Charlie was so stiff under my touch, like she didn’t trust it anymore. I hoped my words would thaw that ice around her heart once more.
“But when my family died, Blake was there. She was the only one there. She helped me handle everything, Charlie — the funeral, their will, my inheritance, my apartment, all my bills. She even called my bosses for me, both at the restaurants I worked at and at Juilliard. And she made sure I ate, made sure I didn’t just exist on cigarettes and whiskey.” I paused. “She loved me. And she was the first one to ever tell me that, not just with her words, but with her actions, too.”
I shrugged, memories of Blake holding me in the dark resurfacing. I could still smell the shampoo she used then, could feel her small hands on my shoulders and back, her lips on my forehead.
“And yes, I loved her. I still do. But when I left New York, neither one of us knew what we wanted. She works for one of the fitness magazines based in the city, in social media, and she loves it. Even though she can do her job remotely the way she is while she’s here right now, she didn’t want to permanently leave New York City, and I never would have asked her to. I was looking for a new start, anyway.”
Charlie lifted one brow. “So, you moved away, and she stayed, and no one asked the question, ‘What happens now?’”
“I know it sounds crazy,” I admitted. “But that’s just how we are. We don’t ask questions like that. We don’t talk about feelings or future plans. We just figure it out as we go. So, when I left, I think we both had this sort of mutual understanding. We’d keep in touch, but past that?” I shrugged. “There was nothing really to say.”
“Except that there was,” Charlie argued. “Because she showed up on your doorstep two months after you moved thinking she was still your girlfriend.”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Yeah, well, she’s going through something. Her dad is in the hospital here in Pittsburgh, something about a brain tumor they found. They’re not sure how serious anything is yet but… I guess she needed me.”
Charlie’s eyes finally softened at that, and I squeezed her hand, praying to any god that would listen for her to believe the next words out of my mouth.
“I care about her, Charlie. And I want to be there for her the way she was for me. But, she’s not my girlfriend — not the way she thinks. And I promise I will clear that up and I will tell her about you, when the time is right.”
“When the time is right,” she deadpanned.
“Yes. And I don’t see any sense in rushing that, seeing as how you’ve given Cameron his time. Am I right?”
Charlie narrowed her eyes then, pulling her hand from mine. “Don’t turn this on me. I was honest with you when I agreed to give Cameron time, and it shouldn’t have mattered, not if what we’d felt was so solid. But you lied to me, Reese. How could I ever trust you now?”
“Has Cameron never lied to you?” I deflected. “You gave him your trust when he didn’t deserve it. At least give me the chance to earn it back, too.”
Charlie’s shoulders rounded, her little eyes sad under bent brows. “That’s low, Reese.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, pulling her hands into mine again. “Just… please. Give me another chance. I’m still the same guy you’ve been with since January. I’m still the same boy you used to have a crush on.”
She smirked. “So cocky. How do you know I had a crush on you?”
It was me who cocked a brow this time. “You’re kidding, right? Miss Red Cheeks.”
On cue, she blushed, rolling her eyes before she let them settle on mine again. They were wide then, searching for something. “I wish I could have been there for you, when everything…” She swallowed. “I didn’t even call.”
“We’ve been through that,” I told her, squeezing her hands. “You had your own life here, Charlie. It’s okay.” I shrugged. “Now, I just need you to understand that I had my own life before you, too. Or rather, after you — and before we found each other again. The in-between. But it doesn’t change anything about how I feel for you now. It doesn’t change the fact that this,” I said, gesturing between us. “We are real.”
Charlie pulled her little mouth to the side, considering me.
“Let me back in,” I begged her. “Please.”
She sighed, her brows pinching together like she was still a little unsure. But she smiled, and that smile let me take my next breath.
“Fine,” she said. “But, no more lies, okay? I mean it. I’ll be honest with you, and I expect the same.”
“I promise.”
A pang of warning zipped through me as I gave my word to her, knowing what I needed to say next would likely ruffle any feathers I’d managed to smooth in the last ten minutes.
“With that in mind, I need to tell you something.”
Charlie’s smile slipped. “Okay…”
“This morning, Blake was really upset…” I scratched my neck, praying the words would come out right. “She’s going into the city to see her dad, and she’s scared. And well… the way she used to help me, sometimes, it would get… physical. It was just the way we sort of made the pain go away. On both ends. And…”
Charlie’s lips were flat now, her hands turning cold in mine.
“God, Charlie, please don’t make me say it.”
“You slept with her.”
I cringed, trying to hold her hands tighter but she ripped them away, swiping the workbooks off the table as she stormed across the classroom.
“God, Reese. What the hell is wrong with you?” She slapped the workbooks on her desk, hastily shoving her personal items in her messenger bag before throwing it over her shoulder. “You just fed me that… that load of complete garbage not even a full twenty-four hours after you slept with her?” She shook her head. “You’re unbelievable.”
“It didn’t mean anything,” I said, stumbling a bit as I stood from the awkward position I’d been in at the kids’ table. I caught the crook of her elbow just before she reached the door.
“Let me go.”
“No.”
“Let me go, Reese.”
“I can’t!” I yelled, eyes glancing in the hall behind her before I pulled her more into the classroom, more into me. “I can’t let you go, Tadpole. Not after I’ve known what it’s like to hold you.”
Her eyes glossed then, and her gaze dropped to the floor between us. “I can’t believe you slept with her.”
“You haven’t with Cameron?”
“Not since you.” Her eyes met mine immediately, unwaveringly, the truth one she was proud to state. “How could I, after what we shared?”
My heart broke and beamed all at once. She’d refused her husband for me. Even though she’d promised him more time, she hadn’t slept with him, at least not yet.
I hoped she never would again.
I wanted to be the only hands that got to touch her, and that’s when I realized that it didn’t matter if my morning with Blake was meaningless. It still hurt.
It was still wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, brushing Charlie’s cheek with my knuckle. “I won’t let it happen again. I promise. I give you my word. Just… stay with me this weekend. Blake is gone. Tell Cameron you’re going somewhere, or hell, tell him the truth, I don’t care. Just…” I lifted her chin, our lips just centimeters apart as I whispered my plea into her skin. “Be with me.”
She considered me, her eyes searching mine before they flicked to my lips and back again. But then she sighed, pulling away until we no longer touched, until there were feet between us instead of inches.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t know how I feel right now,” she said with a sniff. “I need some time to think. To process. Besides,” she added. “Cameron is taking me somewhere this weekend.”
Dread seeped through me slow and mercilessly, followed quickly by a hot, jealous anger. I clenched my jaw, testing my next words carefully in my mind before letting them out.
“Where is he taking you?”
“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.
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 my 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.
What He Always Knew (What He Doesn't Know Duet Book 2) Page 6
