What He Always Knew (What He Doesn't Know Duet Book 2)

by Kandi Steiner

  “It’s okay,” I repeated. “We can talk tomorrow. Tonight, let’s just be.”

  “I can’t.” Her voice was meek, muffled by her cries.

  “I know,” I said quickly. “I know you can’t talk right now.”

  “No.”

  Charlie jumped up from the piano, abandoning her wine as she moved for my bay window. Her hands flew to her hair, her shoulders trembling.

  “Charlie?” I asked, making my way toward her.

  “Please, just, I need a minute.”

  “Okay.” I held up my hands, and when she turned, I kept them there. Slowly, I stepped toward her, and the more I watched her face, the more it twisted with grief, the more my stomach knotted. “What’s wrong?”

  She cried more, shaking her head.

  “He’ll be okay,” I tried. “I know it was hard. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling but I’m here. I’m right here,” I told her. “Just let me hold you, let me take the pain away.”

  “It’s not Cameron.”

  I paused, still holding my hands up. “What is it then?”

  “I haven’t gone to him,” she whispered. “I haven’t been home yet.”

  “Oh,” I answered, confusion sweeping over me. “Well, did you want to talk before you go? Do you want me to go with you?”

  Her bottom lip slipped between her teeth. “Reese…”

  At the sound of my name, the coldest chill of my life swept over me in a rush.

  It was the way she said it, the way her face crumpled as it tumbled from her lips, the way the syllable rolled off like an apology.

  My confidence was zapped like a bug drawn to a false light, one designed to kill, and the truth settled in like the darkest death.

  “It’s him.”

  My voice broke with the words, with the way Charlie’s hands flew to cover her mouth when I said them.

  “It’s him, isn’t it? You’re choosing him.”

  “Reese—”

  She reached for me, her small hand wrapping around my forearm, and my instinct was to pull away. But once she touched me, I knew I couldn’t.

  I would never be able to.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, my eyes searching hers. “Charlie, you can’t. You can’t choose him. It’s us, it’s always been us. I make you happy, can’t you see? I love you. I love you. Don’t you love me?”

  “I do,” she cried. “Reese, I love you so much it hurts.”

  “But you love him more?”

  She pressed her lips together, squeezing her eyes shut just the same as she set more tears free.

  Black invaded my vision, and I moved back to the piano bench, falling down into it harder than I intended. One hand braced on the keys, sounding a loud, abrasive collision of notes, and the other found my bouncing knee.

  “He hurt you,” I whispered. “He cheated on you, Charlie.”

  “He didn’t.”

  I looked up, watching as she moved slowly toward me.

  “He never slept with her.”

  My mouth fell open. “What? How…”

  “I walked in when she was on top of him, but he had already told her to get off. She told him she wanted him, and he said no.” Charlie shrugged. “Yes, he betrayed me. He found comfort in another woman when he should have come to me. But he never slept with her,” she said. “It was me who cheated, Reese. And only me.”

  “But he still left you. He wasn’t there when you needed him, when you were grieving.”

  “But I wasn’t there for him either.”

  Charlie took the seat next to me, wrapping her hand around mine.

  “Reese, Cameron hurt me. And I hurt him. Neither of us is perfect.” She squeezed my hand. “But he’s my husband. I made vows to him, the same as he made to me, and I can’t turn my back on those vows at the first warning sign. Every couple has challenges they face — and those challenges either make or break them. Sometimes we run from our problems, and other times, we hold hands and go through them together.”

  “And you don’t want to run.”

  “I can’t,” she said easily. “And I know if you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t either.”

  I sat there as disbelief colored every inch of me, hitting me in different waves. One moment I was angry, the next I was in shock, and somewhere underneath it, maybe I knew it all along. Maybe I saw it coming.

  “I love you,” she whispered. “And I know you love me, too. But it’s a different kind of love than the one I have with Cameron. You and I, we’re friendship and forbidden want. We’re late night music and talks. We’re the kind of love that burns bright and fast, but fizzles out just the same. We’re a comet — a shooting star. We can’t last, Reese.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “It’s true, and you know it. We want each other, we always have. And when we have each other?” She laughed. “It’s… explosive. Catastrophic, maybe. I’ve never felt passion like that, the way I have with you. But it was born out of years of want, years of being told no, and at the base of it all, you’re looking for something that doesn’t truly exist in me,” she said. “The same way I looked to you for something I should have found in my husband.”

  My heart ached with her words, so much so that I doubled over.

  “I remind you of home,” she said. “I remind you of your family, of Mallory, of your parents. I remind you of your youth, of a simpler time when you had them, when you had time to figure everything out in your life. I’m a piece of your life before it hurt. But now, you’re thirty-five, your family is gone, and no matter where you end up — whether it’s here in Mount Lebanon or back in the city or somewhere completely different — no place or person will ever bring them back,” she said, and her voice dropped lower with her next words. “Not even me. Not even as much as I wish I could.”

  Emotion pricked my eyes, and I blinked against it, the ache in my chest growing stronger with every second. Oxygen hurt just as much as not taking a breath at all.

  It was true, every word she said, and the truth had never hurt so badly.

  “You love me for who I used to be, for the wide-eyed, untouched girl I once was. But I’m a woman now. I have scars. Cameron was there when they were made, and though he may have lost his way just as I did, he has his own scars, too. We both have them, and we both slipped into this dark hole together.” She paused, her hand sliding up from mine to grip my wrist. “We have to climb out just the same.”

  Her words faded off, and the suffocating silence of my house surrounded us. It was like a weighted cloud, dark and heavy, and I let it take me under its grasp.

  She wasn’t mine.

  Charlie would never be mine.

  It killed me — physically, I felt my heart cracking as it digested the truth. But what hurt more was that Charlie was right. I had come to Mount Lebanon searching for a home, and I’d found it in her.

  But she couldn’t be my home. She was already Cameron’s.

  The longer we sat there, the heavier my thoughts were, and I felt darkness slipping inside me like an old friend coming home. I tried to hold the door closed, to block it out, but it was no use.

  I didn’t realize how long I’d been silent until Charlie spoke again, her words muffled with a fresh wave of tears.

  “I’m sorry, Reese,” she said, breaking. “I’m so, so, sorry. I care for you so much, and it breaks my heart to break yours. I hope you’ll forgive me, I hope one day—”

  “Shhh.”

  I pulled her into me, wrapping my arms all the way around her as she broke in my arms. Her tears came harder, her shoulders shaking, and I smoothed a hand over her hair as I searched for the right words.

  “Don’t be sorry,” I told her.

  “I hurt you.” Her voice was muffled in my chest, and I held her tighter. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

  “I know. I know you didn’t.” I forced a breath, kissing her hair. “In another lifetime, it could have been us, couldn’t it?”


  Charlie sniffed, not answering, her hands fisting in my shirt.

  “Maybe if I would have kissed you, if we would have stayed in touch. Maybe if I never would have left at all.” My heart squeezed. “Maybe my family would still be alive, then, too.”

  Charlie pulled back, her eyes finding mine. We were both a mess, tears staining our faces, eyes red and puffy.

  “You could never know,” she whispered. “In this lifetime or any other, everything happens for a reason, Reese. Your heart will heal, and you’ll find home again,” she promised me, as if she could possibly know for sure. “It may not seem possible right now, but you will. And something tells me the home you find will be more than you ever imagined. More than you’ve ever had before.”

  She smiled then, a small, timid smile, and I returned it with as much energy as I could muster. Then, I pulled her into me again, allowing myself just a few moments more to hold her, to be with her, to pretend she was mine.

  There’s nothing okay about losing the person you love.

  Nothing would help ease the pain — I knew that even in the very first stage of it. There would be nothing to make it go away, nothing to numb it at all. So, in that moment, with her still in my arms — I welcomed it. I lived in it like I had after my family passed, only this time, it was a little easier.

  Because I knew in the end, she was happy.

  I had been wrong about Cameron. That much I knew when he fought back, when he didn’t let her go so easily. But then he’d shown me even more of who he was when he’d come to my house, when he’d told me he would bow out should she choose me. He wanted her happiness more than his own, and it was then that I realized he was a better man than I was — even if I hated admitting it.

  He was fucked up, just like all of us, but he loved Charlie fiercely.

  I knew he would treat her right, that he would mend what was broken, and that they would find happiness again together.

  Perhaps that was what hurt the most.

  Charlie was in no rush that night. She let me hold her as long as I needed to, and only when I stretched my arms and let her loose did she look at me, her eyes dry now, a soft smile on her lips.

  “I will always love you,” she whispered.

  I mentally traced the gold flecks in her eyes, knowing I would forever see them in my dreams.

  “As will I always love you.”

  I sealed that promise with one final kiss, one soft and sweet pressed to her lips.

  And then, I let her go.

  It was only in the exact moment that I let her walk out my door that I realized I truly did love her. Not in the selfish way I had since I was a kid, not in the empty way I had when I returned to Mount Lebanon looking for something to fill me again. I loved her in the true, genuine way.

  Because I loved her enough to set her free.

  In that moment, as much as my soul split open as she walked away, I put her happiness above my own. It was what Cameron had done from the start, what I wasn’t sure I could ever do, and yet here I was.

  And I was thankful for that love.

  If it was all I had, that one chance to love someone that much, that wholly, to care for them more than I care for myself — then I was glad to have it.

  Even if it didn’t last.

  It felt like an addict letting go of an addiction of sorts as Charlie pulled away, and I found myself already thinking of making amends. I owed a lot of people a lot of things after the way I’d been behaving — Blake an apology, Cameron one, too. I owed Charlie the respect and space to love her only from a distance, to never cross that line she’d redrawn between us. I owed it to my family to truly live again, to let them go, to somehow find a way to release the guilt I felt over their death.

  And more than anything, I owed it to myself to build a new home — one that started with me — instead of trying to find it in someone else.

  I knew the pain was far from over. I knew the race had just begun. I would spend months drowning in the bottle, in the memories, and a part of me knew I’d never fully let Charlie go.

  But still, as her taillights disappeared from view, I found myself smiling.

  My heart was broken, but it was still beating.

  I could work with that.

  The End

  Eighteen months later

  Charlie

  I’d never seen my parents’ house covered in so much pink.

  Pink streamers hung from the banisters, along with classy, delicate pink lights that dangled from rose gold wire. There were pink chairs at every pink tablecloth-covered table. The napkins that wrapped around the silverware were pink, along with the plates and glasses, and of course, the cake was pink, too — and covered with glitter. Mom had even had two kiddie pools put in, though it was only thirty degrees outside and just weeks from Christmas. Both were heated, with pink walls and lights to illuminate the water, and there were more balloons in the house than I remembered at my college graduation party.

  It was Daisy’s first birthday.

  I scanned the entertainment room with a smile as I balanced a fresh pitcher of strawberry lemonade in one hand and a pack of wipes in the other. There were kids all over the house — some that I knew, most that my mother knew from other grandparents at the country club. Even Daisy’s older cousin, Callie, was in attendance, along with my brother and Christina. They sat at the edge of one of the pools, holding Callie’s hand as she splashed around.

  Mom was fussing with the plates on the table where the large cake was, talking eighty-miles-per-minute to the poor server assigned to that task. Dad was standing right next to Cameron, who sat in front of the smaller cake, the one Daisy would smash her face into.

  And Daisy sat on his lap.

  She was all smiles in her bright pink onesie and tutu, both just as glittery as the cake we were all about to eat. Her dark hair that had been present from the moment she was born curled over her ears, and her dark lashes brushed her cheeks with each giggle that slipped from her lips.

  Her eyes were bright blue.

  The doctor told us they wouldn’t stay that way, but they had so far, and I loved those little blue eyes. They were the ones that looked up at me as Cameron and I cried in the hospital, and the ones that watched me curiously each night when I breast fed her. They were the eyes that watered when she stuck her little tongue on Cameron’s lemon drop, the ones that lit up whenever we played peek-a-boo, and the ones that watched her cake now with the most mischievous smile right beneath them.

  When Mom told me she wanted to plan Daisy’s first birthday, I had nearly laughed. “Why so early?” I had asked. But then I realized her birthday was just a month away. My little girl had already been alive for one full year, and it just didn’t seem possible.

  So much had happened in that year.

  Cameron had completely renovated the house after the dust settled last spring. My library had yet again been turned into a nursery, only this time, it had also been rebuilt — downstairs, right next to Scarlett and Rhett. I spent many afternoons there as my belly rounded, and even more with baby Daisy in my lap as I rocked in the hammock and she stared up at the birds in wide-eyed wonder.

  Work had slowed down for Cameron, too. He’d told his boss that he needed less work now that he had a family coming, and with my father behind him, his wish was granted. He still worked hard, and there were still overtime days, but they were few and far between.

  Less time at the office left more time for us.

  I started joining Cameron at his sessions with Patrick, realizing I had just as much to work through as Cameron did. We had individual and couple sessions both, and together, we worked toward a healthier relationship.

  And by the grace of God, we fell in love again — deeper in love.

  We spent hours in the garden, and full days in the aviary. We would talk until our throats were sore, and dance like we were just twenty again. We rebuilt the connection we had broken, earned back the trust we had lost, and more than anything, we started a new c
hapter together with more gusto than we’d ever written with before.

  Watching him now from across the room as I sat the new pitcher down, it was hard to remember what we’d been through. We were so happy now, so blissfully happy, I couldn’t remember what it had felt like to feel rejected by him. I couldn’t remember the darkest days, the betrayal, the torture — for both of us.

  Life had a way of doing that, of giving us brighter days that seemed to completely knock out the dark. I loved living in that new light with Cameron.

  “I think everyone is here,” Mom said, flitting by me in a hurry with an arm full of damp towels from the pools. “We should do the smash cake soon.”

  “Yes, Mom,” I said on a chuckle, but I doubted she even heard with how fast she whizzed by.

  I was in no rush to do the cake, or to open the presents, or send everyone home. My daughter was turning one, and all I wanted to do was take the day in. I watched Cameron as he whispered in Daisy’s ear, her little hands wrapped around his fingers, and then he’d nibble at her neck and she’d giggle like it was the funniest thing in the entire world.

  And I realized how much our life had changed once she’d come into it.

  Graham and Christina had given birth to a healthy Callie just months before we did the same with Daisy, and once we were flung into life with a newborn, the days flew by. It was more than I could have ever imagined, living in my new world with Cameron. I had thought I was prepared, that anticipating the arrival of Jeremiah and Derrick had set me up for motherhood, but I had been wrong.

  Being a parent was so much more than baby books and birthing classes.

  It was late night groans over who would get up to change diapers. It was fits of laughter over each face she made, and fits of anger over each toy stepped on in the dark. It was pictures that didn’t do real life justice, memories captured with eyes and cameras both. It was worry over if we were feeding her the right things and loving her the right way. It was tears of agony when she was sick, when all we wanted to do was take the pain for her, and it was tears of joy over her first word spoken.

  Of course, her first word was “no.”