Chapter Twenty-Six Charlotte
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHARLOTTE
The neighborhood sex fairy
“I T ’ S CUFFING SEASON ,” F AITH WHINES . “A ND I STILL HAVEN ’ T FOUND my cuff.”
“You don’t want a boyfriend,” I remind her. “Every time you have a boyfriend, all you do is complain about him.”
“Yes, in the summer ,” she says in a haughty voice. “In the winter, I’m all about it. I get to wear his hoodies. There’s snuggling. Pumpkin spice lattes. Couple’s costumes for Halloween.”
Ugh. That does sound nice. I miss having a boyfriend too. Mitch might be a total dickhead these days, but the two of us could rock a couple’s costume like nobody’s business.
“What was your longest relationship?” Blake asks Faith, twirling the thin straw in her sangria. Since I’m sticking to green tea, Faith had no choice but to twist my Little’s arm into ordering sangrias.
At Faith’s insistence, the three of us are at Malone’s tonight. Tomorrow, we’re all headed to our respective homes for Thanksgiving break, and Faith insisted she needed to get drunk in preparation for the family drama in store for her. I haven’t met Faith’s parents, but I’ve met four of her six siblings—that’s right, six —and I can only imagine how chaotic holidays are at the Grierson house.
It sounds like Blake will have a busy Thanksgiving too. Her family’s spending it with all her parents’ friends and their kids.
Me, I was happy to hear we’re keeping it low-key this year. Immediate family only. I prefer the quieter holidays. Gives me more time to spend with my parents.
“Never more than six months,” Faith says in response to Blake. She gasps. “Holy shit, I’m a seasonal dater.”
I snicker into my tea.
“How about you, Charlotte?” Blake asks curiously.
“Almost two years with my ex. And in high school, I didn’t have a regular boyfriend. I was too busy to date.”
“I’ve never had a relationship,” Blake admits.
I give her a sidelong glance. “How’s it going with Isaac?”
All I currently know about the situation is that she went on a date with him. He took her to the movies in Hastings and did not get a kiss good night. The end.
Blake Logan is the least forthcoming person I’ve ever met. I swear, it’s as if secrecy is woven into her very fabric, which makes me wonder what kind of shenanigans she gets into that nobody knows about. Maybe she leads her own double life. A…Blakey to my Charlie. Maybe she races cars in the middle of the night and sleeps with multiple hockey players too.
“Have you seen him again?” I press.
She shrugs. But I see her fighting a smile as she sips her drink.
“Oh my God. You have.”
Another shrug.
“How many times?”
After a beat, she caves to the gossip demands. “Three times total.”
“Have you slept with him?” Faith asks with a grin.
When Blake shakes her head, I try not to raise my eyebrows. I can’t envision Isaac Grant being okay with moving at this glacial a pace. The man was ready to bang me after flirting for five minutes outside the Coffee Hut. His reputation is not just a fabrication of the rumor mill. It was earned.
The memory of my interrupted evening with Isaac elicits a twinge of guilt. I’d planned on telling Blake about it after he showed up at the house making a big production of asking her out, but it slipped my mind once things with Will and Beckett ratcheted up.
Now that she revealed she’s been regularly seeing him, though, I need to be up-front with her.
“So,” I start, reaching across the table to steal Faith’s glass. Her jaw drops as she watches me gulp down some sangria. “Sorry,” I tell her. “Need the liquid courage.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Blake frowning at me. “Liquid courage for what?”
Faith now wears a knowing look. As my emergency contact and murder preventer, she’s the only one who knows my connection to Isaac Grant.
I move my chair, angling it toward Blake. “This is super awkward, but for the sake of full disclosure—and before you decide to have sex with the guy—you should know that Isaac and I fooled around once. Before you ever met him,” I hastily add.
Her eyebrows soar to her hairline. “What? You hooked up with Isaac?”
The guilt pulls harder at my gut. “Yes. We didn’t have sex, though. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before—”
She surprises me by waving her hand, unfazed. “No, I don’t care at all. You didn’t even have to tell me. I’m just…” Her eyes are wide with amazement. “Shocked. You’re the last person I’d have expected to engage in random hookups with football players.”
I don’t take offense to that. My carefully crafted Delta Pi persona is so effective, nobody would ever suspect about my lively sex life. That’s the whole point of the persona.
“I know. It’s very unlike me. But…I was bored” is the only answer I can think of.
Faith covers her snort with a cough.
Blake isn’t fooled. “Nope. Like I told you before—I know there’s more to you than meets the eye. This just deepens the mystery.”
As per the best friend vows we’ve taken, Faith intervenes on my behalf. “Anyway, now that we’ve cleared the air, I want to know more about these dates you went on,” she says to Blake. “You said no sex, but how about kissing?”
Once again, the freshman reverts to guarded mode. “Maybe.”
“Good kissing?” pushes Faith.
“Very good. He’s not what I expected,” Blake admits.
“So he’s not a cocky football player with a sense of entitlement?” I can’t help but tease. Because that’s exactly what I pegged Isaac for, and my time with him didn’t disprove that hypothesis.
“No, he’s definitely that. But he’s also got a sweet side. He texts me every morning and every night to say good morning and good night. He’s…kind of a sap.”
This surprises me almost as much as Isaac Grant waiting more than three dates to have sex. But my scientific brain can easily pinpoint the solution here: human nature. Biology. We are creatures wired to find a mate, and generally speaking, it’s the male of a species that chases the female. The female plays hard to get because she has more options. She holds all the cards. Which makes the males work harder, puff up their feathers, and do whatever it takes to beat out the competition.
All this is to say I don’t know how much of this “sweet side” is Isaac actually wanting Blake or if it’s due to internal wiring that tells him he needs to chase her.
A wave of noise from the door grabs my attention. We’re seated in the main room tonight, so we have a clear shot of everyone walking into the bar. A group of guys just entered, several of them wearing black hockey jackets. A flash of blond hair catches my eye.
Beckett.
The last time I saw him, he was fucking me hard enough to make me see stars, his fingers digging into my hips and thighs so tight he left tiny fingerprint bruises. I should have been alarmed when I saw the bruising in the mirror the next day, but I wasn’t. It only made me wet, remembering the sensation of him moving inside me while Will encouraged me to be a good girl and come for Beckett.
My thighs squeeze together at the memory, and I tear my gaze off the door. No. I’m not allowed to remember the pleasure. I need to focus on the shame. That horrible, smothering feeling I got afterward when I was leaving their house, wondering what people would think if they knew I just had sex with everyone inside it like the neighborhood sex fairy.
“We should head out,” Faith says, polishing off the rest of her sangria. “I have an early flight tomorrow.”
I nod. “I just need to use the ladies’ first.”
“Go. I’ll settle up. It’s my turn to treat.”
I walk toward the back corridor to the restrooms. I pee quickly, then wash my hands and fix my hair in front of the mirror. Make sure my side part is perfect. Not that I care what Beckett thinks of my side part. But you know…
Yes, we want to look good for the guy you banged while his best friend watched, don’t we?
My inner critic is such a bitch.
I exit the bathroom to find Beckett waiting for me.
Usually, the restrooms are packed until closing, but it’s a Wednesday and still early in the night, so the corridor is completely empty. We’re alone. But I still glance toward the end of the hall to make sure no one’s coming.
“Afraid to be seen with me, sugar puff?” His Aussie accent makes my heart jump.
“No, that’s not it,” I lie.
“Too sleazy for you, huh?”
My stomach clenches with guilt. “I told Will I don’t think he’s sleazy. Either of you.”
“You also told him that someone who has ongoing threesomes is sleazy. So what you’re saying doesn’t add up, now does it?”
My insides twist harder. Damn it. I feel like an asshole. I am an asshole. Because he’s right—the reasons I’m providing for not wanting to see them again contradict the assurances I’m giving him now.
But the confusing thing is, I’m not judging them. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they’re doing.
So why is it wrong when you do it? challenges a voice in my head.
Confusion floods my brain. I…don’t fucking know. All I know is that I felt ashamed of it. But they shouldn’t feel ashamed. Because…
A groan jams inside my windpipe. Why can’t I make sense of any of this?
As if sensing my inner turmoil, Beckett shrugs. “It’s all good, Charlotte. If it’s not for you, then it’s not for you.”
As he steps away, I catch a whiff of his familiar scent, so reminiscent of the ocean. It infuses my senses. I remember breathing him in when he was kissing me. When his face was buried in my neck. When his fingers were gliding down my body, turning me over so Will could put his cock in—
Enough. I can’t think about it anymore, damn it.
Embarrassment creeps into my cheeks. “It was a fantasy. And I got it out of my system.”
“If you say so.”
He’s not touching me. There’s a foot of distance between us, and his hands are in the pockets of his faded blue jeans. Yet I feel the phantom sensations of those hands on me. His tongue licking a line up my thigh, traveling toward my—
“It’s okay to want it, Charlie.” A knowing smile flits across his lips.
I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to hold back the sting of tears.
Then I exhale and say, “I’ve never felt more ashamed than when I left your house that morning.”
That visibly startles him. “Charlotte—”
“No. Just drop it. I have to go. My friends are waiting for me.”
I can feel him watching me walk away, but I don’t look back. I find Faith and Blake at the front entrance, and I must not be doing a good job keeping my mask in place because Faith’s features soften with concern.
“You okay?” she asks. “You look a bit pale.”
“I’m fine. Just remembered all the stuff I have to do when I get home tonight. I guess I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
“Is this the grad school admissions essays?”
I nod. “They extended the deadline, so I want to reread them and make some edits. I rushed them before because of midterms.”
“If it helps, I can proofread everything before you submit it?”
I’m touched by the offer. “Aw, thanks. I’d really appreciate that.”
As we exit the bar, I stick my hand inside my purse and fish around for my car keys. My fingers collide with metal at the same time as the sight of a guy standing near the entrance, partially obscured by the night shadows, snags my attention.
There’s something about him—the haircut, his posture, the way he’s trying to blend in but failing—that makes my skin prickle.
Faith follows my gaze. “Do you know that guy?”
“I don’t think so—”
I cut myself off when he turns to leave and I catch a glimpse of his eyebrow. Suddenly, the image of that same guy lurking in the parking lot on campus comes rushing back.
“Wait, shit. I’ve definitely seen him before. Just…stay here a second.”
Faith frowns. “Charlotte—”
Ignoring her, I make my way toward him, my heart pounding not from fear but from the adrenaline of an impending confrontation.
At my approach, the raven-haired guy stiffens, realizing he’d been spotted. He tries to walk away, but I’m faster, blocking his path.
“Hey!” I call, my voice sharp. “Why are you following me?”
His eyes widen, and he takes a step back, hands raised in surrender. “I’m not following you, I swear.”
“Bullshit,” I snap, advancing on him. “I’ve seen you around campus, and now here? Are you stalking me?”
“Charlotte. What’s going on?” Faith comes up beside me while Blake remains near the entrance of Malone’s, on the alert.
“I think this creep is stalking me,” I inform her, and Faith’s eyes immediately narrow on him.
His face turns beet red, and he looks like he wants to melt into the sidewalk. “No, it’s not like that. I—”
“Then what is it?” I demand, crossing my arms over my chest.
He fumbles with something in his pocket.
Faith and I instinctively back away, and I feel silly when I realize he’s only pulling out his phone. He holds it out so I can peer at the screen.
“Look. You sent me this.”
Shocks slams into me when I recognize the BioRoots logo and see my own words reflected back at me.
“I’m not stalking you,” he says with a heavy sigh. “I’m your brother.”