Chapter 13
TEXT MESSAGE FROM REECE KRUEGER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 2:25 AM:charlie?
On the walk back to Randall, her cracked phone smugly informed her of the time: nearly four o’clock in the morning. All the coffee in the world couldn’t mask the weariness in Charlotte’s bones. Her feet hurt. Her head ached. Her throat was a special kind of scratchy that only came from laughing, crying, and barfing in the same evening.
But her night wasn’t over yet. She had to talk to Reece.
Charlotte still didn’t know what she needed to say. They’d carved out this time capsule with the unspoken agreement that it wouldn’t last after the reunion. She wasn’t sure what she wanted after that, or if Reece wanted to explore an after at all.
Even if their interest in after was mutual, assuming Reece could forgive her for being a bitch at the Lawn Party, they’d never known each other outside Hein’s alternate reality. They’d never gone to the movies, or talked on the phone, or eaten a meal alone together. Oreos didn’t count.
But she knew Reece cared about her. Even if she didn’t understand why, or when, or how he had come to care for her, she could feel the truth of it in her bones.
She trusted him.
That trust allowed her to take out her phone and text him as she stood outside his dorm room. She knew Reece would text back. A man like that didn’t care about people on a whim.
She just didn’t know what would happen when he opened the door.
TEXT MESSAGE FROM CHARLOTTE THORNE TO REECE KRUEGER, 3:43 AM:Any chance you’re still awake?
Her message hovered on her screen and then was delivered. She leaned against the wall opposite Reece and Garrett’s room as she waited for an answer.
In the interim, she checked her other notifications.
TEXT MESSAGE FROM JACKIE SLAUGHTER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 2:51 AM:so uh I know we’re fighting right now but would you mind not coming back to the room for a while
TEXT MESSAGE FROM JACKIE SLAUGHTER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 2:51 AM:or at all
TEXT MESSAGE FROM JACKIE SLAUGHTER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 2:53 AM:not because I’m mad at you but because I’m gonna bone Nina
Shit. She’d been sexiled.
Well, good for them.
TEXT MESSAGE FROM CHARLOTTE THORNE TO JACKIE SLAUGHTER, 3:43 AM:yes ma’am, you crazy kids have fun
As she sent her reply, the phone vibrated with another incoming message.
TEXT MESSAGE FROM REECE KRUEGER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 3:44 AM:there might be a chance
Charlotte considered Reece’s tone. The text was clever but cautious, a raised eyebrow as opposed to a direct answer.
She matched his humor.
TEXT MESSAGE FROM CHARLOTTE THORNE TO REECE KRUEGER, 3:44 AM:I find myself in need of a bed to sleep in.
The typing bubble expanded and then disappeared. Then:
TEXT MESSAGE FROM REECE KRUEGER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 3:45 AM:is that so
TEXT MESSAGE FROM REECE KRUEGER TO CHARLOTTE THORNE, 3:45 AM:might I interest you in a twin xl
Charlotte snorted, more relieved than amused.
Thank goodness, her trust wasn’t misplaced. Reece hadn’t shut her out. He didn’t hate her for how she behaved tonight, or for her vanishing act.
The door swung open. Reece stood with one hand looped around the doorknob, the room dark behind him.
“I thought there was someone skulking around out here.”
“That’s me. The skulker.” She ran her hands over the front of her outfit, smoothing down the bedraggled hem of her crop top. God only knew what she looked like after the last eight hours. The dorm’s fluorescent lights weren’t exactly forgiving.
Reece kept his face blank. Scruff had begun to overtake his jaw, and he’d changed into pajama pants and a white henley.
“Did I wake you up?”
He shook his head. A wet lock of hair fell across his forehead, fresh from the shower.
“I got back from the Lawn like a half hour ago. Garrett’s still out.”
Charlotte almost told him that she’d left his roommate hunched over Wynn’s laptop watching Say Yes to the Dress with him and Jio, but she didn’t know what Reece knew about Garrett’s queerness. That was between them, and it wasn’t her information to share.
She waited for him to invite her in. Reece didn’t move in the doorway.
In college their roles were usually reversed. If they didn’t meet up at some party, Reece arrived all sweaty and buzzed at her door at the end of the night. She would let him into her apartment. He kissed down her throat until their self-consciousness bled away and they pretended not to care about each other. Just sex. Just distraction. Just release.
The old script hung over their shoulders, but carelessness didn’t fit anymore. He couldn’t paper over his feelings for her, and she couldn’t refuse to feel anything at all. It was far too late for that.
“Listen, I’m sorry—” she started.
“Don’t.” Reece shook his head, that loose curl swinging across his forehead. He swiped at it as he stepped back, opening the door wider. “Just come in.”
A thread of resignation ran through the invitation. Charlotte bristled but followed his instructions.
Moonlight spilled through the open blinds. Outside she could see students roaming campus, little more than dark forms lurching to their next destination.
She blinked as he closed the door.
“How are you feeling?” Reece leaned against the dresser, his arms folded across his chest.
Charlotte cleared her throat. “Oh, you know.”
He tilted his head to the side and watched her squirm. The silence stretched between them. Reece made no effort to rescue her from her discomfort. It dawned on her that he wasn’t going to let her wiggle out of talking about what happened at the party.
Damn it.
“Embarrassed, I guess.” Her voice was hoarse, which only made her feel worse. Reece had already seen too much of her tonight.
Reece started across the room, only to stop at the foot of his bed. He looked like he wanted to touch her but didn’t at the same time, restraining himself at the last moment. Instead, he gripped the footboard. “Why are you embarrassed?” he asked.
Like she hadn’t thrown up on him, or acted like a coward in front of her ex, or screamed at him to leave her alone.
Where to start?
Charlotte picked the worst infraction. “I yelled at you. You were being nice, and I yelled at you.”
Reece nodded grudgingly. “Yeah, you did. But you were having a panic attack and I crowded you.” He said it like it was nothing, a simple misunderstanding already resolved.
Charlotte’s hands fisted at her sides, nails biting into her palms. She didn’t want Reece to be mad at her, but his easy dismissal didn’t make any sense. “That doesn’t make it okay.”
“It’s all right.”
Reece ran his hand along the duvet. The bed was unmade—if he wasn’t asleep when she arrived, he’d nearly been. The urge to apologize again rose in Charlotte’s throat, but he didn’t look angry. If anything, he looked sad.
Were his eyes wet? Or was the moonlight playing tricks on her?
“I’m not mad at you,” he said, answering her unasked question. “I was just worried.” His forehead creased with those new worry lines.
Charlotte shifted on her feet. Worry. It seemed to surround her this weekend: Jackie’s judgmental worry, Nina’s understated worry, Reece’s earnest worry. She didn’t know what to do with more worry. It made her skin itch.
“I’m okay.” She gave him a hollow smile. “I’m fine!”
Reece’s eyes trailed from her snarled hair to her dusty shoes. He shook his head, smiling despite himself. “Charlie Thorne, always fine.” His words were thin, but he didn’t elaborate. “Let me find you something to wear.”
As Reece searched the explosion of clothes on his desk for makeshift pajamas, Charlotte focused on the simple task of getting ready for sleep. She tucked her shoes under the bed and texted Jackie that she would spend the night with Reece. She left her phone on the windowsill.
Reece gave her a clean T-shirt and a pair of boxers. He busied himself with plugging his phone in to charge as she changed. The shirt fell to just below her hips. Cartoon kittens scampered across the boxers. Charlotte balled up her clothes and put them next to her phone.
Having run out of stalling tactics, Charlotte hopped onto the mattress. She tucked herself in and scooted over to make room for him.
The bed shifted as he climbed up next to her. He avoided looking at her as he slid under the sheets.
They both knew the bed was too narrow to sleep without touching. Charlotte slowly turned to face the wall, and Reece positioned himself behind her, one arm curling around her waist. After a moment’s hesitation, she wove her fingers through his and held tight.
They had never done this before. Reece’s warm breath spilled across the back of her neck. The sensation was so unusual and pleasant that she blinked at the wall. Was sleep even possible like this? How did one doze off when squished against six feet of another human?
“Where did you go?” Reece murmured. As quiet as his words were, she clearly wasn’t the only one wide awake.
He meant where she’d gone after the party. His heartbeat against her back, a quick but steady thud thud, thud thud.
“My room. And then Acronym.”
Reece shifted to get more comfortable. He tucked his right arm underneath their shared pillow. Her nerves tightened as he engulfed her body in his warmth. It felt like being nestled in a padded envelope, precious cargo sent with care.
He squeezed her hand.
Little by little the tension left Charlotte’s limbs as she melted in the kiln of the too-small bed. Her body craved sleep. But images from the night kept whirling through her mind: Ben’s teeth flashing red in the party lights…Jackie pushing her to quit her job…Reece’s eyes electric with life on the President’s Lawn.
Charlotte felt like she was coming off a drug, wired and depleted all at once.
She focused on Reece’s heartbeat, solid like the rhythm of an old watch.
Reece pressed his forehead to the back of her neck. She shivered at the delicate touch. “I’m sorry too,” he said.
Charlotte frowned. “For what?”
Reece’s fingers twitched between hers, but he didn’t let go. “For not protecting you at the party.”
She remembered that dreadful interaction at the bar. From her perspective, Reece had played silent witness to one of the worst moments of her life. He was an innocent bystander watching a car crash, utterly blameless. He didn’t need to apologize.
“I had no idea what to do. He was sleazing all over you and I froze. I didn’t want to make a scene if that wasn’t what you wanted, but you obviously wanted him to leave you alone. I should have done something.”
A strange emotion she couldn’t identify spread through her chest. Of course Reece understood her behavior at the party. Of course he didn’t think less of her for fawning over Ben. She always underestimated him.
Gratitude. This feeling was called gratitude. It sat butter yellow in her throat, warring with her irritation that he’d somehow found a way to blame himself.
“And then you doubled over, and I didn’t know if you were sick from drinking or having a panic attack or what.” Reece’s fist clenched under her hand. “I couldn’t do anything. I was just in the way.”
If there was something Reece Krueger would never be, it was just in the way.
Charlotte twisted in his arms to face him. His mouth was a pained grimace. She recognized the expression from so many nights at support group: He looked the same way whenever he talked about his dad.
Helpless.A muted mauve color, sad and frail.
“I don’t want to make you running into Ben about me, because it’s not,” he said firmly. “I just…wish I’d helped.”
“You do help. You help everyone.” Charlotte curled her fingers into the collar of his shirt and gave him a shake. “You’re helping Jio with the wedding, and you’re helping Jackie find a therapist for her dad, and you help your mom all the time.”
“Yeah, but I don’t help you.” Reece’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t help when you were hurting senior year. I didn’t help tonight.”
She couldn’t bear the tattered look on his face. Charlotte cupped his cheek in her palm. His lips were pillow-soft as she ran her thumb across his mouth. “Please stop. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want it.”
Reece’s eyebrows folded together, his brand-new worry lines multiplying.
Shit, that came out terribly. For the second time tonight, she was going about this all wrong. In the moments that mattered, she could never find the words to capture what she really felt.
What had she yelled at him outside the tent?
I don’t want your help. I don’t need you.
What she actually meant went something like…I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed to let you see me like this.
Reece’s lips parted underneath her thumb, his breath wicking across her skin. Something about the image of Reece’s mouth opening at her touch felt so vulnerable. He wasn’t afraid to grant her access to his little soft spaces. Not right away, not all at once, but he let her in eventually. When he was ready.
His trust gave Charlotte the confidence she needed. She wanted to tell him the truth. To tell herself the truth, really.
“What I mean is that I don’t know how to ask for help when I need it.”
She had never put that thought into words. She’d never wanted to before. Doing so meant admitting to the kind of wound that risked defining you: the absent father, the abusive mother, the self-reliance that kept you alive even as it held you apart from people who might love you better. A thin line separated not needing help and thinking you didn’t deserve it.
Understanding dawned on Reece’s face. Her hand fell from his lips as he gathered her in his arms and tucked her head underneath his chin.
Reece pressed a kiss into her hair and held her tight. Strange, how absolutely herself she felt surrounded by his strength. If she wanted to move, he’d let her go in an instant, and that simple knowledge made her never want to move again. She wriggled closer and wrapped an arm around his waist. Her fingers found the bottom of his shirt and stole upward to trace his skin.
“You are wonderful,” he murmured into her hair.
Charlotte held her breath. Her hand stilled its tender exploration of his back. If she’d been any other girl, she might have found his words romantic. Instead, her lungs threatened to crumple like an empty wasp’s nest.
Goddamn it, enough of this.Reece had no reason to lie to her. She wanted to believe him.
“You’re not a fan of compliments, are you?” Humor tipped his words, infusing them with curiosity rather than frustration. Reece shifted her in his arms so that he could see her expression. Green eyes peered at her in an invitation to explain. He wasn’t criticizing her, just trying to understand.
Guilt pooled in her chest. Stupid goddamn defense mechanisms. She studied the well-past-five-o’clock shadow dusting his jaw. “I’m sorry, I— Thank you.”
“But…” Reece prompted her.
But. Why did she hate compliments so much?
She supposed she didn’t have the best track record with them. Ben doled out compliments like loose change, cheap and easy. On his worst days he used them as currency to balance his tab of nastiness. She wasn’t pathetic, she was brilliant. She wasn’t a stupid bitch, she was ravishing. A vague you’re beautiful bought her forgiveness. Ben used praise to bail himself out.
“I’m used to them being bullshit.” Charlotte pressed her palm against Reece’s chest, grounding herself as she parsed her hang-ups. As much as it came as a relief to unburden herself like this, it hurt somewhere deep and vital to churn up buried soil. “Manipulative, I guess.”
Reece’s voice slipped an octave lower. “I’m not trying to manipulate you.”
“I know you’re not.” She forced herself to look him in the eye. “I guess I have trouble believing it sometimes,” Charlotte continued. She worried her lip between her teeth as she separated insecurity from self-awareness. On a cognitive level she could see herself clearly, more or less. But believing it wasn’t easy. “Like, I know I’m smart. I work hard. People seem to really like my hair.”
“Because it’s beautiful,” Reece growled, grasping a loose curl. He gave it a playful tug.
She gave him a weak smile, and he let go.
“It’s just…” She sighed. “You get told often enough that you’re a disgrace and eventually kindness feels like the lie.”
Reece’s eyes went round. Someone else might have rushed to tell her how great she was, but he lay in the silence with her.
“Your mom,” he finally said, knitting the last pieces together.
She felt like she had gravel caught in her throat. “Yeah.”
The secondhand anger on Reece’s face was a little too much to take. She pressed her face against his neck and cuddled close. His arms closed around her automatically.
After a while, Reece combed his fingers through her tangled hair. “I’m having trouble picturing her,” he mused quietly. “I don’t think I saw her at graduation.”
The old, dark wound in Charlotte’s chest throbbed painfully. She assumed that Jackie had filled him in on the missing details of graduation, but obviously not. He still didn’t know. She never told him.
“She wasn’t there.”
Reece’s hand stilled. She could practically see the gears grinding in his brain as he processed this new information.
“What?” Reece blurted out.
Charlotte caught the collar of his shirt between her fingers, thin from so many washes. He really did use a lovely fabric softener.
Words, Charlotte Thorne. Use them.
“She was supposed to be there. I invited her as a sort of olive branch, and she agreed to come.”
Charlotte planned her graduation outfit in advance. She found a Lilly Pulitzer dress made from white eyelet lace at Goodwill. Charlotte never wore Lilly Pulitzer, or lace, but it felt like fate when she saw it on the formal-wear rack. This was a dress Olivia Harrington Thorne would choose for her daughter to wear to her graduation. Pretty and feminine and preppy as hell.
She planned to wear the dress with electric blue cowboy boots borrowed from Nina, and her hair was still that hydrogen-peroxide-white bob. She would always be Charlotte Thorne, the bisexual dirtbag, but she intended for the dress to be a gesture toward compromise.
She closed her fist around Reece’s shirt. “I thought if she saw me here, somewhere I belong, that I’d make more sense to her. That she would understand me better.”
It was a fantasy, of course. The emotional whirlwind of the end of term made her think that anything was possible: an internship at an It Media Company, finally leaving her terrible boyfriend, reconciling with her mother. Their relationship had been fractious since her breakup with Ben, but Charlotte had so much to be proud of. She was moving to New York City and maybe she finally had her shit together, maybe she had it all figured out.
In reality, she had no reason to think her mother would change her mind. People didn’t snap out of a decade of homophobia and a lifetime of neglect. Nothing in the world would close the gulf between them, no stack of cartoons published in the school paper or prestigious internship offers. No secondhand cocktail dress or picturesque New England campus.
“But she just didn’t show up.”
Graduation day was a brutal reminder that life didn’t offer happily-ever-afters. Not for people like her.
Reece was still processing. “Did she ever explain why?”
Charlotte bit the inside of her cheek. “Yeah, she emailed me after the ceremony.” And what an email it was, confusing and harsh. Charlotte remembered squinting at her phone in the bright sunlight on the quad, wondering what on earth her mother was talking about in her stilted, formal language. But when she figured it out…
As she remembered her mother’s words, bloody anger wrapped itself around charcoal gray shame. She drew strength from the former as she continued.
“Remember when I told you that Ben spread a rumor about me? That I’d cheated on him with Jackie?” Reece nodded, not seeing the connection. “My mom was one of the people he talked to. I think he found out that you and I were hooking up, and he called her to stir up shit.”
Reece’s face whitened with horror. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be, his psycho behavior is not your fault. He didn’t like me moving on, and he lashed out through her. He knew that would hurt me the most. And my mother always adored him; she never understood why we broke up.” A mirthless smile stretched across Charlotte’s mouth, tight and hollow. “I guess it was easier for her to believe I was an unfaithful slut than that he was a controlling monster.”
She clung to her self-righteous anger as Reece winced, praying her instincts were right and that he wouldn’t judge her.
“Olivia said in her email that I was a disgrace to the family and no longer her daughter. I replied that she should go fuck herself.”
Stunned, Reece blinked at her. “Damn,” he whistled. “Good for you. Fuck her.”
“Thanks,” Charlotte said. “We haven’t spoken since.”
Over time it would hurt less. It already did hurt less. She never doubted her decision, even during the hardest moments of the last five years. It had taken twenty-two years for Charlotte to reach her limit with her mother, and she knew she had done everything possible to avoid that breaking point. She would choose being broke and alone over Olivia Harrington Thorne’s emotional abuse any day of the week.
Reece exhaled in a huff. “I can’t believe she fell for that guy’s act.”
“Honestly, I don’t even care that she believed Ben. What if it had been true, you know?” Charlotte wiggled up into a sitting position, Reece’s arm still looped behind her hips. “What if I was seeing Jackie? So what? Olivia didn’t care that I supposedly cheated, she cared that it was with a woman.” Her fury blended with pearly white certainty. “But I love being queer. It’s one of my favorite parts of myself.”
Charlotte meant it. No one ever took that away from her, not her parents, not even Ben. Her bisexuality wasn’t a rebellious phase or a party trick, and it wasn’t an inconvenience or an embarrassment to the people who loved her. Queerness meant joy and community and endless potential to fall in lust and love and understanding. Even if Charlotte had lost sight of that in the last few years.
“I’d rather not have my mother in my life than apologize for who I am,” she said. “And I will never subject anyone I care about to her judgment.”
Reece sat up beside her in the narrow bed. He had an odd look on his face, intense but soft. His smile was missing, but his eyes burned with something better: respect. She settled against his side as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. A moment later she felt her curls stir as he pressed a kiss to her hair.
Now, wrapped up in Reece’s embrace, it didn’t hurt to remember that awful day. Her perspective shifted. Maybe it wasn’t the day her mother had rejected her for good. Maybe it was the day she finally cut out her first abuser.
If only the decision hadn’t come with collateral damage.
“I really did want to meet your family,” Charlotte added. “I’m so sorry I didn’t show up at the picnic. I should have at least answered your texts when you asked me where I was, or called you to explain.” She licked her dry lips. “I was not my best self that day.”
Reece found her chin with his hand and tipped her face up to his.
“Charlie,” he murmured, his voice lush with awe. Not pity, not disgust. He looked at her with pure, undiluted tenderness. “I forgive you. And I can’t understand anyone choosing not to know you.”
His words spread through every inch of her, from her fingertips to her shins to the top of her head. She breathed in deep and exhaled on a staggered sigh. “Oh wow,” she laughed humorlessly. “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
His eyes creased as he smiled. “I’ll tell you again anytime you need a reminder.”
She wanted that. She wanted it so much she felt like her heart might seize. She wanted Reece’s affection anytime, every day, whenever and wherever.
An emotion she hadn’t felt in years fluttered inside her rib cage, begging to be released. She wanted to kiss him, wanted to press herself into all his little corners and absorb every ounce of his affection. She wanted to let go.
But something held her back.
“I keep waiting for you to…flinch,” she confessed. “The more I say…”
Reece’s smile slanted into an amused smirk. “Are you forgetting that we met at a support group?”
Charlotte bit her lip. “Fair point.”
“My whole life changed when you came back to the 3Ds,” he said. “I looked forward to sitting next to you every week.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. And then, the real question that had nagged at her for years: “Why me?”
He smiled, all lopsided and self-conscious. “You made these little noises under your breath while people spoke. You rarely talked, but you hissed and grumbled and growled because you were so mad for everyone else.”
Charlotte blushed. “I did?”
“Yeah, you did.” He chuckled. “It was so cute, I lived for it. I had to sit next to you so I could hear you.” He ran his thumb across her neck until he found her pulse point. She swallowed at the soft pressure of his hand against her fragile skin, her heart racing under his touch. “You care so much about everyone, and you get so pissed off when you see an injustice. But I don’t think you apply that same care to yourself.”
She licked her dry lips, overwhelmed and amazed. Reece just kept looking at her, seeing the best and worst of her, knowing her through and through.
“So no, I’m not going to run, Charlie.” The humor vanished from his voice. “You don’t scare me.”
Her gasp escaped before she could squash it. It was better than any profession of love, more affecting than any romantic gesture. It was also the truth. She told him her secrets and he held her closer.
A frustrated moan stole from his mouth.
“What?” she whispered.
Reece clenched his eyes shut. “I’m trying not to make the same mistake twice.”
Charlotte nuzzled against his neck, her eyelashes brushing his skin. Desire unspooled within her as she felt his pulse jump. “What’s that?”
“Bombard you with affection and freak you out.”
Her answering laugh was huskier than usual. She slithered her hand under his shirt, flattened her fingers against his back. It was ridiculously unfair how sexy she found the notches of his spine.
Reece’s hand tightened at the back of her head, tugging at her hair before releasing. Pinpricks of pleasure-pain singed her scalp. Her mouth fell open in a silent gasp.
His hips rocked forward as his restraint faltered. She clung to his torso, not wanting him to stop.
“You’re not going to freak me out,” she promised. Pleaded, really. She grabbed for his waist and found purchase on his hip, pulled him against her again.
Delicious friction sparked between their bodies. He hissed through his teeth. “Charlie…”
She rolled over, bringing him with her as she turned onto her back. Reece didn’t protest. He caught his weight on his left hand and pressed his palm against the mattress beside her head. He felt undeniably right between her thighs. Her knees bracketed his hips.
Reece looked down at her for a long beat, his face an open book of uncertainty and want. They’d hooked up only last night, but the energy felt different between them now. This wasn’t just desire. Heavy, vulnerable longing threatened to consume Charlotte whole.
Against all odds and expectations, this mattered.
That little glimmer of fear returned.
“I’m not good at this,” she blurted out.
She wasn’t even sure what she meant. Intimacy? Sleeping together?
Falling in love?
Reece lowered himself onto his elbows. He studied her face with those glorious green eyes, dark pupils tracking across her bruised lips and pink cheeks. “That’s okay,” he murmured as he tucked her hair behind her ear. A suggestion of a smile pulled at his mouth. “You’ll learn.”
As they kissed, Charlotte stopped smuggling away details to remember later. She only knew sensation: the press of Reece’s weight on her, the heat of his mouth moving with hers. There was no need to rush—time became irrelevant. She wove herself against his body with reverence, with permanence.
At some point after their clothes got lost in the sheets and the separation between their bodies disappeared, she understood. She didn’t overthink it. She barely planned it. She just said it.
“I want this.”
She couldn’t see Reece’s face, pressed as it was to her neck, but she could feel her words run through his body. He stopped moving even as his cock twitched within her. The muscles in his back tensed under her fingertips.
She wiggled her hips, pinned to the mattress, and then he was looking at her, all wide eyes and parted lips. Emotions swirled across his face, surprise and desire and awe.
Absurdly, Jackie’s words returned to her: Like you were put on this earth to ruin his life.
“Charlie.”
No one else called her Charlie. The way he said it, it was more than a nickname. He sounded like he was describing a miracle. Her.
“You have me.”
And then there was no more talking.