Chapter 33
33
CARRIE
I know as soon as I wake in the middle of the night, though my body has betrayed me by falling into a sated sleep wrapped around Luke – my leg across his, my arm around his waist, my head on his chest – that my regret is fierce. Dread turns in my head and in my torso, which has nothing to do with the wind raging outside Luke’s pod. No, this feeling is one I know too well, and it’s worse than the fear of any weather.
He looks so peaceful, so calm, but there’s a storm brewing and it isn’t a hurricane. We shouldn’t have slept together. We shouldn’t have kissed.
Why do we do this to each other? Why do we make such a fucking mess of everything? And why am I crying?
I cover my mouth with my hand, begging my emotions to stay quiet as I slip out of Luke’s hold and out of his bed. I see one of his t-shirts, or some kind of garment, it’s hard to tell in the darkness of the room, hanging over a chair. Whatever it is will have to do because I need to get out of here.
It’s a long-sleeved top, I realize as I pull it on, tiptoeing from his pod and closing the door as quietly as I can behind me. The wind is intense outside; it takes me by surprise, pausing my tears for a moment as I run from Luke’s pod to my own. Inside, I shut the door, press my back to it and slide down to the floor, my silent tears now flowing freely.
What have I done? I can’t be back here. I can’t.
In the darkness, I move to my bed and find my phone on the dresser. It’s after four in the morning and shortly, I’ll have to move to the basement at the main house, where I’m going to spend the rest of the day with my client and a group of people who all love Luke, the man who just broke me apart all over again.
And I let him. I did more than let him; I begged him to do it. I walked to his pod.
Why? Was it the letters he told me he wrote? I don’t even know what they did or didn’t say. Did I fantasize that they declared some kind of undying love, a fire that would never be put out?
What an idiot I am. What a glutton for punishment.
Worse still, I’ve done it all right under the nose of my client, risked my reputation again, and for what? A one-night stand for old times’ sake?
My tears come thick and fast, again. I only have myself to blame. None of this is on Luke. Not this time. I walked into this with my mind closed but my eyes open.
I do the only thing I can think to do: I call Callum. Though it’s an ungodly hour of the morning, I beg into the night that he’ll answer.
When he doesn’t pick up the first ring, I dial again, and again. I feel needy. I’m being needy, and needy is not the kind of woman I am or want to be, but my best friend’s counsel feels like the only thing that might help me at this juncture because I am… lost.
‘Carrie,’ Callum blurts, panting. Did he run for the phone? ‘Are you okay?’
The storm. I’ll have scared him to death. ‘Shit.’ I sniff and wipe my nose inelegantly against the back of my hand. ‘Sorry, yes, I’m…’ A sob escapes me, muffling the sound of the word ‘fine’.
‘Whoa, whoa, wait, wait. Hold that thought and definitely hold that action, I’ve got to take this,’ Callum says to someone who is not me. Now, I hear music playing in the background… Usher? Oh.
‘You’re with someone.’ I sniff. ‘I’m sorry, Callum. This doesn’t matter. Go back to whoever you’re with and whatever you were doing.’
‘Baby girl, when did you last call me at four in the morning? This matters.’ The music disappears and I imagine he’s left one room and moved into another.
‘Eddie can’t see what you’re doing, can he?’ I ask, trying and failing to sound playful.
‘He’s asleep in his bed in the lounge but the man in my bedroom is big enough that Eddie might just catch a glimpse from there.’
‘Too much information, Callum.’ His usual crudeness about his sex life doesn’t manage to amuse me as much as it normally would but it does pause my tears.
I hear a thud and think he just plopped down onto his leather sofa – I must remember to wipe that down before I sit there next. ‘Let’s get serious, what’s wrong? Are you okay? I’m worried to death about you over there.’
‘Ha, and Mr Huge is just there to take your mind off things, right?’
‘Hey, don’t belittle how much I care about you.’
I know he does. I know because I care about him just as much. He’s been a staple in my life for… well, since Luke broke my heart and I moved in to my current apartment, which I couldn’t really afford then, next door to Callum. Speaking of which…
‘Callum, I’ve done something stupid.’
He sighs. ‘You kissed Luke.’
His statement is emphatic. Not surprised or perturbed. Resigned.
‘More like fourth base,’ I confess, bringing the palm of my hand to my forehead.
‘Wh— Hold up. You? You screwed him? Luke? ’
‘Please don’t call it that and stop with the judgy-judgisome. Though I totally deserve it.’ I groan, looking to the ceiling to fight more tears but unable to prevent another sniff of my nose.
‘No, I— Carrie, I’m not judging you, babes. Zero judgment. I have a hunk waiting in my bedsheets next door.’
‘Right.’ I shake my head, knowing it’s so far from the same thing. ‘You do this all the time. Means nothing.’
‘Yeah, but that’s because I do it all the time, Carrie. That’s my lifestyle choice. If you take a man to bed?—’
‘Please don’t finish that sentence.’
‘It means something, babes. The question is, what did it mean to you and why are you calling me at this time in the morning crying your heart out?’
‘I’m not crying. You’re crying,’ I say, repeating words we say to each other when we’re both bleary-eyed after a Nicholas Sparks movie. But they aren’t funny in this moment because another silent drip falls down my cheek. ‘I don’t know, Callum. I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know what it meant, and I don’t know how to face him again today.’
‘Did you do a sneak out?’
I blow out so hard, my lips almost raspberry. ‘Yes. I’m a wreck. He can’t see me like this. And I’m stuck here, trapped. The storm is nearly on top of us and I need to clean up and get to Joe Hettich’s hurricane room to ride it out with a bunch of people who are all Team Luke, and Luke . Oh yeah, and the client who is probably the last person who stands between me and my partnership case at the firm that I’ve busted my ass for.’
I expect some kind of told you so or witty remark, but it troubles me more when Callum speaks with the kind of sincerity I rarely see on him. ‘I wish I was there to help you through this one, baby girl.’
His words, his tone, only confirm how much of a disaster this is.
‘What do I do, Callum?’
‘Build yourself a time machine?’
I shake my head. ‘If I can’t do that?’
‘Get yourself a shower. Get dressed. Put your war paint on. And while you’re doing all of that, decide how you want to play this thing.’
‘What if I don’t know how?’
I imagine him rubbing his gruff chin, the way he does when he’s thinking, because it’s long seconds before he asks, ‘Do you want to be with him? Is that what screw— sleeping with him was about?’
‘No! It can’t be. He’s my client. Joe Hettich is my client. I’m not putting my career on the line again for Luke or any man. But even if that weren’t the case…’ I press my finger and thumb into the corners of my eyes as pressure builds again. ‘Nothing’s changed. He still walked away from me once before for someone he wanted more.’
I think about the letters Luke spoke of. Letters I never received. I wish I knew what was inside those pages. But the fact is, they were words. He may have written to me to explain a few things, to apologize, but ultimately, he still went back to his wife. Now, it seems, truly his ex-wife, too. I don’t even know how long they’ve been apart and divorced, whether there’s been anyone serious since. None of it even matters. It can’t.
‘I can’t go back there, Callum. I can’t go back to being in a thousand pieces the way I was.’ Pieces that Callum helped pick up and put back together. He knows how shattered I was. How I had to rebuild my life and career.
‘Callum? Are you still there?’
‘I’m here,’ he says. ‘Just thinking. So maybe, what happened between the two of you last night, or this morning, was closure, right? It was one last rodeo to say goodbye, or get each other out of your systems, you know? Closing the door on the past rather than opening the door to the future.’
I nod into the darkness. ‘You’re right. I have to see it that way, don’t I?’ The tightness that brings to my chest is painful. Am I going to do this again? Set off on the path to the rest of my life with Luke just a memory that eases with time but is always there, always present, like a dull ache in my bones that never ceases?
‘You don’t have to do anything, Carrie.’
Except, I do. I don’t forgive Luke. I haven’t forgotten. How can I when I’ve never had an explanation for what he did to me, to us, the way we ended? We got so wrapped up in the crazy sexual chemistry between us that we, I , let it cloud my judgment.
‘A mistake,’ I mutter. ‘Closure.’
‘If that’s what you want it to be,’ Callum says.
There’s such a fine line between want and need.