by K. C. Crowne
I filled the tub up with the hottest water my skin could stand and laid back in it, letting the warmth wash over all of my aching, tense muscles. I closed my eyes and for the first time in a long time, I could truly relax.
I hadn’t realized just how much the wedding had gotten to me until I experienced the relief of simply, cancelling everything. I had sent e-mails to all our vendors and a mass e-mail to everyone invited to the wedding letting them know of the cancellation. I had left a handwritten note for Peter, telling him why I had left and that I wasn’t going through with the wedding. And when I left for the airport with Ms. Harvey, I had turned my phone off and hadn’t turned it back on since.
I would have to check my e-mails and messages at some point. I still had my career. Thankfully I freelanced, so I didn’t have to worry about bosses being upset over my sudden departure, but I had clients who still expected mockups and meetings with me. I had messaged my main client and told them I was going out of town on a family emergency, just in case they needed to contact me, but other than that, I was mostly free for the next few days.
And I truly did feel free. For the first time in years, it felt like I could breathe again. Peter had controlled and stifled everything in my life, and I had let him. Everything had been a fight. And it had been exhausting.
But I wouldn’t have to deal with that anymore.
That thought alone brought a smile to my face.
I couldn’t believe that I had ended a relationship with a man that I’d been involved with for almost nine years and not shed a single tear. If that wasn’t a sign that I had done the right thing, well, I don’t know what could have made it any clearer.
I sunk further into the water, my head mostly submerged, as the jets massaged my aching back and shoulders.
Yes, this is heaven, I thought to myself, briefly forgetting who’s house I was in. I had tried not to think too much about Eli because thoughts of him often led me down a dangerous path.
He looked so damned good though.
Eli had always been an attractive man, even in high school, and all the girls had wanted him. I remembered being surprised when he asked me, of all the girls, to junior prom. Not that I was an ugly duckling or anything - I was a cheerleader, he was the quarterback, it made sense. But he was just so… perfect and he could have had anyone, yet he chose me.
Stop it, I told myself. Stop thinking about him.
But it was hard when I was in the bathtub at his house, and had only an hour before, stared upon his chiseled jawline and deep, dark brown eyes that seemed to stare right into my soul.
I lowered myself even deeper into the water, as if somehow, that would quiet the thoughts. My ears were underwater now, and the only sound was the echo of the water moving around in the tub.
I closed my heavy eyes, feeling like I could just fall asleep like that.
A sound pulled me from my thoughts, and I lifted my head from the water. Was that a door opening?
I had left the bathroom door open and stared into the room.
“Charlotte?”
For some reason, hearing a voice - Eli’s voice - sent me into a panic. He was in the room, and the bathroom door was open. Without thinking, I stood up in the tub, reaching over for the towel hanging on the back of the door. I couldn’t reach it, so I stepped out and onto the rug. My heart was pounding heavily in my chest.
“One second! Don’t come in--”
My foot caught on the corner of the rug, and before I knew what was happening, my entire body fell forward. I caught myself with my hands, but there was I was, splayed on the bathroom floor, ass up in the air.
“Ow,” I said, feeling a pain in my wrist, but I was thankful that was the only thing that hurt - besides my ego.
“Are you okay?”
I glanced up and there was Eli staring down at me - or rather, trying not to stare too much. He would look at me, then look away, then look at me again, his cheeks a bright red.
He knelt down to help me, but I couldn’t look him in the eye. “Please, just get me a towel.”
He’d seen me naked many times before, in our youth, but we were together back then. My entire body was red from blushing so hard, or maybe it was the hot water from the tub, who knows, but it felt like my skin was crawling from shame.
“Oh, right, yes,” he stumbled on his words. He hurried and got up, then handed me a towel while shielding his eyes, reminding me that Eli was always one of the good guys. “Are you going to be okay?”
“I’d be a lot better if I wasn’t buck naked in front of you right now, but yes, I’m fine.” I used the towel to cover up my naked ass, but I would have to stand up somehow, and that would require flashing even more of me.
“Want me to step out until you get dressed?”
“Please.” I didn’t mean to sound so sarcastic, but it was hard not to be in the moment.
“Right then, please call out if you need anything,” he said, shuffling awkwardly from the bathroom. I heard him step out of the room, and once I was convinced there was no way he’d see my naked body, I pulled myself back up to my feet, wrapping the towel around me.
My knee hurt from hitting the tiled floor, and my body ached in ways that surprised me - reminding me that I wasn’t as young as I used to be. I frowned as I threw on my clothes and debated hiding away in the bathroom for the rest of eternity rather than look Eli in the face after my clumsy mishap.
“Everything okay in there?” he called out from the other side of the bedroom door.
“I’m fine,” I shouted back.
He was waiting for me. Outside the door. Meaning I couldn’t hide here forever, dammit. I only hesitated for a minute before opening the door. I counted to ten and took some deep breaths to calm myself down, then swung it open.
Eli was sitting against the opposite wall, and when the door opened, he hopped to his feet. His cheeks were red again, which was absolutely adorable. I couldn’t recall ever seeing him blush like that.
“I’m so sorry. I knocked a couple of times, and when there was no answer, I panicked,” he said. “I thought something might have happened to you. Maybe you had a concussion or something and--”
I held up my hand to silence him. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened and only existed in my worst nightmares, alongside the ones where I showed up to class naked or lost all of my teeth, not something that really, truly happened.
“It’s okay, Eli. Can we just forget about it, please?”
“Oh yes, of course,” he said. “I was just coming to tell you that dinner is almost ready.”
My stomach growled at the very mention of food, and as much as I had wanted to sulk away to my room and hide my head, I knew I needed to eat. I hadn’t had anything since lunch with my sister, and even then, most of my meal had gone to waste.
“Sam’s cooking,” Eli said, as if needed to convince me. His brother had always been known to be one hell of a chef. Eli, on the other hand, well, he tried, God bless him. “Not me.”
I stifled a chuckle at his own self-deprecating comment.
“That sounds great.”
“It’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes if you still need to do-- well, whatever it is you women do to get ready and stuff,” he said with an awkward grin. “Oh, and Mason and Graham are here too. Hopefully you don’t mind.”
His family had always treated me like one of their own when Eli and I had been together. I remembered family dinners where we’d pile around a table, eating Mrs. Harvey’s famous meatloaf followed by her even more famous apple pie. Or sometimes Sam would grill up some pork steaks. Those were the days.
But I knew a lot had changed since then, and I wasn’t sure how his brothers would feel with me being back in the picture, all things considered.
“It’ll be good to see them again,” I said, my voice softer than before. I hoped they would think the same of me.
Eli turned on his heels and walked back downstairs, and I watched him until he
disappeared around the curve of the staircase. I couldn’t help but stare at him. Was I really there, at Eli Harvey’s place? I thought after things ended the way they had, we might never see each other again. I thought that the last memory I’d have of him was him shipping off and leaving me alone in San Diego.
The memory of that day still haunted me. It was one of the most painful days of my life. There I was, alone in a big city, on the opposite side of the country from all of my friends and family, and the one person I counted on the most was leaving. We often only had e-mail to communicate, and sometimes it would take days before he could get back to me, and that had kicked off one of the loneliest times of my life.
The months that had followed were easily the worst days of my life, and I was including the abuse from Peter. Nothing could compare to what I experienced those few months in San Diego.
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat and went back into the bedroom. I had about fifteen minutes, so I quickly blow dried my hair and rushed downstairs.
My heart was racing as I stepped off the bottom stair. I could hear voices coming from a nearby room.
Laughter, warmth, and so much love oozed out of the dining room. My own family often ate in relative silence after my dad went around and asked how our days were. It was so formal. In our house, loud laughter was a foreign concept. But in the Harvey home, it was a common occurrence.
Would they welcome me back in with open arms, like Ms. Harvey had, I wondered?
I put on foot in front of the other and walked into the dining room. The table was built for eight or ten, maybe more, and still, with the massive Harvey boys sitting around it, it looked crowded.
As soon as I stepped in, the laughter stopped. Eli cleared his throat and stood up. “Hey Charlotte. I think you remember my brothers.”
They had all grown up so much, and they looked a lot alike. I couldn’t be sure who was who anymore to be perfectly honest.
“I do,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. I smiled for them, hoping to exude confidence and warmth. “It’s great to see all of you again.”
“Likewise,” the one I thought to be Sam said, standing up and reaching across the table to shake my hand.
“Sam, is it? Y’all just look so much alike, and you’ve grown so much since I last saw all of you.”
“Yes, I’m Sam,” he said with a friendly smile.
“Welcome, Charlotte,” the man sitting to his right said, doing the exact same as his brother. “And I’m Mason, in case you forgot. The middle child, so it’s easy to forget.” He winked playfully at me and set me right at ease.
“Why thank you, Mason. I remember you were one hell of a fisherman back in the day,” I said.
“Yes ma’am,” Mason said. “Still try to get out to the water when I can. Not as easy as it used to be, with the kids and all.”
“Oh, you have a family now? How nice.”
“We all do, except Eli here,” Sam said. “Here, take a seat.”
My eyes fell on the last brother as I sat down directly across from him, between Eli and Ms. Harvey. Graham Harvey was Sam’s twin, though he often took on the oldest brother role. He eyed me carefully, but eventually spoke up. “It’s good to see you, Charlotte.”
Something in his eyes told me that wasn’t exactly true.
“Thanks, Graham. It’s good to see you too.”
“I hope you still like BBQ,” Sam said. “I made a hell of a lot tonight.”
There was an entire spread on the table - pork steaks, mashed potatoes, fried green beans. My stomach rumbled, and I was very thankful for mustering up the courage to face Eli after our little incident.
“I’m from Tennessee, aren’t I?”
Sam laughed. “Alright, let’s dig in.”
They passed around the dishes, and the warmth was back in the room. Everyone was smiling and laughing, and I found myself smiling right along with them, even if I had no idea who any of them were talking about.
“Lily heard me say damn the other day,” Sam said with a chuckle. “Now she goes around repeating it. Took her months to say daddy, but she picked up damn after hearing it one time.”
“You have to be careful what you say around them. MJ picks up everything we say, so we are very careful around him.”
I piled mashed potatoes in my mouth and thought back to when they were all younger. It was hard to imagine them with wives and kids of their own.
“So where are your wives tonight?” I asked.
“Oh, they’re having a girl’s spa and dinner night,” Mason said. “Once a month or so, we all get together for dinner and they do their thing, and we hire a couple babysitters and all.”
“That sounds very nice. So they all get along?”
“They’re all very close,” Mason said. “It worked out well, I think.”
“So how many kids do you have?” I asked, thinking back to the numerous names I’d heard during the conversation earlier. There were… well, a lot.
“I have three,” Mason said. “My wife had a daughter before we met named Skyler, and I’ve adopted her, and then we had twins last year - MJ and Elianna.”
“Oh wow, that’s a nice sized family,” I said.
Sam just grinned sheepishly. “I have four. They just turned one a couple months back.”
“They all turned one? As in--”
“We had quadruplets, yes.”
“Jesus,” I said, trying not to gape. “I mean, I’m sorry, that sounds amazing, but what a handful too.”
“It’s a lot, but I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world,” Sam said. “You probably know my wife too.”
“Oh yeah?”
Sam shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “Yes, Penelope Whitmore. John Whitmore’s younger sister.”
His best friend’s little sister, to be exact. Which is why he looked somewhat awkward in explaining it to me.
“Penny Whitmore? Heck yes, I remember her! I always liked her.”
She and her brother always hung out at the Harvey house too, and I’d spent a lot of time with Penny.
“It will be nice to catch up with her after all these years,” I added.
Now the attention was on Graham, who hadn’t said much throughout dinner.
“So if Mason had twins, and Sam had quadruplets, let me guess, Graham -- you have triplets? Or is it quints?”
Graham chuckled, which was nice to see since he’d been giving me the cold shoulder most of the evening. “I just have two so far, but we’re thinking of more,” Graham said. “Emmy and I are hoping our kids can grow up close in age, like the four of us did.”
Eli and I had talked about having several kids close together for the same reason.
My smile faltered as I remembered having conversations about our future, and how excited Eli was to have kids one day. Now, he was the last one in the family without a family of his own, and from the looks of it, he wasn’t even close to getting started.
Hell, neither was I, even though I had always wanted to be a mother.
Thankfully, Eli broke through my depressing thoughts. “You’ll still be here this weekend; you can meet everyone. It’s Skyler’s birthday, and we’re all getting together.”
“That sounds very nice.” But also, a little bit awkward. A family get-together with the brothers and all their wives? I was the odd person out. Sure, they had always treated me as family, and Ms. Harvey had been nothing but kind to me even after the breakup, but I worried what it would be like, surrounded by all the kids - reminded of what I had thrown away when I left Eli all those years ago.
Chapter 4
Eli
“Can I speak to you for a moment?” Graham stood in the entryway, looking into the living room.
“Sure, what’s going on?”
Graham seemed to scope out the place, even looking upstairs, before coming into the living room. He lowered his voice. “It’s about Charlotte. I’m worried about you, man.”
“You have nothing to worry about.
Since she’s been here, I haven’t seen her that much. She came down for dinner with everyone the other night, but other than that - she mostly stays in her room, even for meals.”
And as much as it pained me to admit, I thought that might be better for everyone. I didn’t push her to come down to eat, and we didn’t really have scheduled mealtimes on the nights Mom went over to one of my brother’s houses to eat anyway, which had been the last two nights.
Graham took a seat in the chair opposite the sofa, lacing his fingers together and resting his hands on his lap. He stared at me with an appraising look.
“Honestly. We hardly even see each other. It’s easy for me to forget she’s even here, to be honest. She’s so quiet and barely steps out of her room.”
“I guess that’s good at least.” Graham sighed. “I just-- I worry about you so much. After she left you, I remember--”
“Trust me, I remember it too. I don’t need to be reminded of my stupid behavior,” I said.
“I know, Eli. And I know you’re an adult now, but--”
Graham looked up just as I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. I turned around to find Charlotte stepping off the bottom stair and into the room. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, her curls falling down around her shoulders. Her eyes were large, as if she were surprised by something. Or maybe afraid.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company,” she muttered, her hand gripping the banister of the stairwell tightly.
“No, it’s fine,” I said. I stood up, ready to go to her if she needed me to. Every time I saw her, it was like a fist gripped at my heart, threatening to rip it from my chest. It was hard to breathe, to even think.
“It’s no big deal, I’ll come find you in a little bit.”
She nibbled her lower lip and averted her gaze to the floor. Dammit, she still had the same facial tics she had when we were together, and I knew she was lying.
She hurried back up the stairs, and I had half a mind to run after her.
“Dammit,” Graham growled.