Chapter 11 Charlie #2
“Oh, you’re Southern,” his mom squealed. “Also, please don’t call me Mrs. Cole, that’s my mother-in-law’s name. It’s just Auburn and Ledger.”
“Auburn and Ledger,” I repeated. It was so strange to call them by their first names.
“You guys know each other . . . how?”
“Auburn. Let’s go inside. I’m sure Evie wants us to order the pizza and they want to go out.” Ledger grabbed his wife’s hand. “It was so nice to meet you, Charlie.”
“Thank you. You as well.”
His mom laughed and then leaned into her husband. “Come visit us whenever. You know, as long as you guys don’t randomly decide to get married tonight . . . like last time.”
“Oh my fucking god. Mom. We’re leaving now.”
“Auburn. Seriously?” Ledger said as he shook his head.
Austin turned toward me and gently placed his hand on my lower back, guiding me toward the car.
I glanced over my shoulder with a smile. “It was lovely to meet y’all.”
As I slid into the passenger seat, his hand lingered in the same spot he’d touched when we were in the water, back when I had far less on.
Fully clothed, his touch more intimate. Maybe it was because I’d just met his family, or maybe it was something else, but that spot on my back tingled with each movement. The moment he pulled away, it stopped.
Austin walked around to the driver’s side, got in, and started pulling out of the driveway. We drove a block in silence, the tension thick between us.
“I am so fucking sorry,” he finally said, his voice filled with frustration.
“Why?”
“You weren’t supposed to meet my mom and her husband. We . . . just . . . fuck. You weren’t supposed to know I was married before. I wanted to be the one to tell you.”
“Oh.”
The offhand comment his mom made about marriage earlier took on a whole new meaning. It wasn’t a joke; it had roots in something deeper. He was divorced.
We reached a stop sign, and he turned to look at me. His eyes searched mine, and anxiety tightened his features.
“You didn’t connect the dots, did you?”
A wave of sympathy rushed over me. He looked so vulnerable, like he was waiting for the inevitable judgment to come crashing down. My heart ached for him.
Without thinking, I reached over and gently placed my hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay,” I whispered, lightly brushing my thumb over the fabric of his shirt.
A car horn sounded, and he pulled away from the stop sign. I kept my hand on his arm, rubbing slow, soothing circles. He melted under my touch, the muscles in his arm relaxing. We drove in silence as I gave him the space to breathe, to be honest, without any pressure.
The color gradually returned to his knuckles, the tightness easing from his grip. I didn’t know the whole story, and when he was ready, I knew he’d tell me.
“We’re going to go down south. With traffic, we should be there in time for the sunset.”
“That sounds nice. My friends are convinced you’re some axe murder, so I hope you prove them wrong.”
He laughed. A full belly laugh that made the car feel warm again. “Ah, well, you’ll have to tell them I left my axe at home, so unfortunately, I’m just taking you to check off part of your bucket list.”
I smiled and turned to watch the road as we drove south.
“Thank you,” he whispered, so softly I almost didn’t hear him.
“Thank you?”
“Yeah.” He kept his eyes on the road, his tone sincere. “Thank you for, you know, helping me or whatnot. For not . . . I don’t know, judging me.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “When I get frustrated, I feel like . . .” I realized I didn’t know how to explain it without sounding ridiculous.
He glanced at me briefly, curiosity flickering in his eyes. “Like what?”
I shrugged. “Like I need to reach out to someone. To remind myself that I’m not alone, I guess. And I don’t know, it felt like maybe you needed that.”
I’d dropped my hand from his arm earlier, letting it rest on the middle divider between us.
His hand shifted, briefly brushing against mine. “I did. More than you know.”
We sat there for a while in silence again.
“I was married when I was really young. Twenty-one.” He paused. “We got married, and it lasted a few months before I . . . before I left and moved to California for a while.”
I raised an eyebrow, the question slipping out before I could stop it. “You left, like that? She didn’t go with you?”
“It was . . . complicated.”
I hesitated for a moment before asking, “Is she still in your life? What happened?”
“No, she left. She moved to another country. I haven’t spoken to her in almost five years. She’s dating and has a kid.”
My heart ached for him. “Are you okay?”
A small smile crossed his lips, and he glanced at me, a hint of surprise in his eyes. “You’re the first person to ever ask me that.”
I blinked, confused. “Wait, no one’s ever asked if you’re okay?”
“Yeah.”
There was a pause, and he took a deep breath. “I wasn’t okay for a long time. I’m better now.”
His voice was steady, but there was a vulnerability beneath it that made my chest tighten. I could see how much it had taken for him to share this with me.
“That’s good.”
For a second, the corners of his lips twitched, a faint smile flashing across his face before he turned his attention toward the road ahead.
“What about you?”
“What about me?” I repeated, a little thrown off by the shift.
“Any long-term boyfriends I’ll need to fight off?”
I laughed, but the suggestion in his words didn’t slip past me. The way he said it—“fight off”—implied something more, something possessive. It was as if he was laying claim, even subtly.
“Definitely not.”
“Phew. My next question was going to be how much bigger they were, so I’d know how many workouts I’d need before I had to take them on,” he said jokingly.
As I laughed, the sound filling the car, his hand slid off the steering wheel. Without warning, his fingers found their way to my thigh and settled there. The warmth of his touch seeped through the thin satin fabric of my skirt, and before I could stop myself, my breath hitched.
His grip tightened ever so slightly, a slow squeeze, and it sent a wave of electricity coursing through me. My skin tingled where his hand rested, his fingers flexing enough to make me hyperaware of every inch of him.
It wasn’t a gesture I could brush off because there was intention behind it. I didn’t move or pull away. Instead, I let the moment stretch. I wanted to savor the way his hand lingered.
“Not too much farther,” he murmured as we pulled off the highway and started to take the backroads.
I didn’t know where we were, only that we were south of the city.
“I don’t know anything about you except for the fact that you like to go to the lake at night and you take care of your sister after school.”
“Mhmm. That’s about all I do.”
“Come on,” I laughed. “There has to be more to you.
“Eh. What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we can start with what you do for work?” I teased, my eyes drifting down to where his hand still rested on my thigh.
“Not important.”
“What? That is such an important question.” I balked, playfully raising an eyebrow. “You could be a serial killer for all I know.”
He chuckled, his grin widening. “Guess you’ll find out in a few minutes when I pull up to the lake.”
“Stop,” I laughed, settling back into my seat.
“I help Evie’s dad coach kids during the day, then watch my sister after school until my mom gets home. She owns a café,” he explained.
“You’re a coach? For kids?” I repeated, surprised.
Sure, I’d seen him around Evie plenty of times, but he didn’t strike me as the typical guy you’d imagine coaching children. There was something about him—rough around the edges, a little guarded—that made me curious about the side of him I didn’t know.
“Yeah,” he chuckled, turning down a narrow back road, the gravel crunching under the tires as we left the main road behind.
On either side of us, the vast flatness stretched out, fields of corn swaying gently in the breeze. The stalks, once amber and full of life, were starting to fade into shades of yellow, signaling the slow shift of the season.
The sun hung low on the horizon, just about to dip into that golden hour where everything would be bathed in an orange glow. The sky stretched wide, endless and open, and the world felt vast, quiet, as if this moment was all that mattered.
“I coach hockey.”
I looked over at him, not realizing that I’d zoned out to look around us.
“Some of the schools around here don’t go back until after Labor Day, so I’m busy with camps right now. Otherwise, I help out during the school year too, but it’s mostly a lot of early mornings and weekend games.”
“Wow. That’s . . . amazing.”
My mother would never approve of him. A coach for little kids. He’d be a complete loser because he wasn’t running a multimillion-dollar business, according to her.
“How did you get into hockey?”
We pulled into a small parking lot, and as he turned off the engine, he casually said, “I used to play for the Chicago Ravens.”
“What?” My jaw dropped. A professional hockey player? I looked at him, stunned. He was still so young, but something must’ve happened. “Did you stop because of an injury?”
There was a long pause, and the realization hit me that I might’ve overstepped. I quickly covered my mouth with my hand. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. That was rude. I just—”
“Charlie, you don’t need to apologize . . . ever. Not with me.”
My cheeks flushed as embarrassment washed over me. I hadn’t meant to make it awkward.
He gave me a small, reassuring smile. “Yeah, I used to play professionally.” He got out and opened the truck, revealing a couple of grocery store plastic bags.
He reached into one of the grocery bags, rummaging around for a moment. I turned over my shoulder to see what he was doing, curious. He pulled out two cans of sparkling water and held them up with a small, almost hesitant smile.
“I’m an alcoholic.”