“Should have never, you son of a bitch.”
I landed on my ass. She’d shoved me right off my barstool and loomed over me. Without the lights on, she looked like some sort of demon from the shadows come to feast on my soul. Didn’t matter—she could have what little there was left of it. I really didn’t care one way or the other.
I rolled over, putting my back to her, but Hannah wasn’t having it.
I found out in short order a woman in the fit of a blazing temper was nothing to underestimate. Especially a woman hell bent on getting her ounce of flesh from the one who’d hurt her best friend.
She had me up on my feet with a jerk. My shirt was wound in her hands as she walked me backward into the bar.
“Give us your best shot, luv,” I said, smirking.
Her fist caught the underside of my jaw. Stars exploded around me. But she wasn’t done. Not by a long shot.
My teeth rattled as she shook me, yelling in my face, close enough her nose bumped against mine before she’d screamed herself hoarse. I let her get on, leaving the air blue with all the foul words she could string together.
Her hand cracked across my face. “You will listen to what I have to say, fucker, or I’ll beat you senseless until you do. What’ll it be?”
I brought my hands up, slicing them between hers, and shoved. She went flying backward. My temper snapped, my fist curling as I pulled it back. Hannah’s eyes squinted, throwing me off for a minute. Bringing me back from the edge I felt slipping out from under me.
I spun away, putting as much distance between the two of us as I could. Horror stricken that my reaction to her had been to give back the same treatment she’d given me. My stomach rolled. What the hell had I become?
“Is your head out of your ass yet?” she asked, coming up behind me.
“Stay away from me,” I said, whispering the word ‘please’ so softly I wasn’t sure if she heard me.
“Oh, I will, but not until I’ve had my say,” she hissed.
I flinched, shoulders bowing in until it felt like they’d touch. If Hannah wasn’t going to leave, I was. It had been too close. Way too close. If I would have hit her… if I would have let my anger cloud over every single bit of reasoning, I never would have been able to live with myself.
“I don’t know what happened between you two, but I can bet it’s pretty big. You’re carrying on like a complete jackass, and Charlotte’s turned into some sort of half-living Tim Burton creation. And really, I don’t care. It’s not my business. What is my business is when I’m put in the middle. Ed and I are working night and day, while you’re off fighting and fucking your way to some sort of oblivion—”
“Get out, Hannah. Leave me alone,” I said, not wanting to hear it.
“No, Charlie, you get out. Get out of whatever mood you’ve put yourself in. Get over whatever it is you think is so horrible you had to turn into some sort of monster in order to deal with it,” she shot back at me.
“Shut up. Just shut up and get the fuck out,” I roared at her.
“No,” she fired back.
Goddamn it with the women in my life! “Fine. I’ll leave then.”
“Is being a jackass somehow encoded into the DNA of men when they’re born?” she asked, putting herself in my path. “Because I have to tell you, I know for a fact I was born with the dominant bitch gene, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
The front of the pub had been dark, but not the back. The storage room light was on, and it washed Hannah’s face with a soft glow. A face filled with so many emotions I couldn’t pinpoint a singular one and hold onto it. Fear. Rage. Sadness. Pain. Weariness. They flashed in and out, one layering the other until they blended.
She saw it then. My eyes on her, watching as I connected with her. Knew I would hear what she had to say because I’d been caught in her basilisk stare. “Have your attention now, do I?”
I sighed. Defeated into submission. It was easier to let her rage on and pretend I heard her. Pretend as if I were listening and taking into account what she had to say. I nodded, eyes hooded to keep the truth from her.
“Good,” she said with a nod as she crossed her arms and settled into what I thought of as her verbal fighting stance. She continued to give me the sharp side of her tongue. “Love is a complete and utter bitch. It takes everything you know, or you thought you knew, about yourself, and it fucks with every part of you until you think you’ll die of the pain it replaces every one of your senses with.” She stopped only to take a breath after her profoundly long sentence. “You can’t breathe. You can’t eat. You mope, or you change yourself so much no one recognizes you anymore. And then you heal. You move on and you either learn how to live without the person who made you crazy, or you don’t. If you find out you can, it was never love.
“You’re not living. In fact, you’re doing your damnedest to destroy yourself. In the process, you’re dragging a whole bunch of people down in your wake. Not cool.”
I opened my mouth to tell her I didn’t ask for that, but she wasn’t done. Her hand flew up and pointed in my face as her lips twisted in fury.
“I’m not done talking.”
I snorted, crossing my arms and settling back against a convenient keg. Mouth closed as I waited for her to finish telling me off. The polite thing for her to have done was at least made sure I had a pint to wash away the sting of her words.
“I don’t know what made you buy my ticket to New York. Or what made you think it was a good idea to fuck with Charlotte, but if I had to guess, it’s because she intrigued you more than any other person in the world could. There’s something about her you couldn’t stay away from. By putting yourself in her path again, you’ve brought down something bigger than the both of you on your heads. Am I right?”
I shifted, uncomfortable with the way she’d plucked the truth out of thin air.
“I thought so,” she grumbled with a shake of her head. “So now that you’re both miserable without each other and equally as broken, what are you going to do?”
I snapped up straight at that. “Do? What the hell do you mean, what am I going to do? Didn’t I tell her that I loved her? Wasn’t I the one who planned on making a life with her here? Don’t ask me what I was going to do, when you damn well know what it was. She said no, yeah? Told me she wouldn’t leave her store. It was more important than—”
I shut right up. The truth was a heartless bitch that slapped me right in the gob and shoved my own words right back down my throat. I was angry Charlotte wouldn’t come to me, be with me, because I couldn’t see myself living anywhere else. The pub had been my life for a very long time. It had been the place I could go and be the real me. Where I could sit in the presence of generations of those who’d tended it with each change of ownership. It was a part of me. Just like Charlotte’s shop was a part of her. It might be a fledgling business, but it was hers. A part of her that she’d put in brick and mortar. And I’d scorned her for not wanting to follow me and give it up.
“I have to go,” I said, darting past Hannah.
She called after me, but I didn’t care. I had to find Charlotte.
I HEARD HIS VOICE BEFORE I saw him coming.
My name was bent on a strangled cry coming from his throat. A sound that locked my feet in place and lassoed around my heart. That dissolved my anger as quickly as a match set to paper.
I should get in the car. Lock it. Look away from the deep tunnels carved into the pupils of his eyes where he hid all his secrets.
But I couldn’t.
His hands were on my arms as he spun me, shaking me, the words ‘I’m sorry’ rolling off his lips like a hypnotic trance.
My hands somehow found his chest, and it was weird how my fingers knew the shape of his muscles as if it were only yesterday that I’d outlined them as the sun cut through my bedroom window, lighting his hair like a fall leaf held up to the sun.
“I didn’t mean what I said,” he said, his voice hoarse and deep. “I’m an asshole,
Charlotte. A bloody selfish asshole.”
I felt like I was floating in a dream. Maybe a nightmare. His eyes were bloodshot and pulsing with urgency. The stubble on his face had grown in thick and was the color of melted bronze.
I ran my fingers through it without thinking, and he leaned into my hand, eyes closed. This could be so easy. Him. Me. Our bodies knew this. They seemed to move on a different wave length when we were around each other. Drawn to each other like two magnets.
“I’ve missed you,” he said, and the pain in his voice shattered me like glass.
“I’ve missed you too,” I let myself admit. “But, Charlie, we just—”
“I made a mess of things, luv. I know this. I was stupid in thinking it had to be my way.”
“Charlie,” I said again, trying to stop him from going any further.
He didn’t stop right away. It was like the door to his heart had fallen open and all of his secrets were spilling at my feet. I couldn’t gather them up quick enough. Couldn’t process them fast enough to make any sense of what was happening.
We were standing out in the openness of an alleyway, but it felt like the walls were moving in on us. Like the air was hot and damp and hard to breathe in. His skin was so warm and his eyes were pinning me down, and I knew if I kept looking into them, my words would shrivel away. My truth would be forgotten.
I imagined this was what it felt like to drown, to be held so deep underwater your lungs tried to inhale even when your brain told them not to. I had to fight for the surface. Had to take a real breath.
“Charlie, I’ve moved on,” I blurted out, and it felt like taking that first breath of air after surfacing.
My words were like a zipper to his lips. I waited, watching him like an animal behind a cage, chest heaving up and down.
His eyes moved back and forth, and then his shoulders caved forward. His mouth fell open for a second, and then shut just as fast as his eyes found mine.
He understood in that moment.
“Oh,” he said, backing up a step from me. His movements were jerky and unstable.
I followed after him, reaching, but never fully touching him. “I’m sorry, Charlie. I just… I had to. For my sanity.”
He waved me off. “I understand. Me too, I think.” His hands plunged into his hair as he stared at the ground, pulling at the ends.
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to find the right words, but they all felt wrong. Everything about it felt wrong. “We just… if we really loved each other the way we thought we did, wouldn’t we have made it work?”
He nodded, still refusing to look at me. “You’re right, luv. We would have.”
“Everything is just so… so damaged, Charlie. We ruined it. We took something good, and we both just ruined it.”
He turned away from me and put more space between us, like he couldn’t take being that close. Another piece of my heart broke off and shattered, but my words kept materializing even when my brain felt like it was shutting down.
“Honestly, I kind of hoped I’d run into you. I was scared to death of the idea, but I felt like we needed this. We needed to say goodbye properly. We left things—I left things—unfinished. I’m sorry.”
When he finally looked at me, it stole my breath. The pain in his gaze was like holding my hand over an open flame.
He dragged a tired hand down his face, and then inhaled deeply, his chest puffing out as the air expanded his lungs. “I won’t make the same mistake again, Charlotte. I tried to keep you from who you are. I overlooked what your business meant to you because I was too caught up in what mine meant to me.
“The truth is that we are exactly the same. We’re like two magnets of the same pole. We can revolve around each other, but we can never fully connect. I won’t ever ask you to do something you don’t want to again. If you’ve moved on, then that’s that.”
A forced smile spread across his lips, the corners dipping down as if they were trying to turn back to the direction they really wanted to face.
My heart beat so hard against my chest it ached. My hand pulled at the fabric covering my chest. I knew that was it. It was our goodbye, and I reminded myself that these moments were as rare and as precious as any other. I rooted myself completely, letting the ache spread to my limbs.
He was letting me go because he knew just as much as I did that it was for the best. He would stop me if not, right?
He rubbed his calloused hand along the side of my face as if the touch would memorize it so that he could keep the feel of it long after I was gone. But then, he turned away, dipping back into the shadows of the bar without another word. His form blurred beneath the water filling my eyes.
I blinked and found Hannah’s distorted figure in front of me. “Are you okay?” she asked, pulling me into a hug.
I mashed my palms against my cheeks as my tears fell. It was the only answer I could give as she held me there in the bitterly cold alley. As the chilled air moved through my bones, freezing my heart in place.
I wasn’t okay, but I would be.
I had to be.
IT WAS EASY TO DISTRACT myself when I was thrown into the hustle and bustle of a party on the brink.
I followed Hannah around an estate large enough to house women from every walk of life. I felt like I was living in a book—in a romance novel where a broken heart finds happiness in another country inside a grand house big enough to be considered a castle.
Only my happiness was still hunched over a bar a city away from me. And I let him go, because the alternative was one of us giving up something that could be considered an extra limb.
My shop was my heart. His bar was his.
We couldn’t live without our hearts.
I told myself it was the right thing to do, even though I knew I felt the opposite. Seeing him again brought out everything I had repressed. All I thought I’d come to terms with surfaced and spilled over the moment my skin touched his.
Maybe I’d never get over Charlie. And maybe that was a good thing. We should all have one love in our life that shook us to the very core of our being. Something to remind us we were alive. Something that made us ache so bad we could actually feel our hearts beating.
But I wanted more.
I wanted to be whisked off my feet. I wanted a fairy-tale love that could rival my favorite stories. Like what my parents and grandparents had for each other.
Charlie couldn’t be that for me, so I had to let him go.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Hannah said as she pulled me down the hallway, past the kitchen, and to our room in the back. “You helped so much. Now it’s time to get primped and primed.”
I giggled.
She sat me down in a chair and called for the hairdresser before taking the seat next to me. “What look do you want? Sexy goddess? Belle of the ball? Sophisticated bureaucrat?”
“Well, I kind of tapped into my nerd side when I went shopping. The gown I bought would make Cinderella jealous, so I guess belle of the ball would work,” I said, staring at myself in the mirror. It was going to take a miracle to transform me into something noteworthy. And a ton of concealer to hide the crescents under my eyes.
“Done,” she said as her hands moved through her hair. “For me, I think I’m going to go with sexy goddess. Keep Ed on his toes a little.” She smirked before winking at me.
“How are you guys doing?” I asked, feeling like the world’s worst friend. In all my drama, I had yet to even ask her how she was.
She looked over at me and grinned. “We’re good. I’ve finally begun to remember my way around town and business has been killer at the bar. Between my projects with the women’s shelter here, and helping him on the side, we pretty much stay busy. We have to find the small moments like tonight to live wild when we can.”
“I still can’t believe you live here,” I said as the hairdresser moved in behind me and started working her magic.
“Me either,” Hannah admitted. “There are some mornings, wh
en it’s so bloody cold my toes have turned into popsicles, that I wonder what the hell I was thinking. Or when I start thinking about Little Debbie snacks and how easy they were to come by back home, or how much I miss you and the team, and all the little things I used to do. But then, I look at Ed. Or he kisses me. Or he just walks across the room. It’s really the smallest of things that take away the pain of everything I miss and replace it with this warm, fuzzy feeling only he has the power to induce in me. Loving him makes everything worth it.”
I looked down to my hands as I fiddled with the frayed strings on my jeans and swallowed hard.
Love.
One word. Four letters. So small in reality, but so large in meaning. I wasn’t sure any of us could every truly reach the bottom of its depth.
I had only just scratched the surface with Charlie. Had only tasted my first sip of what love tasted like. It was addicting. It was euphoria. Maddening. Thrilling. I knew it took on every shape of every word ever uttered.
“Do you think you’ll ever get married?” I asked, finding her eyes in the mirror.
Her head tilted to the side as a small smile spread like the sun rising over an open field in the early morning. “Yes,” she said. In her voice was the sound of the happiness I longed for. A fleeting feeling that came and went in my short time with Charlie.
A feeling I hoped I could one day find again.
AFTER SOMETHING TRAUMATIC HAPPENED, THERE was a moment when everything stilled, shifted, and then realigned every molecule inside of a person. And depending on what exactly caused the traumatization to begin with was what the ending outcome would be. In some cases, it made one stronger. They were able to move forward with a purpose they never had before. Then there were those who found the new fitting too much to bear and self-imploded. How I found myself somewhere in between being whole and shattered was beyond me. But there I was.
She’d moved on.
I had not.
What was I to do with that? Who was I to be without her?
“I’ve moved on.” Her words echoed in my head like a bad dream.
When Two Hearts Collide (Game of Hearts Novels Book 3) Page 16