“Then I’m not solely to blame for that, and if that’s all you’ve got in reply to my question, then you shouldn’t be marrying Billie. You can’t change the past. None of us can, but if you still have feelings for Charlotte then you should be honest with yourself, and with the beautiful woman you have waiting at home.”
Hearing his pointed comment set me straight. “I love Billie, she’s my world,” I bit back. “What I meant is my relationship with Charlotte never came to a natural ending, and I’m stuck with that going around in a loop. We didn’t get the chance to peter out, the way we ended was hurtful and abrupt.”
James shrugged and blew out another breath and stood up. “Have it your way, Sawyer. You’d have to talk to Charlotte to know why she did what she did. I’ve said what I came here to say, the rest is your decision. I’d do anything to help move us forward. I know the trust isn’t there, but it never has been.” I mulled over the facts and he was right. I had Billie and this had to end now.
“Okay, this ends today. If what you say is true and you want to begin to earn my trust again, I want you to set Charlotte up, but until she confirms what you’ve said, I can’t call you my brother.”
“Anytime. How do you want to do this?”
“Your place. You can ask her over.”
“Done.” When I stood staring at him, his jaw dropped and he shook his head, startled. “You mean now?”
“Unless you have something better to do. Don’t you think enough time has been wasted, or do you need to think about what you’re alleging some more?”
“No … no, okay, I’m not sure she’ll come, but I’ll try.”
Glancing at me with uncertainty in his eyes, he pulled out his cell phone and called her number.
“Hey, it’s me,” he said, quietly.
I heard Charlotte’s shrill tone ask, “What do you want?” She wasn’t on speakerphone but spoke loud enough for me to hear.
“Listen, can we meet up?”
“You think, after the way your mom humiliated me, and your family let that happen? Where were you, anyway?”
“Honestly, I had no idea all that was about to go down.”
“Why did you tell her, of all people?”
“Tell what, to whom?”
“That old hag, Billie, why did you tell her about the baby?”
James winked at me and I thought, What the fuck? Until I heard him fall into her line of thinking.
“Breaking them up is partly what I want to talk to you about,” he replied, ignoring her question. “Meet me … give me an hour here,” he coaxed.
“Why would I do that?”
“If you want Sawyer back, you’ll come. They’ve set a date for the wedding and you’re running out of time. If you’re serious about stopping it, you’ll meet me today, Charlotte.”
“Where? And you better have a plan,” she remarked.
“I do have a plan. Come to my place, two hours from now?”
“Thirty minutes, I want to go get a manicure later.”
“I can’t I’m in the city, but I’ll leave now. Forget the manicure. Meet me at the house in a couple of hours.” The line went dead and James held his phone up and shrugged. “She said …”
“I heard, I’ll meet you out there.” Not waiting for a reply, I headed back to my bike for the ride to the coast, my head full of revelations about the two people I thought I knew. I hated feeling the way I did about my brother, and I knew people would think I was crazy if I forgave him, but he was still my flesh and blood.
The vibe between us at the penthouse felt different and I realized despite our past, I had missed him being around. People had forgiven worse and if it had happened the way he said it had, there was room for some forgiveness at least.
Traveling by bike meant I made it to his place before James and I parked my motorcycle one block down from his house. Walking back, I felt strangely buzzed that the truth of what went on between Charlotte and my brother would perhaps set my mind free from the ordeal I’d experienced at their hands.
About ten minutes later James pulled into the driveway of his pricey, but gorgeous, two-bedroom two-bath single storey property. I had stayed out of sight and watched him go inside. Once I’d ensured Charlotte hadn’t arrived, I knocked on his kitchen window and went inside.
“You may want to hang in the guest room,” he told me, seconds before we both heard a key slide into the metal lock on his front door.
“You have twenty minutes, James. Get on with it,” Charlotte barked in her super-confident bossy tone as I stood with the bedroom door ajar. “You think Sawyer is having second thoughts?”
“Look, I’m sorry for what happened at my parents’ place at New Year’s,” James began in a mock apology.
“You said. That fucking mother of yours and that bitch,” she began in reference to Billie. “Anyway, skip the apology and let’s move along, shall we?” My chest tightened at the curt way she spoke to James. I felt my hand curl into a fist.
“Well no, Charlotte, first there are a few things I want to get straight before I stick my neck out for you.”
“What few things? If you know what is good for you, you’ll cut to the chase.”
“I think I deserve a minute, don’t you? I mean after all the shit you’ve put me through with my family, aborting my kid? Sexually assaulting me at Aiden’s place, and then threatening to accuse me of doing that to you? Then there’s the continual blackmail—”
“Assaulting you?” she barked. “How did I assault you?”
“Waking up with my cock buried inside you at Aiden’s thirtieth party? I was unconscious, for fuck sake.”
“That wasn’t assault. You rose to the occasion. A woman can’t assault a man, James, that’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? How come I had passed out and came around to you riding me then? What about me pushing you off and when I challenged you, you threatened to run out of that bedroom and tell everyone I had assaulted you?” For a moment she fell silent and when she didn’t protest her innocence, I knew James had been telling the truth.
Opening the bedroom door wide I stepped out, having heard enough and asked myself again if I had I ever known Charlotte at all. It was hard to accept someone I’d lived with for five long years was such a devious character. How had I never seen her like this? And if I’d needed further convincing, how she’d handled the abortion with everything else James had told me, the affair appeared far more one-sided than I had initially thought.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I yelled,making my presence known. Staring in shock, her jaw hung loose, but her hesitation only lasted for a split second before she crumpled in a heap on the floor. It was just like James had predicted, Charlotte broke down in tears and it immediately clicked why James had been so afraid. The scene she created right there on the floor would have melted the hardest of hearts. Her ability to look desecrated and beautifully vulnerable would have fooled most.
It triggered a similar experience I’d witnessed, when she’d done the same thing to me about us living together. Right then I realized James hadn’t been Charlotte’s only victim, she had used me in this way as well.
“Are you fucking sick in the head? You assaulted my brother and then blackmailed him? Why the fuck did you do that? There was no reason for you to behave this way. You had everything you wanted when you were with me. Why did you do it, Charlotte? And don’t say it was because you were missing me. You’ve never worked a day in your life and there was nothing stopping you from coming to see me.”
“I … I don’t know why I did it,” she blurted out, with mascara mingling with the tears that streamed down her face.
“I know why, because you are an attention whore. Your behavior was despicable, and if I ever hear you say a bad word about either of us to anyone in the future, I will drag you through court for defamation of character and ensure the press gets every sordid detail of what you did to James.”
Charlotte’s mouth opened and closed a couple of tim
es but no words came out, and my brother looked devastated by the whole situation.
“What was it you said? Who do I think Sawyer would believe? I guess we have that answer now, Charlotte.” I snickered at James’s comment and although we had a way to go at least in this, we showed a united front. I turned to look at her and thought I’d never seen her so quiet for so long in an argument, and although the situation had felt absurd, I chuckled.
“Don’t ever come near either of us again. If you do, Charlotte, I’m warning you, the world will know what you did. In fact, I’m seriously considering whether your parents need to know this now. You are one sick fuck and they should be warned about the monster they raised.”
Sobbing uncontrollably, her eyes pleaded with me for compassion, but my heart felt as hard as stone when I stared contemptuously back at her.
“We’re leaving, James,” I stated, ignoring my brother’s look of surprise because it was his house. I was thinking ahead and hadn’t wanted her to have anything to blame us for, we were two men against one woman. So instead of us throwing her out on the street and risking her causing a scene, I figured if we left it would keep her off kilter.
“Leave your key and close the door behind you,” my brother told her in an expressionless, flat tone. Wandering over to the coffee table where he’d left his phone, he picked it up and waved it at her before we left. “Before you go spreading more shit, Charlotte, it’s all recorded this time. Every. Last. Word.”
Taking my lead and heading for the back door where I’d come in, James followed me outside and locked his back door. “Now what?” he said, as we both heard her trashing his living room after we’d gone.
“Now we get on with our lives. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you before, but you should have trusted me more from the start. I’d still have been mad about what happened, but this could have been resolved a lot sooner than now.”
“Could it?” Again, he had a point, I was stubborn and hurt either way.
“That was a smart move, recording the conversation,” I remarked, thinking how clever it was he’d had the presence of mind to do that.
He stared at his cell phone and chuckled. “I wished I had when I picked it up off the table, but figured it would do no harm to let her think I had,” he mumbled with a wink.
I snickered and shook my head, thinking it had been a sharp way of keeping Charlotte in her place. I began to turn away from him but before I got far, he flung his arms around me and held me tight in his grip. It felt desperate and I imagined the relief he must have felt at being believed. As much as I wanted to resist his embrace, it felt too good to push him away, but I still couldn’t hug him back.
“I’m not saying it’s all good, James, but today has been a great start. Let’s not push it because I don’t want to be let down again. There’s a lot of work to be done before I can say you’re my buddy.”
Nodding his agreement, he stepped back and bowed his head. “If you let me, I’ll try to be the brother I should have been all along. I know you owe me nothing, and I regret how I behaved toward you every day.” I felt his words, he meant it.
I held up my fist, he immediately bumped it with his before I wandered over to his car. “Give me a ride to my bike and if I were you, I’d stay out of there for a few hours. You’ll need some help to clean up later, she’s an expert trasher from my experience, but I think she knows she’s done fucking with the both of us now.”
When he dropped me off I closed his car door, having said all I’d had to say that day and rode back to Billie feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted off my chest. It was as if I could breathe freely for the first time in a long time. I finally knew how blind I had been about Charlotte, and I wondered how she’d ever managed to snare me in the way she had all those years before.
Chapter Thirteen
It had been almost 2:00 p.m. by the time I got home to Billie, but we had the rest of the day alone because Colby was at Logan’s place with his grandparents. They had been made aware of his dad’s situation and were visiting Logan for the weekend.
This had given Billie enough confidence for Colby have a sleep over with them, and although the following day was a school day, she was more than happy to let him have a night with his dad under the supervision of everyone else. Especially, when Keith, his grandfather had agreed to take him to school the following morning.
“Well?” Billie asked, anxiously as she met me in the hallway.
Shrugging out of my jacket, I glanced at her and smirked. “You were right, as usual.”
“Right? About what?” she asked, excitedly.
“That I should have listened to him. From what I saw today, he’s not the same guy as he used to be, so in that sense Charlotte has done him a favor.”
Stepping close to me, Billie wrapped her arms around my waist. “I’m so proud of you for facing James, I know how difficult that must have been.”
“And Charlotte. I saw Charlotte today as well.” Billie’s body immediately stiffened, and she leaned back to look up at me.
“He brought her with him?”
“Christ, no. When he told me what happened, something inside of me shifted and I really wanted to believe him, but …” I sighed, feeling guilty when I remembered the conversation. “I asked him to call Charlotte out, because I had to hear what he’d told me from her. I needed her admission to back up his words.”
“So, what happened?” I went on to explain what had gone on and how she admitted blackmailing James with threats, the tantrum that followed, and how we’d left her.
“What a piece of work,” Billie spat, as she shook her head. “How did you live with that girl and not know her? Never mind,” she muttered, holding her hand up. “Love is blind, I know that from experience. How did you leave it?”
“After James and I left the house, he hugged me and told me he wanted to make it up to me.”
“And?” she asked, her bright blue eyes shining with hope. I knew what she wanted me to say, but I’d had a long time of hurt about James that wasn’t connected to his incident with Charlotte, as well. When I couldn’t commit to one thought, I knew she’d read the mistrust that lingered inside of me. She pressed her lips into a line like I’d disappointed her. Drawing in a deep breath I exhaled slowly and tried to keep my feelings in check.
“I can’t just forget everything that’s gone before, when we were growing up. However, I’m certain I can get past this incident for sure. I feel angry about what Charlotte did to him and I have nothing but hate for her now. You asked me if I still loved Charlotte. When I gave you an ambiguous reply, that was nostalgia talking.”
“I get that. I didn’t want to believe it of Logan either. I was convinced Poppy had hypnotized him for him to do that to us. In spite of all the horrible situations I’ve been in since he got with Poppy, my heart still clung to the slim good times we had, otherwise marrying him would have felt pointless.”
“Well, now I can answer your question with a categoric no. I don’t want her anywhere near me, and I know now I was a fool to ever have been with her in the first place. I’m only sorry I didn’t reject her more publicly at my parents’ place. That was my upbringing and keeping the peace for my parents’ sake when I shouldn’t have. Perhaps I hadn’t wanted to believe she had it in her. I owe you a huge apology for allowing her to use that to her advantage.”
Her eyes softened in compassion. “No one gets relationships right one-hundred-percent of the time, and although I hated her hanging on you, I suppose it was a testament to my confidence in what we had that I let her do that. We both could have stopped her,” she said, as I sat down on the chair and pulled her onto my lap.
“I guess I should thank you for calling me out on my promise to meet with James, because I finally feel there’s no more to learn and I can bang the door closed on that part of my life.”
“Good, because after you left this morning, it gave me time to think about us and everything that happened on the two occasions I met Charl
otte. I’m not one for drawing attention to myself or for ultimatums, for that matter, but I don’t wish to be in the same room as that woman again.”
“So no wedding invite then?” I teased and she batted my chest with her hand. “You were the reason I agreed to try to resolve this. I don’t think I ever would have listened otherwise. I never realized how stubborn I was until you tore me a new one about how I had dealt with Logan.”
“In terms of our relationship we’ve come so far, but we have a lifetime to find out about one another. We still have loads of things to learn. So far nothing about us being together has been straightforward, but I was naïve to think I was the only one with baggage, when in fact, you’ve had this incredibly complex situation to handle as well.”
Cradling her head to my chest, I let out a sigh. “Mindfucks aren’t as pleasurable as physical ones, huh?” I chuckled and she sighed, her silence told me she was with me on this.
“Okay, the wedding,” she started to say, and I instinctively knew where she was going and tensed.
“I know what you’re going to say—James.”
“Yeah, I’ll ask Lorna to be the second bridesmaid since she is the only one of your sisters not married, but I’d like you to do the right thing and have him present, even if it is only to spite Charlotte. Think about the message you’d both be sending to her.”
“Hammer’s the best man,” I confirmed, decisively. “James can be … present.”
“By present, you mean second groomsman?”
“Last man,” I said, conceding tongue in cheek.
* * *
After Colby came home on Monday, we had dinner and he appeared much more upbeat after being at Logan’s than on previous visits.
“Have a good time, bud?”
“Yeah, it was nice,” he mumbled. “We went to the cinema with my grandparents and he’s going to take me to a Marvel Universe convention next week.” I could see it had meant a lot to him that his dad was making more of an effort.
Dare Me, Part Two Dare Duet Sawyer and Billie: Unchained Attraction Series Page 12