20. Charli
20
CHARLI
As soon as I wake up and glance around, I know something is off. I can feel it in the air—a lack of something, an absence.
Of course, Callum isn’t in bed with me. But he’s usually up before me, so I don’t think much of that. No, it’s the quiet in the rest of the house that bothers me, none of the usual chatter or commotion that fills the air when the guys are getting ready for the day.
“Hello?” I call out into the house, but there’s no response. My heart drops. Where are they? Has something happened? Are they hurt? Worse…?
I’m just about to emerge from the bedroom to start looking for them, but all at once, a sound catches my attention—conversation, overlapping voices, agitation. I freeze, and press my ear to the door to get an idea of what’s going on.
“You heard what he said!” Dax exclaims. “We can’t sit around and wait for?—”
“Yeah, I heard how many people he said were waiting for us,” Callum counters. “We can’t take them all on. There’s just three of us.”
“But with the right planning?—”
“We don’t have time to put together some master scheme,” Chuck argues. “We have to move fast. The more time we spend discussing it, the?—”
But before he can continue, I shift my weight to try and get a better ear on the conversation, and the door swings open. I stumble out, right in front of all three guys—and when I get a look at them, my stomach drops.
It’s clear they’ve been out for hours. Their clothes are caked with dirt, and Dax looks hurt—there’s blood on his hands, spattered over his fists and along his wrists. I rush over to him, my eyes widening.
“Jesus, what happened?” I gasp, staring down at the blood.
He pulls his hands from my grip and shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s not my blood.”
“Nothing?” I exclaim. “What the fuck are you talking about? I wake up and you’re not here, and you come back talking about a plan?—”
“Charli, you should get some rest,” Callum tells me gently, but I shake my head.
“No, I’m not going to be left out of this,” I protest. “I deserve to know what’s going on. Don’t try and keep me away from it!”
The words come out of my mouth in a tone far sharper than I intended, and the three guys fall silent. They look between each other, and I try to catch my breath, the shock of seeing them like this almost getting the better of me.
“What were you doing last night?” I ask, my voice dropping slightly. “What were—did something happen?”
Chuck sighs and pushes a hand through his hair, clearly giving up on trying to hide the truth from me.
“We…we set a trap,” he explains. “For some of James’s men. Catch them in the act and pull them in to ask them some questions, that was the idea.”
My eyes nearly bug out of my head. “A trap?” I gasp. “And you didn’t say anything to me about it…?”
“Because you didn’t need to know,” Callum replies. “Not until we had something to actually report to you. No point in worrying you if nothing happened.”
“So, what, you were just going to tell me when you decided it was time?”
“When we had something to go on.”
“And do you?” I demand, taking a step toward him. They glance between each other, not saying a word for a moment, and I clench my fists at my sides.
“Guys, this isn’t fair!” I protest. “You can’t leave me out of this stuff. I—I’m the one in the middle of this. I don’t want you doing shit that I have no say in, it’s—it’s not…”
I trail off, and to my surprise, I feel tears rising in my throat. I don’t know why this has gotten to me so much. But seeing them like this, knowing they were out there last night, putting themselves in the midst of this danger, it…it gets to me. It really gets to me. Something could have happened to them, and I would have known nothing about it…
And then it hits me.
This feeling. It’s familiar.
Not just because of how scared I feel, but because of how helpless—it’s that sensation that I so often got when I was with James, when I felt like there was nothing in the world I could have done to control anything in my life. That sensation of being left out of all the big choices, having no grasp on the way anything was set to go—like I was being engulfed by a huge wave and swallowed, fighting my way to the surface, with no way to get there.
“Please,” I whisper, looking between them. “Please, don’t push me out of this…”
“Hey, hey,” Callum murmurs, and he reaches over and pulls me into his arms. “It’s fine. We’re fine. You’re fine. Okay…?”
But before I can get out a response, I feel the tears starting to course down my cheeks. I know it’s stupid to cry about this, but I can’t help it. All my emotions are still so close to the surface, and holding them back feels like too big a task in the face of everything else that’s going on.
They guide me to sit down, and Chuck makes us all a coffee before they finally fill me in on what happened last night. The trap they set, the man they caught, the information they got out of him about what’s been going on…and, when he falters, I can tell there’s still something he’s keeping from me.
“What else did he say?” I press. “Something about me?”
The three of them exchange a glance again, and I feel a rush of frustration.
“I know you’re just trying to protect me,” I tell them, speaking slowly, doing my best to contain my irritation. “But…but I can’t be left out of this, guys. Please. I need to know. I deserve to know what’s happening with all of this…”
I can feel the tears starting to rise again, and I quickly swallow them back. I don’t want them to think I can’t handle this. I need them to know that it’s not just about the horror of knowing that James is still out there and looking for me. It’s about knowing, from the bottom of my heart, that I want us all to be on the same side, and I can’t stand the thought of being left out of my own life again.
Callum reaches his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close to him before he finally replies. “He said,” he begins, his voice low and careful, “that James wants to kill you.”
I close my eyes as the enormity of those words sink in. It doesn’t come as a surprise. Either he would want to kill me, or he would want to make my life so miserable that I would want to end it myself. After what I’ve done to him, it’s a miracle I’ve even made it this far for this long.
“Charli?”
Chuck’s voice pulls me out of my reverie. I blink back tears, and look between the guys once more. These three men—these three men who gave me sanctuary when I needed it most. I still can’t believe how lucky I was to find them, and I can’t imagine for a moment that I would have made it this far were it not for their help.
“You okay?”
I shake my head. There’s no point lying about it. Hearing those words, I’m terrified. My ex, this man with so much power and so much influence and so much brutal, violent obsession—he wants me dead. And I don’t know how much of a chance I have to keep myself alive in the face of it.
“No,” I admit. “I’m not. I…I knew he was going to want to take his revenge, but this…”
I draw in a deep, shaky breath. Dax reaches over and rests a hand on my knee; he hasn’t said much, but he doesn’t need to. I can tell from the blood smearing his knuckles that he’s already physically advocated for me, and that’s where his strength lies.
“This is a lot,” I confess. “But I’m not going to let him get what he wants. God knows I’ve done enough of that in the last few years of my life. I think I’ve earned the right to stand up against him, haven’t I?”
Chuck grins at me. The first real smile I’ve seen from any of them since they got back. He nods. “Yeah, I think you damn well have,” he agrees.
“But I need you guys on my side if I’m going to pull this off,” I warn them. “And that means no more sneaking around and trying to pull off these plans behind my back. Everything that you do, I know about. Same goes for me. Alright?”
“Alright,” the guys echo. I bite down on my lip as I look between them. I still can’t believe I’ve pulled them all into this. On some level, I wish I could face it alone, but I don’t stand a chance against the forces that James has working against me by myself.
As part of this quartet, though? I just might.
“I know James better than anyone else here,” I continue. “And I can use that to my advantage. He’s arrogant—I know he thinks he already has this under control. So we need to lure him into making a mistake…”
“Making what kind of mistake?” Dax asks, cautious.
I pause for a moment. I know they’re not going to like what I have to say next. But I wouldn’t be bringing it up unless I truly thought there was no other way to go about this.
“We need to lay a trap. With me as bait. And get him to spring it.”
“No,” Callum shoots back at once. “No. Not a chance in hell. No fucking way.”
“Yeah, if you think we’re just going to hand you over to him—” Dax begins, but I shake my head.
“That’s not what you’re going to do at all,” I assure them. “We’re going to make it look that way. Make him feel like he’s got the jump on us. We need to think like he thinks, let him believe he has us where he wants us. You can put a tracker on me, a walkie-talkie, anything—he won’t expect me to protect myself like that. But we need to lure him out, not his men, and the only way we’re going to make that happen is if he thinks he has me.”
My breath hitches over the last word. The thought of it, of letting him believe for an instant that he has any dominion over me—it’s enough to make a sick shiver run down my spine. Even in the few weeks that I’ve been away from him, the taste of freedom has been addictive, and having to hand that over, even for a moment, doesn’t sit right with me.
But we don’t have a choice. We can’t risk his men stalking these woods and picking us off until there’s nobody left. I need to play a big swing, and this is the biggest I can think of.
Even if the concern on the faces of the men around me tells me that they wish there was any other way to go about this.
“So,” Chuck replies, his voice taut. “How exactly do we set a trap and make sure you don’t get caught in it?”
I take a deep breath.
“That’s where you come in,” I confess with a small smile. “Because I don’t know the first thing about tactics…”
The three of them lean forward, their brows furrowed, matching expressions of determination written on their faces. And as I look between them, I feel a flood of relief.
James has no idea what he’s up against here. And I can’t wait for him to find out.
Preferably the hard way.