6. Charli
6
CHARLI
And just like that, as the door closes behind them—Callum and I are left alone together once more.
Alone, in the same cabin where he abandoned me all those years ago. I can still remember it all too well, the day I woke up to find that he was gone—looking around, wondering if this was some kind of joke, waiting for him to emerge from outside fresh from a run or something…
And the time ticking, passing, sliding away until it finally clicked for me that he was really out of here. He’d left me a note on the bedside table, but I was so distracted by searching for him that I didn’t spot it—and when I did, the horror of the situation truly sank in. I can still recall, vividly, the way my tears pooled on the inky letters of his goodbye as I stared down at those words, waiting for them to actually lock into my brain, but they didn’t. They couldn’t.
Because he wouldn’t have done that to me. Not Callum. Not this sweet, strong man who I had fallen for—not this kind, loving soul, who had his demons, sure, but who was more than what he thought he was. He wouldn’t have brought me all the way out here, I told myself, just to leave me, and I waited there for hours for him to come back and change his mind, but he didn’t.
He didn’t.
“Looks like you finally made it back here okay,” I mutter to him, crossing my arms over my chest and glaring up at him angrily. He’s standing at the other side of the bed, clearly unsure of what to do. Half of me wants him to pull me into his arms and hold me; the other half wants to land a sharp slap on his face for daring to land in my line of sight again, after what he did to me.
“We don’t need to talk about that right now.”
There’s a firmness to his voice that leaves no room for argument, much as I would like to make one. I roll my eyes skyward.
“And what, you expect me to believe that all of this is just a coincidence?”
“What is?”
“You finding me after the crash. Bringing me back to this cabin where we…”
I trail off. He moves to the side of the bed, pulling open one of the cabinets on the bedside table and withdrawing a small first aid kit.
“Yes,” he replies as he plants it on the bed next to me. “I do. Because it is. It’s just a coincidence. Here, give me your arm, I need to clean up those grazes…”
Before I can say another word, he reaches out and takes my hand, pulling it toward him—I wince as the extension stretches the grazes on my skin. I guess I’m lucky I’m not in a worse state—my head hurts, sure, and there’s an achiness all through my body, but nothing that seems too serious. If I’d been out there much longer in the cold, I’m not sure I could say the same thing, and I have them to thank for getting me out of there before anything more serious happened…
Unless, of course, they’re working with him. James. That’s the part I can’t shake. It seems like way too much of a coincidence for anyone to find me out here, let alone Callum. And no matter how much of a fight they put up to try and convince me that they’re innocent, I’m just not sure I buy it.
He pulls out some swabs and soaks them in iodine, the sharp, piercing smell making my nose wrinkle. Dabbing at the grazes on my arm, he wipes away the blood and debris that’s gotten trapped there, and I twist my head away, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to let how much it hurts show on my face.
“You want to get changed?”
I glance over at him. “Into what?” I point out. “Not like I packed any more clothes.”
“I can grab something for you,” he replies with a shrug. “Here, wait a second…”
He gets to his feet and heads to the wardrobe, pulling out some clothes—it strikes me, in that moment, that I must be in his room. I don’t know why, but it suddenly seems so…so intimate in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I know it shouldn’t come as a surprise to me—judging by the way the other guys reacted, it’s not as though they would have wanted me in their space—but knowing that right now I’m in his bed…it’s more than a little strange, to say the least.
Finally, he comes back to the bed with some sweatpants and a large shirt. I recognize them at once as his.
“You really haven’t updated your wardrobe since we were?—”
“I’ll let you get changed,” he tells me, and he turns his back on me, crossing his arms and facing the door before I can make any smart comments. I stare at the back of his head.
“You really expect me to get changed while you’re in the room?”
“I heard how you were talking about getting out of here,” he reminds me. “I’m not taking the chance. I can’t see anything, don’t worry.”
I sigh—I almost want to dig my heels in and tell him that I’m not about to strip down and give him a show right then and there, but I know I’m being ridiculous. He can’t see me from where he’s standing, and besides, I have been in this wedding dress way too long. It’s constricting, the corset digging into my waist and my hips, like I’m being put on display for someone else’s benefit. Not exactly a sensation I find myself craving, I have to admit.
As quickly as I can, I reach back to undo the buttons on the dress—I manage the first few without too much trouble, but as I reach the middle of my back, my arm twinges.
“Ow!” I cry out, and his head whips around.
“Are you okay?”
“I thought you said you weren’t going to look.”
“Do you need help?” he presses, ignoring my comment. I almost want to brush him off again, but I’ll be stuck in this wedding dress if I don’t get someone to help me out of it. It took a couple of people to button me into it, and I don’t know what I was thinking, imagining that I could just get out of it in a matter of moments.
“Can you help me with the buttons?” I ask at last, turning my back to him. “Just the ones to the bottom of the corset…”
He does as he’s told at once, and I can feel his fingers popping the buttons with ease, making certain not to touch my skin. And it reminds me, though I know it shouldn’t, of all the times he undressed me before. Now, if there was one thing that he was seriously good at, it was the physical side of our relationship. Even when he struggled to control or contain his emotions, he could always communicate with his touch, and I’ve found myself craving it more times than I’d care to count in the years we’ve been apart.
And now, here he is, undoing the buttons on my wedding dress—his fingers grazing against my skin just slightly, a reminder of how good we once were together.
But this wedding dress was meant for a different man entirely—a man who I am still supposed to be on the run from. And Callum abandoned me, in this very cabin, all those years ago. I’m not willing to just forgive and forget, not about any of it. I’ve been naive for too long, and that ends here.
He turns his back again when he’s done, and clears his throat slightly. I wonder if the same images coursed through his mind too, even as he tried to rid himself of them—or maybe he’s been with so many women since then that he can hardly even remember what we had in the first place. Yeah, I can see that for him. Dumping me because he was more interested in playing the field, going out into the world to make sure he could land all the pussy he wanted without a girlfriend to hold him back…
I try to ignore the jealousy that wants to get the better of me as I slip out of the dress and hurry into his clothes, tossing them on as swiftly as I can. I don’t want him to catch me thinking too hard about our past. It’s just a distraction from the real trouble here, James, and I need to keep my focus…
Even if the scent of his skin still clinging to these clothes is enough to fill my head with memories that I’ve worked so hard to forget.
I turn back to him.
“Okay, done,” I snap, my voice a little sharper than I intended it to be. He moves to face me again, and as soon as his eyes lock onto mine, something seems to shift in his gaze.
“What happened, Charli?” he asks me softly. I feel a lump leap into my throat. I guess I owe him some kind of explanation, if I’m to believe that all of this is nothing more than a coincidence—though I’m still not totally certain I believe it.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it fucking does,” he shoots back, and I plant myself down on the edge of the bed. To my surprise, he moves in beside me, leaving a few inches between us—but close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, a comfort I didn’t know I’d missed as much as I did until that moment.
“We found you in a crashed car by the side of the road in a wedding dress,” he points out. “And I don’t know exactly what happened to bring you to this point, but I think we deserve to know.”
“Why?” I fire back. “You chose to walk out of my life. You forfeited the right to know my business a long time ago.”
He sighs, pushing a hand through his hair. “This isn’t about what happened in the past. This is about what’s going on now. I want to help you, Charli, but I can’t if you?—”
“You should tell your damn brothers that. Seems like they can’t wait to get rid of me.”
“That’s just Dax,” he replies, waving his hand. “And you can’t exactly blame him, given you came out here all guns blazing, acting like we were in on some conspiracy against you?—”
“And I still don’t believe that you’re not,” I remind him.
“Who the hell are you running from?” he presses. “If you think that I would work with the kind of person who would hurt you?”
He sounds stung. But it’s not as though he’s got any leg to stand on, not after the way he treated me before.
“You talk a big game about not hurting me for someone who?—”
“I’m not talking about that,” he replies, his voice sharp. “I’m talking about here. Now. We need to know what’s going on with you. Why were you in that car?—”
“Fuck—the car!” I exclaim. It hits me for the first time that I left that car sitting by the side of the road—I don’t know exactly who I stole it from, but chances are James already knows what kind of vehicle he’s looking for. As he sends his scouts out on every road that leads away from the wedding venue to catch up with me, surely he’s going to see it sitting there, and he’s going to figure out that I must be somewhere nearby.
“What about it?” Callum asks, sounding confused.
“I need to—I need to get out there,” I reply, leaping to my feet.
“I already told you, you’re not going out in that cold, not in your condition,” he replies firmly. “What do you need? Something from the car? I can get it?—”
“No, I need to get that car off the side of the road before he sees it!”
The words burst past my lips before I can stop them. I can feel him staring at me, and I hate that I’ve given so much away. I can’t even look at him, as he asks the question that I know is the natural follow-up.
“Who’s he , Charli?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I shoot back. “I just need to move that car. Please, let me?—”
“We can move it for you, if you’re worried about it.”
I stare up at him for a moment. I’m not sure I believe him. But as he meets my gaze steadily, I’m not sure that I’m in much of a place to argue. After all, I’m injured, it’s snowing out, and it’s not as though I can go out there and heft that car from where it’s stuck by myself.
I hate to admit it, but perhaps I need to accept a little help here. They have already shown that they’re willing to keep me alive—maybe I need to accept that this is nothing more than a coincidence, and let them do what needs to be done.
“You can?”
“I’ll talk to my brothers,” he replies, jerking his head outside the door. “Once the snow’s settled, we can get out there and move it.”
I chew my lip.
“That’s a long time to just leave it out there…”
“Trust me, in this weather, nobody is going to be driving around these parts anyway,” he assures me. “Please. Just get some damn rest, Charli. We’ll deal with it.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. I have no choice but to believe him right now, even if every fiber of my being is screaming at me to argue, to put up a fight and tell him that he doesn’t just get to tell me how all of this works.
Truth be told, I need to get over myself. I have to rest up. Even if I want to make a break for it first thing tomorrow, I’m not going to be able to do that in the midst of this snowstorm, while I’m still carrying injuries from that crash. He’s offering me somewhere to rest and heal up, and if I’m going to escape from James, I need to be in full fighting form to make it happen.
“Fine,” I sigh, and I sink down onto the edge of the bed. And just like that, all the fight seems to fade from me in an instant. Whatever was left, it’s gone, and all I want now is to curl up under these covers and sleep for the next five years straight. It’s not exactly how I imagined I would be spending my wedding night—but I know it’s a hell of a lot better than having to placate James all evening.
“Good,” Callum sighs, and he heads for the door. But before he can go, I blurt out his name.
“Callum?”
He turns to face me again. I’m not even certain why I said that. It’s like an echo of what we had before played in my mind, calling out to him to stay closer. The thought of sleeping here alone suddenly scares me—like he might walk out on me and abandon me like he did before.
And as he looks down at me, I know he can feel it too. Whatever history there is between us, it won’t be so easily forgotten. And it’s about to make everything that’s happening here a whole hell of a lot more complicated, I’m sure of that.
“What is it?”
I hesitate for a moment before replying. I almost want to spill it all to him, right then and there—how much I’ve missed him, how everything changed after he left, how I settled for someone I knew wanted me back, even if he was willing to control every detail of my life to prove it.
But I swallow it down quickly. Callum doesn’t need to know all of that. In fact, the less he knows about me, the better—the easier it’s going to be to walk away from him when I’m back on my feet. He pulled himself out of my life all those years ago, and I’m not going to try and coax him back in, no matter the circumstances.
“Nothing,” I reply, shaking my head. “Sorry.”
With one last look lingering on my face, he finally heads out of the bedroom and closes the door behind him. I half expect to hear the lock slide across, but it doesn’t, much to my relief. He seems to be serious when he tells me that I can leave whenever I want to, though I don’t have much interest in testing that for the time being.
Slumping back on the pillow, I stare at the ceiling. I don’t know what the hell happens next—but I know that, for the time being, the most important thing I can do is rest. Finally, as my eyes drift shut, I fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.