by S. J. McCoy
Chapter Nineteen
Charlotte couldn’t take her eyes off him. They sat face to face at the same table she’d occupied alone not half an hour ago. They’d checked her bag in and collected her boarding pass. The ticket agent told her that boarding would close one hour before take-off. That was an hour and a half from now. The agent had also told her she should clear security as soon as possible since the lines were long and causing delays. No way. She wanted every minute she could get with Ben. She’d clear security as late as possible and if she missed her flight, to hell with it!
She didn’t know what to say to him. Where to start. Right now all she wanted to do was get lost in his beautiful hazel colored eyes and stay there forever.
He smiled, the lines around his eyes reminding her how much older he was, how much older they both were, than the last time they’d seen each other. “I did this crazy rush over here to catch you before you left, and now I’m here I don’t where to start.”
“Me neither,” she couldn’t help it, she reached across the table and took hold of his hand.
His face clouded over, he looked down at their joined hands then up into her eyes. He didn’t pull away, though.
“I’ve missed you, Ben. Every day, for all these years, I’ve missed you. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about you.”
His eyes were sad. “I try not to think about you.”
That hurt. She understood, but it still hurt.
The shadow of smile touched his lips. “I don’t succeed, but I try.”
She squeezed his hand. “Nothing I can say will help, it won’t change what happened. I behaved so badly.”
He shook his head. “No. It was my fault. I should never have believed what I did. I’m sorry.” He looked away, staring off into the distance for a few minutes before he turned back to her. “Maybe it all worked out for the best, though.”
Surely he couldn’t mean that! “How?”
He shrugged. “You got to go see the world like you wanted to. You weren’t tied down.” He pursed his lips and she wondered whether he was finished. He wasn’t. “You met someone. Married him.”
She nodded and swallowed back the flash of anger. It was caused by pain, she knew that, she couldn’t allow the pain to make her lash out at him. She just wished he would understand. “I met someone after years of us having no contact. And after you had insisted that we could never be together. And I still don’t understand that, Ben. I don’t understand why you decided, all by yourself, that I needed to see the world more than I needed to be with you.”
His face was stony. “I didn’t decide all by myself, Charlie. I simply honored what you told me. I loved you, so I respected your choice.”
“But I never told you that. I would never had said that, because it wasn’t true. Yes. I wanted to travel, yes I was more spontaneous than you, but I wanted us more than I wanted anything else.”
“I still have the letter.”
“What letter?”
“The one where you told me, you had a world to see and I had a resort to run. The one where you said you didn’t want to see me one last time, or ever again.” The pain in his eyes made her heart hurt.
“I didn’t send you a letter that said anything of the kind! I sent you letters begging you to talk to me. Begging you to forgive me. Surely you haven’t forgotten how I poured my heart out to you in that last letter?”
“What last letter?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “How could you forget it, Ben? The one where I told you everything I felt about losing our baby, about how horrible I felt for shutting you out afterwards. The one where I begged you to at least talk to me, if only so we could grieve together.”
He looked as though he was in shock. “I never got it. I didn’t get anything from you after I went to college. Not until that one where you told me you never wanted to see me again.”
She grasped both of his hands. “You have to believe me, I didn’t write that, I didn’t send it.” Her heart was hammering in her chest as he voiced the question that was hanging in the air between them.
“So, who did?”
She wanted to throw up. Her parents. It must have been. How could they do that? She didn’t want to believe that they had.
Ben’s face was ashen. “Your parents hated me that much?”
“No!” At least, she’d never thought they did. She stared at him, lost for words. There was no other explanation, though. “But you knew my handwriting, you must have been able to see it wasn’t me!”
He shook his head sadly. “It was typewritten. I thought it was odd, but at the same time, I thought you’d done it on purpose. It made it feel so impersonal, as though you were ramming your message home.”
“I’d never do that.”
“That was partly what helped convince me that you meant it. The Charlie I knew wouldn’t have sent a typewritten couple of lines to end everything we shared.”
She nodded. “And the Ben I knew wouldn’t have let that last letter of mine go unanswered.”
“I never got it.”
She nodded sadly, remembering all too clearly. She’d cried and cried while she wrote that letter, she’d sat up all night writing and rewriting it. Her parents had been worried about her. Her mum had come and sat on the end of her bed in the morning before she went to work. She’d told Charlotte she’d post it on her way out. She mustn’t have sent it. Charlotte was shaking. “My mum was supposed to post it.”
Ben shook his head “Wow!”
“Yes, wow.” She looked up into his eyes. “What might have happened if those letters had made it?”
“We would have made it, wouldn’t we?”
She nodded. “We would.” She was struggling to process the fact that her mum could have done that to her. She was struggling even more to accept Ben hadn’t wanted it to end between them any more than she had. “So what do we do now?” she asked.
His eyes were sad. “There’s nothing we can do. It was a long time ago. We took our separate paths in life.”
“But we shouldn’t have!”
“But we did. It was you who said we can’t change the past.”
“And we can’t, but we can change the future, Ben.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, but there was no hope in his eyes, only sadness. “No, Charlie. Your future is with someone else now.”
She couldn’t stop the tears that welled up. “But it shouldn’t be. I should never have married him. It was wrong of me, and it wasn’t fair to him. I knew it then, and it becomes more obvious every single day. I told him all about you, you know. Right from the beginning. He thought it would just take time. He thought he could make me love him more than I ever loved you. He thought I was hung up on nothing more than a teenage romance.” She stopped and looked directly into his eyes. “But I wasn’t. It was more than that. It still is more than that. I never stopped loving you, Ben. We weren’t just some teenage romance, you’re the love of my life.” She took a deep breath. “And my life is a long way from over.”
Now she did see the tiniest glimmer of hope in his eyes, or maybe she just imagined it, willed it to be there because she wanted it so much. He squeezed her hands gently. “You’re the love of my life, Charlotte. Forever and always weren’t just words to me.”
“Or to me. So what can we do?”
“That’s not my choice to make. It’s yours. And I’ll respect it whatever you choose.” He looked at his watch. “You’re cutting it fine to get through security before your gate closes.”
“I don’t care! I’ll get another flight if I have to. I’d rather not go at all. I’d rather come back to the lake with you and get on with the rest our life!”
“That’s my Charlie. Just go with the moment, right?”
“Wrong. I’ve grown up a lot, Ben. I only said I’d rather do that. I’m not going to. I’m going to go back and do what I have to do.”
“Go home and figure out what you really want. Don’t rush into anything
stupid.”
“I won’t. This isn’t stupid.”
“Just don’t rush anything. Emma said she was going to invite you to come to the lake.”
Charlotte had to smile at that, there went Mouse with her matchmaking again. Her smile faded though. Sweet as it was of Emma to try to help them along, it couldn’t be that way. “I’m not coming back to the lake until you ask me to.”
He nodded, his face serious. “I’m not going to ask a married woman to come see me.”
“I know.” She stood up. She still had a slim chance of getting to her plane before they closed the doors and now she was in a hurry to go, to get back to England and start putting right everything she’d done wrong.
Ben stood, too. He fell in stride beside her as she hurried toward the security line. His face was set. Had he misunderstood her reaction? She stopped walking and caught his arm. “Do you really think I’d want to come to you as a married woman?”
His eyes told her he doubted.
“Ben, now we’ve seen each other, now we’ve talked, now we know what happened, I cannot stand to waste anymore of my life not being with you. But I can’t be with you until I’ve put right what I’ve done wrong.”
There was no questioning the hope in his eyes now. “But, you can’t…”
She shook her head, “Didn’t you just tell me you’ll respect whatever I choose?”
He nodded as she started walking again.
They reached the security checkpoint before she spoke again. “Will you wait for me?” she asked.
He smiled. “Forever and always.”
She flung her arms around his neck and held him tight. As his arms closed around her she never wanted to leave them again. She lifted her chin to look up at him and went to kiss him. She was disappointed, but not surprised when he turned his head and kissed her cheek. She stepped back and nodded at him.
“You’d better go.”
She nodded again. She couldn’t speak, she’d start to cry, and if she started to cry, she wouldn’t be going anywhere. She stepped forward and kissed his cheek and then turned away to show her passport and boarding card to the agent who had been not-so-patiently waiting.
She turned to look back before she had to go through. He was standing there smiling. He lifted a hand. She blew him a kiss and then ran, hoping to still make her plane.
~ ~ ~
Ben stood there for a long time, staring at the point where she’d disappeared around the corner. He was shell-shocked. His brain felt as though it had seized up trying to process everything. She hadn’t shut him out of her life all those years ago; her parents had. She hadn’t chosen a carefree life over him like he’d thought. He’d spent all these years respecting a choice she hadn’t even made.
Was she really going to go home and end her marriage? If she did, how would he feel about that? Guilty as hell no doubt, he felt bad for her husband. But he couldn’t help feeling happy for himself. Nothing was certain, not by a long shot, but maybe, just maybe, he and Charlotte might have a future together.
He’d never stopped loving her. He knew now that she’d never stopped loving him. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Her text brought tears to his eyes.
Forever and always xxx
How he hoped that was true;
(A Special) Note from SJ
Ben and Charlotte’s story is very close to my heart. When I first started writing Summer Lake, I thought it was going to be just four books—Emma, Pete, Missy, and Ben’s story as the end of the series. Don’t worry, this isn’t the end. This is the backstory. Ben’s book, Live Like There’s No Tomorrow, is still a while away.
I know a lot of readers have grown impatient to know Ben’s story—and I don’t blame you. However, these stories belong to the characters, I just tell you what they tell me. I originally thought Ben and Laura were going to get together and neatly tie up my little world at the lake. I had no clue how many other characters were going to show up and demand that I tell their stories too!
As soon as Smoke and Laura laid eyes on each other, I knew they were meant to be together. Ben didn’t mind, he kept whispering to me that he had a past I needed to know about, and it was a sad one. None of the female characters I dreamed up for him held any appeal. He was still stuck on his past. I cried for him when I understood why.
Losing a baby isn’t a storyline I undertook lightly. If you know anything about me, you’ll understand that. I’ve claimed all along that I write light and fluffy, feel-good stories, and on the whole you won’t find me deviating from that. But, as I said, these stories belong to the characters—and this is Ben and Charlotte’s story.
Anyone who has lost a child—a child who never made it into the world or a child who was here long enough to become a parent themselves—knows the pain and knows that it never goes away. It becomes a part of our lives, something that we live with, a part of who we are. I hesitated over writing about it, I don’t want to add to anyone’s pain. At the same time, one of the hardest things to deal with is the silence—the way people won’t talk about it, because they don’t know what to say. However much it hurts to talk or read—or write—about, these little people were here, however briefly, and I believe that should be acknowledged.
(The Usual) Note from SJ
I hope you enjoyed visiting Summer Lake and taking a look back at what happened all those years ago. Please consider letting your friends know about the books if you feel they might like them. If you'd like to leave me a review, I'd very much appreciate it.
If you’d like to keep visiting the lake to catch up with the gang and get to know more couples as they each find their happiness, check out the rest of the series:
Emma and Jack in Love Like You’ve Never Been Hurt
Holly and Pete in Work Like You Don't Need the Money
Missy and Dan in Dance Like Nobody's Watching
Smoke and Laura in Fly Like You've Never Been Grounded
Michael and Megan in Laugh Like You’ve Never Cried
Kenzie and Chase in Sing Like Nobody’s Listening
Gabe and Renée in Smile Like You Mean It
Missy and Dan’s wedding in The Wedding Dance – this one is not a standalone novel; it’s a chance to catch up with the whole gang for a couple of weddings, baby news, and more.
And don’t worry, there are more books to come in the Summer Lake series. Our Ben will get the happily ever after he so deserves.
If you’d like to take a visit to Montana and meet a whole new group of friends, take a look at my Remington Ranch series. It focuses on four brothers and their friends – one of whom you may recognize – Missy’s big brother, Chance, is like a fifth brother to these guys ;0)
Mason is the first in the series. A second chance romance with Gina - the girl he loved and lost.
Shane is the lovable rogue who meets his match in the feisty Cassidy.
Carter is just a big old sweetheart with a big crush on country singer Summer Breese.
Beau will get his book in Spring 2016.
So many books to write – so little time!
If you want updates you can sign up for the Newsletter. Don't worry I won't bombard you! I'll just let you know about upcoming releases, share a sneak peek or two and keep you in the loop for a couple of fun giveaways I have coming up :0)
If you’d like to keep up with me, you can join me on Facebook.
I occasionally attempt to say something in 140 characters or less(!) on Twitter
And I’m in the process of building a shiny new website at www.SJMcCoy.com
I love to hear from readers, so feel free to email me here, if you’d like. I’m better at that! :0)
I hope our paths will cross again soon. Until then, take care, and thanks for your support—you are the reason I write!
Love
SJ
PS Project Semicolon
You may have noticed that the final sentence of the story closed with a semicolon. It isn’t a typo. Project Semicolon is a no
n-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and love to those who are struggling with depression, suicide, addiction, and self-injury. Project Semicolon exists to encourage, love and inspire. It’s a movement I support with all my heart.
"A semicolon represents a sentence the author could have ended, but chose not to. The sentence is your life and the author is you." - Project Semicolon
This author started writing after her son was killed in a car crash. At the time I wanted my own story to be over, instead I chose to honour a promise to my son to write my ‘silly stories’ someday. I chose to escape into my fictional world. I know for many who struggle with depression, suicide can appear to be the only escape. The semicolon has become a symbol of support, and hopefully a reminder – Your story isn’t over yet;
;
Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
(A Special) Note from SJ
(The Usual) Note from SJ
PS Project Semicolon
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen