by Lane Hart
“I’ve been having a great time with you Roman,” she says as she begins scrubbing at my frying pan. “I just realized I’ve been enjoying myself, a lot, while Tessa is in that cold, sterile rehab facility trying to recover from the worst tortures…” she trails off, at a loss for words.
“Charlotte, no, baby, don’t put that on yourself,” I tell her as I move to stand behind her and wrap my arms around her. “Yes, Tessa is in a bad place right now. I mean mentally, not the actual facility. It seems pretty nice. But, baby, you didn’t do that. You didn’t hurt her, and you being here, helping her through this, means everything to her. Don’t let what happened to her ruin any happiness or joy you can find day to day. Do you know how pissed she would be to hear you talking this way?”
“I know that’s right,” Charlotte snorts, a glimmer of a smile returning to her face. “She would tell me to ‘get right up on that biker, or stripper, or whatever he is and ride him as far away from here as you can’ or something equally vulgar,” she adds lamely as her cheeks flare red once again.
“That sounds like good advice from your best friend,” I tell her as I let her go to grab my dish towel. “But, for tonight, how about we get these dry and go sit on the porch for a while, just enjoy the evening. We can talk a bit; and when you feel like it, we’ll get some sleep. I’ll be right by you to keep you safe, and you can follow Tessa’s ‘advice’ some other time. Sound good?”
“That sounds perfect, Roman. You know, I haven’t met many men who are able to handle my ups and downs. You’re good at handling me, you know that?”
“I’m good at lots of things,” I wink at her. “But if it turns out I’m good at handling Charlotte Newsom, well, that might be the one I’m most proud of out of all.”
Chapter Thirteen
Charlotte
“So, I was able to get time off from the office to stay for the whole month with the promise that I would get as much work done as I can remotely. Oh, and I, ah, was finally able to convince Paul to head back home tonight,” I tell Tessa while we’re sitting in the sunroom, sipping tea in rocking chairs. The place really is peaceful. That could just be the lack of television and electronics, though.
“You were? That’s good,” Tessa says, even though she sounds sad. “That’s good for him,” she amends. “Will you be staying at the beach house alone now?” Tessa asks.
“Oh, um, no, I’m not. I didn’t stay at the beach house last night.”
“Then where did you stay? Did you get a hotel? I hate for you to run up a big bill just to stay close…”
“I’m not spending a dime,” I assure her. “For now, Roman is letting me crash with him since he rents out the beach house by the week and needed us out.”
“Right,” she replies. “And that’s the only reason you’re staying with him?”
“Yep.” I try to quickly sip my tea, but I can feel Tessa staring at me, reading the slight blush on my cheeks.
“Come on, Charlotte! Talk to me. I’m bored, and just because I don’t think I’ll ever let a man touch me again doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear about you and Roman.”
“You don’t mean that, do you? You really don’t want Paul to ever touch you again?”
“I really don’t,” she replies with a sigh. “That’s why I’m cancelling the wedding. He deserves to be with a nice girl, one who wants to be kissed and touched.” She hesitates before asking, “So, how did he take the news?”
“Oh, I, ah, haven’t told him yet.”
“Charlotte!” she exclaims. “He needs to tell everyone!”
“I wanted to make sure you didn’t change your mind before I went and made it official.”
“I’m not going to change my mind. I swear. Please tell the man and cancel what you can to try and save him as much money as possible. I don’t know what will happen with Paul and I down the road, but right now…Charlotte, I can’t do it. I can’t be with him, can’t be touched, can’t be fretted over. I need time, time I won’t have with a wedding…time I won’t have with Paul.”
“Fine. I’ll tell him after I leave today. Him and his brother are packing up their things at the beach house.”
“Tell him to go home and call the wedding off once and for all,” Tessa says. “I still can’t believe you left the beach house to crash with a hot biker. Have you two slept together yet?”
“We have slept in the same bed, but that’s it. Oh, and kissed a little.”
“What’s holding you back? I’m the one who is fucked up in the head about sex now, not you.”
“I know, and I want to,” I tell her. “It’s just…Roman would be my first after Adam, so only the second man I’ve ever been with. I guess maybe I’m afraid that being with Roman will make me forget Adam completely.”
“So you would rather be alone with your old memories than with a sexy man who looks like he has a Ph.D. in giving orgasms and a Masters in the art of cunnilingus?”
“Tessa!” I exclaim.
“What? I may be broken, but I can still appreciate the male species from afar.”
“You are not broken!”
“Charlotte, please. I can’t even stand to look at myself naked in the mirror before a shower. How will I ever let a man see me like that again?”
“Oh, I don’t know, honey, but I hope you’ll find a way. And who knows, maybe you’ll want to see Paul again soon or give him a call…” I trail off.
“No. I don’t want to see him or talk to him,” she replies while looking away, out the glass into the sunny courtyard beyond the window. “I don’t want to talk to him about what happened. I don’t want his pity or see him struggling to try to ‘fix things’. You were there. You saw…saw everything, so we don’t have to discuss it,” she explains. “And maybe it’s mean and callous of me to cut him out of my life, but he’s a good man. He doesn’t deserve this or for me to hurt him, but I can’t face him again. When I think about being with him, it makes me nauseous. Paul doesn’t deserve a wife who gets nauseous at the thought of being with him. This, a clean break, is best for both of us.”
“Fine. I’ll tell him it’s over.”
“Thank you,” Tessa replies. Glancing down at the diamond engagement ring on her finger, she twists it off and holds it out to me. “Give this back to him for me?”
“It’s such a beautiful ring,” I say with a sigh as I take it from her. “I’m sorry you’re not getting your happily ever after in a few weeks, but that doesn’t mean you won’t ever get one.”
“Charlotte, please. Everything changed. I’ve changed, whether I wanted to or not. The future I wanted is gone forever. Now I have to figure out how to survive normal everyday activities like walking past a van or passing a strange man in the grocery store without worrying he’s going to kidnap me.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
“Me too. Tell Paul I’m so sorry.”
“I will,” I agree.
“Anything else you need before I go?” I ask her.
“Yeah. Have you heard…did they catch the…did they catch them yet?”
She wants to know that her kidnappers are locked away. And I wish I could tell her they are, but I can’t.
“The Savage Kings are looking for them. Those guys found you, so I’m confident they will find the men responsible and make them pay.”
“Make them pay?” she repeats.
Lowering my voice, I tell her, “They won’t be dragging them to jail, if you know what I mean.”
“You think…they’ll kill them?” she whispers. I nod, and then wait to see how she feels about that. “Good,” she says with a heavy exhale that sounds like relief. “I want them to die. In fact, I want to kill them myself.”
“You don’t mean that,” I tell her. It’s easy to say the words, even imagine the act, but much more difficult to carry out the actual deed.
“I would do it,” Tessa replies. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“What? No, of course not, sweetie.”
“
If I kill them, then I would finally know that they were gone and couldn’t hurt me again. If someone else does it…I’ll never really know it’s over.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” I say even though I pray that Roman and his guys get rid of the assholes before Tessa leaves here in a month.
Roman
“How’s it going?” Winston asks when he sticks his head in my office the next afternoon. “How’s Tessa?”
“She’s settled in at the treatment facility. Charlotte said she’s still calling off the wedding, but overall she sounds stronger.”
“That’s good,” he says.
“Yeah, I just wish we had more intel on where to find those fuckers,” I mutter.
“Amen, brother,” Winston agrees. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“How are you doing with all this?”
“I’m great.”
“Great? Does that mean you finally got to nail the widow you’ve been stalking for years?” he asks with a smirk.
“First of all,” I start. “It’s none of your business who I’m nailing or not nailing. Secondly, I haven’t been stalking her. I’ve been checking in on her, making sure she’s okay since her husband was killed.”
“So she turned you down. Understood,” he says with a gruff chuckle.
“She didn’t turn me down! Actually she’s staying with me for the next few weeks, but we’re taking things slow.”
“Taking things slow as in the ghost of her husband is still lurking around, refusing to let her go?”
“Something like that,” I mutter.
“Have you told her the truth about him yet?”
“No. I can’t. I won’t.”
“You should. The man is dead, Roman. His secrets should all die with him. Maybe when she finally learns the truth, she’ll be able to move on.”
“I can’t do that to Charlotte, hurt her because of him in the hopes it will help her let him go. She has to do that on her own.”
“So, you’re just going to give yourself the worst case of blue balls ever and wait her out, even if it takes years.”
“Yes! I’ll wait…even if it takes years.”
“Too bad you don’t have years,” he remarks.
“What do you mean?”
“How long is Tessa staying at the facility?”
“A month.”
“Then that’s all you’ve got with Charlotte, Roman. In a month, she’ll be going home with her friend, and your time will have run out.”
Fuck, I hate when my best friend is right about shit. I don’t like seeing things from an angle that I missed, and then being forced to admit I’m wrong. But that’s why Winston is my VP — he’s a pessimist who constantly finds problems with every damn thing.
“Didn’t think about that, did you?” he asks with a chuckle.
“Fuck off. I know she has a house in Raleigh. And a job she loves…”
“Tick tock, motherfucker,” he says, tapping the top of his wrist on the way out the door. “Now or never, prez.”
Chapter Fourteen
Charlotte
“Oh, good, you’re all packed up,” I say when I get back to the rental house and see Paul and Steven’s luggage sitting at the door.
“I need to wrap up a few things at work, but I can come back since I put in for time off during the wedding and our honeymoon.” When I don’t respond to that, he adds, “Charlotte, please tell me you have some good news,” he pleads.
“Let’s…sit down and talk a minute,” I suggest while trying to figure out the best way to tell him the last thing he wants to hear.
Once we’re all sitting on the sofas in the living room, I say, “So, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Tessa is doing very well. She seems to really like the facility and has made a few friends with some of the other patients.”
“That’s great,” Paul agrees. “So, what’s the bad news? Are they going to keep her longer than a month?”
“We don’t really know right now how long she’ll be there,” I reply. “But the bad news is that…” I pause to retrieve the diamond ring from my pocket and then offer it to him. “The bad news is that Tessa wanted me to give this back to you. She’s so sorry, but she’s not ready to get married.”
“We don’t have to get married next Sunday!” he exclaims as he jumps to his feet, refusing to take the ring from me. “We can wait a few months or until next year…”
“Paul, I’m sorry, but Tessa isn’t just calling off the wedding. She wants to end things with you.”
“What?” he gasps as he lowers himself back down to the sofa. “End things? She doesn’t want to be with me?”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. Getting up, I go over and grab his palm, turning it up so I can place the ring in the center and close his fingers back around it. “It’s possible Tessa could change her mind later on, maybe after she’s finished her treatment at the facility.”
“Why?” he asks softly. “Why is she pushing me away when all I want to do is hold her and be there for her?”
I wince when he says he wants to hold her, remembering what Tessa said about not being able to stomach letting him touch her right now. And for the first time, I start to believe that maybe she was right to end things with Paul. He won’t understand what she’s going through, no matter how hard he tries. Only those of us who were there know and get it. And it wouldn’t be fair for Tessa to have to try and explain what she went through to Paul. She shouldn’t have to talk to anyone about what happened and relive that nightmare.
“Go home, Paul. I’m going to stay however long it takes, and I’ll keep you updated, even if Tessa doesn’t want to talk to you just yet.”
“It feels wrong to leave her here,” he says as he holds the diamond between his fingers and studies it as if searching for answers as to what to do next.
“I know it does. But please believe that Tessa is doing what she thinks is best for you. She wants you to go on with your life.”
“How? How do I do that? I don’t want to go on with my life without her in it! Doesn’t she understand that?”
Now he’s getting angry. I try to recall all the stages of grief and hope for his sake that acceptance will be next.
“Yelling isn’t going to change things, man,” his brother Steven tells him.
“What else can I do but yell!” he shouts at him. “My fiancée just broke up with me and wouldn’t even tell me so herself!”
“Don’t be pissed at Tessa,” Steven says. “Be pissed at those assholes who took her. This is their fault. Just give her some time to heal. That’s what she needs now more than you.” Turning to me, Steven asks, “Is there any news? Have the police found them yet?”
“Ah, not that I know of,” I reply even though I’m rooting for the Savage Kings to get to those bastards first. That way Tessa will know for sure that they will never hurt her again. They’ll be dead with no chance of appeals or parole.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll let us know if and when they’re caught,” Steven says. “For now, we better get on the road and get home.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I wish…I wish this never happened.”
“Yeah, so do I!” Paul yells. “And it wouldn’t have if you hadn’t brought her to this goddamn town!”
As soon as he puts all the blame squarely on my shoulders, he storms over and picks up his luggage before walking out the door, letting the screen slam behind him.
“He doesn’t mean that,” Steven tells me after he’s gone.
“Sure he does. It’s my fault. I agree.”
“No, it’s not, Charlotte. Paul is just looking for someone to be angry with, and you were standing right in front of him.”
“I never meant for this to happen,” I say as my chin trembles.
“I know. He knows that,” Steven says when he wraps his arms around me in a hug. “Take care of yourself, okay? I know you’ll look after Tessa, but someone needs to loo
k after you too.”
I nod my agreement before he pulls away. “Someone will,” I assure him, because I have no doubt that Roman will be there for me.
Roman
I head home earlier than usual in the afternoon, eager to see Charlotte, who I know will be waiting for me. I can’t wait to see her after being away from her all day. I missed her. It’s ridiculous but true. And while the circumstances for why she’s staying in town aren’t great and I wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy, I’m still glad she’s here.
After years of watching her from afar, checking up on her surreptitiously, I’m finally able to get a chance to talk to her as much as I want and to see her up close. To kiss her and touch her.
I park my bike in the garage next to Charlotte’s car, then close the doors before I go over to try the doorknob that leads into the house to see if she remembered to lock up when she got home. She did, which is a relief. I live in one of the wealthiest, safest neighborhoods in town; but after what happened to Tessa and the other girls, nowhere feels entirely secure.
“Hey, it’s me!” I call out as I take the steps up to the kitchen so that I don’t sneak up and scare her, even though she probably heard the garage door open and my bike rumbling inside.
“Hey,” Charlotte says in greeting from where she’s sitting in one of the chairs at the dining table, working on a bottle of wine with the glass to her lips.
“Rough day?” I ask before grabbing a bottle of beer from the fridge and taking it over to join her at the table.
“You have no idea,” she mutters before refilling her glass when I take a seat across from her.
“Tessa okay?”
“Tessa is…adamant that she’s not only calling off her wedding but that she doesn’t want to be with Paul.”
“Wow,” I mutter while taking a sip of beer. I may have only talked to the little rich dude a few times, but it was obvious he loved Tessa and was worried sick for her.