Chapter 44 - Charlie
Falling Apart - Michael Schulte?
I return to Hidden Valley in a daze. The whole trip home is overcome with that sensation of driving but you don't know how you got to your destination.
Did I stop at that red light?
Did I give way to that blue car that was turning?
I can't remember driving here but now I'm back, looking up at the bar from the car park and everything reminds me of him. The bar, our home, this town, are all reminders of the life we would have had together. Which has now turned into a daily reminder that he's never coming back to me and I don't know how I'm meant to keep going. Should I move away? Keep running the bar? Start over? All of these questions repeat over and over inside my head and I have no one to talk to about them.
No one that will understand.
I need him so badly.
Why did he leave me?
He made me feel whole and I didn't know how much I was missing out on until it was ripped away from me. Torn from my soul, leaving me broken and in tatters.
With each step heavier than the next I make my way up the stairs and open the door to his apartment, our apartment . This hollow feeling is all encompassing. He's everywhere and nowhere all at once. My body is on autopilot as I put my bag down, take a water from the fridge then have a short shower and brush my teeth. Every action brings me another step closer to sliding his hoodie over my body. The soft fabric allowing me a small moment of comfort in this pit of despair I've been swallowed by.
His smell is all around me and as I slide into his bed, our bed . The weight of my new reality crushes me and with it, I let my tears fall.
One, for the first night we shared.
One, for the first time he caged me while sitting at the bar.
One, for the night he mouthed the words I love you .
My tears fall like a monsoon in the summer heat, rapid, heavy and unforgiving, as I let everything I've kept bottled up, go. I cry until I sleep and when I wake up, I cry again.
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“Charlie?” A soft voice soothes me and I know Mila is here. “There you are, hon,” she says, reaching out to brush the hair away from my face. “I wasn't sure if you were ever going to wake up but I made some food so you need to eat it. You can cry after but you need to eat something.”
My eyes are like sandpaper and I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. It's so hard to move even for something I know I need. Though, what's the point? Why does it matter if I don't have an appetite? Food won't bring him back.
It won't heal my heart.
“What have you made?” I croak out from my hobbit hole under the duvet. My eyes barely peek over the top to look at her while she sits on the bed next to me. The obvious role reversal between my best friend and I, not lost on me.
“Nothing fancy, just a couple of grilled cheese.”
The sob comes out of nowhere, the sound of it exploding from my chest and instantly I'm taken back there. I've never been doted on so much but that night, how he tenderly cared for me like I was something worth looking after. He made me feel wanted, and cherished. That my time was worth something to him.
Like no other man had done before him, I felt heard and valued. And eventually, when there was more than trust between us, he loved me enough to share his secrets.
My eyes begin to water and I pull my head back under, not wanting to make the situation more awkward than what it is. Crying over grilled cheese is not normal but Mila's hand finds and rubs my back, trying to soothe me through this wave of destruction, and after all the tears have fallen and I'm left numb, I let the exhaustion take me and I fall back asleep.
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The sound of heavy banging wakes me, pulling me from the blissful emptiness of sleep, but it's the voice of the person talking that causes me to freeze.
What is he doing here?
He broke my heart at the exact same time his brother did.
“Let me in you stupid giant! You're only not dead right now because it would hurt her even more,” Dimi yells.
It's so loud that it sounds like he's standing right next to me despite him being on the other side of the apartment. I can hear Dante growling, almost tempting me to peek out from the duvet to see what's happening.
“What a fucking joke!” Nova yells back at him. “You think you can come in here guns blazing and get whatever you want, well not today fuck face. You broke her when you didn't tell her what happened. He wasn't there when she opened the door DIMI. YOU DIDN'T FUCKING TELL HER!” Nova screams, the soft murmur of Ace's voice trying to placate her anger.
Anger she's feeling on my behalf.
I told her what happened at the hospital when I realised there was a babysitting schedule in place between the four of them. Someone was always with me. Watching over me while I wallowed in misery and I was so grateful to not be alone, even though I didn't want anyone around me. Dante would take Henry for the day or they all squeezed into the small living area. Nova and Ace would magically appear in the afternoon, always acting like it was some big coincidence they had arrived at the perfect time for a handover. Ace would then set up a bed for them in the corner and just not leave again until the morning.
My friends were saving me from slipping under and being consumed by the grief of losing Porter, of losing my Pasha . All the while, the one friend I thought would never break my heart was standing at the door trying to see me. Throwing the blanket pile off me, I hobble to the door like I've aged eighty years in the few days it's been. My movements slow and jerky as I gather my thoughts ready to face this one hurdle.
“How could you?” I barely whisper.
The notion that if I say too much out loud means it's real, that he's really not here with me any more. Falling to his knees in the doorway, Dimi holds his hands up and for a moment I think he’s going to beg, the big bad mafia man grovelling for forgiveness, but he brings them to his hair and pulls at it. Anguish flooding his face as I try to remember that he lost his brother too. I'm not alone in my grief but I'm frozen by the hurt he gave me. I feel like I lost both of them back in that hospital room and I don't know how to forgive him. “Why, Dimi? Why didn't you tell me?”
“I'm so sorry,” he cries out. “He made me promise not to tell. He made me promise. You were never meant to come to the hospital. You weren't meant to find out that way.”
The pain in his voice is so clear it shatters right through me, shattering the last pieces of my broken heart to nothing. All I can think of is what I've lost in the world and nothing about what I have.
Because without him, I have nothing.
Stumbling away from the door I can't take on his pain when I'm already drowning with my own. So I leave him, alone on his knees in the doorway, I turn away from him and revert back to my blanket cocoon. The one place where if I snuggle down far enough I can still smell the faint scent of butterscotch surrounding me.