Charlie
Late that night, I sat in the aviary with Scarlett and Rhett, feeling as numb as a hand without circulation.
I sipped on hot chamomile tea, watching the birds sleep, hoping the combination would somehow lull me into a sleep that night, too. My thoughts were loud, and none of them made any sense. It was a constant cycle of absolute nonsense, twirling and twirling, taking me down in a heartbreaking wind tunnel of truth.
Somewhere on the ride home, with the windows down, the warm May air whipping through my hair, I realized that it wasn’t that I was mad at Reese.
It was that I was jealous of Blake.
That realization had sucker punched me, the truth of it stealing my breath away. I was jealous of a woman I barely knew, because she got to go home to Reese every night. He swore to me they weren’t doing anything, that he was being strictly a friend to her now, but the fact was that she was still in his bed every night.
And I wasn’t stupid enough to think they didn’t touch.
That made my stomach roll, the thought of it, and I imagined it was only a muted form of what Reese must have felt every night I left school to go home to Cameron.
Cameron. My husband. The man who had shown me more than ever this past week that he loved me truly, whole-heartedly, in a way far different than Reese. It was different in the sense that it was comfortable and dependent, steadfast like a river with a never-ending source.
I was with him all week, and yet I’d also thought of Reese that entire time.
When did I become this person?
Even when I was quiet and reserved, when I didn’t have many true friends, I was always proud of who I was. I was a daughter, a friend, a teacher, a wife. I was honest and true, sweet and kind, always thinking of others before myself.
But this year had changed me.
The new year had snapped me from one person to another, from old Charlie to new, and they sat on opposite sides of the spectrum. Where I used to place others before me, I now only thought of myself. I wanted things — truly wanted them — and I took them instead of waiting or asking. I acted first, thought later. I hurt those around me without realizing it, or maybe I did realize it, and I just didn’t care.
It was like staring in the mirror and seeing a completely different person, like a bad dream I couldn’t wake from.
I couldn’t go back to the woman I was before. I didn’t even know who she was anymore.
I also didn’t know what — or who — was the catalyst that sent me from old Charlie to new.
Was it Reese? Did he wake me up, change me, ignite an old burning flame when he came back into town?
Was it Cameron? Did we hit our breaking point, one coming all along? Was it his lack of care, his years of apathy, that somehow transitioned me from one point to another?
Or was it me?
Was it a quiet giant within my soul, one that had been sleeping, waiting, hoping it wouldn’t have to emerge? Was it the real me, the one who’d always been there, only just freed from her chains?
The answers never came, not with the chamomile and not as the minutes ticked by, taking me later into Friday night.
“I brought you more hot water,” Cameron said, shaking me from my thoughts as he entered the aviary.
He held his hand out for my cup, pouring it full with steaming water from the tea pot in his hand before he sat it on the table beside me.
I was seated in the hammock, folded into it like it was a chair instead of lying down flat, and I swung back and forth lightly, pushing off the ground with my bare toes.
Cameron dunked my old tea bag in the new hot water, handing me the cup before grabbing one of the small stools from the corner. He sat it down right in front of where I was on the hammock, folding his hands between his legs with his elbows balanced on his knees as I steeped the tea.
“I have wondered about the thoughts inside that beautiful mind of yours for the last few months,” Cameron said, his eyes bouncing between mine. “It’s maddening, knowing there is so much that troubles you, and yet not knowing what.” He paused. “This must be how you have felt with me our entire relationship.”
I traced the lip of my tea cup with my finger. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t even know what’s going on up here,” I said, tapping my temple.
Cameron reached forward, taking my tea cup from my hands and sitting it on the table next to the pot. He wrapped my hands in his then, covering my cold knuckles with his warm palms.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Not tonight, okay? It’s been a long day, and I—”
“No, I have to say it tonight,” Cameron insisted, squeezing my hands. “This has waited long enough.”
There was an urgency in his voice, mirrored in his soft caramel eyes, and that tone had my heart accelerating before I even knew the subject on his mind.
“What is it?”
Cameron swallowed, his eyes dropping to where his hands held mine before they resurfaced. “We need to talk about Natalia.”
And with just the sound of her name off his lips, my stomach dropped, landing somewhere below the hammock.
“Cameron, please,” I tried, shaking my head. She was the absolute last thing I wanted to talk about in that moment.
But he squeezed my hands, smoothing his thumbs over my knuckles.
“I know it hurts,” he said. “Trust me, I know. But, we never talked about her, about what happened — what really happened — and with everything…” His voice trailed off, and he swallowed hard, his eyes on mine. “I just have to tell you this, okay? You need to know the truth.”
“I know the truth,” I told him, pulling my hands from his. I crossed my arms over my middle, sitting farther back in the hammock. “I saw the truth, remember?”
A flash of red struck behind my eyes — her red nails, red lips, red bottom of her heels. I could still see Natalia straddling my husband like it was happening right here and now in the aviary.
“You saw only part of it, and the part you saw told the wrong story.”
I cocked one brow, honestly curious. It was the first time Cameron had talked about what happened, other than the night he simply apologized and asked me to forgive him. He hadn’t stuck up for himself, hadn’t offered any excuses or lies.
Why now?
Cameron took a long breath, scrubbing his hands back through his hair before he clasped them together between his knees again. His eyes were on those hands as he began to speak.
“Natalia and I have worked together for a long time… for years.”
“I know,” I deadpanned.
Cameron’s lips pressed together, a frustrated breath sounding through his nose, but he continued.
“I respect her. She’s intelligent, driven, and she always balanced me out well. When we worked on projects, I was the numbers guy, and she was the presentation. She was the closer.”
Another flash of her in his lap, her long blonde hair, her skirt around her hips.
“Everything between us was strictly professional, Charlie. I need you to understand and believe that. There were never any lines crossed, not even so much as an innocent flirt between us. Not until the boys died.”
My emotions were too sensitive, like an exposed nerve, and just that sentence leaving his mouth pricked my eyes. I sniffed, crossing my arms tighter and looking away.
“Something changed in her, then. It felt almost like I was her… her prey. She hunted me, looking for opportunities to get inside my head, to comfort me, to make me happy when I wasn’t. She tried to find a way in. And I’m ashamed to say that sometimes, on the weak days,” he said, his voice trailing. “I let her.”
I shook my head. “Yeah. I caught that.”
“I’m so sorry I did that,” Cameron said, reaching for my hands again. I let him peel them away from my middle, but they were limp in his grasp. “I’m sorry I let her comfort me, that I let her be the one I leaned on. I know I’ve told you before that I thought I was doing the right thing by giving you space, by letting you heal on your own time, but I was wrong. I see that now. I should have been there for you, and I should have opened up to you about how I was feeling, too. I failed you in that,” he admitted, voice breaking as he squeezed my hands tighter. “But I swear to you, on everything that I am, I did not sleep with her, Charlie. Not once.”
My heart leapt into my throat, the beat of it strong enough to block my next breath.
“You didn’t?”
He shook his head. “I never even kissed her.”
My mouth fell open, heart dropping back into my chest before it took off in a full gallop. I shook my head, searching his eyes for a sign of him lying, but I came up empty.
“No,” I said, still shaking my head. “No, I saw her. I saw her skirt… and she was straddling you, and…” I tried to remember if his hands were on her. Were they grabbing her hips? Were they in her hair? But I couldn’t remember.
Maybe they were on the chair. Maybe he wasn’t touching her at all.
“You saw her sitting on me,” he agreed. “She had come into my office right before you, and she straddled me like that before I could even register what she was doing. It was late, we were the only ones there, and I guess she thought it was the right time to pounce. She told me she was looking for trouble,” Cameron said, shrugging. “And I told her to get off me. But it was too late, because before she could even argue with me, you walked in.”
Suddenly, his hands were too warm, the aviary too small, and I ripped away from his grasp before jumping up to stand. Cameron remained seated as I paced, waking Scarlett and Rhett with my quick movements.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “Why didn’t you tell me this? Why wouldn’t you say anything until now?”
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“You didn’t think it mattered?” I repeated. “You didn’t think it was worth it to mention to me that what I’ve thought for the past four years was completely wrong? That you never cheated on me like I thought you did?”
“But I did,” he said. “In a way, in the only way that matters. Sex is just that — sex. To me, that was never true intimacy. At least, not until I met you. Sex has only been more with you. So, no, I didn’t have sex with her.” Cameron swallowed. “But what I did do was worse. I leaned on her. I let her in, I gave her access to my thoughts and feelings. So when I chased you down that night to plead my case, and I saw your tears, I knew there was nothing I could say that could make you feel any better. I couldn’t defend my actions, because I’d hurt you. I’d betrayed you. You looked at me like a piece of shit that night, Charlie, and I was.”
“But that was because I thought you slept with her!”
“I know,” Cameron said, finally standing, too. “I see that now. Talking to Patrick, he helped me see that even if I still feel guilty for what I’ve done, even if I feel like there is no difference in what I did and what you thought, that I still owed you the truth.” Cameron shook his head. “He said you needed to have all the facts, and that it was your decision whether it was the same or not.”
Black invaded my vision, the same nauseous feeling from Wednesday’s food poisoning stint creeping up on me. I moved back to the hammock, flopping down in it as I tried to steady my breaths.
“I can’t believe this,” I whispered, shaking my head. “You never slept with her.”
Cameron dropped to his knees in front of me, taking my hand in his. He pressed a kiss to my knuckle before holding my gaze.
“Charlie, you are the only woman I have ever loved, and I would never dream of touching another woman the way I touch you. You are my wife,” he reminded me, and my heart cracked with the word. “I made vows to you, and though I may have broken some of those along the way, I would never break the most sacred one. I am yours and only yours,” he promised. “And I’m sorry I ever made you doubt that.”
I couldn’t cry, couldn’t scream, couldn’t do anything but sit there in his grasp and stare at the man I thought I knew. Shame seeped through me like dark ink, tattooing me with the truth.
Cameron had never cheated on me.
He stared at me, lifting my fingers to his lips every now and then, and all I could do was stare back. The guilt I’d felt over Reese before was nothing compared to the kind I felt now. Because before, at least a little bit anyway, I felt justified. An eye for an eye, a heart for a heart. I wasn’t doing anything to Cameron that he hadn’t done to me.
But I had been wrong.
My husband had never betrayed me, not the way I had him, and now that the truth was laid out in front of me, I felt more lost than I ever had before.
“We should try to get some sleep,” Cameron said after a while. “I know this is a lot to process. Just… let me hold you tonight, okay? And if you have any questions for me in the morning, I’ll answer them. No matter what they are.”
His words were muffled, like we were on an airplane or like I was half asleep. I think I nodded, though I couldn’t be sure, and the next thing I knew, we were climbing the stairs together.
We both crawled into bed, and Cameron leaned over to turn out the light before he pulled me into his chest. He ran his fingers through my hair, his other hand resting easily on my hip, and I could already sense how much lighter he felt now that he’d gotten everything off his chest.
But it was the law of physics. That weight had been transferred, landing on my shoulders instead. And thought it didn’t make any sense whatsoever, it was under that pressure where I finally drifted off to the best sleep I’d had in months.
Cameron
I held Charlie close all that night, listening to her sleep, knowing I would not. But for once, I wasn’t scared of being alone with my thoughts.
I could distinctly recall the chapter breaks in my life.
I knew where each one began, where each one ended, and what each new chapter had held for me. There was the chapter that ended when my father killed my mother, when he went to jail, and the one that began next as I moved in with my grandparents. There was the chapter that ended with me getting the scholarship to Garrick, and the one that began that first day of orientation.
There was the chapter that ended my sophomore year on a night I slept with one of five girls I’d had that week. I left her room early in the morning, swearing to myself that I was done with that lifestyle. I couldn’t even see another chapter in sight, I just knew this was the end of one for me. I knew the meaningless sex wasn’t what I wanted — not anymore.
The next chapter brought me Charlie, and nothing was the same again.
The chapters with her were my favorite.
There was the one where we said we loved each other, and the one where I asked and she said yes. There was the one where we bought a house together, and the one where she started her dream job. There was the one where she became pregnant with our children, and sadly, the one when we lost them.
And even though the chapters after that were the hardest ones I’d lived, they were still some of my favorites — because Charlie was in them.
I realized during my time talking with Patrick that my life had been split into two — before Charlie, and after Charlie. I was a different man in each part, and I knew that if there were to be a third section where I existed without her again, I’d be a different man then, too.
It was the absolute last thing I wanted, to live life without her as my wife, but I had to come to terms with the fact that it might be reality soon. The next chapter in my life could be the worst one, and I had to prepare.
After tonight, all my cards were on the table.
I’d laid everything out — my heart, my truth, my vows. She knew how I felt, she’d seen inside my heart, and now, finally, she knew the truth about what happened.
But, was it enough?
I didn’t know.
I was fighting against a rip tide, clinging to survival, but I was growing weary. Time was running out, and I knew I was down to my last chance to prove I was the man she loved.
And the man she deserved, too.
Next Friday was the end-of-the-year gala at Westchester, and the following day was when we would break ground on the house we were building for Jeremiah’s family.
That day would also mark two months.
So, I held Charlie a little tighter that night, kissing her as softly as I could so as not to wake her. In my heart, I couldn’t imagine a life where she wasn’t mine, but in my mind, I had to paint the picture, anyway.
Prepare for the worst, fight for the best. That was my motto.
Because I would fight for her — until the very end, I would fight. But if her happiness laid in the arms of another man in the end, I would lay down my gloves, and I would walk away for her. I loved her enough to do that, even if it would kill me in the process.
With one last, long breath, I pushed out the negative thoughts haunting me just for one night. For that one night, I would hold her, and listen to her heart beats, and feel her skin against mine.
For that one night, I would cherish my wife as if I wouldn’t get to keep her.
And before I fell asleep, I’d pray that I actually would.