But that didn’t change the very real fact he had to leave.
Two days. It was all we had left. In the brief time spent together, we’d established something between us. It was more than just a fling. It was real. It was raw.
It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever been a part of.
Never in my life had I ever felt more connected to a person I barely knew. And it scared the hell out of me because everything I knew about relationships was the total opposite of what was happening between us.
My parents met in college. My father chased my mother for two years, even going as far as following her across the world to join a volunteer mission she was on to help children in third-world countries. That was where she fell in love with him. On another mission years after, when I was old enough to braid my own hair, that was where they both met their end together.
My grandparents met in high school and never spent a day apart from each other until my grandfather’s stroke. She followed him to the other side shortly after.
The point was that every relationship I’d personally known had started and ended with an epicness that belonged in the greatest romance novel. There were trials and tribulations, but they were easily overcome because their love mattered more.
We had yet to even discuss what would happen next.
Not only that, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to happen next. Wasn’t that something I should already know? Weren’t we supposed to be friends first? Shouldn’t we have deep, meaningful conversations about life so we knew what each other wanted before we dove head-first into something serious?
I already knew my answer without having to ask it out loud. The Charlie that was with me in those intimate moments… the Charlie I felt I could have an entire conversation with without ever saying a word… that was who he really was.
He wasn’t superficial thoughts. He wasn’t a complicated mind.
He was a man who owned and loved a pub, and he didn’t want to commit to anything outside of that.
A man who now loves me too.
I heard him in the shower, humming to himself, as I took the sheets off the bed, sheets stained with passion, and headed down the hall to the laundry room. It was like a light switched on in him. One minute, we were nothing. The next, he was baring his soul to me.
And I believed him.
His eyes didn’t waver when he told me he loved me. And my heart didn’t miss a beat when I said it back. Because I meant it.
A flash of light brightened the room, and I immediately begin counting the seconds before the thunderous boom followed.
One.
One mile away.
One kiss was all it took.
One decision was what I had to make.
“WHAT ABOUT HERE?” CHARLIE ASKED as he traced a finger along the inside of my hip bone, following the crease of my thigh.
I involuntarily jerked from the sensation of his soft, slow movements as a giggle erupted from the very depth of me. “Yes!” I shouted, trying to pull his hand away. “Ticklish there too!”
“Geez, woman. I don’t think there’s an inch of skin I’ve touched that ye haven’t cried uncle over.” He hovered his finger over my stomach, and then traced a small circle around my belly button.
My body contracted again from the foreign, yet enticing touch as more giggles let loose.
“You’re a bloody mess,” he said, laughing with me, the notes of his laughter like music. He kissed the laugh from my lips, and then pulled back, searching my eyes. He watched me so intently that his eyes almost felt like a touch. “You amaze me, Charlotte,” he said, and how he said it was so deep, so real, I couldn’t look away. “I’ve never been so enamored before. Never wanted to know as much as I want to know about you. And I can’t know it all soon enough,” he admitted, running the back of his hand over my cheek. “I feel sort of like time is standing over me, and I want to make a deal with it so I can have more to spend with you. To get to know you.”
“I know,” I said honestly, feeling the same way.
He chewed the inside of his cheek, and then rolled onto his back, tucking his hand behind his head. Silence filled the quiet seconds between us, falling like dominoes.
“I was thinking I could cook for you tonight,” he said a moment later, rolling to his side toward me.
“That would be nice,” I said with a smile, listening to the rain beating against the roof.
“Do you like roast?”
“Love it,” I admitted, my smile growing wider. “My grandmother used to make it every Sunday. The smell would drift out the kitchen window to the yard where I used to play, and that’s when I knew it was time to come in.”
He watched me for a moment, tilted his head to the side, and then asked, “Did you live with them as a child? Ye talk about them a lot.”
I nodded. “My parents died when I was nine, so they took me in.”
His face pinched in pain at the mention.
“I practically lived with them already. My mom worked for a company that gave back to third-world countries. She and my dad were always on trips somewhere, saving some little village.” I stopped for a second as the rest of the story collided behind my lips. The part I never liked to tell. “They umm… they had to take a small plane to get back to one of the cities they were going to depart from to come home.” I took in a deep breath. “They never found the plane.”
He didn’t say anything. He just pulled me against him and tucked my head under his chin, holding me in such a tender way I couldn’t tell if the tears in my eyes were from the memory of my parents, or from his generous touch. Maybe both.
“My grandma took it the hardest. It was the first and last time I ever saw her cry. My mom was her life. And not having her body to bury in the family’s graveyard was something I don’t think she ever fully recovered from, even though she’d tell you different.”
“I couldn’t imagine losing a parent that young, let alone both,” he said as he squeezed me tighter.
“In some ways, I think being younger helped. Though it hurt like hell, there was an innocence in being so young. I knew what it meant, but I hadn’t yet fully felt the meaning of life, not to understand what was really lost that day. I still find myself grieving in new, small ways as I learn more and more about life.”
“Hell, and here I sit, still trying to figure out what to pick up for my mum for my return home. She’s a hard one to please. Comes and goes as quick and easy as the wind.”
I rolled over until I was draped across his chest and stared up at him. “Are you close with your parents?” I held my breath, hoping he’d answer and not back out of the intimate moment.
He blinked, and then said, “Not really. My parents weren’t the happiest when I was young. They split when I was little. I couldn’t have been happier, because the screaming and hollering drove me mad. I see my dad maybe once every few years. Maybe even less these past couple of years. He’s never really found happiness, I don’t think.”
“That’s sad,” I said, trying to picture his childhood. Though I lost my parents, I still felt love and happiness through my grandparents.
“Nah. My skin is thick. It takes quite a bit to get me worked up. My mum used to tell me I was unusually disconnected from the world, but I beg to differ. I just don’t sweat the little things. People get unhappy. People change. It’s just a part of life.”
“It’s really that simple to you, isn’t it?”
He looked down at me, a smile crooked on the left side of his mouth. “Yeah, I suppose it is.”
My stomach grumbled loudly.
“I think you might be hungry,” he said, smirking.
“I’ve been dying for the past twenty minutes, but I didn’t want to say anything because I’m a sucker for cuddling.”
He lightly smacked my bare backside, and then playfully rolled me up into a cocoon within the sheets.
“Hey!” I called out, trying to wiggle free as we both laughed.
“Well, you can cud
dle all ya want inside yer cocoon, little butterfly. I’m going to make us some dinner.”
“Charlie!” I cried out as he slid his pants on before disappearing around the corner.
“HOLY CRAPOLIE,” I SAID AS I pushed my plate away from me.
“I can say the same. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman go to town on their food like that before. It’s almost an art, luv.”
I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my stomach with an accomplished smile. “There’s something I have to tell you, Charlie.”
“What?” he said, still picking at his plate.
“I’m pregnant.” He dropped his fork as a smirk lifted my lips. “With a food baby,” I finished, laughing as the color began to return to his face.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, woman,” he said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “You and yer jokes.”
“I just like to keep you on your toes,” I said, grabbing my plate as I stood. “Besides, I had to get you back for making me struggle to get out of that sheet for ten minutes.” I took the dish to the sink and washed it before putting it in the dishwasher.
“But you got out, yeah?” Charlie asked as he cleared the table and put away the leftovers.
He came up behind me, wrapping his hands around my waist as I finished cleaning up. “I’ve been thinking.”
“About?”
The silence after my question was enough to make me turn around. I could see it in his eyes—we were about to have the talk. The one that decided what would become of us.
The one I’d silently dreaded for a while.
“I talked to Ed earlier when you were in the shower. He said the pub is doing good. I didn’t expect anything less.”
“That’s good,” I said, forcing a smile and trying not to over think anything.
“Yeah. And I also talked to Hannah,” he continued, watching my eyes.
“Oh yeah?”
He nodded. “Yeah. She said she’d love to help you get settled in once we head back to England. She helped me book your flight and everything. All that’s left is to have a talk with Cherry. She could take over The Raven’s Den just like Ed has for me, that way you can work from afar, but not technically have to be there.”
He said that last bit with air quotations as the floor fell out from underneath me.
He kept talking. Kept going with how it would be over in England. That I could stay with him if I wanted to, but if that was too soon, Hannah would take me in. Gave me a full layout on how I could run my business so I didn’t technically have to give it up, and how happy we would be. How one day I could maybe even open a store near his bar.
I wasn’t sure how long he talked. His words swirled around me like a cyclone, spinning and tightening, closing the gaps until I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stand straight.
“Stop,” I said somewhere in between his game plan.
He did just that. Lips sealed tight as he studied my face.
“I’m not moving to England, Charlie.”
He took a step back, looking at me in confusion.
It built, slowly at first, until the words rushed out in short, angry bursts. “I don’t know where you get off thinking I would just drop everything without even asking me first.” The anger inside me grew as strong as the storm beating at my back door. “I can’t even believe you had the audacity to secure a plane ticket! I mean, maybe it’s thoughtful in some way, but what the hell, Charlie! I’m not Hannah. I’m me,” I said, pointing to my chest.
He looked rattled. Like he didn’t know what to say. And then it all vanished, replaced with a look of anger that matched how I felt inside. “But you love me, and I love you. What else is there to discuss?”
I was at a loss for words. How could he? How could Hannah?
“Charlotte?”
I glared at him, wondering where the man from earlier went. How we could go so drastically from A to Z? “That can go both ways, Charlie. Why do I have to leave everything behind? Why can’t you move here?”
His mouth opened and closed as he stumbled over his words.
“If you loved me, you would,” I threw back at him, uncaring if it was childish.
He tugged at his hair as he paced back and forth, his face shifting through so many different emotions. “My bar is my heritage, Charlotte. I can’t leave that behind. It’s in my blood. Don’t you understand? You can open another shop one day, but my bar? That’s a piece of history.”
I felt like he’d just punched me in the gut. “Well, at least the truth is out now. Your bar is more important than my business. You think because it’s been around longer that you get seniority when it comes to deciding our future?”
He stopped in front of me, face flaring and red. “It’s not like that and you know it.”
“It’s exactly like that!” I shouted at him. “I can’t… this isn’t going to happen. I’m not leaving.”
He flinched back as if I had struck him. “That’s it then? Ye won’t even think about it? All done and dusted for ye?” he asked, his anger flashing against his cheeks.
I crossed my arms, not backing down. “Are you going to move here?”
“No.”
The world opened its jowls and swallowed me whole. “Then I guess so.” I snatched up my keys and purse, heading for the door.
“What about us?” he demanded hotly, right on my heels.
I threw it back at him. “What about us, Charlie?”
He tossed his hands in the air. “Do ye think I give it away so easily, luv? That just anyone could make me feel the way you do? I’m giving up everything of myself here. Can’t ye give a little too?”
That was the final nail in the coffin of our dead relationship. I wasn’t going to stand around and listen to him tell me how much he’d be forced to give up for me. Love wasn’t about yourself. It was about the person you’d fallen in love with. And, at that moment, I couldn’t have loved him less.
“Where are you going?”
I stopped at the door, silently hoping he’d change his mind. That he’d try to understand my side, but he didn’t say a word.
And neither did I.
“SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING to do?” Cherry asked me as she handed me a fresh box of tissues.
“Not a damn thing,” I said, just as angry as I was when he first told me. I looked up at her and begged. “Please, Cherry. You have to take him to the airport for me. I can’t… I can’t see him again. It’s done. Over. And it should have never started to begin with.”
“Yeah, of course,” she said, nodding as she held her arms open for me to fall into. “And then I’ll kill him.”
“No,” I said, looking up at her. “Please. It’s enough I won’t be taking him. I just… he knows where I stand and I know where he stands. We’re at a stalemate. Let it just be a clean, easy break. Please.”
“I guess,” she said.
“Thank you,” I replied as I leaned back on the couch, fatigue taking over me.
I began to nod off when I heard her say, “I’ll give him just that. A clean, easy break.”
THE PLANE RIDE HOME WAS a bloody nightmare as I sat for hours on end in one spot while my mind moved at the same speed as the plane hurdling me through the atmosphere.
Waspish words stung against my inner ear. First one she-devil, and then another. Each with something harsh to say. I fought to ignore it. Every word. Every look.
Nothing fucking worked.
I jabbed the stewardess call button, fidgeting in my seat like a two-year-old who had to go to the bathroom. When she finally arrived, she gave me a syrupy sweet smile, that fake smile they all give while silently thinking of ways to screw people over, and said, “What can I get for you?”
I scowled and said, “Whiskey.”
A small tick under her eye was the only sign of her annoyance with me. With a slight nod, she asked, “And what soft drink would you like to go with that?”
My eyes closed slightly as I gave her my best ‘don’t fuck with me’ look. �
�Whiskey with a whiskey and a cup of ice. That do ya?”
She stiffened, giving me the slightest of nods as she walked away.
When she came back with two small amber-colored bottles and a cup of ice, I gave her a slight twitch of my lips. Not a smile, but something resembling an acknowledgement of thanks.
She didn’t come back again to check on me, which suited me perfectly fine.
Fucking women. If they weren’t trying to change ye, they were judging ye.
The first sip of whiskey slid down my throat and flamed. When it hit the bottom of my stomach, it curled, rolling back up with a soothing warmth. Like a blanket of comfort.
To us, I thought, tipping my glass at myself because as surely as the sun would rise the next day, I, too, would.
Fuck the rest.
Fuck her.
ONE MONTH AND NOT ONE single fucking phone call. Not one single apology.
I guess it wasn’t real after all.
I fucking hate him.
A MONTH HAD PASSED, BUT I still couldn’t take a solid breath. My chest ached. My head hurt. Alcohol wasn’t enough anymore. I needed to purge her from me. I needed to remember who I was.
I WISH I COULD STOP wondering what he’s doing. Wish I could scrub him from my memory.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
I was so stupid for letting him in.
HER SKIN WAS WRONG. HER smell was, too. The fake sounds of pleasure screaming past her overly painted lips grated against my ears. It was all I could do to finish.
I didn’t wait for my heart to stop hammering. I just left.
I’d never felt so hollow in my life.
TWO MONTHS, GOING ON THREE.
It was a repeat of everything that happened in the past. He was never going to be mine. Not from the first night when he shoved me away, and not from the last night when he didn’t try to stop me from leaving.
I just wanted to feel something… anything but this pain.
When Two Hearts Collide (Game of Hearts Novels Book 3) Page 13
