If she couldn’t tell him how she felt about him, she didn’t deserve him.
Lola was making arepas for dinner—one of the top five things she shouldn’t be eating less than a week before the season started. And she was too nervous to put any food in her stomach anyway. When her grandfather showed up and kissed Lola on the mouth, it was weird. But their relationship or whatever it was grew less weird by the day. Her grandparents seemed happy, and that was all that mattered. Even if they’d tried to destroy each other in the past, they had this easy way around each other that couldn’t be denied. They hadn’t discussed the fact that he’d cheated on her grandmother. That was mostly because Laura had enough issues with her own crumbling marriage.
Even though she was adjusting to the idea of her grandparents dating each other, she’d exiled herself to the living room to avoid observing any PDA, just to be safe.
When the door chime rang, signaling Charlie’s arrival, she jumped off the couch and ran to the door. She should have let Lola answer it because Charlie looked amazing. He was freshly showered, and his hair was still wet. He wore one of his designer suits—the kind that she would have thought were slick and sleazy if they weren’t on him. His white shirt showed off his tan, and was unbuttoned enough that she could see his chest hair.
The urge to touch him was overwhelming. She could almost feel the press of his body against hers as she repressed the desire to hug him. Her lips burned from the desire to kiss him. And his gaze seemed to eat her up in the same way she was living again because he was here.
It had only been a few days, but her body craved his like a drug.
She stood, holding the door open, for too damned long. He didn’t say anything, and it seemed to her that he was as affected by seeing her again as she was seeing him. It wouldn’t make it any easier to tell him that they were going to be over before they planned to be knowing that he still wanted her even though she’d refused to give him what he really needed.
With a great deal of difficulty, she broke his gaze and motioned him inside.
“Come in.”
He nodded and entered as she moved back. The vestibule of the condo was narrow, and she didn’t move back far enough for him not to graze her breast with his arm. Or she could have moved further away, but she was too much of an addict to care.
How had this happened? None of her previous lovers had ever felt this essential before. She’d never been this connected to anyone. Maybe it was because he was exactly the wrong guy for her that she couldn’t leave well enough alone.
She wasn’t expecting him to lean over and kiss her cheek after she’d closed the door and turned back to him. It was an awkward, chaste thing that made her pulse speed up just the same.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I didn’t want you to leave the other night. Not before we talked.”
She hung her head in regret. Couldn’t meet his gaze because it would mean that he’d probably see something that gave him hope. “I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”
His posture stiffened, and he put both hands in his pockets. They stood there for two beats, four. Until Lola stormed in to save them.
“Why are you standing in the doorway?” Lola wore a colorful apron, and her lipstick was only slightly askew. She’d probably paid enough attention to the food that dinner wasn’t burnt. “Dinner is ready.”
Charlie put his hand on the lower back as she led him into the dining area. They sat on one side of the table, opposite her grandparents. Lola talked about everything and nothing while Laura picked at her food, and Charlie demolished his. It was as though her grandmother sensed that they had so much to say to each other that they couldn’t put anything into words.
Or her grandmother was just giddy because she’d fallen in love again. Probably the latter given the number of times she and Charlie got incidentally caught up in the game of footsie played by the septuagenarian couple across from them.
It stabbed Laura in the gut every time one of them got their feet grazed in the sock-laden crossfire. She’d never expected to have that kind of connection with anyone, and it seemed to come out of nowhere. Her parents didn’t share looks that said more than a thousand texts. They didn’t have their own intimacies. But she and Charlie were starting to have that.
And it was better if it stopped now than when he asked her to give up dancing to follow him around the world. It had to be tonight so that she wouldn’t be tempted to call him on the phone when he was travelling next, just to hear him talk about his day.
When everyone—except for Laura—finished their food, she and Charlie got up to clear the table.
“Were you not hungry?” Charlie asked as she scraped her food into the trash.
“I want a divorce.” The plate he was holding dropped into the sink with a clatter, and shattered a wineglass. When he went to grab the dish, she pulled on his arm. “You’ll cut yourself.”
He rounded on her, and she expected to see something in his gaze other than resignation, but that was the only thing there. “Why do you care?”
Couldn’t he see that she was doing this because she cared about him? She wanted him to have the kind of life that he wanted, and she wanted him to find the sort of woman who could give him that life. It wasn’t her, and she would not ever allow herself to be that kind of woman. She couldn’t give up everything that made her separate from her mom—ballet—to follow Charlie around the world.
“I do care about you, Charlie.”
He ripped his hand away from her, and it felt like more of a loss than it should have been. “Funny way of showing it.”
“You don’t want me.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, afraid to look at him for fear that she would take it all back despite this being the best thing for both of them.
She’d apparently said the wrong thing because he backed her up against the counter, crowding her, filling her nose with his scent and her visual field with his body.
“Did it feel like I didn’t want you three nights ago?” He pressed his lower body against hers, and she could have groaned at how he was still half-hard and ready. “Does it feel like I don’t want you now?”
She couldn’t give in to him. One moment, she’d felt the strength of her convictions, and she’d been ready to end this before either of them really got hurt. Now, she wanted to wrap her legs around his waist and ride him to the kitchen floor. The only reason she didn’t was because they weren’t alone.
This was how powerful his hold was over her, and this was exactly why getting any more involved with him could destroy them both. She was dangerously close to falling in love with him. She might already be more than halfway there.
He grabbed the sides of her face, and lowered his mouth to hers. The way his gaze had pierced her a moment ago, she would have expected him to ravage her mouth, leaving her lips bruised and searing her skin to his. Instead, it felt as though he was drinking her in. Like he was saying goodbye with his mouth.
Maybe he was having as much trouble with words as she was, but his lips against hers were a benediction. Their tongues dancing, the grip of his hands on her hips, how tightly she grasped his shoulders. It was all so desperate, sad and moving that she wasn’t surprised when tears slipped down her cheeks. He must have tasted them because he deepened the kiss for a moment, and she could barely stifle a sob into his mouth.
He was killing her without even trying. People had already been hurt—maybe her even more than him. She wanted him, and couldn’t have him leave doubting exactly how much. He was breath and light and hope.
And she was throwing it all away for a career. What kind of fool did that make her?
Abruptly, too abruptly, he pulled away and grabbed a pair of kitchen tongs. She found a plastic bag under the sink and cleaned up the broken wineglass in silence. It took a long time, way too long.
&n
bsp; This simple domestic task, probably being performed across the world by different couples felt heavy and meaningful. Every time he brushed against her or she him, sparks that felt like home skipped across her skin.
Every time he moved away, she tried to remind herself that hope was what got her caught up in something she couldn’t control. Hope and tequila.
Chapter 15
“The shoot will take fourteen days, but you guys only have to be down for seven.” Jonah looked relieved, and Carla appeared to be disappointed at the short shoot. “I’m going to go down with a camera man and wrap up all the background footage, do all the set up myself.”
“Laura’s not going with you?” Now, Carla seemed to be confused.
Charlie shook his head. “No, she and I aren’t—we’re not together.”
Technically, they were still married. The day after the dinner at her condo, a messenger had showed up at his house with divorce papers. She’d been planning it all along—probably since the first time they’d fucked. He couldn’t help the tendrils of betrayal that wound their way through his gut thinking that all the time they’d spent together, even after he’d offered her something real instead of a charade for the press, had meant nothing.
Despite her protestations of having feelings for him, she was just as cold as he’d feared. Why did he always have to offer his love to people who didn’t believe he was good enough? It was whiny and self-indulgent to wonder, but it was true.
He’d started a production company so that he could prove to his father that he was just as capable as his brothers. And the only time the man had ever said anything nice about him was when there were cameras on or reporters about.
He’d offered Laura a real marriage based on more than just chemistry. He was in love with her passion for dance, and he’d thought she could see that being with him wouldn’t take that away. She believed that he would be the end of something she’d loved her whole life, not the beginning of something new and exciting.
He’d been willing to eat his own pride and work for his father if he could be with her. And she wasn’t willing to give him anything in return. The thought left him feeling hollow inside.
He must have drifted off and missed part of the conversation because Jonah put his giant hand on his shoulder and said, “You okay, man?”
Charlie shrugged him off, and took a beat to ponder whether to be honest with his friend. He and Jonah had known each other since college. Charlie had been a rich, entitled fuck. And Jonah had been the scholarship football player from a tiny town on one of the smaller islands of Hawaii. His friend had been overwhelmed by the spotlight of playing football for one of the premier programs in the premier conference in the country. Somehow, Charlie had decided that he would be a good guide.
They were an odd couple, for sure. But they had never lied to one another. When Jonah had dropped out following his girlfriend’s suicide and the media shit storm that had followed, Charlie had told his friend that it was a terrible idea—that he was throwing away his life. Then, he’d ordered Jonah the most expensive camera he could fit on his emergency credit card and had it delivered to Jonah’s house. Charlie had remembered Jonah loving a photography class sophomore year, and he at least wanted him to have something to do while he figured out his life.
And then Jonah had become a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer.
“I’m not doing so hot, buddy.”
Carla narrowed her gaze, and he regretted opening up until Jonah said, “I gotta talk this out with Charlie, princess. You mind?”
His wife communicated something silently in a way that felt like a stab wound to Charlie. He and Laura would never have that, and at this point, she was the only person he could imagine feeling that way about.
Jonah turned his chair, so he was facing Charlie, who kept his body turned to the conference table. His friend might look like boulders of muscle piled on top of bones that could crush concrete, but he was a deeply sensitive and perceptive man. That was how he’d become a wildly successful photojournalist before meeting Carla.
“How soon after you met Carla did you know she was yours?”
Jonah leaned back and scrubbed his hand down his face until he landed in a thoughtful beard stroke. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Am I that fucking obvious?” He faced his friend, then. And immediately got annoyed with the wry grin on his face.
“No, but I’ve just known you too long.” He shook his head. “And I can never remember you getting depressed over anything—much less a girl.”
“You didn’t see me after that tape got released.” But even that, when he should have been at his lowest, hadn’t felt like this. Back then he’d been motivated by the negative attention from his father and the media. He’d set out to prove everyone wrong about him and he hadn’t put his head back up until he’d accomplished that. “This is different. Laura is different.”
Christ, he didn’t even like saying her name out loud, as though uttering the words would drain more of her essence from him. He felt like he was losing her a little bit more every time he said it.
“I knew that Carla was mine when she told me she was having my baby.”
“Laura was mine the second she said her vows, even though neither of us really remember them.” He put his forehead on the table, the glass fogging with his breath. “I didn’t know it yet. She didn’t. But, I’ve never been with someone who fits me that well before.”
“I had to prove to Carla that I was ready, too. She wanted to push me away—was just going to introduce me to her family and put up deuces.”
“She was going to raise Layla alone?” The idea of Jonah not getting to be a father to Layla hurt Charlie. He might just be an unofficial uncle, but the way Jonah and Carla loved their baby girl—the way she fed their love for each other—was beautiful. The idea that they’d almost lost that was wounding.
“I think she loved me, too. But I had to show up for her.”
“Laura wants me to go away. She served divorce papers.”
“The last time you saw her, did it feel like it was over?”
The last time he saw Laura narrowed down in his mind to that kiss in her kitchen. The way she’d touched him, the taste of her salty tears in his mouth. No, it hadn’t felt over. Even though their words had said differently.
“No, but I don’t want to stalk her creepily until she gives in. Maybe I need her to come to me?”
“No.” Jonah’s booming voice could have shaken the window panes if they weren’t made of thick, tempered glass. “That’s the last thing you need to do. I shouldn’t be telling you this because Carla wouldn’t touch my dick anymore if she found out, but you have to know that Laura’s family is fucked up, right?”
“Yeah.” While her parents hadn’t done anything overtly awful after their initial meeting, he caught something haunted in Laura’s gaze whenever they were mentioned—especially her mother.
“Laura’s mom has a drug problem that no one talks about.” Jonah’s words shocked the shit out of Charlie. “Apparently, she stays high because Mr. Delgado is a dick to her.”
“Why doesn’t she leave him?” Laura would certainly support her mother if she sought any sort of help. He didn’t know everything about his wife—not as much as he should know—but he knew that for sure.
“She was fucked up by how her mother refused to leave Cuba with the rest of the family. Then, she fell in with her douche husband, and refuses to hear talk about leaving him.”
“But how does this relate to me and Laura?”
“This is the part that Carla’s going to castrate me over.” Charlie motioned him to keep talking. He needed to hear all the good stuff. “Laura has always said that she’ll never get married. She doesn’t want to end up unhappy and catatonic like her mother. As soon as she could get out of that house—she was fourteen when she moved in to th
e ballet academy, and she travelled to dance camps every summer—she got out.”
“And she never looked back.” It was so much to think about. Getting married to him had ripped open wounds that she’d been running from for decades. Loving him wouldn’t just mean giving up her ballet career, it would mean giving up who she’d thought she was forever. Could he ask her to do that? Knowing it might make her crumble? Could he walk away from her, even if that’s what she needed?
“I’d say she looked back when she hooked up with you.”
“That was a drunken mistake.”
Jonah shrugged on of his massive shoulders again. “You know what they say about ‘in vino veritas.’”
“But how do I show her that being with me doesn’t mean that she has to give up anything?” Charlie wanted her to have everything she wanted. Everything.
“What means the most to her?”
“Ballet.” Even given all the revelations dropped today, he knew that for a fact. She might be a little tired, but dance was the only thing she’d ever allowed herself to be passionate about.
“You have to show her that she can have you and ballet. Together, at the same time.”
Charlie could do that. He would show that she didn’t have to give anything up to have him. He would show her that being together made the dancing more—that he could make her life easier. He’d keep her more insulated from her family bullshit than locking herself away in a rehearsal studio ever had.
And sure, he wanted kids and a home base. He wanted all of it. But he could wait for his. As long as Laura was there at the end of the wait.
Chapter 16
Laura felt as though she was flying across the stage. Her body hadn’t felt this light in ages. Her movements were perfectly timed with the music, and she could feel the audience leaning in to every gesture.
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