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“I think there’s more to you, Hemlock. You’re a nurse practitioner and you work at both the clinic and the hospital. You also still help Truck with the detailing business. And from what I’ve heard, you’re uber-smart when it comes to math.”

He never thought about that stuff like other people did. Tired of talking about himself and wanting to hear her story, he said, “Tell me about Charlie Rose.” Hemlock rolled over and scooted up into a seated position against the headboard. Opening up his arms, he waited for Charlie to snuggle into him before wrapping them around her.

Charlie tugged the sheet over them, giving her time to decide where to start. She had a very different life than Hemlock. Laying with her head resting against his chest, she sighed and started at the part that was most important.

“My parents were workaholics; they never gave having children a thought. My mom said they never did any prevention and after years of never getting pregnant they assumed they couldn’t. One day, my mom couldn’t handle a simple glass of wine. It made her violently ill. According to her, she went to the doctors’ multiple times saying she wasn’t feeling well. Each time, they told her it was a bladder infection and gave her antibiotics. My mom wasn’t stupid and knew that wasn’t the problem. Then she was asked could you be pregnant. Her reply was no. She hadn’t missed a cycle in her life, plus she was in her mid-forties. My dad was in his fifties. But it turned out she was pregnant.

“They were great parents. When I was nineteen, I started college in New York. I wanted to be a ballerina. I was two years in when I got the call that they’d been killed in a boating accident.”

With only a year left, she’d chose to stay in school and finish, yet in the end, it hadn’t quite worked out that way. She had taken a semester off to handle her parents’ estate. Everything had been a blur with no time to really grieve. Then reality hit her in the face; her parents were dead.

“Then the bills started piling up, and although my parents always seemed to be well off. At least to me they did, but they weren’t. They lived on credit cards the way so many people do. They put everything on cards and at the end of the month they’d pay some off and others they’d just make the minimum payment. Each month they rotated which one would be paid off and which ones would get the minimum.”

She still remembered how embarrassed and floored she’d been sitting in the dean of school’s office. “You don’t have a scholarship, Miss Cote. Your parents have been paying monthly for your tuition.”

“Everything was a mess. I had to leave school because I couldn’t afford to stay. My parents’ apartment was a rental and not theirs as I had been led to believe. There was a pile of debt, and I thought the only way out was for me to file bankruptcy where I wouldn’t be saddled with it. Then I found out that I wasn’t responsible for my parent’s debt.”

Charlie paused, her breath catching for a moment, her fingers tracing a pattern along the fabric of the sheet. Hemlock could feel the weight of her words settle around them, the vulnerability thick in the air. He let her take her time, the steady rhythm of his breath a quiet support.

She glanced up at him, her eyes clouded with memories, before continuing, “I threw myself into working after that. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to feel it. I thought if I kept moving, kept pushing forward, it would all just… disappear. But it didn’t. The grief crept up on me when I least expected it. The nights were the hardest.

“I could never sleep. I’d lie awake, staring at the ceiling, wishing I could hear their voices again. And then one night I had thisdream. It was so vivid—my mom was there, laughing, telling me everything was going to be okay. She looked like she did when I was little, when life was simple and… I don’t know, whole. And I woke up, and for a second, I thought maybe it wasn’t just a dream. Like she was really there,” her voice faltered for a moment as she tried to steady herself. She let out a quiet, shaky breath. “But then it was gone. And I was still here. Still alone.”

Hemlock kissed the top of her head; everyone had a story. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Charlie closed her eyes at the gentle pressure of his lips against her hair. His words were simple, but they carried the weight of understanding, the kind that could only come from someone who had known loss or carried their own burdens in silence. She didn’t expect him to fix it or offer some grand solution—just his quiet sympathy was enough. “It’s still hard sometimes. The things we lose. The things we can never get back,” she said softly after a long pause, her voice muffled against his chest.

Charlie sat up, crossing her legs Indian style and tucked the sheet around herself. “I was so angry at them. I couldn’t understand why financially they would put themselves in that position. They had great jobs. We didn’t live lavishly. My car was a fifteen-year-old Buick that smoked and wheezed like an old man. I had to roll down the window to open the door. But I never complained. I never asked for a new one. If they would have said,“Charlie, we can’t afford that school.” I would have said okay.”

Hemlock stayed quiet for a moment, letting Charlie’s words sink in. He could hear the frustration, the pain in her voice, the regret she carried with her. It was a different kind of grief—one where the weight of unanswered questions and what-ifs could be just as heavy as the loss itself.

“They did it because they loved you,” he said softly, sitting up slightly, watching her cross her legs. He didn’t move to touch her, not just yet, giving her space to keep speaking if she wanted to. “Sometimes it’s not just about what we have or don’t have—it’s about the choices we think we have to make for the people we love.”

She paused, looking out into the dim light of the room as though searching for answers she hadn’t found yet. “I miss them. Every day I miss them.”

Hemlock was quiet for a moment, his hand reaching for hers.He tugged her back to his side wanting to hold her close. “I’m sure they’re proud of you.”

Charlie shook her head slowly. “Yeah, because I’ve been doing fantastic. Getting mixed up with Crispen and believing Ashley was my friend.”

Hemlock’s thumb lightly traced the back of her hand. “We all get suckered at some point.”

She met his eyes then, a soft, vulnerable expression on her face. “I guess that’s true.” Tired of talking, Charlie eased up and kissed Hemlock. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“What do you wanna talk about?” He felt her hand glide over his cock and smiled.

“I think something might come up.”

Rolling her over, he kissed her until she moaned. He knew better than most how sometimes you needed a distraction when things got too heavy.

Instead of pushing them both to keep talking about their pasts, Hemlock gave them each something else to focus on.

A new exploration of Charlie Rose.

Chapter Nineteen

Charlie stepped into the library’s door, and she was on her boss’s radar. Moving quickly down the short, tiled floor, she ducked into the office to clock in. When she stepped back out, her manager stared at her.

“Miss Cote, if you can’t make it to work on time, we will just have to replace you.”