by Vi Keeland
“You took his card.”
“I was being polite.”
“I didn’t realize that politeness entailed flirting and leading men on.”
My eyes bulged. “Flirting? Leading men on? You say I’m nuts; I think you have a few screws loose of your own, Eastwood. I asked him about a climb for you. I didn’t flirt at all. And I certainly didn’t have any intention of calling him.”
“I don’t think he got that message.”
Frustrated, I flailed my arms in the air and slapped them down against my legs. “You know what? Screw you.” I opened the car door but then turned back. “Maybe I will call him. I haven’t gotten laid in a really long time. And God knows, you shot me down when I asked you out. So I might as well move on and find someone else who can get my rocks off.” I stepped out of the car door and slammed it shut with as much ferocity as Reed had earlier.
He called after me as I stormed toward the elevator. “Charlotte!”
I answered without turning around, raising my middle finger over my shoulder as I walked. Screw you, Reed Eastwood. I’m done.
CHAPTER 24
REED
Once again, I’d fucked up.
It seemed to be a regular occurrence when it came to Charlotte Darling. I’d say or do something that would upset her because I was pissed, and then hours later I regretted it and hated myself for the way I’d acted. Normally, she was good about it. We’d established a routine of sorts—I’d either get jealous of her having contact with another man or get frustrated because I couldn’t push her up against a wall and show her how she made me feel. Then I’d lash out and she’d get angry. Her anger would simmer and turn to upset, and my guilt would eat at me. I’d apologize, and we’d go back to being friends. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Only this time, she wasn’t letting me apologize. Even though her hotel room was right next door to mine and I’d heard her moving around, she pretended she wasn’t inside when I knocked. I also sent a text that showed as read, but no damn response from that, either. Now it was my second call to her room, and the phone just rang and rang.
I showered, answered a few work emails, and then decided I needed a drink. On my way down to the lobby bar, I knocked on Charlotte’s door one last time. Not surprisingly, she didn’t respond. After a minute of standing at her door in silence, I heard the sound of movement inside, so I took a chance and spoke with my forehead pressed up against the door. “I’m going to go get something to eat downstairs. I know I’m an asshole. If you’d like to join me to yell at me over a steak and glass of wine, you know where to find me.” I took a few steps away from her door and then walked back. “I hope you join me, Charlotte.”
The first Scotch went down smooth, so I decided to order a second and eat handfuls of peanuts from the bar rather than order a steak. I’d positioned myself in a corner, facing the entrance, so I could watch who came in. Each time someone approached, my pathetic heart sped up. Then I’d realize it wasn’t her, and I’d chase down my sorrow with another gulp of amber liquid. After the third glass in an hour and a half, I decided to skip dinner and get some sleep.
I practically stumbled out of the elevator and onto our floor. Outside of Charlotte’s door was a room-service tray. I picked up the metal cover to her dinner to see what she’d had and found a full, untouched cheeseburger. There was a piece of cheesecake with one spoonful taken out of it and . . . a cork. Guess we had the same meal.
I took a deep breath and knocked one more time on the off chance that she’d listen to my apology—never expecting her to answer. But she did. And when the door swung open, offering her an apology was the furthest thing from my mind.
Charlotte was standing there in nothing but a black lace bra and panties.
“You liked it so much in the bag, I thought maybe you’d like to see it on.”
My eyes had already zeroed in on the little red rose sewn onto the top of the waistband of her thong. After that day in the office when I told her to show me the lingerie she’d purchased, I’d spent weeks imagining her wearing it for me at night. I’d use my teeth to grab that rose and tear the lacy fabric down her gorgeous legs. But anything I’d imagined couldn’t hold a candle to the vision before me.
Charlotte was simply stunning. Taking her in, the air rushed out of my lungs. All that creamy, toned skin, those gorgeous killer curves covered in only a few pieces of skimpy black lace. Fuck me. Her full breasts were aching for release from that little low-cut bra and . . . I could see her nipples protruding through the sheer fabric. Lush, hard, beautiful, pink nipples that begged to be sucked.
I knew she was watching me but couldn’t take my eyes off her body long enough to look up at her face. “What do you think?” she whispered. Charlotte did a slow, seductive turn, stopping so I could get a good, long look at her ass on full display, except for the string that ran up her crack. I imagined what my handprint might look like on the two creamy globes of her ass cheeks.
When she circled back around to face me, our gazes locked. I had no willpower left. I wanted to suck on her skin more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life. I wanted to suck hard and leave marks, hear her cry out my name when my teeth sank into her. This was not going to be gentle, not even close.
“Charlotte—you’re so fucking beautiful. Everything . . . your body, your face. You—inside and out.” My gravelly voice strained to speak. It wasn’t easy with the massive rush of blood heading south.
“It’s your turn to get naked,” she said. “I’ve shown you mine; it’s your turn to show me mine.” I smiled, at first thinking it was cute that she’d messed up what she was trying to say. Then . . . she hiccupped. Followed by a giggle.
I tried to ignore my conscience, even with the warning bells going on around me. I wanted her so fucking bad. But . . . A cork on her room service tray. Messed-up speech. Hiccups and giggling.
Looking over her shoulder, I caught the empty wine bottle on the dresser. “You drank that full bottle of wine yourself?”
“I didn’t save any”—hiccup—“for you, bossman.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
I almost did it. I had almost reached for her and taken what I’d wanted from the moment she entered my life. That is, until I realized exactly how inebriated she was. That brought me back to reality. I seemed to have forgotten that I couldn’t have her anyway.
Charlotte just kept looking at me with those glassy eyes. I was half-sauced myself with very little desire to move from my spot long enough to head back to my room. I just kept staring at her beautiful body.
“Sometimes you look at me, Reed, and I could swear you want to smack my ass.”
“‘Want’ isn’t strong enough of a word to describe what I want to do to your ass.”
Fuck. What was I saying? I was losing it.
Charlotte was looking down. My dick had completely betrayed me as it stretched through the crotch of my trousers, displaying a more-than-obvious erection. I was hard as hell, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Looks like someone is happy to see me, even if you’re trying to convince yourself otherwise. Maybe I can help clear up some confusion?”
Charlotte reached behind her back.
What was she doing?
She unsnapped her bra and let it drop to the ground.
No. No. No.
Her gorgeous tits were now on full display. I swallowed, hardly able to contain the need to lick them. Her nipples were erect, and the skin around them prickled in little goosebumps. My eyes then landed on a tiny cluster of freckles in the middle of her cleavage. Charlotte’s breasts were beautiful, round, and hung naturally, unlike Allison’s stiff silicone.
Jump up and down for me, Charlotte. I want to see them bounce.
“Touch me,” she panted.
I literally put my hands behind my back. “I can’t touch you as it is, Charlotte. But I most certainly can’t touch you when you’re drunk.”
“What is it about me that stops you every time? You
clearly want me. You gave your whole heart to someone like Allison, but you refuse to explore things even a little with me, to see where this could go. Just tell me what’s wrong with me. I can take it.”
God, I hated to let her think that my hesitancy had anything to do with Allison. Well, it did, but not in the way she thought at all.
She took two steps closer and seemed to lose her balance. Charlotte then wrapped her arms around my neck. Before I could process that, her lips were on mine.
A noise that I couldn’t identify came out of me. It felt like all the oxygen in my body escaped into Charlotte’s mouth as I surrendered to the need to kiss her. My hands were gripping her hair for dear life. I enveloped her lips with mine. Charlotte’s taste was sweet and intoxicating with a hint of white wine. I let my tongue slip inside her mouth for a few seconds, and the pleasure was too much to bear.
I ripped myself away from her in one last-ditch effort to stop from making a huge mistake that I’d never recover from.
With the back of my hand, I wiped her saliva off my lips, not because I didn’t want it there. Just the opposite. My hand was shaking.
Covering her breasts and looking humiliated, Charlotte bent down to pick up her bra, then put it back on. She looked more upset than I’d probably ever seen her. I couldn’t blame her. I was sure none of this made any sense to her.
Her eyes were glistening as she shouted, “Go!”
“I can’t.”
“What?”
“I can’t leave you when you’re upset like this.”
“Fuck you, Eastwood,” she huffed before making her way over to the bed. Charlotte buried her face in her pillow. I couldn’t tell if she was crying or simply in the midst of passing out. It was likely that she might not even remember this exchange tomorrow. At least, I hoped she didn’t.
Standing there like a dumbass with my hands in my pockets, I watched her lying on her stomach.
After a few minutes, I moved and sat on the edge of her bed, then eventually kicked my feet up. The room was spinning a little. Turning to her, I watched as she continued to lie there, her face buried in her pillow, her breathing still heavy.
Speaking softly, I said, “Charlotte. What am I gonna do with you?”
My eyes fell to her half-naked ass, my dick still perpetually hard. My balls ached.
“I know none of this makes any sense.” I started to open up, knowing she likely wasn’t going to process it. “I’m so sorry to have hurt you. I don’t know how to be around you anymore. Don’t mistake my apprehension for lack of interest. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite, a constant battle. The truth is, I’ve been fighting my feelings for you for a very long time. And it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But I know with one hundred percent certainty that I am not the right man for you. You’re a dreamer, Charlotte. The biggest dreamer of them all. And you deserve to be with someone who won’t ever hold you back in life.”
Closing my eyes, I let out a deep breath. “I’m trying so hard to do the right thing here. If I slip and let myself have you, I’m never going to want to let you go. And that wouldn’t be fair. I dream of what it would be like to get fully lost in you, to not have any cares in the world. God, you’d probably want to have me arrested if you knew all the things I’ve done to you in my head. I want to do crazy fucking things to you. It’s all so close that I can taste it, but in reality, it’s so far away. Anyway, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you tonight. You deserve better. You deserve the world. And you’re gonna make some lucky bastard the happiest man on the planet someday.” My chest constricted at the thought. The idea of Charlotte with another man made me feel physically ill. But I couldn’t have her, and I needed to learn how to let her go.
Her breathing had slowed. I was pretty sure she was out. I wanted nothing more than to nestle my face in her hair, to breathe her in until I lost consciousness. Instead, I compromised. Fluffing my pillow, I inched in closer so that I could at least smell her without touching.
I closed my eyes and let myself drift away.
It was as close to bliss as I was going to get.
CHAPTER 25
CHARLOTTE
Blinking my eyes open, I looked over at the opposite side of my bed. I couldn’t remember when Reed left last night. I couldn’t remember much of anything.
The time shown on the clock caused me to gasp. I’d slept till noon? What the hell? Why hadn’t Reed called to wake me up?
A vague recollection of his talking low in my ear and apologizing to me last night registered, but I couldn’t figure out if I’d dreamed it all. Also . . . did we kiss? I thought we had, but I couldn’t be sure if I’d imagined that as well.
An empty feeling came over me as my head pounded. My cell phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Charlotte. This is John.”
John was the instructor from yesterday who’d tried to get me to go out with him.
“How did you get my number?”
“It was on your registration paperwork.”
“Oh. How can I help you?”
“Your friend Reed was just taken to the hospital. His instructor drove him. He’s okay, though.”
My heartbeat accelerated. “What?”
I then remembered that Reed had scheduled an early-morning climb.
“Yeah. He was climbing this morning and fell. His legs gave way from under him. It’s company policy to take the client into the hospital for observation if anything happens on our watch.”
“You said he’s alright, though?”
“Yeah. He was coherent . . . walking and everything. Just with a slight limp. Again, it’s just procedure.”
“Which hospital?”
“Newton Memorial.”
“Can you take me there?”
He hesitated. “Um . . . sure. Yeah.”
John met me outside of the resort and drove me the couple of miles to the hospital. I insisted that he drop me off, figuring that Reed and I would call an Uber back to the hotel whenever he was cleared to leave.
After much searching, I spotted Reed inside one of the examination rooms. He was talking to a doctor. Unsure of whether to make my presence known, I instead opted to stand outside of the door. I couldn’t help listening to their conversation.
“The thing is . . . I’d really been feeling great as of late. I wouldn’t have planned this trip if I thought the muscle spasms were going to return.”
“So you have experienced symptoms . . .”
“Yes, but they’re fleeting. I’m still in the very early stages.”
“Well, multiple sclerosis can be sneaky that way. And the truth is, you may have several weeks or months at a time when you’re asymptomatic, only to have the symptoms return. Have you experienced anything else in recent weeks?”
“Aside from some mild vertigo, no.”
“Did you come to the Adirondacks alone?”
“No, I’m here with a friend. She doesn’t know I’m at the hospital and doesn’t know anything about the MS.”
MS?
Reed . . . has MS?
Reed has MS.
What?
It seemed like the hospital vestibule was spinning. My heart felt like it was ready to explode as I ran down the hall and to the elevator. I needed air.
Once outside, I knelt down with my head between my legs on the front grass of the hospital grounds.
Breathe.
Everything was suddenly making sense. The cancelled wedding. Everyone saying that Reed had his reasons for the way he was. Why he wouldn’t let himself be with me. The bucket list. Oh my God! The bucket list.
My shoulders shook as I cried into my hands. Never in my life had I felt so much pain for another human being. At the same time, something else was bursting through me as every moment I’d ever had with Reed seemed to flash before my eyes.
I was hesitant to call my feelings for Reed love. All I knew was that I’d never experienced what I was feeling befor
e. I’d known for a long time that my feelings for Reed transcended normal infatuation. Now that I truly understood why he was preventing us from taking that next step, I could allow myself to really experience those feelings for him for the first time. I went from understanding nothing to understanding everything. Everything.
Reed thought he was protecting me.
“You deserve to be with someone who won’t ever hold you back in life.”
Where had that come from? Had he said that to me? It was buried somewhere in my mind. Had he said that last night?
Then I thought about the dress and the blue note. He hadn’t known what lay ahead when he wrote that note to Allison. Reed’s hopes and dreams were likely shattered sometime after. But why did they have to be? Surely he couldn’t just give up because Allison left him? She was a coward who never really loved him.
What Allison had done to him was really starting to hit me. She left him because of his MS. Had she never heard of in sickness and in health? To think that I believed that blue note sewn inside her dress represented unconditional love. The fairy tale was an illusion. The fact was, Allison wouldn’t know the meaning of unconditional love if it smacked her in the face.
An overwhelming need for information overtook me. Tonight, I vowed to read everything there was to know about MS on the internet until my brain bled. I needed to find every bit of information there was to give him hope.
I remember watching that talk-show host Montel Williams on TV. He had MS and was lifting weights and looked healthier than most people. There had to be a way around this. I needed there to be hope. Reed could not let this rule his life.
There were the tears again. How the hell was I supposed to hold myself together today if I didn’t tell him I knew? He clearly never intended for me to know about his diagnosis. He was never going to tell me. I just knew it.
I had to think long and hard about this, because I didn’t want to upset him. He deserved the right to be able to tell me on his own terms. My finding out the way I had was an unintentional violation of his privacy.
My heart. It felt so heavy, like it was weighing my entire body down.