by Elise Faber
“Char—”
“And I hate that I only just now realized that I’m thirty-fucking-years-old and the only thing I want, perhaps more than my job, is my own family—kids and a husband who loves me and—”
He cupped her cheek.
“And I really hate that I didn’t see through what you were doing, that I internalized it and made you go to a man who I trusted as much as my own father to trick me into making the right decision.” A hot tear slid down her cheek, burning a trail from the corner of her eye to her jaw. Annoyed, she brushed it away, shoved hard enough against his hold that he let her go. “And I really hate—”
Her words cut off.
Because she’d wanted to finish that with you.
But she couldn’t.
She couldn’t hate this man. Try as she might, she couldn’t hate him or what he’d done or even how he’d gone about it.
Sure, she could wish things had gone differently, but also, she knew if the situation were reversed, she would have done something very similar. She wouldn’t have let Logan risk his dream for her.
Not ever.
“That’s why,” he whispered, trailing his fingers over her cheek, across her jaw, up to lightly stroke the spot behind her ear. “Because you need some time, sweetheart. To think about us, to sort things out in your head. I’m here to talk through what’s going on with your family. I’m here. I really fucking hope to maybe be that person you can build your own family with someday, but”—he inhaled sharply, released the breath slowly—“I’m also the man who hurt you, who broke your heart, and you need time to process why.”
Her heart was pounding.
Anger was a sharp ache in her throat.
Pent-up need a coiled snake in her center.
But . . . he was right.
She needed to allow herself this moment, to not bury everything as she’d done for the last years. Feel. She needed to feel and think and come to terms with all that happened.
Sighing, she rested her forehead against his chest.
“As much as I hate to admit it,” she muttered. “You’re right.”
His laughter—slightly strained—and the hard planes of his body—hard everywhere, heh—relaxed her enough that she could think again. Or at least not feel as though she were going to be swallowed by her emotions.
She glanced up, enjoying the feel of his fingers stroking through her hair, his body pressed to hers, his scent surrounding her.
“Will you at least kiss me before you go?”
A wicked smile, fingers tightening slightly in her hair.
And then he did as she asked, kissing her until her pulse pounded in her veins, until her lips were swollen, until her body was a tangled knot of need.
Eventually, they broke apart, his gaze holding hers, and the need in those beautiful green eyes took her already jagged breath away.
As did his words.
“I plan on kissing you goodnight every day for the rest of my life.”
It was early East Coast time.
Which meant it was really freaking early California time.
But Char had woken just as the sun was beginning to lighten the brown-topped hills in the distance, the summer’s heat already turning the green grass dry and brittle. Soon enough fire season would be upon them, smoke choking the air, blocking out the sky, making it impossible for her to see the stars she liked to glance upon with a glass of wine in her hand.
Often, she snuck away for a week or two, recharging at a spa, spending time at a beachfront hotel while doing nothing more than sticking her toes in the sand, or occasionally in the ocean. Last year, she’d skipped the break completely, having spent those weeks dealing with the move and getting her ducks in a row for the season.
She’d swung by her family’s house for a weekend, kissed her mom and dad, sat around the kitchen table listening to them cook and bicker in equal measures. But it hadn’t been long before she’d felt the vise tighten around her chest, and she’d slipped out, losing herself to emails and work.
She’d left early the next day, had come to San Francisco, and all but lived in her office.
At the time, she’d chalked it up to nerves about her new position, to needing to assure herself that absolutely everything she could control was in order. But now she wondered if seeing her parents so in love and happy and in tune had made her shut down.
And then bolt.
Ugh.
More pondering to do, more thinking to complete.
But for now, she needed to slay the demon that was circling in her mind. Or at least try to cage it and glare it into submission.
Which was why she was back on her deck, a coffee in hand and staring at the lightening sky.
“Just do it already,” she muttered.
She hit the button on her phone’s screen then put her cell up to her ear.
Ring-ring.
Ring-ring.
Ring—
“Lottie!” Luc’s voice boomed loudly through the speaker. “I was wondering when you’d get a moment to call. How are you? Terrorized any underlings lately?”
God, one call, and she was back in that arena.
Shaking her head, biting back a smile, because seriously this man was like an older brother and father and friend, all in one package. “I was doing better before you decided to use that name.”
He laughed, and she could imagine him leaning back in his office chair, plunking his feet onto his desk.
“Plus, I don’t terrorize anyone.”
“Call it unintentional terrorizing then,” he said. “You’re so damned good at what you do, it’s almost impossible to live up to your example.”
Her breath caught, an unfamiliar ache sliding through her stomach.
“My mom said that once.”
Silence.
The feet would be leaving the desk now, dropping back onto the floor, his brows drawn together. “What’s that now?”
“She said the reason I’m single is that I’m so focused on being perfect that I can’t accept the imperfections and failings of those around me.”
He sucked in a breath, the noise rattling through the speaker.
“That’s bullshit.”
Char blinked. “What?”
“You know I love you, Lottie girl,” he said. “So, I’m not going to mince words. I’ve waited this entire season for him to make a fucking move, to make things right, but he hasn’t, and so now I’m going to do what I should have.”
“Do what?” she asked, fingers clenching on her cell.
“You’re single for two reasons, and only two.” His voice was sharp, demanding she pay attention. “One, because you’re hung up on Logan Walker and your relationship with him overshadowed every other romantic one you’ve had since, and two, because none of those dumbasses you’ve dated since Logan had the balls to drag you down the aisle.”
“You—”
“Yes, I knew,” he interrupted before she got more than that one word out. “Yes, I also knew what I helped you two give up. Did I hate every fucking minute of it? Yes. Did I still think it was the right thing for both of you? Yes.”
Char closed her eyes, was silent as his words washed over her.
Luc sighed. “Look, Lottie,” he said, voice gentling. “I know that you were hurt badly by how things went down between you and Logan, and I fucking hated him for getting involved with you in the first place. Hell, I hated you a little bit for wanting to drop everything and take away my best employee.” He paused. “Then I realized that you weren’t two people looking for a quick fuck, but instead you two were just dumbasses in love at the wrong time in the wrong place, and I hoped you’d eventually find your way back to each other.”
“Luc.”
“Then when you picked Logan up before the season—which was a bold, fucking move that I’m still pissed you were able to pull off without me—I figured you two would work things out. Would realize this is a different time and place and social climate and get back to rememberi
ng that you were two dumbasses in love once.” A beat. “Then be able to find your way back there.”
“I—”
“And since that seems to not be the case,” he said, talking over her, “and since I taught you all you need to know about being a stubborn ass, I figured I might as well give you the shove off the cliff you so obviously need.”
That was the thing about her former boss.
He liked to talk.
A lot.
He was never short for words, and while most of the time she could filter through the bullshit and arrow in on the important details, this morning they were talking about her life and her job and—
She sighed.
Her heart.
They were talking about her bruised, damaged, pieced-together heart.
“And—”
“Shut up, Luc,” she said, interrupting him for the first time in this conversation. “And let me talk.”
Silence. For all of ten seconds. Then, “So talk.”
“Logan already told me.”
A longer blip of silence. “And you didn’t get back together?”
It was impossible to miss the disappointment in his tone. It was also impossible to sum up all she was feeling for Logan, considering it was so fresh in her head. “He just told me last night.”
“Waited till the season was over,” Luc said, tone approving. “That’s a good man. Didn’t get between you and your job, even though it had to be killing him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s seen you nearly every day for nine months, Lottie. And he couldn’t touch or hold you. The man was thrown into close contact with the woman he’s crazy about and didn’t want to risk fucking up the good thing she had going.” He chuckled. “No wonder he played the best season of his career.”
She couldn’t deny that Logan had absolutely killed it at the blue line throughout the year.
“He came to me the night we lost,” she admitted. “With fucking slippers.”
Luc burst out laughing. “Oh man, that slick fucker pays attention. How often did I tell you that you were going to end up with a bum back if you kept wearing those death contraptions, but no, you’ve got to keep clomping around the arena in them—”
“First, I do not clomp. Second, I need them in order to be somewhat the same size as the rest of you giants,” she muttered. “I was tired of looking up everyone’s nose all the time.”
More laughter, but she joined in this time.
Before long, though, she sobered. “Why’d you do it, Luc? Why did you keep me in the dark? Why did you lie? I thought we—” She sighed. “I thought we meant more to each other than that.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said, sounding more serious than she’d ever heard him. “I hope you know that.”
“I—uh—did you not think I could handle it? Handle being on the same team if we broke up?”
“No, honey,” he told her. “No, it wasn’t that at all. I thought you were young and needed space to think, needed to figure out what you wanted in your head and heart without anyone else influencing you.”
“Except . . . you influenced me.”
He inhaled, released it slowly. “Fuck, I never thought about it like that. Shit, Lottie, I—”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Part of me is really hurt you and Logan had this whole plan about my life without bothering to include me in it. Another part of me understands. Still another is pissed at myself for considering giving up my life for Logan, for thinking that his dreams were bigger and more important than mine.” She swallowed hard. “And a final part, one I just realized last night when someone I know announced she was pregnant, is furious for not recognizing that in making my life only about my dream after Logan left, I missed out on my family, on making a family of my own.”
Char blinked like a madwoman. It was too fucking early in the morning for tears, too early to be a blubbering mess with her former boss, her sort of brother, father, friend.
And it was a good thing that she did all that blinking because when he spoke a few moments later, his words made her eyes sting.
“It’s not too late,” he said. “Not too late for you, and not too late for you and Logan.”
She sniffed, and since they were talking about all of the serious shit that morning, she told him the other thing that was bothering her, the deep-seated worry she held because she liked Logan so damned much. “What if I get like before? What if I want to give up everything so I can have a family with Logan?”
“Why are those things mutually exclusive?” he countered. “Why can’t you have your family and your dream?”
“I—” She stopped, blinked. Because, of course, it was the logical thought, but also . . . “It’s not that simple,” she said.
“Isn’t it?” he replied. “You have a demanding career, but so do plenty of people. You like someone that might put you in a complicated position, but the Gold, as an organization, has weathered that particular storm enough times over that I know there are certain HR and personnel protocols in place. You’re in the public eye, but so are plenty of other people.”
He was right, the bastard.
“If it’s so easy,” she grumbled, “why aren’t you in a steady relationship?”
“This isn’t about me and my almost forty-year-old ass. This is about you and Logan and how the man loved you enough to set you free or some other sappy bullshit.”
Her lips curved into a smile. “For all that you accuse him of propagating sappy bullshit, you’re the one that helped protect me.”
“Meh.”
So like him to dismiss his role in anything. Just exactly as he handled his career, never taking credit, even where it was due. It was always the guys, the team, the organization.
She’d modeled herself after him, and often did the same, felt the same.
But she knew he’d done more in this case than he’d accept.
He and Logan had risked her hurt and anger to try and do right by her. They’d loved her and protected her, and so maybe she didn’t approve of everything they’d done, and yeah, she wished they’d handled it differently, but Char was old enough to know that the tough decisions were rarely ever black and white.
“I can’t wait until you find a woman who throws your whole life into disarray, until everything you thought you knew is turned upside down.” Like Logan did for her. Like she was starting to recognize was something she craved.
“That’s not going to happen,” Luc said after a beat. “Hashtag bachelor for life.”
Except . . . there was something in his tone that made her pause, made her wonder why there was sad on the edges of his voice. She’d known him for nearly a decade, and she had never seen the same woman on his arm more than a handful of times. A few dates, a few months, but never any longer.
Like her.
And she’d always figured he was like her in that way, that things had ended with the women in his life because he was married to his job and didn’t have room for more.
Still, considering she’d just realized that her relationships hadn’t failed solely because her career kept her too busy, but also because she’d been hurt and had encased herself in a protective shell that only Logan seemed to be able to penetrate, she figured that Luc might have something happening behind that casual, cavalier shield of his.
“You never got close?”
Silence.
Then, “Yeah, I got close. Once, I got pretty damned close.”
Pain in that sentence, so much pain that she’d unwittingly churned up. Damn. She went to apologize, paused. Because Luc was like her, but harder, and he’d shown her a little chink in his armor. He wouldn’t want her to poke at it, to draw attention to it.
He’d want to move on and make it about something else.
So, she deliberately lightened her tone and said, “Well, I can’t wait until you fall for someone, so I can watch you spew sappy bullshit over her.”
“Spew. Such a lovely word.” He
snorted. “Also, why can’t you wait?”
“Because I’m both a nosy bastard and I can’t wait to make fun of you.”
“Nice,” he said. “And here I am, protecting you, being nice. I would never be so mean as to make fun of you.”
“Should I circle us back to you saying I was a lovestruck asshole?”
“That’s fact,” he said. “Also, technically, I said you were a dumbass in love.”
She resisted the urge to laugh. Just barely. Instead, saying, “One who needs a man to drag me down the aisle?”
“Man, woman, identifies as neither, or both, or at some other point on that scale, I don’t care. But the truth is that you do need someone to drag your ass down that aisle.”
“I’m not that—”
“You were burned. You need to know someone won’t cut at the first sign of trouble. You need proof that your relationship has staying power. That’s not bad or wrong or fucked up,” he said. “But with this, you need to not be scared, to realize that the only place you ever really felt safe was Logan’s arms.”
He was right.
In so many ways.
She’d never needed to have her guard up with Logan. He’d always seen right into her heart, straight down to all of the hidden pieces of her soul. Just as she’d seen the same in his heart, his soul.
That trust had been broken.
But for a very specific reason.
So, the question she needed to ask herself now was whether she had the courage to put it all aside and to move forward.
Because this conversation had answered the other question—whether she wanted to move forward.
She wanted. Oh, how she wanted.
“Now’s the time for courage, Lottie girl.”
If she’d been looking for a sign from the universe that moving forward with Logan was the right decision, then one could certainly consider Luc speaking the same words aloud she had circling in her mind as one.
