the facets of that reality as easily as I’d chosen what to pack for the weekend, but it was useless. So, I focused on that packing, on that easy task, on something that felt like it could be tackled, since my thoughts couldn’t be.

  Cameron was taking me on a trip.

  I didn’t have any other details outside of that. He gave me a small packing list of things I would need, and told me we would leave tonight after he got off work. He also said we wouldn’t return until Sunday evening.

  I had no idea where we were going, but it didn’t really matter.

  All I knew was that I didn’t want to go.

  I sighed as I tucked my shoes in first, following Cameron’s guidelines to pack casual, comfortable, and warm clothes. And as the methodical task of playing Tetris in that suitcase took over my hands, my mind slipped away, taking me to the one place I dreaded more than wherever it was Cameron was taking me.

  To thoughts of Reese.

  Just a simple whisper of his name in my subconscious made me shove my clothes in harder, wedging them into the spaces with a curl in my lip. It had been just hours since he’d told me about what he’d done, and those hours weren’t enough for me to cool down from the boiling temperature he’d set my blood at.

  He’d slept with her.

  Not only had he slept with her, but he’d fed me another baking sheet full of bullshit cookies before telling me that he’d slept with her. He’d actually had me, too. He’d had me in the palm of his hand, eating up every lie he told, believing that he didn’t love Blake like he loved me, that she didn’t mean anything.

  Stupid.

  He begged me to believe him when he said it was meaningless, the morning they had shared, but how could I? Everything he’d said to me felt hollow and fake now, especially without his hands and lips to seal the promises he whispered against my skin.

  Reese Walker had betrayed my trust, just like my husband.

  And yet I loved him still.

  That was the most frustrating part, I realized, as I shoved another pair of boots into my suitcase with a grunt. He wanted me to believe him, and as much as I didn’t, I wanted to. It was there, that yearning to trust him, to let him take me in his arms and erase all the pain like he had just a few weeks before.

  Had anything changed since then?

  It felt like everything had. Between Cameron asking me for more time and Blake showing up as the unforeseen plot twist in my nightmare, I didn’t know which way was up anymore. Nothing made sense.

  Except that when Reese touched me, when he took my hand in his, I felt it.

  I remembered.

  That small touch alone took me back to that night, to that fort, to that weekend. It took me back to the Incline, to the fundraiser, to every moment since he’d shown back up in my life and reminded me what it was like to be loved.

  To be wanted.

  He confused me more than quantum physics. I didn’t understand how I could hate him and yet still want him with every breath I took.

  And then, there was Cameron.

  My hands slowed at the thought of him, and I paused completely for a moment before I continued packing, tucking my panties into the side pockets of my suitcase with care.

  He had been so patient with me since the night I’d agreed to give him time, and even more so since the night I’d rejected him.

  I knew how badly that hurt.

  It was the first time he’d been on the receiving end of that hurt, and now that he knew what it felt like, I wondered if he understood the pain I’d endured over the last five years. It wasn’t that we’d never had sex, but he had rejected me more times than I could recall.

  Each one left a deeper cut, and none of those had formed scabs yet. They were all still fresh and raw, their pain just as present as it was the first night it existed.

  For the past week and a half, Cameron had been more quiet than usual. He was staying later at work again, but as soon as he would get home, he would sit with me at our dinner table and talk for hours. He would tell me about his day, ask me about mine, and fill the silence between us with conversation that seemed so meaningless, yet made me feel at home again.

  I thought what I really wanted was to be alone, but when Cameron talked to me, I realized it wasn’t true. I actually looked forward to dinner with him — as much as I could, anyway.

  And the truth was, I couldn’t remember the last time we’d talked like that.

  Even if it wasn’t anything substantial, just hearing his voice again, seeing his laugh — it had brought a warmth to my heart that had been absent for far too long.

  And then, last night, he’d asked me to take this trip with him. And I’d agreed.

  “How’s it going in here?”

  His voice startled my thoughts, and they scattered away like birds, flying back to the little cages of my mind reserved for each of them as I zipped up my suitcase.

  “All packed up,” I said, heaving my suitcase off the bed as I turned to Cameron.

  He was already rushing to m
y side, taking the suitcase from my hand with a smile so big it made a new ache split my heart.

  He was so excited, and I only wanted to crawl into bed and not see him for the rest of the night. Hell, the rest of the weekend.

  “I’ll get this in the car, then. Do you need anything else?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll just freshen up and meet you downstairs.”

  “Okay,” he said, bouncing a little as he leaned in to kiss my cheek. “You look beautiful, by the way.”

  “I don’t have any makeup on,” I pointed out. “And my hair is a mess from school. And I’m exhausted.”

  Cameron’s eyes circled my features as I pointed them out, but he just smiled wider.

  “Exactly. And you’re still beautiful.”

  I flushed, a long breath leaving my chest as Cameron took my bag and headed for the stairs.

  After I’d used the restroom, I checked our bathroom mirror, staring at the reflection Cameron had called beautiful. My eyes were heavy, the skin puffy underneath them, and my hair was piled into a messier bun than usual on top of my head. I wore just a casual, mint green, long-sleeve shirt and jeans with my favorite pair of brown boots. There was nothing particularly special about how I looked or what I wore, yet he had called me beautiful.

  He’d said that the day I gave birth to our sons, too.

  A flash of his smile on that day hit me out of nowhere, like a lightning bolt set to kill, but I shook it off, packing that memory away along with the clothes in my suitcase. I’d take it with me this weekend, and, as I’d promised Cameron, I’d try.

  I’d try to give him the chance he’d asked for.

  But as I turned out the lights in our room, fingers trailing the wood of our staircase as I made my way down, I couldn’t hide the hurt that underlined my intention. Because what played in my mind on repeat each time I was with him was that he hadn’t wanted a chance to keep me — at least, not until he’d lost me in the first place.

  And that was one truth I couldn’t pack away.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  * * *

  Cameron

  I had less than two hours in the car to breathe some life into Charlie.

  Ever since the evening of our dinner at The Kinky Starfish, she’d been like a turtle that had retreated into her shell, refusing to poke so much as a toe out, let alone her head. She woke up, went to work, came home, ate dinner, gave me what little energy she could in our conversations, and then she was right back to bed.

  And I was running out of time.

  Two months wasn’t long, and here I’d already lost almost two weeks. I needed to get her away from the house, away from the every day… away from him.

  My heart had done a little jump for joy when she agreed to let me take her out of town this weekend, but it would be a pointless trip if I couldn’t reach inside the shell she was hiding under and coax her out.

  “We’ve got a couple hours in the car,” I told her once we were outside the Mount Lebanon city limits. “Feel free to kick off your shoes and get comfortable.”

  “Okay,” she said softly, but her tired eyes stayed glued on the trees we passed outside her window. She was leaning so close to her door that I couldn’t reach over and rest my right hand on her knee, but I left it open on the center console — just in case.

  Ideas for how to get her to laugh popped through my mind like lottery balls as I drove, and I waited for one to jump out and stick. I should have asked Patrick if he had any ideas before I left, since it had been his suggestion to take the trip. Then again, my time with Patrick was already packed, and I needed every minute he had to filter through my own shit.

  I met with Patrick for the first time the very next evening after Charlie rejected me in our bed, and I’d been with him every day since — save for Saturday and Sunday. Charlie thought I was working late again, and as much as I hated it, I let her believe that was the truth. I didn’t want to tell her I was talking to a therapist until I had something more substantial than that to say.

  Like that it was helping.

  The first session had been the most difficult, my head hung between my shoulders as I wrung my hands together and confessed what a horrid husband I’d been to my wife since we lost our children.

  It felt a little like the one and only time my father had dragged me to church with him, when I’d sat outside the confessional as he told the man inside it all of his transgressions. He’d been tasked with a handful of Hail Mary’s to absolve his sins, but I knew there was nothing I could do to ever make peace with mine. I only wanted to try — not for me, but for Charlie.

  I wanted to be the man she deserved, though I’d never be the one who deserved her, in return.

  Patrick had sent me away with homework after every session. Sometimes it was to write about a memory, something from my childhood, and other times it was answering a list of questions I’d never even thought to ask myself. One of them that stuck with me long after I’d let the pen drop on the page I wrote on was, “What do you love about your wife, and what do you think she loves about you?”

  Answering the first half of that question was like adding one plus one together. Loving Charlie was effortless — it always had been.

  Since the moment I met her, I knew she was unlike any other girl I’d known before her. The way her cheeks tinged when I held her hand, the way she smiled fully only to bite her lower lip like she wished she could take part of that smile back, like she was showing all her cards at once, the way her soft eyes searched mine every time she asked me a question, like she was hearing the answer I gave and also the one I didn’t at the same time — it was all part of what made Charlie the one and only girl I ever let inside my head.

  Because I trusted her to see me, the real me, and not run away.

  Those small truths were what had drawn me into Charlie, what had made me want her, but it was what I found after months of spending time with her that made me love her.

  It was how intelligent she was, how she was always reading and learning, talking to others like they were more of a lesson than anything she could find in a classroom. It was how she cried for stray dogs and cheered for couples getting engaged at the park we used to walk in together, even when she had no idea who they were. It was how she held me the night I told her what happened with my father, and instead of saying she was sorry, she told me she was thankful to him.

  Because everything that had happened in my life, whether good or bad, had somehow led me to her.

  Then, she told me she loved me, and I knew my life would never be the same again.

  My reasons for loving Charlie were endless, and each sentence I wrote about her brought me back to the fact that I could not lose her. But in order to keep her, I knew I had to dig deep, into a part of myself I never wanted to touch, or see, or let be seen. That’s what I was doing with Patrick — even when it hurt.

  The second part of that night’s homework had been impossible to answer.

  I knew Charlie loved me. That was perhaps what I loved most about her, the way she loved me. The way she saw me, cared for me, understood me. But to answer the question of why she loved me, of what she loved about me — it was impossible.

  Because I didn’t understand it. I never had.

  I didn’t see anything inside me worth loving. I was an unwanted child, both by my mother who was killed and my father who killed her — even by my grandparents who were stuck with me after the murder. They cared for me, they loved me enough to put me in hockey and get me thinking about college, but even still, I knew I was something they never asked for. I was a burden.

  I’d tried to love Charlie right.

  Since the moment I realized I loved her and she loved me in return, I vowed to be everything she needed in life — and that was well before our wedding day. But I’d failed her, and for that reason, I couldn’t think of a single reason why she should love me.

  But maybe, just maybe, I could change that.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked when
we were a little over an hour into our drive.

  Charlie shook her head, gaze still fixed out the window. I wondered what she was thinking.

  “I’m okay.”

  I frowned. “Are you sure? We haven’t eaten dinner yet, and there’s a stop coming up that STRIPES!”

  The word flew out of my mouth before I could stop it, and Charlie jumped a little before looking over at me with wide eyes.

  “What?”

  It had been habit, calling out the object marker sign as we passed by it. The yellow and black stripes slanted at an angle toward the road, indicating an obstruction, and I drove slightly to the left to avoid a small breakage in the road just before a bridge. Charlie still stared at me, and even I was surprised I’d called it, but I realized it may be the perfect opportunity to break through to her.

  “You heard me,” I said, feigning confidence. I adjusted my hold on the wheel and turned to her with a wry smile. “Stripes. Whatcha taking off, first?”

  Charlie’s mouth popped open, a mixture of emotions crossing over her features as she processed. She went from shocked, to confused, to marginally amused, and back to disbelief again.

  “You’re kidding, right?” she said, leaning up in her seat.

  But she was smiling. That was a win.

  “Stripes,” she deadpanned. “As in, the car game we used to play when we were in college.”

  “The one and only.”

  It was a road trip game we played, mostly when traveling to parties off campus or making our way across country for spring breaks. Any time you saw that stripes sign, you called out STRIPES, and everyone who didn’t call it first had to take off an article of clothing. First person to call stripes three times won, and everyone else had to strip completely at that point.

  Charlie laughed, crossing her arms as her eyes found the road in front of us. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not playing that. I’m thirty years old,” she pointed out. “And you’re thirty-one. We’re adults.”

  “So? You still have great tits, and I want to see them. Strip.”