27. Callum
27
CALLUM
I pause for a moment in the doorway to my bedroom, looking down at her, sprawled on the bed before me. She’s wearing a cute pair of pajamas, a cami and some shorts that she picked up after a trip to the city last week. She insisted that if she was going to be staying here for a moment longer, then she needed to have something of her own to wear, and when that means less clothes, I’m not going to argue.
Charli is flipping through a book, her legs kicking through the air as she lies on her front on the covers. I’m not sure if she’s noticed me yet, but as I shift my weight from one foot to another and the floor creaks beneath me, she fires a look over her shoulder and flashes me the biggest grin.
“Well, hey there,” she greets me playfully, wiggling her butt. “You going to just keep staring, or actually do something?”
“When you put it like that…”
I move over to the edge of the bed and let myself down on top of her, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her against me tightly. She giggles, her small body squirming against mine as she flips around to face me, her book lying forgotten on the bed beside her. I kiss the corner of her lips and pull back for a moment, admiring the way the light pours through the window to pick out the shape of her body.
“You look so fucking beautiful,” I murmur to her, and she smiles at me.
“You really think? I like these new clothes. Feels good to be out of your wardrobe for a change…”
“Yeah, I was getting sick and tired of sharing,” I tease. “About time you started grabbing your own stuff around here.”
She rolls her eyes at me and laughs. “Oh, come on. You love it when I wear your clothes. You always did.”
“You got me,” I admit, and I reach up to brush the hair back from her face.
“You know,” she murmurs, resting her hand against my chest. “This is the same bed we stayed in when we…when you brought me here before.”
My heart drops slightly. We don’t talk about the past much. In the couple of weeks since we handed the journalist that information about James, along with the recording, it’s like a cloud has lifted from above each and every one of us, granting us a little peace in the face of everything that’s been going on. But that doesn’t mean our history is erased, just like that, no matter how much I wish I could put it all behind me.
“I know,” I murmur. I still don’t know how to talk about that part of our relationship. Even now, it’s raw—I can still remember staring down at her as she slept and wondering if I was doing the right thing, and then convincing myself that she would be better off without me.
She trails her fingers over my tee for a moment, probably able to feel the way my heart picks up the pace when she brings it up.
“You ever think about what might have been different, if you hadn’t left back then?” she asks me. The words hang in the air between us. I’m not sure if she’s accusing me or just wondering, but still, I can’t lie.
“Of course I do,” I reply softly, swiping a strand of hair away from her head so I can look at her. “Jesus, Charli, I think about it all the time.”
“Really? What do you think about it?”
I pause for a moment. I’m surprised that she even has to ask, to be honest.
“I regret it,” I tell her. “I regret it more than anything else I’ve ever done in my life. Jesus, if I could go back in time and change it, I would. I wouldn’t even think twice, I…”
I trail off. The emotion gets the better of me for a moment. When I think about all that she’s been through, all that she would have been able to avoid if I had just been there for her instead of walking away, it kills me, and I still don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to live with the weight of it hanging over my head.
“I’m so sorry, Charli,” I murmur. “If I’d known what would happen to you because of that, I…”
“It didn’t happen to me because of that,” she replies, her voice suddenly taking on a firmer edge. “It happened because of James. Because James was looking for a victim, and he found me. You have nothing to do with the choices he made, Callum. I’m not going to let you blame yourself for them.”
“I know,” I reply. “But I…if I had still been with you, if I hadn’t left you the way I did, you wouldn’t have been hurting so bad, and…”
She lifts a finger to my lips and presses it there.
“Don’t talk like that,” she insists. “You can’t hold yourself accountable for that, you just can’t. It’s not fair to you, it’s not fair to me. It’s…what happened, happened. And it’s behind us now, that’s all that I care about.”
I rest my head against hers for a moment, breathing in the scent of her.
“Is it really?” I ask her.
She frowns up at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I hurt you back then,” I point out. “Badly. And it’s not like I can just…go back in time and undo that, it doesn’t work that way. I know I need to take responsibility for what I did, and I’m not denying that I made a mistake, but I—I can’t stand the thought of you hating me for that. Even though you have every right.”
Something in her face shifts as I speak, like she can hardly believe the words that are coming out of my mouth.
“You think I would hate you for that?” she murmurs, and she sits up on the bed. She reaches out, her hand on my face, her eyes staring deep into mine.
“You think that I could ever hate you?”
I move to face her, so we’re looking eye-to-eye. Her voice has such a fervency to it that it almost surprises me. She shakes her head, her gaze not breaking mine for a moment.
“I never hated you, Callum,” she assures me. “Never. I was confused, sure, I was hurt—but I knew that whatever you did, you did because of what you thought about yourself. The way that you saw yourself, the pain you were dealing with. If I’d known about it back then, if I’d known about you losing your father and how worried you were about Dax, I would have done everything I could to be there for you. But I got it, even then. I got it.”
Her voice is trembling slightly, and she has to pause for a moment to gather herself before she continues. “And besides, who’s to say that we would have made it work back then?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Charli, I was crazy about you,” I remind her. “I loved you. Still do. Did all those years that we were apart?—”
“I know you did,” she replies. “And I loved you too. But we were different people back then, both of us. I don’t know that you would ever have been able to open up to me the way you have now, not back then. You kept it all to yourself.”
“I didn’t want to burden you with it.”
“I know,” she murmurs. “And I get that. But I guess I’ve burdened you with enough that we’re even now, huh?”
I can’t help but chuckle. “Charli, nothing about you is a burden,” I reply. “Never has been.”
She cocks her head to the side, screwing up her face as though she doesn’t quite believe me.
“You sure about that?” she remarks. “Because I’m pretty sure turning up in a wedding dress crashed out at the side of the road wasn’t exactly the least burdensome thing I could have done…”
“I just couldn’t believe that I had you back,” I admit. “I know I shouldn’t have been thinking about it like that, but shit—all this time, I had been thinking about you, and then there you were, out of nowhere. Like I had just magicked you up for myself.”
“Maybe I was looking for you when I drove out here,” she remarks, a smile creasing the corners of her mouth. “I mean, when I ran away from that wedding, I didn’t have a damn clue where I was going. I don’t even remember picking a direction. I think a part of me wanted to find you out here, in this place. It was the last trip I went on before…before I met James. Maybe the last time I was really happy before he got his claws into me.”
“Well, whatever the reason,” I reply. “I’m just glad you’re here. And that you’re not going anywhere.”
She pauses for a moment when I say that part, and I can see an edge of doubt on her face—my brow furrows.
“You thinking of going somewhere?” I ask, trying to keep the surprise out of my voice.
“No, no, it’s not that,” she replies quickly. “It’s just…it’s just that I know how much of an imposition I’ve been. And I know that your brothers weren’t exactly sure about me being here in the first place. And now that everything with James is wrapped up, it feels like—well, I don’t have anything to be running from anymore, right? I should just go back to my life. Go back to what I knew before him. Try to rebuild.”
“Is that what you want to do?” I ask softly.
She sighs, her shoulders drooping downward. “I’m—I’m not sure,” she confesses. “I mean, the life I had before James, it doesn’t really exist anymore, not in the same way it once did. He pushed away all of my friends, and the people that I knew through him are hardly going to be welcoming, are they, knowing what I did to him. My career, it’s not where it should be, I don’t have any savings to fall back on. I always dreamed about getting out from under him and starting over, but I don’t know if that’s what I want anymore.”
“And what do you want?” I ask softly, reaching up to cup her face.
She chews her lip, and looks up at me again.
“I—I think I want to be here. With you. And your brothers.”
It’s the first time she’s said that out loud—and the hit of relief that it gives me is more than I can even begin to express. I wouldn’t have blamed her if this place was tainted by everything that’s happened and she wanted to get out and go back to the city where she could start over again, but the thought of letting her slip through my fingers when she has already been through so much doesn’t sit right with me.
“You know you’re welcome here, right?” I tell her. “For as long as you want.”
She eyes me for a long moment, falling silent.
“I just don’t know if I can ask for that from all of you,” she mutters. “I know how hard you worked to make this place a sanctuary for yourselves, and there’s no reason I can’t strike out on my own now, not after everything that’s?—”
“It’s not about what you can do,” I tell her firmly. “It’s about what you want to do. And if you want to stay here—then we’re happy to have you. More than happy.”
“You sure Dax and Chuck agree with that?” she asks. Her voice is light, but I can tell there’s real weight behind what she’s saying. She clearly doesn’t entirely believe, even now, that we’re capable of loving her the way we do.
I nod. “Yeah, I am,” I reply. “Triplet stuff. You always know what the others are thinking. Plus, they told me how they feel about you when we were putting our plan together. I don’t have to guess.”
She smiles slightly, and sinks her teeth into her bottom lip.
“I just don’t want to make your lives harder,” she confesses. “I don’t want to mess up what you’ve worked so hard to make here?—”
“And you won’t,” I assure her. “We’ll teach you everything you need to know. Besides, you can cook, right?”
“Well, mostly pastries…”
“That’s better than any of us,” I reply. “We’ll get you in the kitchen before you know it.”
She laughs—God, I love the sound of her laugh. It feels like the whole world lights up for a moment when she’s happy, and I know I’ll never get tired of it.
“Oh, I see how it is,” she shoots back. “You’re just keeping me out here to get my nose to the grindstone, aren’t you?”
I chuckle, winding my arms around her again.
“Damn right,” I agree. “We can’t let all your skills go to waste. We need to have you hard at work, if you’re going to be living here with us.”
I drop a kiss on the top of her head, and she leans into me—and I know that there’s nothing else we need to say. Threshing out the details of another person staying here with us, that can come later down the line. For now, all that matters is that she’s here, and that she knows none of us want her to go anywhere.