Page 53 of Meet Me in the Valley (Oakwood Valley #2)

Chapter Thirty-Four

LOGAN

We’ve been going at this for fifteen minutes, and I can’t get out of my head today.

“Logan, you seem tense. Where did you go just now?”

Three weeks of being with Charlotte has definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone.

She lets me set the pace, but she has this way of getting me to open up like no one else has.

Every time I fight it, she’s right there to coax me out of the ugly parts of my mind.

Knowing exactly the right words to say and making them land where she needs them to.

I dig my fingers into the back of my neck, rubbing out the strained muscles. “I’m sorry,” I sigh.

“You never have to apologize, Logan. Not with me,” Charlotte reassures with her disarming smile.

“Right. Um, I was thinking about my last night with Tia.”

“The night before she moved back to California, right?”

“Mhmm.”

Charlotte readjusts the thick-framed glasses on her face, icy blue eyes boring into mine. It’s not an intense stare, but it’s almost challenging—like I can’t hide and fold into myself.

“What made you go there?” Charlotte asks gently. Her pen pauses just above her notebook. “What is it about that memory that brings you ...” She purses her lips, choosing her words carefully. “Unease?”

That’s a loaded question.

I slouch in my chair, the familiar ache in my chest already tightening. That last night with Tia plays again like a broken record—same words, same regrets, same dissection of everything I said or didn’t say.

Charlotte doesn’t press. She never does. She just waits, letting me sit in the silence long enough to actually hear myself think. I try to pull it apart.

Why this memory? Why now?

It’s something I’ve been shoving down, pretending that I’ve moved past it. But Charlotte’s big on saying things out loud—bringing thoughts into the open, naming them so they lose their power.

“It had me thinking about my mom,” I murmur.

Charlotte nods, encouraging me to go on. My palms are slick, but I wipe them on my jeans and push through.

“I sleep with a lot of women,” I say, then quickly correct myself. “Slept. I’ve slept with a lot of women. I didn’t ... I never let anyone get close. Commitment didn’t feel real. Or safe.”

Charlotte’s tone remains neutral. Measured. “And now?”

“Now I have a reason to settle,” I say, more certain than I’ve ever been.

“A reason ,” she repeats, jotting something down. “That’s different from having the tools.” She looks up at me through the computer screen. “Do you feel capable of settling down?”

My confidence falters. Tia’s face floods my mind—the pain when I told her about Krista. The way she looked at me like I wasn’t who she thought I was. The way she pulled away, like I’d proven every fear she’d ever had about me.

And she wasn’t wrong. I let her down before I even had her.

I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. The silence says it for me. Charlotte watches me closely, and her voice softens.

“When we last met, you said you witnessed your mother’s infidelity. That’s something no teenager is prepared to understand—especially when she left not long after. That loss of trust, Logan … it leaves a mark.”

I nod, the lump in my throat rising. “It was hard.”

Charlotte jots something down, then looks back at me. I shift slightly, adjusting the angle of my laptop screen to cut the glare. Mostly to buy myself a second to breathe.

“Hard,” she repeats quietly. “And maybe somewhere along the line, your brain decided it was safer not to trust anyone. Safer to keep things temporary. Surface-level.”

I blow out a heavy exhale. “Tia isn’t temporary,” I murmur under my breath.

Charlotte offers a small, almost imperceptible smile. “That’s the first step. But the next one?” She tilts her head. “It’s trusting that you don’t have to become what hurt you.”

Charlotte’s words land heavy in my chest. I let them settle, pressing against something I’ve avoided for a long time.

There’s an undeniable truth in them. But there’s confusion too. And resentment. Not toward Charlotte, but toward what those words stir up.

“It feels like I already am just like her, though.”

“Like your mother,” Charlotte states. Not a question, just quiet recognition.

“Yeah.”

“How so?” Charlotte tilts her head with imploring eyes.

I let out a heavy sigh, rubbing my temples with my pointer and middle fingers before answering.

“I slept with a woman from work who I knew Tia didn’t like.

But it wasn’t only that. I slept with her because I had intense feelings surface for Tia, and that scared the shit out of me.

So, to avoid it all, I ran away from it and did what I knew how to do. ”

Ever since my mom left, I’ve held onto this belief that my dad and I just weren’t enough. That if we had been, she wouldn’t have needed more. Wouldn’t have disappeared.

I was sixteen when I saw her. In a car. In the next town over.

With someone who wasn’t my father.

I wasn’t supposed to see it, but I did. And something inside me cracked so hard, I’ve never really been able to put the pieces back together.

I hear what Charlotte is saying. I don’t have to become her. I can tell myself I’m not like her. That I’d never do what she did.

But when I look at what I did to Tia when I slept with Krista, it’s hard to keep believing that.

I didn’t cheat. I was single. Technically, I did nothing wrong.

But betrayal doesn’t need a technicality to exist. It felt like betrayal to me.

And it sure as hell did to Tia. Because I knew what she meant to me, no matter how hard I tried to deny it, or blame Tia for denying it.

I still acted like she was disposable. Like my fear was more important than her trust.

She trusted I wouldn’t hurt her the way I did. A lot like how my dad trusted my mom not to do the same thing. That’s the part that guts me.

Charlotte’s expression softens, her voice even and grounding. “Logan, acting out of fear doesn’t make you your mother.” She pauses, giving the words room to breathe before continuing.

“You didn’t betray someone you were committed to.

You didn’t build a life and then walk away from it.

What you did—running from your feelings, trying to numb them or control them the only way you knew how—that’s not the same as abandonment.

” Her firm yet kind eyes hold mine. “What you did was self-protection. Flawed? Yes. Painful? Definitely. But it wasn’t calculated.

It wasn’t cruel. It was fear, not malice. ”

She leans in toward the screen slightly. “The difference is, you feel the weight of it. You’re here. You’re facing it. That’s what separates you from her.”

I don’t expect the sting of tears to prick my eyes as quickly as they do, but I’m suddenly overcome with intense emotion, like a secret dam inside me finally opened the floodgates.

I take a second to compose myself, but I’m unable to stop the assault of tears that pour freely from me. I cry quietly, covering my face with my hands. Part of me is thankful that Charlotte isn’t physically in the room. She’s quiet on the other side of the screen, giving me space to process.

Wiping my tears with my shoulder, I sniffle and let out a laugh. It feels like relief. Charlotte just smiles, pride beaming in her eyes at my breakthrough.

“Sorry,” I mutter, then immediately wince at myself for saying it—again. I shake my head and wipe my face with the heel of my palm.

Charlotte doesn’t rush in. She just holds that same calm, steady gaze from the other side of the screen. Her silence isn’t distant—it’s spacious. It feels like permission.

“You don’t have to apologize for feeling,” she says softly, like she’s plucked the thought straight from my head.

I nod, swallowing hard. My throat’s raw. My chest feels cracked wide open, but in a way that finally lets the light in.

“I think I’ve been carrying this for so long that I didn’t realize how heavy it had gotten. I just—” I pause, searching. “I just didn’t know what to do with it.”

Charlotte tilts her head gently. “And now?”

I let out a breath. “Now it feels like I’m not drowning in it anymore.”

Charlotte offers a soft smile. “That’s what truth does, Logan. It hurts, but it frees. And you’re not meant to carry this alone anymore.” Her words don’t fix anything, but they make space.

Space for me to breathe. Space to admit what I’ve never said out loud.

“I think I need to talk to her,” I admit after a long pause. “My mom.”

Charlotte doesn’t react with surprise. “What do you hope that conversation will bring you?”

I hesitate, because I don’t know if hope is the right word. “Not forgiveness. Not even answers. I just—I think I need to stop pretending that what she did didn’t affect me. And maybe facing her is the only way I stop letting it dictate who I am.”

Charlotte nods slowly. “That sounds like a beginning.”

And somehow, that’s enough. A beginning.

Not for her.

Not for who she was.

But for me.

Unknown Caller …

A California number flashes across my screen, yanking my focus from the design meeting I’ve been stuck in for the last thirty minutes for the Mueller project.

“If we want the interiors to mirror the sustainability goals we’ve set for the site, then the materials have to reflect that,” Krista says, voice steady but dry.

Her eyes flick to my buzzing phone on the table.

“FSC-certified wood, recycled composites—nothing that feels performative just for the brochure—Logan?”

The buzzing stops.

I look up to find every eye on me. Krista’s raised brow has sharpened into a glare.

The phone buzzes again. Same unknown number. Krista lets out a harsh sigh and rolls her eyes.