by Lee, Kimball
He walked away from her and out of their bedroom, and both of them had tears streaming down their cheeks. He slept in the extra bunk bed in Atti’s room for the next few days, and both he and Charlotte were more miserable than they ever thought they could be.
“I’m dropping Atticus at your mother’s house and then I’m catching a flight to Texas to bring Hadley home, I was hoping you would come with me, Finn. You know, the two us could spend some time alone as a couple, we could stay the night in San Antonio, and then drive out to the ranch…” she told Finn a few days later, and then she hesitated, waiting for his reaction. She prayed that his heart had begun to heal, and that he might possibly make room for her once more. He simply shook his head without looking at her.
“She’s been asking for you, Finn, your little girl needs you. I need you too, my love, more than you can imagine. I’m so deeply, deeply, sorry and if I could do anything to change it I would, but we both know that’s impossible. I didn’t go looking for him, if that matters at all. I went to New York on a whim. I was just going to spend money to… I don’t even know what… exact a little pay back because you chose to risk your life yet again, maybe. When I ran in to him, we had drinks in the hotel bar and his mother and West were right there, it’s not as if we were alone. Then Evangeline wanted to see pictures of the kids and West took my phone and they all saw a picture of Atticus. Maybe I thought Bly would be so insanely furious that he would take Atticus from us… instead, the punishment he exacted was time with me.”
“Sex,” Finn said as he stood in the living room staring out the window. He watched as Atticus kicked a soccer ball in the yard, Charlotte was gathering her purse and keys, preparing to drop their son off at Georgina’s house before she went to the airport. “He wanted sex, Charlotte, and I don’t see any bruises on your body. It doesn’t look as if you put up much of a fight, you can’t rape the willing, after all.”
“Finn…” Charlotte said and there was defeat in her voice, but she reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I love you, and even before you came back I forgave you for lying to me and risking your life not once, but many times. Please, please, my love, don’t do this to us, can’t you try and forgive me? I know we can get past this. You own my heart and every cell of my body, I can’t remember when I didn’t love you; you’re such an integral part of me. Without you, my life is an empty husk. If what we had is over then I’ll live for the children, but there will never be anything to compare to us. Life will be hollow and meaningless if you and I aren’t together. The kind of love we have doesn’t come around every day, some people never experience it; I don’t know anyone else who has what we have. Finnegan, you’re the love of my life, there’s no one else for me; there’s only you.”
“Tell Hadley I’ve missed her terribly and I can’t wait to see her. You’d better go now, Charlotte,” he said, and turned his back on her, and although his voice hesitant, his rejection cut Charlotte to the bone.
Charlotte drove to Georgina’s house with Atticus buckled securely into the backseat, he rolled his eyes in the rude way that she was sure he’d picked up from time spent with Matilda Rhodes and her shitty teenaged attitude.
“Atticus, don’t roll your eyes like that, if you have something to complain about tell me.”
“I just get sick of that old kind of music you’re always playing. Can’t we listen to somebody cool for a change?” he asked, and Charlotte smiled thinking she’d felt the same way when her mother refused to listen to any band other than Pearl Jam.
“Okay sweetie, what would you like to listen to?” she asked, and she felt like rolling her own eyes when he told her the name of the band. She played the music he wanted to hear and handed him her iPod when they arrived at Georgina’s, she told him he could make his own playlist and enjoy.
She drove toward the airport and her mind and heart were reeling with the realization that Finn was not going to forgive her. She knew that his heart was injured and that it wasn’t only because she had slept with Bly. Finn was a man of honor and he had been untruthful with her for years. He had gone on his missions for reasons known only to himself, and his last assignment to South America had cost him dearly. In Houston he had been hospitalized to reset his broken arm and he was treated for sepsis caused by the gunshot wound in his leg. The doctors had assured him that one more day in Argentina might have cost him his life due to blood poising. As well, JP was still missing, and although there was nothing Finn could have done to change JP’s mind about going to Mexico, the guilt weighed heavily on him. Intel confirmed that JP had walked away from a tiny airport in the countryside north of Mexico City, he’d simply vanished into the low-lying mountain slopes.
As well, Bly wasn’t about to forget her or the time they’d just spent together, and even though he knew that Atticus loved and needed Finn, he seemed to have hardened his heart where that relationship was concerned. Bly had sent text after text to Charlotte to let her know that he was returning from Paris with Holden and Mia and he wanted a full time relationship with Atticus. He also wanted Charlotte to divorce Finn as soon as possible and marry him. He was adamant about that, Charlotte was the love of his life and the mother of his first born son, if her heart belonged to any man; it belonged to him. Charlotte had sent him a curt message telling him they would work out the terms of his visitation with Atticus when she returned from Texas, and that unless Finn insisted on a divorce, she had no intention of ever leaving him.
Did she love Bly? Yes. Was she in love with him? No. She had been stupid to think that she could feel the same thing for two men at the same time. Perhaps she would always be vulnerable to Alexander Bly, and certainly he had been one of the great loves of her life, but Finn was the man she couldn’t live without. Now she wondered if Finn would be able to live with what she had done. He would probably never leave her, he would want to live under the same roof as his children, but would he ever touch her again with the unquenchable passion he once had for her? The thought that she had doomed herself to a life devoid of Finn’s wild and often out of control desire for her released a silent torrent of tears just as her cell phone rang. She pulled her car to the side of the road and answered, it certainly wasn’t a call she had expected. An officer from the San Diego police department asked if she had any interest in bailing her husband out of jail.
*
Finn had watched Charlotte drive away with Atticus waving goodbye from the back seat. He’d wanted to run down the street after her and tell her he couldn’t stop loving her no matter what she had done, or would ever do. He was so tied to her, to imagine a life without Charlotte was not possible, she was the air he breathed, the blood that pounded in his veins, she was the reason he existed. The house phone rang just then and when he answered it Bly began to speak before Finn had time to utter a single word.
“Charlotte, for the love of God where have you been? I’ve tried and tried to reach you, why won’t you take my calls, why are you avoiding me? I want to see my son, I want to see you; I need to be near you, Charlotte. Are you listening, Goddammit? I’m coming to get you both, meet me out front,” Bly said in a rush.
Finn slammed the phone down and walked outside and crossed the yard to the curb. Bly’s Bentley was just pulling up and Finn used his one good arm to jerk the door open and land a quick and effective blow that broke Bly’s nose. Blood splattered across the interior of the car and Bly unbuckled his seat belt and knocked Finn onto the grass with a deadly precise blow. They fought in the yard in plain sight, fists flying, bones shattering, blood spraying, until five men ran from the street and neighboring houses and pulled them apart.
“You crazy obsessive bastard,” Finn shouted as three of his neighbors held him back. “Stay the fuck away from what’s mine, do you hear me? That means my wife and my son, come near her again or try to see him without permission and I’ll show you what I do best. Your days of dealing with Charlotte are over, you want to see the boy, deal with me, man to man. And if you even think of dra
gging her into court, I swear to God you’ll never live to see the day.”
“You crossed a line here today, Finn, you fucking lunatic,” Bly said calmly, but fury simmered just beneath the surface. “You stole Charlotte and that boy from me and you’re going to pay for it. I should have left your ass to rot in that jungle prison in Taiwan. Go on and try to keep me from what’s rightfully mine, I can guarantee you’ll play hell doing it. There’s one thing you can fight against but you can never change, Atticus and I share a common bond that doesn’t include you. We’re connected by blood, my blood that runs through his veins. He’s mine and he’s Charlotte’s, rage against that until fucking hell freezes over, kill me if you think you can, but he’s a Bly and nothing you can do will change it.”
Finn felt those words land like a knockout punch, but he didn’t back down. Both he and Bly were dripping blood, and a pair of La Jolla policemen stepped out of a cruiser at the curb. Finn grabbed Bly’s shirt and spoke close to his ear, “If she wanted to be with you, she would be, and if you had any understanding of Charlotte you would know that she left you because I am the man she loves. I’m the man she chose to be a father to her son and a husband she could be happy with for the rest of her life. Can your smug, arrogant ass can comprehend that? I AM HER CHOICE! You can see Atticus on our terms until he’s old enough to decide what he wants. And if you send your bodyguard to deal with me, I’ll gladly send the both of you slowly and painfully to hell.”
“Don’t worry about my bodyguard, you sadistic fuck, I’ll take care of you myself,” Bly said, and the fight would have started all over again if the policemen hadn’t handcuffed both men.
*
Charlotte and Billy Kipling arrived at the San Diego county jail at exactly the same time, and they sat talking with the chief of police.
“I must say, I’m surprised to see you here on a personal matter, Counselor,” the police chief told Charlotte as he leaned back in his desk chair and studied her beautiful face. Charlotte Hale, Counselor at Law, she had a reputation for being a blood thirsty barracuda in the courtroom, and it had been rumored for years that Alexander Bly was still in love with her. It was obviously true, and who could blame him? The police chief remembered Charlotte from her American Jock cover, and they had both been seniors at UCLA the same year. They’d never met, but she had been fantasized about by every guy on campus, and he was included in that group. In those days she was married to the NFL quarterback, and after her divorce she didn’t seem interested in men. That broke quite a few hearts, her refusal to date. She ended up becoming roommates with two special-ops nutcases with more testosterone than brains, and now she was married to one of them. Bly and her husband had been taken to the emergency room to have their faces stitched up before they were booked for disturbing the peace. Both men looked like hammered shit, their faces and knuckles split open and swollen, the arresting officers had been shocked at the ferocity of the fight between two upstanding members of San Diego society. The chief had decided to drop the charges and release them to Charlotte since neither Bly nor Finn wanted to file assault charges against each other. Alexander Bly would buy his way out the charge anyway, and there was an unspoken understanding in the law enforcement community that Finn Hale was in a line of work better left alone.
“Your husband and Alexander Bly were arrested for fighting like a couple of teenaged gang members on a nice residential street in La Jolla. I have to say, that’s not something I get to see every day. I’m cutting them lose, they seemed intent on killing each other but now neither one wants to file any charges. You can sign them out and they’re free to go. Although, you might offer them some free legal advice, tell them to settle their differences in a law office rather than in the court of fists and F-words.”
“Well, they’ve kind of lost their minds I suppose, Chief. I’d like to have a word with them, did you say you put them in cells next to each other? That’s good, I suggest you keep them locked up for a few hours and let them talk out their differences until they’re blue in the face. I’m going on to Texas today to pick up my daughter. Billy, you go ahead and bail them both out if you want, I’m done with men, I’ve had about as much fun as I can stand in one lifetime,” Charlotte said. The police chief laughed to himself, and pictured her fine young ass on the pages of American Jock as he led her back to see Finn and Bly.
“My, my, aren’t you two a pair,” she said, pacing in front of the jail cells. She shook her head in disbelief as she stared through the iron bars at the two men who had made her life heaven and hell for way too long. “I see the two of you failed in your attempt to kill each other, maybe you should let it go now because here’s the big news of the day; I’m through with both of you. Don’t say a word, please, just shut up and listen. Atticus is the tie that binds all of us together, and he deserves the best of everything. And I don’t mean everything money can buy. I mean the three of us working together to give him a good, solid, happy start in life. He knows and loves Finn as his father, and that’s the way it’s going to remain until Atti is old enough to decide otherwise. Bly, I’ll tell him about you and the two of you can have a relationship, what you make of your time with him is up to you. I don’t want the world to know he’s a billionaire’s son just yet, no bodyguards, or people wanting a piece of him, a normal childhood is what he’s going to have. His name will be Atticus Hale not Atticus Bly, someday he can decide if he wants to make that change. How this all came to be doesn’t matter right now, I’m sure he’ll demand an answer, but we’ll cross that difficult bridge when we come to it. In the end, he’ll either love or hate us, and the last the thing that child needs is three parents who are tearing each other apart and spending all their time in jail or the courtroom.”
“My love,” Finn said so softly she barely heard him, and she walked to the cell and put her hand over his on the cold metal bar. She looked into Finn’s eyes and in them she saw her world, but she’d made up her mind, it would be a world without him or Bly… a world on her own.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she glanced at Bly. They both loved her, there was no question about that, but together they’d made a mess of love. Three hearts were too many for one love affair, so she would end it, and they would simply learn to exist with hearts of fire that perhaps someday would burn themselves out.
*
Charlotte missed her plane, but she waited at the airport and caught a later flight. She sat in a window seat and stared out at the immense star dappled sky, and she felt more alone than she ever had in her life. Self-inflicted wounds were the worst of all, she realized, and she couldn’t help herself, she cried like a baby.
“Ma’am, we’d like to move you to first class,” a flight attendant said as he bent down and handed her a stack of tissues.
“What? Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll be alright in a minute. Really, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother anyone,” she said, dabbing at her eyes and turning away from the scowling passenger seated next to her.
“We have a seat available for you, ma’am, please, if you’ll just follow me,” the young man said with more determination in his voice.
“I’m fine right here, miserable but fine, thank you very much,” she said and pulled a magazine out of the pocket of the seat in front of her and buried her face in it.
The flight attendant closed his eyes, let out an exasperated sigh, and headed to the front of the plane. A moment later a voice came over the intercom announcing that a bit of nostalgic music would be playing for a couple on board that was very much in love. Hearing that, Charlotte began to wail into the magazine, ‘a couple very much in love’, that really was the last straw.
“Shhh!” the woman next to her hissed, “I wanna hear this song, it’s “The Heart of the Matter,” I love Don Henley.”
Charlotte stopped crying then and listened, and she remembered when she and her love had danced to that very same song at a little bar on the beach.
“I got the call today that I didn’t want to hear, but I knew tha
t it would come, an old true friend of ours was talkin’ on the phone, she said you’d found someone. And I thought of all the bad luck and the struggles we went through, and how I lost me and you lost you, what are these voices outside love’s open door, make us throw off our contentment and beg for something more? I’m learning to live without you now, but I miss you sometimes, the more I know the less I understand all the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again. I’ve been tryin’ to get down to the heart of the matter, but my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it’s about… forgiveness… forgiveness, even if, even if, you don’t love me anymore.”
She handed the magazine to the women sitting next to her and unbuckled her seat belt in a flash. She hurried toward first class and he was standing in the aisle waiting for her, and every person who witnessed their tears and laughter and endless kisses, clapped and cheered.