by Cora Black
“Oh.” Amazingly, it still took Ben a few seconds to understand what she meant, his brain was still so foggy from their fucking. But when realization hit, it struck him like a hammer to the head. He started blinking rapidly, making Charlotte’s worried face disappear and reappear while he tried to gather his screaming thoughts into a coherent sentence. “I, um. I,” he stuttered pathetically.
Charlotte straightened up and sat cross-legged on the bed, shifting a few inches away from Ben. “If it’s not the same for you, I… I get it. I don’t… I didn’t expect that, but I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
“No, no, I—” Ben started to say, but Charlotte cut him off.
“No, I get it, really,” she said, starting to get to her feet, leaning over to grab her underwear off the floor. “I was… I was just trying it out, you know. I told you, I don’t really do this type of shit, but if it’s not like that for you, I can just as easily go back to the way things were. It’s not a big deal.” But she was frantically grabbing spilled articles of clothing off the floor and slipping them onto her body.
When Charlotte started heading in the direction of the stairs, Ben got to his feet, willing his legs to work well enough so that he could cross the room before she disappeared. “Charlotte. Charlotte, stop.”
“No, Ben, it’s okay, really,” she said in a voice that was clearly intended to sound casual. “I’ll see you tomorrow. For work.”
Ben caught up and grabbed onto her elbow, gently but firmly pulling her backwards. “No. Stop. Come on, let’s talk.”
Charlotte laughed humorlessly. “You want to talk? You?”
“Yeah, I get it, it’s funny,” Ben said partly sarcastically. “But hold up a minute. You didn’t even let me speak. Just— Give me one fucking second.”
Charlotte groaned a little under her breath before turning around to face him. “Okay. Fine. Talk.”
Her face was still screwed up into a scowl. Ben resisted the urge to reach up and smooth all of her frown lines away. “Okay, look,” Ben started. “I know I come off… a certain way.”
Charlotte just stared blankly at him.
“I’m not good at the fucking mushy feeling shit,” Ben said. “I never have been. I’m trying here.”
There was silence for several long excruciating moments before Charlotte finally sighed, averting her eyes from his face. “Trying to say what?”
Ben felt his face heat up. “Do I really have to spell it out?”
“Yes!” Charlotte said. “Yes, you do. I have no fucking clue what you’re trying to tell me here.”
He rubbed the side of his mouth nervously, trying to get his skin to stop itching like it was on fire. “When we first started fucking, you know, I told you… I told you we couldn’t do this whole big thing. Remember?”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Because it’s too dangerous or something, right?”
Ben just nodded, feeling about two inches tall, but he was trying to put on a hard face.
She stepped a little closer to Ben but crossed her arms. “I think I know the life by now. You’ve shown me the best of it and the worst of it and I’ve handled it all. But no, you have to act like you’re this big tough guy that nobody can ever possibly keep up with. It’s not fucking cute. It’s patronizing and I’m sick of it.”
“Okay—” Ben started but was again cut off.
“You treat me like I’m a little kid. Like I can’t handle the most basic shit and I’m sick of it. I deserve better. I deserve better than to be treated like that.”
Ben felt his heart drop down into his stomach. “Yeah. You do,” he said softly, looking at the ground.
Charlotte sighed. “No, that’s not what I—I didn’t mean it like that,” she said in a lower voice. “Obviously, I want you to… I want you to be… with me.”
Ben looked up again to see Charlotte blushing deep red. He leaned forward, aiming for her mouth, but Charlotte turned her face and he ended up kissing her cheek. He grasped her head with his hands and turned her face back to look him in the eyes. “I wish you didn’t,” he whispered. “I wish you didn’t want that.”
“I know,” Charlotte said back, eyes still glued to the floor. “But can’t you see why that bothers me? I want you to see me differently. I want you to, you know, trust me.”
“It’s not that I don’t,” Ben replied. “I just… If anything were to happen…” Ben cleared his throat and leaned forward again, pressing their foreheads together. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
Charlotte shook her head and pulled back from him. “You’re not living with yourself now. You’re still punishing yourself for Danielle, acting like you don’t deserve anything good.”
Ben rushed to deny it. “It’s not like that at all.”
“Just…just let me say this, okay?” Charlotte said. Ben nodded, biting his lip in anxiety. “I’ve been following the group around for over a month now. I’ve been present for drug deals and gun deals and whatever else. I’ve been in some shit, is what I’m trying to say. And the whole time, something bad could have happened, to you, to me, to fucking Noah, to anybody. And you’ve let me be here. What would change if we were together, really together? Why would that all of a sudden make someone kill me?”
Ben opened his mouth to answer, but no words came. He racked his brain, trying to find the exact reason that would explain everything, that would reveal why it was so much worse for them to be together, but he couldn’t come up with anything for the life of him. So, he just stared at Charlotte, whose face hardened before him.
“You can’t do it. You can’t answer me because it’s bullshit. It’s always been bullshit. That’s not why you refuse to do anything but fuck. The answer is somewhere in here,” Charlotte said while pressing her finger on Ben’s chest, right over his heart.
“It’s not—I don’t— Fuck,” Ben said, sighing deeply. “I don’t know what you want me to say here, Charlotte.”
“Maybe, maybe, you shouldn’t say anything,” Charlotte said, dropping her finger from his chest and stepping away from him. For a second, Ben was terrified that Charlotte was going to turn and bolt down the steps, but she just walked over to his kitchen, opening his fridge and cracking open a beer. “You want one?”
Ben shrugged. “Sure.”
She cracked open a second beer and gestured for Ben to follow her over to his couch. “Maybe I’ll talk, and you can listen,” she said.
Ben followed her and gladly took the beer, chugging a third of it in a few seconds as he flopped down on the couch, still naked and vulnerable.
Charlotte ran a hand through her hair and blew out her breath. “So I guess I am doing some counseling today,” she started, laughing a little. Ben wanted to return the favor and break the tension, but he just couldn’t bring himself to make any noise. “Um, so I guess, all I can do is give you my theory of things. About why you want me to stay away.”
Ben shifted uncomfortably on the couch beside her and remained silent.
“So, I, uh, I think that there’s a part of you that does want to protect me. You know, I know you’re an honorable guy, underneath it all. But not from the club. Or at least not just from the club, and the life that comes along with it. It would be easier if Danielle just got shot, if nothing else contributed to her death, you know. But it wasn’t like that, right? It’s like you told me. If she hadn’t been high, maybe the same thing would have happened, but maybe not, and that’s what kills you, right?”
Ben shrugged, but when Charlotte kept staring at him, he gave a short nod. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I feel like you would know better than me.”
Charlotte nodded back and took a large gulp from her beer. “Right. So it’s the club, for bringing her in contact with the drugs, but it’s also you. It’s you because you think you should have been able to prevent it, or stop it before it got really bad, or keep her from taking it that day and getting on a bike. So you blame yourself.”
“I—” Ben started to say, but this time he
cut himself off. “I don’t know.”
“Right. Well, I think I do,” Charlotte said. “I know it’s hard to accept, but there’s a lot of guilt in there, and it’s hurting you. Maybe it’s killing you, making you do the things you do every day. And it’s making you stay away from me. Because somewhere in the back of your brain, you think that it’s not the club that’s poison. It’s you, and whoever touches you has to deal with the consequences. That’s what you believe. I mean, that’s what I think.” She stopped talking and drank again, tipping the bottom of the bottle up to the ceiling.
Ben drank his beer deeply, trying to catch up with Charlotte. Honestly, she was scaring him a little bit. She was breathing heavily, her chest heaving up and down like she had been running rather than talking. He wanted to take the beer away from her and make her calm down.
Charlotte finished her beer and placed it on the ground. “So, you’re protecting me from you, because as long as we’re fucking you think your dark poisonous influence won’t touch me. Like by loving me or liking me or whatever you’ll just hurt me, or worse. And… and then there’s the other part of it,” she said before getting back on her feet and walking back to his kitchen to pour herself a shot of whiskey.
“You want to slow down there a bit, sailor?” Ben suggested. But Charlotte just shook her head, downed the shot, and poured the next one. For a second Ben hoped that it was for him, partly because he needed something to break the fear that was clutching so hard at his chest. But she walked back over to the couch and started sipping at the shot.
“The other thing,” Charlotte said in between little sips of her whiskey. “The other thing.”
“What’s the other thing?” Ben asked, trying to keep his voice from trembling as noticeably as his hands were. She’d just accused him of thinking of his love as poison, and yet he was still terrified of what more she had to say.
“The other thing is related. It’s all under the big Danielle umbrella. Everything is about her,” she said, her tone sounding a little bitter. Is she jealous of Danielle? Ben wondered. He didn’t know whether to feel defensive or worried about that. “Danielle. You love her.”
Ben threaded his fingers together and stared down at the spots of empty space around his own skin. “Yeah. Yeah, I loved her.”
“You love her. Present tense,” Charlotte corrected him.
“What’s the difference?” Ben asked, starting to feel growing frustration.
Charlotte finished her shot and got up again to refill her glass. She continued talking in the kitchen as she poured herself more whiskey. “You haven’t let her go. It’s normal. A lot of people take years to move on from a relationship like the one you had.”
Anger flared up in Ben’s stomach, causing his spine to stiffen, making him sit up straighter. At first, he didn’t know why. He stared at Charlotte as she walked back over to the couch, holding two glasses this time. She didn’t hand either of them to him. He opened his mouth to tell her she should slow down, but something else came out. “You know, I know you do this all the time, I guess, but I’m not just another one of your fucking patients or whatever. You shouldn’t act like you know everything about me, because I assure you that you don’t.”
Charlotte nodded slowly and drank again. “Not everything, you’re right,” she conceded. “Just most of the important things.” She laughed and downed the rest of her first drink, moving on to the second.
Ben felt his anger burn brighter, and this time he couldn’t keep it out of his voice. “You shouldn’t… You shouldn’t fucking talk about her, okay? Just move on to the next thing you’ve decided is wrong with me.”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand, there you have it,” Charlotte said with a flick of her wrist. “Danielle is sacred to you. It’s like you’re still protecting her, even now. Even from me.”
“What the fuck is your point?” Ben said, barely keeping himself from yelling.
“You act like you’re still dating her!” Charlotte shouted. She scoffed right after and downed the rest of her drink, knocking her head back on the headrest of the couch. “You act like you’re still with her, and every time you get close to me you have to back away like I’m fire and you don’t want to get burned. Because you’re protecting her. Because she’s still your girlfriend. Because if you do more than fucking me then you’re really cheating on her and you can’t forgive yourself for that,” she said in a rush.
The words hung in the air, lingering over them like a dark cloud. Ben didn’t know what to say, or what to feel, or what to think. He just blew out his breath and got to his feet, walking over to the kitchen on autopilot. Ben poured himself a drink and walked back over to the couch, sitting down closer to Charlotte than before, until their legs touched and Charlotte moved away.
“Charlotte,” Ben started. “Charlotte, if you, if you really think all of this about me, why do you even want to…” He trailed off.
“Be with you?” Charlotte supplied. Ben just nodded. “I guess I have a whole pack of issues myself.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Ben said before taking a drink.
“I don’t know,” Charlotte began. “Maybe the fucked-up parts of me like the fucked-up parts of you. I guess I should analyze myself.”
Ben felt himself smiling. He reached over and put a hand on her knee, giving it a squeeze. For some reason the desire to comfort her overcame everything else he was feeling. “Yeah, I’d like to hear that.”
Charlotte moved her hand over his, and for a second he thought she was going to push him off, but instead she wrapped her fingers around his hand, making him squeeze her leg harder. “Okay. So I’ve gone the last ten years without dating any guys. Probably because I have daddy issues, like most women my age. Then, I meet a guy, we have great sex, and all of a sudden I develop these stupid gross feelings out of nowhere. Probably because I know there’s no danger of them being reciprocated. So I know I’m still safe.”
Ben bit his lip and turned in his seat to face her side. He leaned in to brush a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re not,” he said in a low voice, barely above a whisper.
“I’m not damaged? Coming from you, that doesn’t mean anything,” Charlotte said with a teasing smile, turning a little to face him.
Ben shook his head. “No, no, you’re not safe. In any way imaginable,” he whispered, leaning in to brush his lips softly against her cheek.
Charlotte swallowed hard and looked up into his eyes.
“You’re saying you… want me?” Charlotte asked, staring at him with wide, desperate eyes.
“I’m saying,” Ben began, having to swallow hard just to let the words come out. But there was no stopping them now. He had to say this, at least once. “I need you.”
Charlotte crashed into Ben, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and smashing her mouth against his. He returned the kiss, slipping his tongue against hers and moaning when she bit down gently onto his lip, but he pulled back after a second. “I do. I do. I know it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t. Whatever you say about it, I know it’s fucked-up. I can’t… I shouldn’t….”
“You can, and you will,” Charlotte argued back, kissing him so hard it almost hurt.
They fell backwards onto the couch, locked in each other’s embrace. The kiss never seemed to end. Charlotte’s drifting hands were in his hair, on his face, on his chest. Ben clutched at her like she was about to disappear into thin air. He got hard again fast, but this time when Charlotte slipped out of her underwear and climbed on top of him, he let her lead the way. She didn’t waste any time, sinking down onto his cock all at once, her cunt somehow still warm and wet and ready for it.
“You’re so… It’s so good,” Ben grunted out, his eyes still screwed shut as he leaned his face into her shoulder.
Charlotte laughed above him and moved faster, still bouncing in long, deliberate motions that had his whole body quivering. She seemed to get wetter with every twitch of her hips, and Ben clutched at her back, at her ass, trying to hold on as sh
e sped up again.
“I’m—I’m not gonna last,” he warned, feeling his orgasm creeping up on him even just a few minutes in. Charlotte didn’t say anything but instead bounced faster, her legs smacking loudly against his on every downward stroke. Her hands abandoned his chest and back, and Ben opened his mouth to complain. “What are you—oh, oh!” One of her hands had somehow found their way under her own body to fondle at his balls. God, I’m on fire. I’m on fire, I’m not gonna live through this. I’m gonna crack open and spill everything I’ve ever had into her.
“Look at me,” Charlotte ordered, her fingers pulling more insistently on his sac. “Look at me.”
Ben opened his eyes. She looked like a goddess above him, like the most powerful thing he’d ever seen in his life. He reached out to rub at her shoulders, down her arms, over her clothed torso, until he found her clit again and rubbed it gently. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. He was afraid that if he said it any louder he would fuck it up. It had been so long since he’d said anything like that deliberately. But he didn’t want to take it back, not when Charlotte’s face softened and she started fucking him even harder, taking him in and out at a ridiculous speed.
