Chapter 35
35
The tree house is silent when I knock.
“It’s just me,” I say, opening the door slowly. I expected to find Charlie with a joint and a few friends, but he’s sitting on the couch, head tipped back, eyes closed. “Hey.”
Seconds pass, and Charlie says nothing.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He replies without moving. “I slept with her.”
My body freezes.
“Delilah?”
Charlie sits up slowly and looks at me.
“Percy,” he finally says. “I slept with Percy.”
I feel like I might vomit. It takes a moment to force out, “When?”
“A long time ago.” His voice is as cold and quiet as a frozen lake. “The summer before she and Sam started university. I was twenty.”
I sit on the couch beside him only because I’m not sure my legs will hold me.
“They were in a bad place,” Charlie says. “Sam was away at some science workshop. He was pushing her away, telling her he needed space but hanging out with other girls. Their relationship status was questionable—Percy wasn’t certain they were together.”
“Why?” It’s the only thing I can think to say.
“I thought Sam was being a dick. I thought he was ungrateful for what he had.” He swallows thickly. “I thought I might have been in love with her.”
Blood rushes to my ears. “And were you?”
He rubs both hands down his face. “I don’t know. I had feelings for her, yeah, but I think I was mostly jealous and lonely and wanted what they had.”
Charlie leans forward, hands clasped between his knees, looking at me from the corner of his eye. “They didn’t speak for more than ten years. It messed them both up. Percy spent more than a decade punishing herself for what happened. Sam hated me. He closed up again, just like after our dad died. The light Percy brought into his life vanished. And Mom was so disappointed. It was worse than her being angry.” He shakes his head. “Aside from losing my parents, it was the worst time in my life. Fuck, that sounds so selfish. It was worse for Percy and Sam.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask quietly.
He straightens, pinning me with a venomous green gaze. “I want you to know what being friends with me entails.” He echoes what Delilah said earlier.
I stare at him, trying to pull my thoughts together, to separate what I know about Charlie from my shock and disappointment, and swallow back the bitter snap of envy. “You were twenty,” I say slowly. It would have been the summer after I stayed here.
“Old enough to know better.”
“Maybe.” I think of myself at twenty, hopelessly in love with Oz and wholly unable to tell him how I felt. “But young enough to struggle with complicated feelings.”
He tilts his head to look at me more fully. “Why are you going easy on me?”
“Do you want me to tell you that what you did was shitty and wrong and hurtful?”
He swallows. “Yeah. Get mad at me, Alice—I deserve it.”
I could. I feel unreasonably jealous and betrayed in a way that confuses me. I’m angry with Charlie for laying this on me after he’s made me like him so much. And he wants me to lash out at him, to walk away.
“I’m not going to give you that,” I say.
Charlie’s jaw clenches, but he doesn’t speak.
“You made a bad decision about who to sleep with when you were twenty. You already know that. Now I do, too. But you weren’t the only one at fault.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Sam has clearly forgiven Percy. They’re disgustingly in love. They’ve moved on. They’re married. They’re having a baby.”
Still, he says nothing.
“And I know that’s not who you are, Charlie.”
“That is who I am,” he says, eyes wide. “Why can’t you see that? I’m the guy who slept with the love of his brother’s life.”
I shake my head. Charlie deserves to have someone in his corner. “Screw that.”
He blinks at me.
“Maybe we wouldn’t have gotten along when we were younger,” I tell him. “Maybe I would have been too shy, and you would have been too full of yourself. But I’m not friends with the person you were then. I’m friends with you .”
I give him a moment so it sinks in, but there’s only a slight change in his posture as he glances around the room.
“ You built this magical tree house for your niece or nephew,” I say. “You made the best birthday cake I’ve ever tasted. You take my grandmother to choir practice and make me laugh harder than I have in my entire life. You care about people, and you’re far kinder and more considerate than you give yourself credit for.”
Charlie has gone still, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off me. He’s listening. He’s always listening. But I hope he’s hearing me, too.
“I’m not friends with the person you think you were in the past. I’m friends with you now. And I like that man.” I rest my hand on his knee. “Even if he’s high-maintenance.”
Charlie lets out a short, disbelieving laugh but quickly falls serious again. “I’m still selfish, Alice,” he says, his voice rough. “I still want things I shouldn’t.”
Charlie’s gaze drops ever so slowly to my mouth.
Laughter and music carry on outside these walls, but all I hear is the beating of my heart.
“Why shouldn’t you?” I whisper.
His eyes land on mine, and there’s nothing but him and me together in this oasis in the treetops. The lamplight blankets us in gold, and Charlie’s smell mixes with the wood, like the most luxurious forest.
“Charlie,” I say quietly when he doesn’t answer.
He gives me a long look and says, “Fuck it.”
I’d smile, but his mouth is already on mine. His tongue parts my lips, greedy. It’s unhinged, the way he devours me, growling dirty things against my skin. Where he’s going to put his tongue. The parts of his body he wants to see covered in my red lipstick. What he thought about in the shower this morning. How he wants me to keep my glasses on. I scramble to unbutton his shirt. We’re going to do this. Finally.
Charlie curses my name as he wraps his hand around my ponytail and pulls my neck to the side so he can kiss his way down my throat to my collarbone.
“I like how desperate you sound,” I murmur.
“You have no idea.”
He guides me onto my back, and hovers over me, spreading my legs with a knee while he works at the buttons at the top of my jumpsuit. His shirt hangs open, and I smooth my hands over his chest.
“I might have some sort of idea,” I say, tilting my hips to meet his. He’s already so hard.
Charlie laughs, then pauses to meet my eyes. “You’re incredible.”
He lowers his lips to mine, but this kiss is gentle and sweet. Something precious.
“You make me feel incredible,” I tell him. “You make me feel so good.”
His hands find mine, and he laces our fingers together on either side of my head.
I’m so lost in the slow glide of our tongues, the caress of his thumb on the back of my hand, that I don’t notice the door to the tree house opening until I hear “Sweet Jesus.”
I bolt upright, bashing my head into Charlie’s, holding the top of my jumpsuit closed. Sam stands in the doorway, his eyes on the ceiling.
He lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I really should have known better.”