15. Gwen
Ana’s hair is soft under my touch as I comb it with my fingers. We’ve been on Charlie’s couch—well, our couch, now—for the entire morning and early afternoon, watching the animated Star Wars show she loves. She’s got a pillow propped under her side so the sensitive skin on her chest doesn’t rub against anything.
I hear the door click open and shut again, gruff voices carrying in boxes of our clothes and the limited mementos we wanted to keep from the apartment. My stomach clenches.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” I ask, scratching the crown of Ana’s hair. Her eyes are barely open, but she manages to roll them anyway.
“You promised not to ask that again,” she quips, giggling at something happening on the screen.
I swallow hard.
“I know, but this is really fast. We can wait longer.” My throat is tight as she shifts to look directly at me. Glare, actually.
“You spend all your time doing everything for me. Putting your life on the back burner to take care of me. We’re doing this because you love him, and he loves you, and this is what it takes to prove that you’re not turning into a weird hermit because of me.”
She turns back to the TV, and I nearly choke on the instinct to correct her. I know it’s logical for her to assume that we love each other, but it’s the first time I’ve heard that word in the context of our relationship, and I nearly break out in a cold sweat.
I don’t love Charlie. Lust after him, maybe, after the events of this weekend. Trust him, albeit a little blindly.
But if Ana believing I love him makes this move easier for her, I’ll let her think that. My stomach turns at the thought that eventually, Charlie and I will have to start saying it to each other, if only to keep up appearances. It shouldn’t matter that it’s a lie, but it does.
I turn over my shoulder as the door opens again. This time, the guys moving our stuff in are carrying a large box, grunting under the weight of it, which is strange. We left the vast majority of our furniture to be picked up for donation, and most of our things were cheap and flimsy, anyway.
Charlie enters the house behind the movers, observing their work with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. It’s not like I haven’t seen him dressed casually, but something about jeans and a t-shirt looks so domestic on him it has me in this weird, hormone-induced trance.
He catches my gaze, a soft smile pulling at the corner of his lips as he pulls the door shut behind him. I feel heat creeping up my neck and turn away without smiling back.
I had really hoped whatever insanity had overcome me while torturing Kayden would be contained to that room. But while it isn’t as potent, I still feel his fingertips dragging over my knuckles when I’m trying to fall asleep.
I focus on the show, not understanding half of what’s going on, as Charlie joins us on the couch.
“What’s with the boxes?” I ask.
Partners, maybe friends, I remind myself as my skin buzzes with his proximity. It’s been like this every time we’re anywhere near each other this week, and it’s driving me fucking insane.
“A surprise, for later,” he replies, and when I look over at him, he smiles and nods at Ana, who isn’t paying any attention to us. She seems to be caught up in her own mind, which is fair, seeing as it’s her last day of treatment.
Even though it’ll be a few months before we do follow-up scans and confirm that the treatment worked, her oncologist has been optimistic. And being done with radiation feels like something to celebrate.
Ana’s exhaustion has only gotten worse, though, and she’s barely wanted to eat after treatment, much less do anything fun. But her spirits seem up today.
She has a small grin the entire drive to the hospital, her fingers tapping to the beat of the music blasting through her headphones.
“You’re staring at her,” Charlie whispers as we turn off the highway. He’s been quiet the whole trip, but I could feel his eyes on me.
“Yeah, I know,” I reply, watching Ana close her eyes and lean her head against the window. Charlie’s hand squeezes mine in my lap.
“You did a really great job,” he says.
My answering smile is a little pained. “She did all the hard work,” I argue.
“I didn’t mean with the treatment, though you handled that well, too.” He squeezes my hand again and I finally tear my eyes away from my sister. “I meant with raising her. She’s a good kid, and that’s because of you.”
I barely hold back the tears welling in my eyes as I look back at her in the rearview. She’s strong and funny and brilliant, and while most of that was the luck of the draw, I can’t help but to be proud of my part in the person she’s become.
“She could have been raised by wolves and would have turned out this good,” I say, brushing off the compliment. But Charlie doesn’t let it go.
“She’s got someone in her life who loves her so much, they would go to the ends of the earth and back for her. That’s not nothing, Gwen.”
Charlie pulls into the closest parking space we can find, and Ana barely waits for the car to stop before she’s opening her door.
“Ready for your finale?” I ask, looping my arm around her shoulders and pulling her tight against me. She wraps her arms around me, nearly tripping over my feet.
“As long as there’s no encore,” she sighs.
When we get checked in and upstairs, Dr. Mya is standing in the waiting room, a huge smile plastered on their face. I haven’t seen them since Ana’s last pre-treatment appointment, but they’ve been sending me updates on Ana’s progress.
“Banana!” they call out, and Ana huffs a laugh under her breath. “Congratulations on your last day!”
The other techs and nurses I recognize from the last few weeks gather around Ana, telling her how well she did and how proud they are of her. Charlie and I hang back, letting her have this moment with the people who took care of her.
I notice a few of the staff giving Charlie a double take, glancing at him when Ana’s preoccupied with someone else. Without thinking, I take a step toward him, angling my body so we’re nearly touching.
“Territorial,” he says under his breath, putting his hand on my hip and gently pulling me closer.
Heat climbs up my chest, but I scoff, trying to play it off.
“I am not territorial, it’s just rude,” I argue, but he’s not wrong.
It strikes me that Charlie and I have absolutely no agreement about seeing other people. That he could be getting these kinds of looks from any and everyone, entertaining them, looking at them with desire. I hate myself for caring.
“They don’t know that this is fake.”
Charlie’s hand freezes on my hip, the soft touches suddenly still. I try to turn, to figure out what’s wrong, but he holds me in place, fingers digging in softly.
“Wouldn’t want them to wound your pride,” he says, his voice a little harder than before.
I want to argue, but what the hell do I even say? He might be right.
The staff dissipates, and Dr. Mya leads Ana back to the treatment area. She looks back at us, bag slung over her shoulder, and she smiles like she really is happy.
Ana’slast appointment goes by quicker than any have before. When she returns from the treatment area, a radiation tech holding her hand and her jacket already around her shoulders, I can see it in her eyes. She made it. And even though we’re not out of the woods yet, the feeling of relief is overwhelming.
People keep coming by, wishing her luck with her scans, making jokes about how they hope they never see us again. Charlie gets a few more lingering glances, but each time his hand finds its way around my shoulders, or onto my knee, and I curse myself for feeling comforted by the motion.
She’s chatty the entire ride home, telling Charlie and me about the playlist that one of the nurses made for her based on the music she played during treatment. She’s still exhausted, and based on Dr. Mya’s latest message, she likely will be for weeks, but she seems hopeful.
Traffic is light, and we make it back relatively quickly. When we walk through the front door, Charlie turns to take Ana’s coat.
Ana hovers in the entry a bit, rocking on her heels, and I realize that this is the first time we’ve walked into this house as our home. In the apartment, she’d kick off her shoes and launch herself onto the couch, or claw through the pantry for cheese crackers. But neither of us knows how to act.
Charlie must have been prepared for the awkwardness, because after hanging up our coats, he turns to Ana.
“This is your home now, okay? Leave your shoes in the hallway, decorate the walls, do whatever you want. Both of you,” he says, glancing at me. “I know it’ll take some getting used to, but I want you to be comfortable here. So, I’ve got a little surprise.”
Ana looks to me, but I’ve got no answers for her, so I just shrug and let Charlie lead us down the hallway. When we land in front of the door to Ana’s new room, Charlie steps back and urges her forward.
“Go ahead.”
Ana cracks the door open, leaning in hesitantly. But all nerves seem to disappear as she sees what’s inside.
It’s the same bed I slept in on my first night here, but the olive green sheets have been replaced with pale blue ones. Pictures that used to be pinned to her bedroom wall with thumbtacks—of her softball team, of her and Gray in cosplay, of school events and championships—are hanging in frames above a small desk. But it’s clear what the star of the show is by the way she beelines to it.
There’s a second desk on the wall across from her bed, quite a bit bigger than the other one. Small rolls of fabric are stacked in open shelves under the tabletop, and books on costume design and fashion are lined up in color-coordinated rows along the back. Gold fabric shears, black charcoal pencils, rotary cutters, and other tools of the trade sit in pretty acrylic containers. A peg board hangs precisely on the wall.
But nothing stands out more than the shiny new sewing machine sitting in the center of the desk. It looks professional grade—dark blue and massive, with a fancy computer screen on the front. It’s way nicer than the one Ana uses at the public library, or even the one Gray has.
“Holy shit,” Ana whispers, running her shaking hand over the top of the machine.
I should tell her not to say shit, but holy shit. I’ve looked up how much these things cost, and it’s in the hundreds, maybe thousands. This is way too much.
But as I watch Ana sit at the chair in front of the desk, peeking under the table and searching through the swathes of fabric, I can’t chastise Charlie about how much he spent. Because if I’d been able to, I would have done the exact same thing.
“This is really mine?” Ana asks, swiveling around in her chair. She looks on the edge of tears, which has me swallowing back my own.
Goddamnit, I cry a lot lately.
“All yours, kid,” Charlie says, crossing his arms and leaning against the door jam. “We’ve got to get your applications ready, right?”
Ana smiles so wide it’s got to hurt her cheeks. She spins around in a circle in the chair, the joy radiating from her like sunshine.
“Thank you, Charlie,” she says, but Charlie shakes his head.
“Thank your sister. She’s the one who made this happen.”
Sometimes when I look at Charlie, I can’t read a thing. He’s so disciplined that every emotion is locked in some sort of safe I can’t crack. But there are moments like this where it seems like he’s unlocked it for me, letting me see everything written there.
An inside joke, a thank you, a gift. A moment where we’re on the same team.
Ana collides with me, and I avoid touching her left side as I hug her back.
“Thanks, Ginny,” she whispers into my shoulder. “For everything.”
As excitedas she is to tear into new projects, Ana’s also exhausted. The burst of adrenaline she got from her surprise is quickly dwindling, and we make quick work of the pho that Zane drops off. We eat on the couch, Ana curled up under a blanket with her bowl on her belly, as Charlie asks about the projects she wants to work on for her portfolio.
“All right,” I say, stretching and grabbing her bowl from her lap before it spills. “Time for bed.”
Ana just nods, flinching as she accidentally brushes her side with the blanket. Charlie grabs the bowls from my hands and nods.
“I got this. You guys go ahead.”
I try to let all the gratefulness I feel seep into my smile before I help Ana up off the couch.
“Come on, let’s go find our pajamas,” I say, letting her lead me down the hall toward her room. When we get to the two doors at the end, she turns toward hers and I start to open the second spare.
“Where are you going?” she asks, standing under her doorway with a look of sleepy confusion on her face.
I look at her, and then into the spare room. It’s got the same high-end yet basic furniture that Ana’s room had when I stayed in it that first night.
“Umm…” I start, trying to figure out what in the world possessed me to think that my belongings would be in the second spare room.
Ana laughs, sparing me from coming up with a response.
“You don’t have to pretend you sleep in separate rooms. I’m not that na?ve.” She turns and shuts the door behind her. “Don’t be weird about it, though!” she calls through the door.
Charlie’s chuckle from the end of the hall startles me, and I turn to him, a little shell-shocked.
“I have no explanation for what just happened,” I say, arms raised in defeat.
Charlie just laughs again, and the sound settles like something warm and familiar.
“You can sleep in the spare room, if you’d like,” Charlie says, a small, slightly sad smile on his face. “Or I can switch the office to this side of the hall and you can make your own room next to mine.”
The offer is sweet, and I nearly laugh at the fact that this is the same man that I thought was blackmailing me into sex weeks ago.
“No, it’s okay. She’d figure it out in a second if we weren’t in the same room. If you’re all right with it, I’m sure we can figure out how to share.”
There’s a quick beat, a flicker of some sort of strange camaraderie, and for a second my desire seems manageable. Because if I’m being totally honest with myself, most people aren’t lucky enough to have someone in their lives who is in their corner. And Charlie’s in mine.
He clears his throat, crossing his arms and looking at his feet.
“I’ve got a surprise for you, too,” he says, his ears red and voice nervous.
“You really did enough, more than I ever could have asked for,” I reply, trying to repress my smile. I don’t think I’ve seen Charlie anything other than confident and self-assured since that first night at Catalina’s.
“Come on,” he says, tugging at my arm and leading me down the hall toward his room—our room.
My pulse climbs, thinking about him lying next to me in bed, nearly touching, but not close enough.
But he doesn’t lead me to the bedroom. Instead, he pushes open the door to the office and steps aside. The room looks split in two. One side has a desk against the wall that’s covered in neatly organized files and folders, a laptop open on the edge. Bookshelves line the walls to either side, filled with the memorabilia of dozens of stories, faded photos of a group of kids near a glimmering ocean, books with well-worn spines. A heavy chair sits behind the desk, dark leather faded, with a checkered blanket draped over the back.
The other side has the same furniture, same layout, but everything is empty. The leather on the chair is crisp and new, and the blanket is the one that used to be draped over the end of my bed. But otherwise, it’s identical.
“What’s this?” I ask, stepping into the room. The last bit of sunlight is peeking over the rooftops of the outbuildings through the window. There would be a beautiful view of the wildflowers from here in the spring.
“Our office,” Charlie says simply, standing next to me, arms nearly touching. “I know so much about Ana. Her dreams and her ambitions, what she likes and hates. And I feel like I know so little about you.” His voice is calm, comforting, like the sound of rainfall on a roof. “At first I thought I hadn’t been listening, or asking the right questions. And while that’s part of it, maybe you don’t know those things about yourself either.”
I try to make my expression incredulous when I turn to him, but I think he can see the vulnerability in my eyes, how close to home he’s hit.
“You have been Ana’s sister, her mother, and her protector for so long. You’ve spent so much of your time making sure she has the world. I think you’ve lost sight of yourself. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to find yourself again.” He gestures at my side of the office, but I can’t look away from his face. “Take classes, become a potter, or a gardener, or a blacksmith. Fill the shelves up with pictures, or books, or those creepy porcelain dolls. Try a thousand things and hate them all until you love something. And then tell me about it.”
There’s this tightness in my chest that borders on pain. I love being Ana’s sister, her parent-figure. While I’ve never resented her for even a second, there have been moments where I wonder who I would have been if I’d had the time and freedom to find myself. Now I’m standing here, in this office, being given the opportunity to do so. And I don’t know how I got this lucky, stumbling into a frat-filled bar on a random Friday night.
“I apologize if I overstepped,” Charlie says, taking a step back and giving me some space.
I realize the tears I’ve been trying to hold back all day are finally falling, and I wipe them away with a laugh.
“No, you didn’t,” I promise, taking a step closer to the desk.
A few of my personal belongings lay on top. A framed photo of me and Ana at her thirteenth birthday party. The mother’s day card she made in the fifth grade that had the word mother scratched out and replaced with sister. The shot glass, one of a pair, that Kenzie and I stole from the fancy nightclub in Baltimore on my twenty-first birthday.
My grandmother’s watch, cracked and bloodstained. My vampire book.
“This is a very kind gift, Charlie,” I say on a breath, turning back toward him. “It means a lot.”
He smiles, and I feel it sink into my bones.