Charlie Day: Oh! Now you want to talk? I waited all week to talk to you, and you blew me off. Frankly, you can go fuck yourself.
The emphasizing is a little irrational, but once again I have a point to make. I want him to hurt as much as I do.
The door between our offices pops open in response, and Jackson strides through it. My scowl automatically deepens.
I point at the door. “Get out of here.” I don’t want him to see me this way. I’ve lost five pounds in four days and monstrous bags hang beneath my eyes. It’s not cute. I look like hell.
He stops in front of my desk and crosses his arms over his chest. “No. I want to talk to you.”
“Well, I don’t feel like talking anymore, Jackson.” I spin in my chair when tears build behind my eyes. Not this, not now, I plead with myself. “Why are you here? To further humiliate me?” I let my head collapse into my hands and begin to cry. “Mission accomplished. You can leave now.”
“I’m here because I care about you,” he says softly.
“You’ve got an interesting way of showing it.”
He reaches down and gathers me into a hug, pulling me up from my seat. Then he shifts to sit down and takes me with him. My body automatically folds to his, and I let him pull me against his chest. This isn’t right, but in my emptiness I don’t care. I let him hold me while I sob into his expensive suit.
He places one hand on the back of my head and plants his lips on the curve of my neck. “I’m so sorry.”
“What happened to you?” I choke out.
“I freaked out. My head was messed up.”
I lean back until our eyes lock. “I needed a friend—I needed you.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I was a jackass.”
I laugh dryly. “You said it, not me.”
When my tears cease, he tips my chin back and plants a soft kiss on my lips, but it doesn’t feel right. My head doesn’t spin and my chest doesn’t flutter. Instead, my body stills and turns to glass, and I start to shake. I can’t trust him, not after the way he shut me out.
I leap out of his arms and take two stiff steps away from him. “You’re messed up, Jackson.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t intend—”
“Get out.” My voice is calm. Stern.
He blinks a couple of times, surprised by my firmness. “Charlie, please—”
I cut him off again. “I need space, Jackson! You really screwed with my head. I’m in a bad place.”
His eyes are oceans of anguish. It’s heartbreaking, and I’m prompted to comfort him—but I don’t, because I want him to hurt. He deserves to hurt.
* * *
“Why did you invite him?” I scowl at the back of Jackson’s head while he stands with Devin at the bar. My Friday night is officially ruined.
Taylor follows my line of sight. “Stop scowling like that—and I didn’t invite him. Devin did.”
“Why?” I grumble. “We’re broken up.”
She takes a sip of her martini. “Well, he told Devin that you aren’t.”
“Well, we are,” I snap, irritated. He shouldn’t be here.
She chuckles and shakes her head. “It’s not that easy. You can’t just break all ties with three words.”
“It’s that easy if you let it be,” I argue. “And you’d better be glued to this table all night long. If you leave me alone with him for three seconds I’m going to throw a fit.”
She raises her eyebrows like she’s amused. “And if we want to dance?”
“You won’t be dancing.”
She rolls her eyes and turns her attention to the dance floor, which is already alive and popping. She has no intention of honoring my request. I twist my mother’s wedding ring around my finger. I wonder what my dad is doing. That’s where I should be right now, not here.
I slip down from my chair. “I’m going to make a phone call.” Taylor nods, and I weave through the noisy club until I find a quiet hallway to stop in.
“Hiya, cookie,” he answers, bellowing into the phone. His cheerful tone instantly brightens my mood.
“Hey.” I smile a little. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. How was your chemo today?”
“Oh, it was great. Billy took me. We went out for dinner after, and we’re hanging at his place with Oliver now.” My smile gets a little bigger.
“Maybe next Friday you can let me take you?”
“Yeah, cook, that sounds like a plan. You still comin’ over tomorrow?”
“Of course,” I say. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Alright. You be safe tonight, okay?”
“Always,” I promise. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hang up with a small knot in my stomach. What will I do if the day comes when I don’t get to hear his goofy twang anymore...when it’s not just a phone call away? I don’t want to think about it. In fact, I can’t bear to think about it. It’s something that I hope never happens.
Jackson and Devin are at the table when I return. A second knot ties in my stomach. What am I going to do about this? He’s something else I would rather not think about. Unfortunately it’s not going to be so easy to ignore tonight.
Jackson pushes a drink into my hands when I sit back down. I take it without letting our fingertips touch or saying thank-you. I drain the entire contents with one tilt of the head. It’s whiskey, and it burns.
Taylor shakes her head disapprovingly across the table, so I slide Jackson’s glass from his hands and drain it as well, whiskey again. I signal for another round.
I glare at her, and she’s quick to mirror my expression. Devin chuckles under his breath.
“If you give the bartender a good shot of your cleavage he’ll probably pour it straight into your mouth.” A twinkle glints in her blue eyes. She’s kidding, but she’s got an impressive poker face. Devin’s mouth hangs open in shock.
“You would know, Hastings.”
She purses her lips. “Very funny.”
The waitress returns with our drinks. I slide one to Jackson and keep the other for myself. He carries on a conversation with Taylor and Devin, politely ignoring me. But his lingering glances are starting to make me squirm, which is not what I want. I want to stay mad, keep my guard up.
Eventually Devin turns to Taylor and asks, “You wanna dance?”
She throws a pleading look in my direction, and I sigh. “Go.”
She blows me an air kiss before slinking away into the sweaty mob of grinding bodies. Good for her. Jackson clears his throat beside me, so I stand and stalk to the bar without so much as a glance in his direction.
I’ve had two shots when he joins me.
He leans against the open seat next to me. “Are you going to ignore me all night?”
Neither of us turn to look at each other. “That was my plan.”
I order a double from the bartender and push it to Jackson.
“Is this what it’s going to take to get you to talk to me?”
I shrug and act bored. “Maybe.”
He tips the shot glass back and downs the amber liquid without taking his heated blue eyes from mine. It makes my heart rate pick up.
He orders the next round, and we take them together. My head is fuzzy, and it’s getting harder for me to keep myself in check.
I set my glass back on the bar and swing my head around to face him. “You told Devin that we aren’t broken up.”
“In my opinion we aren’t.”
“You opinion is irrelevant, because I hate you.” I glare up at him, wishing he weren’t so tall and I were more intimidating. “And a certain phone call prompts me to disagree.”
“Charlie.” H
is eyes are desperate, pleading. “That’s not what I meant when I said that.”
“That’s funny because that’s literally what your words meant, so why don’t you tell me what they figuratively meant?”
“That I was mentally in a bad place, so I couldn’t mentally be there for you.”
“You could have tried,” I point out.
“You’re right, and I should have, but I was freaked out and upset.”
I don’t know what to say, so I order us another round and do my best to stop scowling. We take our shots when they arrive. This one is a little unsettling to my stomach.
Jackson turns to me and brushes a stand of hair from my face. I recoil. “This isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
“I don’t care.” I turn and head back to our table. He follows.
“So you just want to keep going in circles over this?”
“No, Jackson, I don’t.”
He grabs my hand and stops me, spinning me to face him. “What do you want to do?”
I rip my hand from his grip. “I don’t know.” We walk the rest of the way without speaking.
Devin grins and slaps Jackson on the back when we rejoin them. “There’s the happy couple!”
“We aren’t a couple,” I protest, ignoring Taylor’s threatening stare.
“We are a couple. A happy one. Right, sweetheart?” Jackson smiles, but it’s a sarcastic one. Then he kisses me on the forehead.
I shoot him a dirty look. “Yeah, babe. You know it.”
His lips twitch like he’s amused, and he runs his hand up the length of my thigh and then back down, squeezing just above the knee. I flush and push it away.
“I want to go home,” I blurt.
“But we just got here,” Taylor objects.
“I can take her,” Jackson interjects.
I shake my head. “Never mind.”
Silence settles over the table. I’m killing the mood. I know I need to get my act together. And I do have a buzz. Now I just need to turn it into a happy buzz. I need to distance myself from the situation, from Jackson.
“Actually, I feel like dancing,” I announce. “Taylor?”
She lifts her brows. I don’t dance, not ever. Mostly because I’m bad at it, but who cares. Besides, I’ve discovered that no one’s really that bad at dancing. It’s just easy to believe that you are. Taylor takes my hand and pulls me to the dance floor. The music is pulsing and the crowd of people moves in rhythm around us.
Taylor smiles and pulls me in to shout in my ear. “Have some fun! It won’t kill you.”
I laugh and close my eyes. Then I let myself get lost in the music. The catchy beat is easy to move to, so I do. I lift my hands over my head and let my hips go to work. This is easy, thoughtless, even.
When the song is over I feel better, lighter somehow. Devin appears behind Taylor, and they instantly fall into a rhythm together for the next song. When I take a step to leave, a hand catches mine and stops me. Jackson.
“You aren’t getting away that easy,” he mumbles against my ear.
“What do you want?”
He grabs my other hand and tugs. I stumble forward. Before I can step back, one arm circles my waist and keeps me in place. We’re chest to chest. He grins. “Dance with me.”
I shake my head and spin in his arms. Then I take a step to leave, but he steps with me. And his stride is bigger, so we’re even closer than we were before. My back is to his chest, and I can feel every inch of him. This is dangerous, and I need to leave. I should probably run. But I don’t. Because he starts to move, and I give in and match his rhythm.
He sweeps my hair to one side of my neck and plants a soft kiss on the back of my shoulder. My breath catches then my heart starts to pound. I twist around in his arms and slide my hands up the length of his torso, feeling every chiseled muscle that floats by beneath them.
He dips his head and touches his forehead to mine. Instead of pulling back, we both freeze. I can feel his breath on my lips—soft and warm and increasing in proportion to my own ragged breathing. Our surroundings melt away, blurring and spinning around us. My senses are hyperaware of only him...the rise and fall of his chest against mine, the pad of his thumb skimming down my neck, the way he smells.
“Charlie.” His lips are only a fraction away from brushing mine. “Please don’t shut me out.”
My heart is out of control in my chest, and it’s making my limbs tingle. One long breath, two long breaths, three long breaths—I can’t wait anymore. I lift my chin and close the small distance that separates us.
His hands thread through my hair, and he takes control of the kiss. Our tongues twist in a slow, sensual dance that teases me and sends butterflies skittering through my veins. His touch is electricity, and my weak knees would send me crashing to the floor if he weren’t holding me up.
“Can we talk?” he mumbles between kisses. In a daze, I nod. Our fingers interlock, and he pulls me from the crowd, out of the club, and onto the street. When the cool night air hits me it brings some of my senses back down to earth.
We sit in his truck, twisted in our seats and staring at each other. He’s the first to speak. “Nice weather tonight.”
I smirk. “You brought me out here to talk about the weather?”
He rubs a hand over his jaw then shakes his head. “No. I want to talk about us.”
“Us,” I repeat, my voice cautious.
“More specifically, what you want us to be?”
“That’s a loaded question and you know it.” I spin my ring nervously. “My life exploded in my face a week ago.”
“Let me help you put it back together,” he says softly, reaching for my hand.
I shift away. “I need to be there for my dad right now.”
“Let me be there for you while you’re there for him.”
I stay quiet for a long time, because the words I’m about to say don’t want to come out. “You’re a distraction.” My voice shakes, but I rein it back in. “I can’t afford to have distractions in my life right now.”
He grips the steering wheel like he’s trying to force his hands to be still. “We can slow things down.”
“We both know that we can’t do slow. We aren’t capable.”
He releases the wheel and runs his hands through his hair. Then he sighs. “I want things to be the way they were before I left.”
“That can’t happen—it won’t. Shutting me out, the phone call, my dad—all of that changes things. It’s different now.”
“Charlie, please.” He’s desperate. Pleading. “You don’t understand. And I want to explain things—to make you understand. But I can’t, because I don’t even know why I shut down like that. I just did.”
“Jackson—”
He holds his hand up to silence me. “I promised Adam a lot of things while we were in Iraq—I’m not ready to share all of them with you. But I’ll tell you I gave him my word to keep you strong. To make sure you stay on your feet. After all that shit happened, I was broken. I couldn’t hold myself up. So when you called, I lost it. Because I wanted to fix you, and I couldn’t. I felt helpless.” I open my mouth to speak, but he rushes on. “I didn’t mean to lash out at you. I was mad at myself, because I felt like I was breaking promises. To Adam. And to you. I loved him. And I love you. And I just—” His rushed words come to a halt and a look passes over his face. One of shame. “I’m disappointed in myself.”
He shakes his head like he can’t believe himself. “I let the two people I care about most in this world down... I hate myself for that.”
My chest feels like it’s ripped open and bleeding. I want so badly to curl into his arms and make this all go away. But I can’t—that’s the scary part. That there’s nothing I can do to take away the pain he’s feeling right now. I know
he can’t just skim over it. He has to sink into it. But I’m not going to let him go down alone.
I move from my seat to his and squeeze my body between the steering wheel and his. I wrap my arms around his chest, and he wraps his around my waist. Then we hold on to each other and sink. Together.
* * *
I don’t know how long we stay glued together, but when we finally peel away from each other it’s close to midnight. He drives me home, and we sit in the drive for another half hour.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come inside?” I ask.
My hand is in his, and he brushes his thumb across my knuckles. “I’d better not. I have to be at the airport at five in the morning.”
“Oh.” If we’d been speaking to each other, I’d probably already know this. “Where are you going?”
“New York. For business with my father.”
“How long will you be gone?” I don’t want him to go.
“Five days.” He doesn’t look like he wants to go either. He leans over the console and kisses me. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
I nod and kiss him one more time. Then I tell him goodbye and go inside without him. It feels wrong.
* * *
I’m jolted awake by the shifting of my bed. Someone has joined me. “Jackson?” I call out in a confused, sleepy daze.
“Oh, baby, you wish.”
As the sound reaches my ears, my heart stills in my chest. I would know that voice anywhere, and it’s not Jackson’s. It’s Stewart’s.
I open my mouth to scream, but his hand clamps over it instantly. His other hand presses down on my shoulder, shoving me against the bed. “Don’t even think about it, you stupid little bitch.” His rancid breath pours over my lips and down my neck. I shudder and struggle to free myself from his weight. He shakes me hard. “Where’s your daddy now?” He speaks through clenched teeth. Then he runs a gritty hand up my stomach, lifting my shirt. “He can’t save you now.”
I open my mouth and clamp my teeth into his hand.
He retracts his hand with a shout. “You bitch!”
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