Chapter 15
“The shoot will take fourteen days, but you guys only have to be down for seven.” Jonah looked relieved, and Carla appeared to be disappointed at the short shoot. “I’m going to go down with a camera man and wrap up all the background footage, do all the set up myself.”
“Laura’s not going with you?” Now, Carla seemed to be confused.
Charlie shook his head. “No, she and I aren’t—we’re not together.”
Technically, they were still married. The day after the dinner at her condo, a messenger had showed up at his house with divorce papers. She’d been planning it all along—probably since the first time they’d fucked. He couldn’t help the tendrils of betrayal that wound their way through his gut thinking that all the time they’d spent together, even after he’d offered her something real instead of a charade for the press, had meant nothing.
Despite her protestations of having feelings for him, she was just as cold as he’d feared. Why did he always have to offer his love to people who didn’t believe he was good enough? It was whiny and self-indulgent to wonder, but it was true.
He’d started a production company so that he could prove to his father that he was just as capable as his brothers. And the only time the man had ever said anything nice about him was when there were cameras on or reporters about.
He’d offered Laura a real marriage based on more than just chemistry. He was in love with her passion for dance, and he’d thought she could see that being with him wouldn’t take that away. She believed that he would be the end of something she’d loved her whole life, not the beginning of something new and exciting.
He’d been willing to eat his own pride and work for his father if he could be with her. And she wasn’t willing to give him anything in return. The thought left him feeling hollow inside.
He must have drifted off and missed part of the conversation because Jonah put his giant hand on his shoulder and said, “You okay, man?”
Charlie shrugged him off, and took a beat to ponder whether to be honest with his friend. He and Jonah had known each other since college. Charlie had been a rich, entitled fuck. And Jonah had been the scholarship football player from a tiny town on one of the smaller islands of Hawaii. His friend had been overwhelmed by the spotlight of playing football for one of the premier programs in the premier conference in the country. Somehow, Charlie had decided that he would be a good guide.
They were an odd couple, for sure. But they had never lied to one another. When Jonah had dropped out following his girlfriend’s suicide and the media shit storm that had followed, Charlie had told his friend that it was a terrible idea—that he was throwing away his life. Then, he’d ordered Jonah the most expensive camera he could fit on his emergency credit card and had it delivered to Jonah’s house. Charlie had remembered Jonah loving a photography class sophomore year, and he at least wanted him to have something to do while he figured out his life.
And then Jonah had become a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer.
“I’m not doing so hot, buddy.”
Carla narrowed her gaze, and he regretted opening up until Jonah said, “I gotta talk this out with Charlie, princess. You mind?”
His wife communicated something silently in a way that felt like a stab wound to Charlie. He and Laura would never have that, and at this point, she was the only person he could imagine feeling that way about.
Jonah turned his chair, so he was facing Charlie, who kept his body turned to the conference table. His friend might look like boulders of muscle piled on top of bones that could crush concrete, but he was a deeply sensitive and perceptive man. That was how he’d become a wildly successful photojournalist before meeting Carla.
“How soon after you met Carla did you know she was yours?”
Jonah leaned back and scrubbed his hand down his face until he landed in a thoughtful beard stroke. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Am I that fucking obvious?” He faced his friend, then. And immediately got annoyed with the wry grin on his face.
“No, but I’ve just known you too long.” He shook his head. “And I can never remember you getting depressed over anything—much less a girl.”
“You didn’t see me after that tape got released.” But even that, when he should have been at his lowest, hadn’t felt like this. Back then he’d been motivated by the negative attention from his father and the media. He’d set out to prove everyone wrong about him and he hadn’t put his head back up until he’d accomplished that. “This is different. Laura is different.”
Christ, he didn’t even like saying her name out loud, as though uttering the words would drain more of her essence from him. He felt like he was losing her a little bit more every time he said it.
“I knew that Carla was mine when she told me she was having my baby.”
“Laura was mine the second she said her vows, even though neither of us really remember them.” He put his forehead on the table, the glass fogging with his breath. “I didn’t know it yet. She didn’t. But, I’ve never been with someone who fits me that well before.”
“I had to prove to Carla that I was ready, too. She wanted to push me away—was just going to introduce me to her family and put up deuces.”
“She was going to raise Layla alone?” The idea of Jonah not getting to be a father to Layla hurt Charlie. He might just be an unofficial uncle, but the way Jonah and Carla loved their baby girl—the way she fed their love for each other—was beautiful. The idea that they’d almost lost that was wounding.
“I think she loved me, too. But I had to show up for her.”
“Laura wants me to go away. She served divorce papers.”
“The last time you saw her, did it feel like it was over?”
The last time he saw Laura narrowed down in his mind to that kiss in her kitchen. The way she’d touched him, the taste of her salty tears in his mouth. No, it hadn’t felt over. Even though their words had said differently.
“No, but I don’t want to stalk her creepily until she gives in. Maybe I need her to come to me?”
“No.” Jonah’s booming voice could have shaken the window panes if they weren’t made of thick, tempered glass. “That’s the last thing you need to do. I shouldn’t be telling you this because Carla wouldn’t touch my dick anymore if she found out, but you have to know that Laura’s family is fucked up, right?”
“Yeah.” While her parents hadn’t done anything overtly awful after their initial meeting, he caught something haunted in Laura’s gaze whenever they were mentioned—especially her mother.
“Laura’s mom has a drug problem that no one talks about.” Jonah’s words shocked the shit out of Charlie. “Apparently, she stays high because Mr. Delgado is a dick to her.”
“Why doesn’t she leave him?” Laura would certainly support her mother if she sought any sort of help. He didn’t know everything about his wife—not as much as he should know—but he knew that for sure.
“She was fucked up by how her mother refused to leave Cuba with the rest of the family. Then, she fell in with her douche husband, and refuses to hear talk about leaving him.”
“But how does this relate to me and Laura?”
“This is the part that Carla’s going to castrate me over.” Charlie motioned him to keep talking. He needed to hear all the good stuff. “Laura has always said that she’ll never get married. She doesn’t want to end up unhappy and catatonic like her mother. As soon as she could get out of that house—she was fourteen when she moved in to the ballet academy, and she travelled to dance camps every summer—she got out.”
“And she never looked back.” It was so much to think about. Getting married to him had ripped open wounds that she’d been running from for decades. Loving him wouldn’t just mean giving up her ballet career, it would mean giving up who she’d thought she was forever. Could he ask her to do that? Knowing it might make her crumble? Could he walk away from her, even if that’s what she needed?
“I’d say she looked back when she hooked up with you.”
“That was a drunken mistake.”
Jonah shrugged on of his massive shoulders again. “You know what they say about ‘in vino veritas.’”
“But how do I show her that being with me doesn’t mean that she has to give up anything?” Charlie wanted her to have everything she wanted. Everything.
“What means the most to her?”
“Ballet.” Even given all the revelations dropped today, he knew that for a fact. She might be a little tired, but dance was the only thing she’d ever allowed herself to be passionate about.
“You have to show her that she can have you and ballet. Together, at the same time.”
Charlie could do that. He would show that she didn’t have to give anything up to have him. He would show her that being together made the dancing more—that he could make her life easier. He’d keep her more insulated from her family bullshit than locking herself away in a rehearsal studio ever had.
And sure, he wanted kids and a home base. He wanted all of it. But he could wait for his. As long as Laura was there at the end of the wait.