Page 51 of What He Always Knew

And so, with our new birds chirping in the background, I focused again on what I had to tell Charlie when she got home.

I didn’t want to relive that time in my life, and I definitely never wanted to discuss that day, but I had no choice. Patrick was right. Charlie deserved the truth, and more than that, she deserved to know what I had been thinking, what I’d been feeling.

Charlie thought I cheated on her, but I didn’t.

Natalia Aleppo had been a partner of mine for years. We worked our first project together when I was in my second year at Reid’s Energy Solutions, and from the very first moment I met her, I liked her.

But not in any way a married man wasn’t allowed to like a woman.

I thought she was intelligent, and well-spoken. I liked that I could depend on her to pull her side of a project, that she could speak to a crowded conference room of people and articulate our ideas while I stood silent in the corner with the numbers and figures. She was the face of our team, I was the machine in the back. I liked it that way.

Natalia was always professional with me, always nothing but sweet and friendly. She and Charlie met many times, and she’d always treated Charlie with respect, too.

But after we lost the boys, when depression took me under, something in Natalia changed.

I liked to think of her as a predator, and me her prey, one she watched carefully from a distance until the exact right time to pounce. But I couldn’t blame her for everything, not when I was equally as guilty. I may not have ever slept with her, but I had leaned on her — I had let her in when I should have been talking to Charlie, and to this day, I didn’t know why.

She was just there, that’s what I had told Patrick, anyway. When we were working long nights at the office, when I was trying to give Charlie space to heal while I dealt with the loss of our children on my own, Natalia was right there. She was asking questions, bringing me coffee, rubbing my shoulders, telling me it was all going to be okay.

And I should have told her to stop.

I should have told her no well before I did, should have seen the warning signs, should have admitted to myself that the way she looked at me had changed. But I didn’t. Not until that very night when she let herself inside my office after hours and closed the door behind her.

I could still close my eyes and see the smile on her red lips as the door latched closed, hear the click of her heels on my floor as she crossed to my desk, feel the pressure of her fingers on my shoulders as she climbed into my lap. She didn’t give me a chance to stop her, to argue, to evenrealizewhat was happening until her legs were spread over me, her skirt bunching at her hips, panties pressing to the zipper of my pants.

“I’m looking for trouble,” she’d whispered, grinding her hips against mine.

But as she’d leaned in to kiss me, I’d stopped her, gripping her wrists hard and peeling her off me.

“I’m not.”

She’d pouted, tilting her head to the side. “She doesn’t have to know. Just… let me make you feel good, Cameron. You deserve to feel good.”

Charlie was all I’d seen in that moment, she was all I cared about, and I didn’t for one split second give in to Natalia, not even when the carnal urges inside me screamed for me to let go.

I told her to get off me.

I told her to leave.

But none of that mattered, because it was too late.

Charlie walked in. She saw Natalia in my lap. She saw the skirt around her hips, smelled Natalia’s perfume on my shirt. I’d chased her down, begged her to listen to me, to hear me out, but once we’d gotten home, I knew in my heart there was nothing I could say.

It didn’t matter if I hadn’t slept with her, everything Charlie had seen had still been true.

Another woman had sat in my lap, with her bare thighs against me, with her arms around my neck, and I hadn’t pushed her off. I hadn’t stood and knocked her to the ground. I hadn’t told her no, not fast enough, anyway. Not with enough conviction.

And I’d let that woman in.

I’d talked to her about my fears, about my pain, about the very loss my wife was dealing with on her own. I’d stayed late at work because I enjoyed being in Natalia’s company, and I’d told her things I’d never once told Charlie. The more I told her, the more I opened up to her, the more I liked her. And even if I hadn’t acted on it, I couldn’t deny that I hadn’t felt the energy change around us. I felt the pull, I felt the want, I felt the desire.

If we never acted on it, it was innocent, right? That’s what I had told myself, it was what I’d convinced myself was true.

Andthatwas why I couldn’t tell Charlie I hadn’t cheated on her. Because in the only way that mattered to me, I had. There had been many women who’d shared my bed before I met Charlie, but she’d been the only one I let inside my heart. For me, that was what real intimacy was. It was talking late into the night, sharing scars. Until Natalia, Charlie was the only one I’d ever done that with.

I may not have been guilty of the crime she imagined, but I was still guilty, nonetheless. And I’d never been a man to beg for a forgiveness I didn’t deserve.

Still, I agreed with Patrick that Charlie deserved to know the truth — if for no other reason than that I’d always been honest with her. I didn’t expect her to forgive me, or for it to change anything between us. I didn’t expect it to be enough to make her stay.