Chapter 17
Seventeen
The road stretched out ahead, long and empty. Miles of nothing but frost-rimmed fields and low, broken fences. The prison was still twenty minutes out, but Charlotte could already feel it looming.
Beside her, Graham had gone quiet—thinking. She knew the way he turned things over in his mind. Had seen it for years. The silence wasn’t aimless. It was sharpening. She waited, kept her eyes on the road, pretending she didn’t feel the pressure building in the cab.
Finally, his voice cut through. “Are you in love with Marcel?”
She didn’t flinch. But she didn’t answer right away either. Just kept her hands steady on the wheel, eyes locked forward. “Yes,” she said at last.
Another pause.
“Did you have to think about the answer,” he asked gently, “or were you thinking about answering me?”
Charlotte’s grip tightened. “This was a mistake,” she muttered. “You’re already in my head.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” His tone was even, but she heard the tension underneath.
She didn’t answer right away. She couldn’t. The words were stuck somewhere behind years of locked doors. Years of carefully measured survival. But then, slowly, they came. “If you’re in my head,” she said, barely above a whisper, “I can’t get you out.”
“Char…” His voice was soft now. “Put it into words I can understand. Remember, I’m a man. A knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, I think you used to call me.”
She exhaled, short and unsteady. “I don’t have the strength to let you out if I have to. I’ve barely recovered, and risking things again could break me. I don’t have the emotional resilience.”
His silence this time wasn’t sharp. It was patient. Waiting.
“I can’t hurt like that again.” And then—oh God. The flood she’d spent years holding back crept up through her chest like cold water.
“Chuck,” Graham said quietly, the name hanging in the air like a weight. “You’ve never dealt with the grief. That’s why.”
Charlotte snapped, “Why what?”
“Why you were able to turn off our relationship like a light switch. And, more importantly, turn off the relationship with Alex. You can’t let him in.”
Her head whipped toward him. “We were work partners.”
He scoffed. “Wow. You really have worked yourself into the world of denial.”
She turned back to the road, her pulse loud in her ears.
“We spent eight years together, Charlotte. Working hellish hours. You took care of people in trauma all day and then went home and carried five daughters on your back. And on your days off, who was fixing that leaky faucet? Who painted the porch with you? Changed your tires? Stayed late because Ruth had a fever and you needed someone at the house?”
“Graham…”
“No. You need to hear this. On more nights than I can count, after the girls were asleep, I held you while you cried. You didn’t even try to hide it. And, no, we never slept together. But don’t you dare tell me that wasn’t a relationship.”
Charlotte’s throat tightened. She swallowed hard, jaw clenched.
“I loved you,” he said. “I still love you. And I’m not saying that to make things harder. I’m saying it because I need you to understand—you didn’t walk away from nothing. You didn’t go numb just because of Chuck. You shut the whole damn door.”
She blinked, vision swimming.
“I’m hurting for you,” he said quietly. “I’m hurting for Alex. He loves you. I can hear it in his voice, even when he’s trying not to beg.”
Charlotte shook her head, her voice cracking. “I don’t know if I can do it again.”
“Would you rather spend the rest of your life alone than let someone really love you?”
Her knuckles were white around the wheel.
“Don’t tell me you have a full life with the girls. Don’t give me that line. I know you love them. I know you’d do anything for them. But they can’t fill this space, Char. They were never meant to. And, damn it, I don’t think you were meant to be alone.”
The silence that followed gutted her. It wasn’t empty. It was full of things she’d never said. Nights she had buried. Needs she had denied. She wiped a hand across her face, blinking against the tears she couldn’t afford to cry.
“I don’t know how to let go,” she whispered. “Not of Chuck. Not of you. Not of any of it.”
Graham reached across the console, rested a hand lightly over hers on the wheel. Solid. Familiar. No pressure. “You don’t have to let go,” he said. “But you do have to let someone in.”
Charlotte couldn’t respond—not yet. But the words stayed lodged in her chest, beating in time with the ache she'd carried far too long.
The prison loomed in the distance now, low and gray against the horizon. The first tower rose past the fields—concrete, steel, fences stacked in layers like armor. She focused on it. Let her mind fixate on the sharp lines, the perimeter. Anything but the ache in her throat.
Graham hadn’t moved his hand from hers. The warmth wasn’t the kind that made her want to pull away—but the kind that reminded her they had once been tethered by something real.
“Char, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Her stomach turned. She braced.
“I’m married,” he said.
It hit like a small, clean punch. Not hard, but unexpected. Her breath caught in her chest before it released slowly. She nodded, keeping her eyes forward. “Good. I’m glad.”
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
She said nothing.
“I’m serious,” he added. “I’m not telling you to make it weird. I’m telling you because you deserve to know. You were part of the reason it took me so long.”
Charlotte blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I finally heard you,” he said. “Not the words. God knows you never said much when it mattered.” His tone was soft, not cruel. “But I heard what you couldn’t say. And I realized I had to stop waiting for you to come back.”
She glanced at him, just for a second. “Who is he?”
Graham smiled faintly, eyes distant. “Nate. Nathan Ellis. I met him after I retired. He works at the university—psych department. Sharp as hell. Dry wit. Makes a perfect Old Fashioned.”
Charlotte blinked again, slowly. “You came out.”
He nodded once. “I didn’t think I ever would. Thought that door was closed forever. But Nate—he helped me let go of the bitterness. Especially the part I was carrying about us. He helped me get over the way things ended.”
She wanted to say something—something more than “I’m glad” or “good for you”—but the words tangled.
Her heart was still stuck in the past while his had moved on, steady and whole.
She wasn’t angry. She was just… sad. For the girl she’d been when they met.
For the woman who never let herself admit what she needed.
“Does he know about me?” she asked finally.
Graham chuckled. “He knows everything. I told him there was a woman who once broke my heart without even realizing it. He said he figured.”
Charlotte exhaled shakily. “Sounds like a smart man.”
“He is,” Graham said. “And patient. He knows I still worry about you. He knew this trip might shake things loose.”
“You told him you were coming?”
“Of course I did. He told me to go. Said, ‘Don’t let her drown in her past, Graham. If you can help her, go.’”
Charlotte pressed her lips together. She blinked fast, but the tears came anyway—quiet and slow, slipping down her cheek. “You deserved better,” she whispered.
“Don’t do that,” Graham said gently. “You were surviving. You had five kids, a dead husband, a full-time job, and a partner who didn’t know how to say how he felt until it was too late.”
“I should’ve told you the truth.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But I think you’re ready now.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know if I am.”
He squeezed her hand once. “You’re closer than you’ve ever been.”
Charlotte turned onto the final stretch leading to the prison. The towers were clearer now. The gate. The rows of fencing.
She didn’t know what would happen once they got inside. Didn’t know what Ward had left waiting for her. But she knew one thing as certain as the sky above them: She wasn’t alone.