32. MATT
32
MATT
T he minute I step into the kitchen, I know something’s wrong. It’s late, so Lucie must be asleep, but Charlie and Aries are sitting opposite one another at the table in complete silence. Aries’ forearms are on the table, her head hangs low, a curtain of red hair hiding her expression. Charlie is glaring at her.
The sight makes my heart drop. “What’s going on?”
Aries’ hair ripples like she’s shaking her head, and when she looks up what I see in her face makes my heart plummet right through the fucking floor. Her eyes are ringed with red like she’s been crying, or wants to cry and hasn’t let the tears fall. Her normally flawless skin is red and blotchy. She touches her lips with her fingertips.
“Is anyone going to answer me?” The question drags rough along my tongue, because I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear anything they’re going to tell me.
Charlie’s jaw flexes, and I know he has no intention of speaking to me.
“Aries?” I ask.
She raises those big, beautiful green eyes at me. “Covent Garden…” are all the words she manages.
A horrible pressure swells in my chest as I try to sift through possible explanations. There’s no way Charlie was in Covent Garden. He couldn’t have seen us. He was at home with Alec. I know for sure because Alec sent me pictures of the two of them playing Mario Kart in the cinema room downstairs. And Charlie was asleep when we got back. If not Charlie, then who?
Shit .
The group of boys who kicked cans at us. I frown, trying to remember their faces, but it was so dark, and I’d been more worried about Aries than anything else.
And then, like a cruel flash of lightning in a midnight sky, I remember. “Ben Charlton?”
Aries swallows and says, “Yes. And Hugo. Both of them.”
Charlie pushes his chair away from the table and tosses me a scowl that looks like he wants to murder me and feed my body piece by piece to the pigeons.
“Fuck you, Dad. Fuck. You,” he spits, before striding up to me, his shoulder glancing mine as he pushes past.
The impact jolts me, but I don’t shift. Instead, I grab him by the shoulder, and although he tries to shrug me off, he can’t. “Watch your language. Do you want to talk, or do you want to run away?”
“The latter.”
“Tough. Sit down.” I can hear the threat in my voice, and Charlie resentfully holds my gaze, me physically pinning him in place, until the resistance in his muscles melts, and he takes his seat opposite Aries.
Silence crackles around the table as I take a seat too. My heartbeat throbs around my body, the rush of blood so loud in my ears I feel dizzy.
“This isn’t how I wanted you to find out,” I say. “I’m deeply sorry. But Aries and I…” I break off, searching for the right words, but all that come to mind are inappropriate phrases that would only add crap to this shitfest.
A wry chuckle sounds from Charlie. “I’m not a child, Dad. I get it. And I don’t care.”
“You don’t?”
He shakes his head. “No. I don’t care what you do. But I do care that you gave the Charlton twins another reason to…” His voice fades.
“To what?”
Charlie says nothing, his eyes flicking to Aries, but this time it looks like he’s pleading with her for help.
“They beat him up,” she says. “After the boat race. Said it was his fault they lost. Because of Lucie falling in. Because Charlie jumped out the boat. Because—”
“You knew about this?”
Aries nods, closes her eyes and drags a hand through her long hair. “I only found out who did it today…” She falters, pinning her bottom lip with her teeth as tears well in her eyes. It takes a few seconds before she can continue. “But I knew he’d been beaten up before that.”
Before? She fucking knew before? How could she have kept something like this from me? “How long?”
“Since the holiday.” Her voice is weak; a little broken. “On the boat.”
Fucking hell . I’m torn between wanting to hold Charlie in my arms and yell at Aries for hiding this. What was she thinking? “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Charlie scoffs. “Like you’d give a fuck.”
“If they hurt you, I care. How often was it happening? At school?”
“Yes, at school,” Charlie says. “And often enough.”
“The weed?” I ask.
“Yes,” Charlie says. “They planted it. Made it look like it was mine.”
This is a total shitshow . “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you say something? Barney called me. Said he thought something was wrong.”
Charlie stiffens, just slightly. He says nothing.
“We can sort this out,” I reassure him, straining to keep my anger in check. Charlie doesn’t need me losing it right now. “I’ll speak to your mother.”
Charlie drags breaths through flared nostrils. “She definitely won’t give a shit. I don’t want you to do anything about it. I’m fine. This is why I didn’t tell you in the first place. Do you really think anything you can do or say is going to make a difference? You only make things worse. Like this.” He waves a hand between me and Aries, disgust warping his lips. “Can I go now?”
I know I shouldn’t let him swear at me, or talk about his mother like that, even though she deserves every word of it. But I don’t feel like I can reprimand him… not when my actions have caused him pain. Not when I’ve allowed my feelings for Aries to dictate my behaviour.
And he has a point; not to excuse the twins, but my recklessness, my infatuation with Aries, gave them fodder to tease my son. If I felt like a bad father before, I feel worse now.
All that sneaking around… hiding it all from him on the boat… on the holiday. What was the point? Maybe we should’ve come clean back then. Or not done it at all.
And the whole time she was keeping something this important from me…
“Can I go?” Charlie repeats.
I nod my head and Charlie gets up.
Aries shrivels in her seat, and the sight of her makes anger boil in my blood, but it’s tempered by the acidic flavour of disappointment, eating away at my organs like a bitter type of sadness. How could she have hidden this from me? If she respected me, cared about me, wouldn’t she have told me?
I wait until Charlie’s footsteps have disappeared up the stairs before I speak. “Your job is to take care of my kids,” I say, very, very slowly. “You have a duty of care to them. To me. You’ve known someone was hurting my son for what… three weeks? A month?”
Aries’ chin trembles and a single tear rolls down her cheek as she nods. “I’m sorry.”
In spite of everything, all I want to do is wipe that tear from her face, hold her in my arms, and kiss her. I want to make all of this go away . But I can’t, because this time, sorry isn’t good enough. “Tell me everything.”
She drags her eyes to mine, and I know whatever she’s about to say she doesn’t want to admit. “I walked in on him after you told me to bring him to breakfast on the deck. He was covered in bruises, but he promised me it would never happen again. That the boys who did it had left the school. He’d never see them again. He said it was over. I had no idea he was talking about Mark Charlton’s kids. I didn’t know it was boys he’d see again, boys he would have to live with when he stays with his mother. I wanted to tell you at the time, but you wouldn't let me talk. You swore at me in front of your brothers and Kate. I was angry with you. And when I went back to fetch Charlie, he wanted me to promise not to tell you. He didn’t want to ruin the holiday. I didn’t think…”
How could she hold this back? I close my eyes, fisting my left hand over my mouth. When I open my eyes again, Aries’ tearful gaze meets mine. “I’m really trying not to lose my temper with you right now, but those excuses are paper fucking thin, Aries.”
“I know.” Tears are rolling freely down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
I sigh and run my tongue over my top teeth. “What happens now? What do I do now?”
She stares at me across the table, looking like she’s about to shatter into a thousand pieces. “What do you mean?” she whispers.
Christ, I don’t know what I mean. I don’t know if I mean with Charlie or with her. With us. With her continuing to work in a role I’m not sure I can trust her to do.
I thought we were building something real here, but this feels like a betrayal.
My chest is tight, each breath a struggle it shouldn’t be. “This was a bad call, Aries.”
She swallows so hard I can see every muscle working up her neck. “I know.”
“What were you thinking?”
She shakes her head, and strands of her hair catch the brutal gleam of the overhead lights, turning into burnished gold. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s Charlie’s birthday party tomorrow,” I say. “Let’s just get through that, then we can sort this out properly.”
“Okay.” She stands, and as she passes me, her hand reaches out like she means to touch me, but she doesn’t. Her hand falls to her side like she lost her nerve. “I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
“We both made a mistake.”
Unspoken words hum in the air, and I know she’s wondering the same fucking thing I am. Is this such a huge breach of trust that we can’t get beyond it? Is this over? Are we over?
Every fibre of my being wants to reach out and pull her to me; tell her I don’t care, that I want her more than this… need her more than this. But I can’t because I’m not sure it’s true anymore, and the thought breaks my fucking heart.