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Broken Truth

Page 13

by Beth Ashworth


  “Deep breaths,” she mumbled to herself.

  The lift slowly came to a stop on the top floor. Charlie immediately stepped forward into the marbled hallway, stopping directly in front of the large double doorway of Callum’s home. Raising her hand, she hesitantly tapped against the strong wood and waited for him to answer.

  Charlie’s heart practically exploded at the first signs of the door being unlocked. She held her breath as the large wooden door was casually pulled open before her.

  “Can I help you?”

  Charlie blew out a relieved breath at the sight of the young woman who had answered the door. She should have anticipated one of his housekeepers would answer instead of him. She knew that he had always relied heavily on having members of staff around the apartment to cater to his every need. It was one thing Charlie hadn’t yet managed to convince him to lose in London.

  “I’m here to see, Callum?” she enquired as her eyes discreetly looked over the woman before her.

  She figured she must have been in her late twenties perhaps early thirties based on appearance. Her long platinum blonde hair hung in damaged waves against her overly fake tanned skin. Her white tank top appeared extremely tight along with the painted on jeans she wore around her hips.

  Charlie shifted in her heels, feeling uncomfortable at the sudden atmosphere. She made a mental note to perhaps speak to Callum later about his choice of staff. But first of all, she was going to thoroughly enjoy the orgasms he was going to give her.

  “I’m sorry, but who are you?” the young woman replied, eyeing Charlie suspiciously.

  “Charlotte Harris. I’m Callum’s girlfriend,” she snapped. She was getting slightly pissed off with this conversation and just wanted to find where Callum was. She looked behind the woman to see if she could see inside.

  “Well... Well... Well... Charlie Harris, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

  Charlie heard the venom in her tone and instantly backed away from the woman. “Who are you?” she demanded angrily.

  A salacious grin spread across the woman’s face.

  “I’m Claire,” she replied, extending her hand to Charlie. “I happen to be Callum’s wife.”

  Eighteen

  Charlie stiffened as a cold surge flooded and enveloped her body. Physically trembling, she squeezed her eyes shut and wished that everything she had just heard was nothing but a nightmare. It was all just a nightmare that she was going to wake up from in a few minutes and laugh about.

  Opening her eyes, Charlie felt the air leaving her lungs at the sight of Claire standing smugly in the doorway of the penthouse.

  “W-W-Wife?” Charlie asked in disbelief.

  “Wife,” Claire confirmed, lifting her left hand to wiggle a very impressive and expensive looking diamond in her face. “We have been married for almost four years,” she stated with a satisfied smile.

  Charlie’s stomach plummeted as she brought her fingers up to her lips. Tears stung painfully at the corners of her eyes, but she held them back with as much dignity she could muster from inside her shattered body.

  “I’m so sorry to burst your little fantasy,” Claire replied with a simple shrug. “Now if you don’t mind, my husband should be home with our daughter shortly and I would prefer it if you weren’t here to cause a scene in front of her. The last thing I want is for my daughter’s image of her father to be crushed by his delusional and foolish mistress,” she said, eyeing her with a look of complete disgust.

  Charlie couldn’t speak. Her heart was being twisted and squeezed like a dishrag knowing the world she had been living in for the past fifteen months had all been one big lie. All of her plans and dreams were now gone - instantly crushed and burnt away like smoke. Everything she had ever wanted had been destroyed unsympathetically by the woman that was stood before her.

  Swallowing the large, dry lump that had formed in her throat, Charlie tried to digest and make sense of what she had just been told.

  Callum was married.

  Callum had a child.

  A sudden wave of nausea rushed from Charlie’s stomach to her throat. She heaved and choked back the rising bile. Her boyfriend, the man she loved, the man she thought she loved, had been playing her all this time.

  He was living two lives all along.

  While he was the doting boyfriend catering to her every whim, he was also playing happy families with a wife and child in London.

  The realisation finally sent her over the edge, releasing the tears she had fought hard not to shed. She looked down at her hands and rotated them over and over. She felt nothing but dirty as she tried to comprehend that she had been sleeping with a married man all this time.

  She was nothing more than a mistress.

  She was Callum’s weekend mistress.

  Charlie struggled to see clearly as the tears continued to fall helplessly down her cheeks until they splashed onto the marbled surface at her feet. Still unable to speak, she knew that she needed to get out of the building. She stumbled backwards in her heels and fumbled for the lift call button.

  “Don’t worry,” Claire called from the doorway. “I’ll be sure to tell Callum that you stopped by. I’m sure he will be glad to hear that his dirty little secret is finally out in the open. Maybe now I can finally go back to having my husband all to myself. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking in allowing this thing between you two to continue for so long.”

  Wiping the tears from under her eyes, Charlie clenched her fists. “If you knew about me all this time then why did you carry on with your sad and pathetic married life?” Charlie spat in response.

  She was amazed by her own sudden outburst towards Claire.

  Running purely on her sky high emotions and adrenaline, Charlie found a small surge of courage that she retaliated back with. “You agreed for your husband to have a mistress. The father of your child was sleeping with another woman every weekend and you agreed to it. Do you know how fucked up that actually sounds? You can’t try and blame me for something that I didn’t know anything about.” Charlie watched as Claire’s posture stiffened in the doorway. “It just begs the question though doesn’t it?”

  “What?” Claire snapped.

  “Clearly you aren’t giving him everything he wants,” she shrugged. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t be coming to me to get it would he?”

  “Listen to you, you stupid, naive whore. You don’t get it do you? You have been sleeping with a married man who has no plan to play a part in your little fairytale story. He doesn’t want to be your knight in shining armour. He wants nothing more than to fuck you for the weekend and then come back to his reality with me,” Claire screamed across the hallway.

  Charlie’s heartbeat increased with growing fear. She fumbled around on the wall behind her, wondering why the lift was taking so long.

  “And... did you actually think that I didn’t have any contact with Callum during the weekend?” She flinched as Claire continued to scream in her direction. “Let me just clear something up for you. I am your weekend stalker, bitch. Every last fucking phone call from the moment he walks into that apartment until the minute he leaves is all me. All of those work phone calls are actually Callum answering to make sure his wife and daughter are ok.”

  Charlie’s body trembled as a fresh set of tears rolled down her cheeks. The phone calls had been the one bitter point to their most recent arguments. The need to continuously have his Blackberry on his person was starting to finally make sense. The bastard was keeping his wife sweet while he was fucking her all this time. It was the icing on the cake for Charlie and she knew that she couldn’t take anymore.

  Turning around to look at the numbers on the lift, she saw that it was now steadily rising through the floors. Just a few more minutes and she knew that she would be away from here. She just needed to cut her ties and leave.

  “He’ll be back soon. I think you’d better hurry up and leave,” Claire said, watching as the lift doors suddenly opened before Charlie.
<
br />   Stepping into the empty lift, she pressed for the ground floor and watched gratefully as the sight of Claire vanished from her vision.

  Resting against the polished wood of the lift, Charlie lifted her hands to her face and cried. She was back to square one again with everything.

  No boyfriend.

  No home.

  The lift slowly came to a stop and the doors pinged open to reveal the bustling lobby of the apartment building. Keeping her head down, Charlie headed straight for the revolving doors that would lead her out into the fresh air.

  “Charlie...?”

  She stopped moving, her body tensing at the sound of his voice. Her heart was pounding frantically in her chest as she lifted her head to look at his confused face.

  “I hate you,” Charlie choked out as she instinctively raised her hand ready to slap Callum harshly across the face.

  A piercing cry reverberated off of the walls around them, stopping Charlie before she made contact with his skin. Dropping her eyes to Callum’s arms, she gasped as she registered the crying toddler he was holding.

  A little girl no more than three years of age was crying softly into the shoulder of her father’s shirt. She saw the instant conflict in Callum’s eyes as to whether he should comfort his crying daughter in front of her or not.

  She watched as Callum made his choice and lifted the little girl off of his shoulder so that he could look at her small, distraught face. “Daddy will get you upstairs and into bed in a minute,” Callum spoke softly before placing a kiss reassuringly on his daughter’s forehead.

  Charlie’s face crumpled as she observed him soothing and interacting with his little girl. The images she had of Callum one day holding and looking after their child interrupted and clouded her brain.

  “How could you do this to me?” Charlie cried. “I can’t believe you were married all this time.”

  “Please,” Callum pleaded, his voice breaking with pain. “I can’t discuss this in front of Paige. Give me a few minutes and I can explain everything to you. There was a reason for it and you will understand why I did it. I promise you, Baby. I did everything I did for the both of us.”

  Charlie recoiled from his words. “You did this for us? Callum, I can tell you right now that there is no longer anything between us. The moment I met your Wife, everything I ever felt for you vanished in a second,” she said, snapping her fingers in front of him. “I hate you!”

  She rushed past him and through the main door onto the street. Stumbling towards the row of waiting taxi cabs that were parked just away from the entrance of the building, Charlie quickly slid inside and gave the driver an address.

  Safely secured inside the taxi, she watched out of the window as they pulled away from the building that was likely to be firmly stuck in her mind forever.

  Holding onto her heels, Charlie walked along the corridor towards the hotel room that she was sharing with both Amelia and Lucy. Sliding her key card into the door, she turned the handle as the light flashed green permitting her entrance.

  Dropping her shoes to the floor with a loud clatter, Charlie closed the door behind her. Leaning against the wood, she slid her body down towards the floor.

  “Oh fuck!” Amelia shouted from her seat at the kitchen bar. “Lucy, I need you quickly,” she called as she hopped from her seat and rushed towards where Charlie sat in a crumpled mess on the floor.

  “What the hell happened?” Lucy’s panicked voice filled the room. Rushing in, she dropped to her knees in front of Charlie and placed her hands under her chin. Tilting her face up, she searched for some sort of answer. “You look distraught, Charlie. Please tell us what happened at Callum’s?”

  Her concerns continued to grow the longer Charlie remained silent.

  “I’m going to get that wanker on the phone,” Amelia growled, lunging into the pocket of her dressing gown to get her mobile phone.

  “Don’t...” Charlie croaked, raising her hand to halt Amelia. She didn’t make eye contact with either of them, but knew they were focusing intently on her.

  “Ok,” Amelia surrendered, putting her mobile back into her pocket.

  “You need to talk to us then, sweetie,” Lucy said, trying to reason with her. “You can’t just leave us in the dark with this. Please tell us what happened to get you into this state?”

  Leaning her head back against the solid door, Charlie took a deep breath and scrunched her eyes closed. She clenched her fists tightly by her side as her heart twisted in her chest. “I have just met Callum’s wife,” she announced, choking back on a sob.

  Tears seeped out of the corners of her tightly closed eyes. Charlie didn’t need to open them to know what the expressions on her friend’s faces were. The awkward silence in the room was enough to satisfy her assumptions.

  After a few minutes of silence, Charlie slowly opened her eyes. It stung a little at first due to the amount of tears she had shed over the past hour, but eventually she was able to open them fully. Taking in the scene before her, she felt her eyes swelling once again. She immediately noticed the pain reflected across both of her friend’s faces as they studied her with concern filled eyes.

  “Charlie...” Lucy lifted her hand to cover mouth. “I don’t even know what to say to you. I don’t know what either of us can say to make this hurt any less for you.”

  “I know what I want to fucking say,” Amelia’s voice answered hoarsely in response. “And what I want to fucking do to that prick when I finally get my hands on him. No wonder that lying bastard didn’t want her to come down to London!”

  “You can deal with your anger later,” Lucy snapped, jostling Amelia slightly in the side. “Right now we need to make sure that Charlie is ok.”

  Charlie could clearly see the rage bubbling beneath Amelia’s surface. She knew that given the chance, she would have been out of the door within seconds of her admission. She was always the fiery, explosive one out of the three of them. The one that never really gave any thought to her actions until it was too late.

  “I know, I know,” Amelia said a little defeated. “I just...” she trailed off with a sigh as she looked at Charlie’s tear stained face. “I want to kill him,” she finished, shaking her hands in a choking gesture.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened?” Lucy asked, ignoring Amelia’s comments.

  Charlie shook her head.

  She wasn’t ready to relive the nightmare she had just experienced. She wanted nothing more than to just crawl into bed and cocoon herself within the bed sheets. She was broken, shattered, devastated...

  “I just want to lie down,” Charlie murmured, her voice just above a whisper.

  Lucy and Amelia nodded understandingly before helping Charlie to her feet and into the king size bed in her room.

  Thanking them gratefully, Charlie pulled the covers up and over her head to block out the light and sound in her life. She knew that she wasn’t going to sleep tonight, so she prepared herself for a night of more tears and heartache.

  Nineteen

  “Babe, I know you want to hide away from everything right now, but we need to check out in an hour,” Lucy said, lightly patting Charlie’s cocoon of quilt covers. “Don’t worry about packing your stuff. Amelia and I have done it already. We just need you to get up and get changed into the clothes we’ve left out for you.”

  Although she was awake, Charlie remained silent beneath the covers of the bed.

  “I’ll come back in half an hour,” Lucy said gently as she got up from the bed and made her way out of the room.

  Hearing the bedroom door click closed, Charlie exhaled the large breath she was holding in. She knew that her friends just wanted to talk to her about what happened last night, but she just couldn’t bring herself round to discuss it yet. She wanted to tell them more than anything, but it was just still too raw. She knew there would be too many questions asked that she wouldn’t be able to answer. Let alone the further disclosure she had to make about Paige.

  She
still couldn’t believe that he actually had a daughter.

  Pushing the covers off of her body, Charlie tried to unsuccessfully open her eyes. “Fuck!” she muttered in exasperation, realising that she had fallen asleep with her contact lenses in. She needed to find her eye drops quickly so that she could moisten her stuck eyelids.

  Reaching towards the general direction of the bedside table, Charlie flinched in pain. Her entire body ached with complete exhaustion, so much so that she could feel how tender her muscles were. The slightest of movements caused a spasm of pain to radiate throughout her body.

  Gritting her teeth, Charlie fumbled haphazardly on the table until her fingers clutched around the small bottle of solution she was after. Untwisting the cap, she tilted her head back and placed a few drops into each eye. She blinked a couple of times before reapplying the solution. Eventually she got to the point where her eyes were fully open. “Idiot... Remember to take your contacts out in future,” she mumbled, swinging her legs out of bed.

  “Knock-knock!” Lucy cheerfully bobbed her head around the door. “I thought I heard you pottering around, so I thought I’d come in to see if you needed any help getting out of...” She trailed off and nodded towards the clothes Charlie still wore.

  Glancing down at her attire, Charlie openly cringed. She was still wearing the peplum dress and sexy lingerie that was supposed to have wooed Callum the night before. Seeing herself in the clothes put her straight back into the nightmare.

  Regardless of the aches and pains she felt, Charlie reached behind her neck to try and unzip the dress from her body. She needed to get it off of her skin as fast as she could.

  “Let me do it,” Lucy said, rushing forwards to help unfasten the zip. The dress fell into a crumpled pile on the floor around Charlie’s stocking covered feet. “Do you want me to unhook the basque for you?” she asked cautiously.

 

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