Page 96 of What He Always Knew

“But he still left you. He wasn’t there when you needed him, when you were grieving.”

“But I wasn’t there for him either.”

Charlie took the seat next to me, wrapping her hand around mine.

“Reese, Cameron hurt me. And I hurt him. Neither of us is perfect.” She squeezed my hand. “But he’s my husband. I made vows to him, the same as he made to me, and I can’t turn my back on those vows at the first warning sign. Every couple has challenges they face — and those challenges either make or break them. Sometimes we run from our problems, and other times, we hold hands and go through them together.”

“And you don’t want to run.”

“I can’t,” she said easily. “And I know if you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t either.”

I sat there as disbelief colored every inch of me, hitting me in different waves. One moment I was angry, the next I was in shock, and somewhere underneath it, maybe I knew it all along. Maybe I saw it coming.

“I love you,” she whispered. “And I know you love me, too. But it’s a different kind of love than the one I have with Cameron. You and I, we’re friendship and forbidden want. We’re late night music and talks. We’re the kind of love that burns bright and fast, but fizzles out just the same. We’re a comet — a shooting star. We can’t last, Reese.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“It’s true, and you know it. We want each other, we always have. And when we have each other?” She laughed. “It’s… explosive. Catastrophic, maybe. I’ve never felt passion like that, the way I have with you. But it was born out of years of want, years of being told no, and at the base of it all, you’re looking for something that doesn’t truly exist in me,” she said. “The same way I looked to you for something I should have found in my husband.”

My heart ached with her words, so much so that I doubled over.

“I remind you of home,” she said. “I remind you of your family, of Mallory, of your parents. I remind you of your youth, of a simpler time when you had them, when you hadtimeto figure everything out in your life. I’m a piece of your life before it hurt. But now, you’re thirty-five, your family is gone, and no matter where you end up — whether it’s here in Mount Lebanon or back in the city or somewhere completely different — no place or person will ever bring them back,” she said, and her voice dropped lower with her next words. “Not even me. Not even as much as I wish I could.”

Emotion pricked my eyes, and I blinked against it, the ache in my chest growing stronger with every second. Oxygen hurt just as much as not taking a breath at all.

It was true, every word she said, and the truth had never hurt so badly.

“You love me for who I used to be, for the wide-eyed, untouched girl I once was. But I’m a woman now. I have scars. Cameron was there when they were made, and though he may have lost his way just as I did, he has his own scars, too. We both have them, and we both slipped into this dark hole together.” She paused, her hand sliding up from mine to grip my wrist. “We have to climb out just the same.”

Her words faded off, and the suffocating silence of my house surrounded us. It was like a weighted cloud, dark and heavy, and I let it take me under its grasp.

She wasn’t mine.

Charlie would never be mine.

It killed me — physically, I felt my heart cracking as it digested the truth. But what hurt more was that Charlie was right. I had come to Mount Lebanon searching for a home, and I’d found it in her.

But she couldn’t be my home. She was already Cameron’s.

The longer we sat there, the heavier my thoughts were, and I felt darkness slipping inside me like an old friend coming home. I tried to hold the door closed, to block it out, but it was no use.

I didn’t realize how long I’d been silent until Charlie spoke again, her words muffled with a fresh wave of tears.

“I’m sorry, Reese,” she said, breaking. “I’m so,so, sorry. I care for you so much, and it breaks my heart to break yours. I hope you’ll forgive me, I hope one day—”

“Shhh.”

I pulled her into me, wrapping my arms all the way around her as she broke in my arms. Her tears came harder, her shoulders shaking, and I smoothed a hand over her hair as I searched for the right words.

“Don’t be sorry,” I told her.

“I hurt you.” Her voice was muffled in my chest, and I held her tighter. “I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

“I know. I know you didn’t.” I forced a breath, kissing her hair. “In another lifetime, it could have been us, couldn’t it?”

Charlie sniffed, not answering, her hands fisting in my shirt.

“Maybe if I would have kissed you, if we would have stayed in touch. Maybe if I never would have left at all.” My heart squeezed. “Maybe my family would still be alive, then, too.”