Reese
The morning of Charlie’s decision, I sat on my couch with Blake, staring at my hands while she stared at me.
It had been a long night. I’d figured after the gala, Blake would have packed up her things and left. But instead, she was waiting for me when I got home with a bottle of gin and about a million questions. Neither of us had slept more than a few hours, and those hours had been spent tossing and turning through fitful dreams.
I couldn’t guess what hers were about, though I imagined her father and I both were present. In mine, though, it was Charlie. It was only Charlie, just like it had been since I’d shown back up in Mount Lebanon.
In my dreams, it always came back to us. No matter how bad the fight, or how long the distance, or how persistent her husband was — she was always mine in the end. I’d dreamed of this day so many times in the past two months, and every time, it ended with her in my arms.
I just couldn’t imagine another option, another way for the day to turn out. Charlie was meant to be mine since we were kids. We were born for one another, destined to find a home in the other, and I couldn’t picture a world where we didn’t work out. It had to be us.
It always had been.
But, my heart still broke for the woman sitting beside me, the woman who had also been a home for me at one time. She was a temporary home, one I took advantage of and moved away from too easily. She’d given me all of her heart, all of her trust, and I hadn’t known what to do with it because it wasn’t what I wanted.
There was no excuse to be made. I had treated her poorly, and it had hurt her.
Every now and then, when her eyes would drift to the far side of the room, I would look up at her. I would trace the edges of her slender face, marvel over the brightness of her hair, and remember a time when seeing those things was the only joy in my life. It wasn’t difficult to close my eyes and remember the darkness, the depression, the long, drunken nights and even more painful mornings where she was my only saving grace.
Blake had put me before herself in every way possible when my family had passed, and she’d shown me the first love of my life. She’d loved me when I was completely unlovable, when most of my friends walked away. She’d helped me stand when I was weak, when I had no will to even crawl, and I would be eternally thankful to her for that.
I’d told her that, over and over, all night long. I did love her, I always would, but not in the way I loved Charlie. It was just that simple — but though it was easy for me to say, it was torture for her to hear. That’s why she couldn’t let it go, why she couldn’t leave, why all her bags were packed and in her car and yet still, she sat there, on my couch, unable to move.
Blake cleared her throat, dragging her gaze back to me, which always led to mine falling back to my hands or the floor.
“Any sane person would have left by now,” she said. “And yet I’m still sitting here, waiting for something. I don’t know what.”
I just swallowed. There were no words for me to say — none that hadn’t already been said.
“I’m sure I already know the answer to this,” Blake continued, squaring her shoulders to face me fully. “But I need to ask, anyway. I need to hear you say it.”
I lifted my eyes to hers, giving her the respect she deserved in that moment. It hurt to look at her when I knew I was the cause of the pain she endured, but I needed to take it. I needed to accept what I’d done.
“If it came down to it, and you had to choose between us… between me and Charlie… who would you choose?”
She asked it as if it were a hypothetical question, a scenario we’d never be in, but we were already living it. We were already at that apex, at the point where she was asking me to choose her, to be with her, and we both knew I couldn’t.
Charlie was the woman my heart beat for, and I couldn’t change that any easier than I could change how the moon revolved around the Earth. It would always be true, no matter the time, no matter the distance, no matter the circumstance.
I shook my head, knowing Blake already knew the answer just like she said she did.
“No, damn it, Reese,” she said, voice louder now. “I need to hear you say it.”
I sniffed, looking down at my shoes before I found her gaze again. The way her blue eyes bore into mine, begging me to prove her instinct wrong, killed me — especially when I knew I wouldn’t.
“It’s Charlie,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, Blake… but it always has been.”
Her eyelids fluttered at my words, her eyes glossing, but she sniffed back her emotion and pulled her long hair over her shoulder as she ripped her gaze away.
For a while she just sat there, and I watched her while she looked around the house, as if she was deconstructing every dream she’d had for what would happen inside those walls. Maybe she saw herself moving here permanently, saw us building a home and eventually a family. Maybe she really hadn’t seen this coming, hadn’t felt how distant I’d been since she’d arrived, how different it had been from when we were in New York together.
It was like watching an entire kingdom crumble in her eyes, and I was the one holding the hammer that took down the first wall.
Finally, Blake stood, snatching her keys off the coffee table and crossing her arms as she looked down at me.
“Let me ask you this last question,” she said, her voice soft but steady. “If she doesn’t pick you, would you want me then?”
I grimaced, stomach turning with even the thought of it.
“There’s no right answer to that question.”
“I didn’t ask if there was a right answer,” she said. “I asked what your answer is. If she doesn’t pick you,” she repeated, this time waiting until my eyes found hers again before she finished. “Would you ever want me, Reese?”
There had been many times in my life when I’d recognized that I could sometimes be a shitty human. I’d broken many girls’ hearts, pulled pranks that went too far, saw disappointment in both my mother and my father’s eyes too many times to remember them all. But in that moment, with Blake looking at me like I was tossing her heart in a paper shredder right in front of her — that was the worst.
I didn’t look away when I shook my head in answer, and the pain on her face when she registered the meaning was an image I’d never forget.
Blake closed her eyes, forcing a breath before the mixture of a laugh and a cry left her lips. She shook it off, running her hands back through her hair, and then her eyes found mine.
“Rot in hell, Reese Walker.”
She turned on her heels, and I stood to watch her go, suddenly wishing I could reach out for her and comfort her. But how could I, how could I be the solvent when I was the poison, too?
Blake shoved through the front door, and when she did, she toppled right into Cameron.
He caught her before she fell, and she straightened herself, looking back at me once more with tears in her eyes before she shook her head and stormed toward her car. Cameron watched her with me until she whipped out of the driveway, and once the car was gone, he turned.
The husband of the woman I loved was on my doorstep, and there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t like the reason he was there.
“We need to talk.”
I stepped out onto the front porch, guard up and ready for whatever fight Cameron had brought with him.
“What do we need to talk about?”
Cameron nodded toward the door I still held. “Maybe I should come inside.”
“Maybe not.”
He laughed, shaking his head like my answer didn’t surprise him. “Fine. Doesn’t matter where it happens, but we need to talk about Charlie.”
My shield dropped a little then. “Is she okay?”
Cameron walked over to lean against the wooden railing on my porch, crossing his arms over his chest. “She’s fine. At least, she’s as fine as she can be in the situation we’ve put her in.”
“I didn’t put her in any kind of situation,” I defended. “You’re the one who made her wait two months, to give you a chance or whatever.”
“Like you wouldn’t fight for her if you were in my shoes.”
“I wouldn’t have lost her in the first place.”
Cameron’s nose flared at that, his jaw tight, and I would have bet money that he was two seconds away from charging me. But instead, he blew out a long breath, gazing out over my front yard.
“I didn’t come here to fight you,” he said, his voice resigned.
And as much as I hated the man, I felt a little sorry for him in that moment. I never considered how he felt, how it would be to see his wife with another man, to know he was losing her to him.
If I was being honest, I didn’t care because he’d betrayed her first — not just with turning his back on her after their children passed, but by cheating on her, too. Still, I knew what it felt like to fuck up and then have to stare at the consequences of those decisions as they unfolded.
“So, why did you come, then?”
Cameron squinted against the sun, still looking out over my yard and past it, off into the distance.
“You don’t know me,” he said first, his tone careful and calculated. “I know you think you do, but you don’t. To you, it probably seems like I’m a selfish man, one who took his sweet, caring wife for granted. I bet you think I’m a man who never imagined she’d leave me, who didn’t see any other man as a threat, who never once considered what it would be like to lose her. But, you’re wrong.”
I finally stepped onto the porch with Cameron, letting the screen door close behind me. I still kept my distance, though, standing tall against my house while he stayed against the railing.
“I always knew what I had with Charlie,” he continued. “I always knew how special she was, from the very first moment I met her. It’s why she was the first woman I let inside my head, inside my heart, and why I was scared every single day regardless of the fact that she swore she loved me. Because I’m fucked up,” he admitted, those words riding out on a laugh. “I’m fucked up and I know it, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how she managed to see through that and find a good man in me. Or why she married me, or stayed with me. But she did.” He looked at me then. “Until you.”
“I didn’t change anything when I came into town, Cameron,” I said. “I just gave her someone to talk to, someone who would actually listen. And I loved her the way she deserved to be loved. I let her see another life, one she could live, if she wanted to.”
“That may be the way you see it,” Cameron acknowledged. “But, I love her, too. And I’ve loved her in a way you haven’t yet, in a way you can only imagine. I loved her on the hardest days of her life and some of the best ones, too. I loved her in the way you love someone you build a life with, the way you love someone you build a family with.” He swallowed. “It doesn’t matter if our boys didn’t get the chance to live. We had a family, one we built together, and then we had to love each other through that loss, too.”
“Except you abandoned her,” I reminded him. “You left her to grieve on her own. You shut her out, and then, you cheated on her.”
Cameron’s eyes widened at that, shock flashing in them. He was surprised she’d told me, at least, that’s what I guessed. And that only made me stand taller.
He clenched his jaw, looking back over the yard.
“Look, I didn’t come here to defend myself, either — or to try to change your perception of me. You have your mind made up about the kind of man I am just like I have mine made up about you. But I do need you to understand me when I say that I love my wife,” he said. His voice broke a little at the end, and he turned to face me, his eyes hard on mine. “And I will love her every day until I take my last breath, just like I vowed to eight years ago.”
“And I’ve loved her since I was a teenager,” I told him. “We can go tit for tat all day here, Cameron. You love her, I love her, we both think we deserve her over the other. You keep saying you didn’t come here to fight, so just get to the point, already.”
Cameron stood, uncrossing his arms. “The reason I reminded you that I love her, that I always will, is because I cannot pretend that there isn’t a very large chance that my wife will not be mine anymore after today.”
A cool breeze swept between us, like the Earth was listening, like it needed to cool the tension before it was too hot not to explode.
“Charlie could choose you,” he said, and my heart thumped hard in my chest.
She could choose me.
God, I hoped she would.
“And if she does,” he continued. “Then I will bow out gracefully. I will wish you both the best, pack my bags, and be gone. I won’t bother her, I won’t fight you, and I won’t beg for more time. She gave me what I asked of her,” he said. “And she knows her heart better than both of us. She knows what, and who, will make her happy.” He shrugged. “And that’s all I want. More than the breath in my own lungs, I want Charlie’s happiness.”
“As do I.”
Cameron nodded, as if he didn’t doubt me one bit. “Then, you’ll understand why I came today. Because if she does choose you, Reese, then I need you to be everything she wants and desires in life. I need you to promise me, right here and now, that you will never intentionally hurt her, that you will always put her first, that you will listen to what she doesn’t even say out loud. Charlie is so selfless, so kind and caring, that sometimes she forgets to love herself and put her first. I need you to be the man to do that. I need you to be the one who makes her laugh on the bad days, and the one who lets her cry on the worst, and—”
“So, be all the things you couldn’t be?”
Cameron still had his mouth open, but his tangent died on his tongue. His jaw clenched with his eyes still on me, and he took another deep breath, shaking his head.
“I guess so,” he said after a moment, his voice low. “Charlie deserves the greatest love of all time. I think that’s one thing you and I can both agree on. So, I’m just saying, if you’re the one she chooses…” He swallowed, like the possibility of it was enough to make him physically ill. It was the same for me.
“Love her like she deserves,” I finished for him.
Cameron’s eyes softened a little, and he nodded.
In that moment, we were just two men who understood each other, who were in very different shoes yet nearly the same. We recognized each other’s battles, each other’s wounds, and perhaps there was even a level of respect present on that porch where we stood.
As much as he irritated me, Cameron had put his pride aside to come to my house. He was being a man, coming to me as an opponent, seeing the worthiness in me and the possibility that he could lose to me.
And more than that, he was here for Charlie.
I could see that most of all. He loved Charlie enough to accept the fact that he could lose her, and if that was the case, that he would wish the best for her, even still.
I respected him, but I still didn’t have to like him.
“Look,” I said to Cameron. “I don’t have much to say to you. Honestly, I just don’t think you deserve Charlie and I never have — not since the moment I came back into town and saw a lifeless shell in the place of a girl who used to be full of so much light. And I’m not saying you stole all of that away,” I clarified. “But, I do think you were part of it. And I want you to know if she chooses you, and you hurt her again, I will literally murder you.”
Cameron chuffed, as if the possibility were ludicrous, but I narrowed my eyes more.
“I’m serious.”
We stared at each other, each of us standing tall and square.
“But, if she chooses me, I promise you I will treat her right. I have never loved another the way I love Charlie, and I know I never will again. So, I will treat her like the air I’m lucky to breathe, and I’ll show her every day how much she means to me. I will give her everything she wants and needs, and I will not lose her the way you did,” I said, and Cameron swallowed, his demeanor breaking a little. “You have my word.”
He stared at me, like he was looking for a sign of weakness, a glimpse of what could be a lie. I knew he found nothing when he simply nodded, making his way toward the stairs of the porch.
“Then I guess there’s nothing left to say,” he said, and he held out his hand for mine.
I took his hand in a firm grip, shaking it just twice.
“May the best man win,” I said.
Cameron smirked, shaking his head as he pulled his hand away.
“The best man for her isn’t even playing, Reese,” he said, making his way down the stairs. “If he was, neither of us would stand a chance.”
When Cameron pulled away, I watched him go, thinking over what he’d said. He didn’t think either of us was the man for Charlie, that we deserved her, or that we were what she deserved.
But I knew better. I knew in my heart that I would make her happy — happier than she’d ever been, than she ever knew she could be.
Cameron was wrong.
And I swore to myself that if Charlie chose me, I would prove it.