Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
The drive back to The Rose was a quiet one, both Charlie and I lost in our own thoughts.
Dusk was setting in, and the day had passed too quickly for the weight of it.
As we pulled up the long drive and rounded the circle that led to the main entrance of the house, I wasn’t surprised to see Deputy Wright waiting outside, under the lit lamp at the front of the house, as if she’d been tracking Charlie’s movements.
I scoffed as soon as I spotted her.
“What?” Charlie asked, obviously unaware.
“Nothing,” I muttered, just before we were about to pull up in front of the steps.
Charlie slammed on the brakes, startling me.
I turned to him. “What was that for?”
“You won’t talk to me.” Charlie’s tone was elevated ever so slightly, enough to get my attention since he wasn’t the kind of man who raised his voice in any situation.
I met his eyes, those inlets into his soul, and I saw confusion and frustration and perhaps even a feeling of betrayal.
“You’re quiet and moody,” Charlie continued. “And I have no idea what’s going on in your mind.”
I was the moody one? What about him? The one who couldn’t seem to separate his work self from his personal life, the one who could be delightful and endearing one day and reserved and repressed the next.
“I get that the circumstances this weekend, they’re… extreme.” He huffed out a breath. “But you’ve just… You’re acting so… not normal.” His brow furrowed as he struggled to find the words. “Talk to me. Let me in.”
Frustration heated my cheeks. Charlie had no idea of the load I’d carried into this weekend—even before a man had died right in front of me.
Sure, I could’ve told him about Savilla or the worries about my career plans, but I’d been waiting to talk in person this weekend.
Then Brett had died and Charlie had been so…
so infuriatingly distant. It was almost enough to make me explode.
“You want me to talk?” I started, my voice already a pitch higher.
“Fine. In the next forty-eight hours I need to decide whether I’ll start a practice here in Aubergine or take a fellowship in San Diego, a decision that will impact the next four years at a minimum.
On top of that I found out that I’ve inherited half of a freaking palace that may be a financial money pit if my new half-sister, Savilla Finch, is to be believed. ”
He startled. “Your half-sister?”
“Mr. Finch is—was—my father,” I said, almost like a confession.
“Okay. Wow. That’s a lot.” He stared at the steering wheel as if trying to sort through the list of things I’d just thrown at him. “And San Diego?”
“It’s a program my professor wants me to consider.
” I clenched my jaw and released it, trying to let go of tension that wouldn’t abate.
“Then on my first night back home, one of my former classmates, who also happened to be a total asshat, was murdered.” I took a deep breath, deciding to try trusting him with everything.
“Did you know that Brett blackmailed Mr. Finch so he could inherit one of the most valuable diamonds in the world?”
“I had no idea,” Charlie said evenly. He studied me, waiting for me to get all my words out.
“Yeah, he has some awful video of Savilla, and he threatened to leak it unless Mr. Finch gave him what he wanted. Which is actually really similar to what he did to Lacy…” I trailed off, running out of steam as I thought about the few remaining hours until her business and her life might be turned upside down by Brett’s email from the dead.
“Honestly, I’m having trouble keeping up.” Charlie put a gentle hand to my face. “Could you, maybe, start at the beginning? I promise I’ll listen.”
At his touch, something in me loosened, and my eyes met his. He was asking me to trust him with what I knew, to lay it all out on the table. So I did.
Over the next few minutes, I caught him up on everything I knew, which was a kind of trust fall for me.
He listened without jotting down notes, keeping his gaze fixed on mine the entire time.
“And the two people on the case are a gorgeous deputy and my boyfriend who—” I stopped mid-sentence, realizing that I’d used a word for Charlie that I’d never used before. I tried to recover. “And now I have to decide what to do with you,” I finished, putting my elbow on the window.
Out the window, the deputy was staring at our car, likely trying to see why it had stalled.
Charlie’s lips turned up on the right side and he narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean that you have to decide what to do with me?” Despite all of the information I’d just spewed, his expression was actually amused.
“I don’t know,” I breathed out. “Like, what if we break up? Or what if we aren’t even a… an item.”
“An item?” He cocked his head. “Is this the 1950s?”
I frowned at him. “I mean, despite the fact that I just humiliatingly called you my boyfriend, we haven’t actually defined anything.”
Charlie tapped a hand against the steering wheel. “I thought we were too old and wise to need to put a label on things, but, sure, I can do that if you want.”
A label? If I want? Who didn’t want to define a relationship at some point? Although, I guess I hadn’t been in a hurry until this weekend had threatened to topple us.
“I do want,” I said simply, straightening my shoulders as if about to enter an official meeting.
He lifted a shoulder. “Okay.”
This sounded too easy, and it made me suspicious, especially after how hard life had been for the last two years. But before I had time to think about it for long, he wrapped his palm around my fingers until the back of my hand was smothered by his own.
“I’m only interested in dating you. In fact, I’ve only been dating you for the past four months because I thought we were exclusive,” Charlie said. “I guess I’m old-fashioned like that, but since you’d like to be officially asked, Dakota Green, would you go steady with me?”
Despite my swirling mind and the fact that him asking this question didn’t actually fix any of my real problems, I let out a soft laugh for the first time. “Do I get your class ring?”
“You can have anything you want from me,” he said, his voice husky with intent. Almost like he loved me.
I shook off the intensity of his stare. Calling him my boyfriend was enough for now.
I nodded toward the deputy, who appeared to have given up on figuring out what was happening inside the car and was opening the front door to go back inside. “What about her?”
“Jill?”
“The very one,” I said. “And please don’t tell me that you have no idea she’s interested in you.”
He made an expression that said he’d been avoiding thinking about that very thing.
“Lately, I’ve been wondering, but we’ve worked together for so long that I didn’t want to assume—and, to be clear, I don’t feel the same way about her.
” He stole a glance at me to make sure I believed him.
“Jill was a great partner and she’s doing well as a second-in-command, but I swear, that’s it for me. ”
I wanted to believe him.
He took a second to figure out what to say next. I was afraid that he was about to backtrack, to tell me that actually he wasn’t sure about her, about me, about any of this. Instead, he surprised me with his next few words.
“She doesn’t like dogs,” he said, as if that should be explanation enough.
It was not.
So he continued. “Jill’s parents take her on a two-week vacation to the Swiss Alps every winter to ski, and she doesn’t like to read anything except People magazine.
She won’t try new foods—it’s always buttered pasta and grilled chicken when she eats out—and she only listens to classical music.
She became a police officer because she didn’t like college and she said she wanted to find out what it’s like to be a ‘working person.’ She’s good at her job, and she’s a great person…
for someone else, who will fall madly in love with her someday.
” His look begged me to believe him. “As for me and you, I guess I think of you as my girlfriend even though we’ve never said that out loud.
I can’t do anything about what you decide to do next with your career, but as for me, I’m…
” Here, a smile crept into his intense focus, and I knew he was about to say something cheesy. “I’m in it to win it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud that time. After a moment, I lifted my hand so that our fingers were entwined.
He lifted my hand and kissed the back of it.
“I’m open to figuring out a way to make this work, Dakota Green, but you’ve got to figure out what makes you happy—not what other people think looks like success.
Remember what you told me when I was trying so hard to get the good people of Aubergine to like me? ”
I bit my lip, remembering all too well because it was the same thing Momma always said to me when I was on the precipice of making decisions.
“‘Don’t do things to impress the kind of people who don’t give a fig about you.’”
Hearing my mother’s words on Charlie’s lips was like an anchor for my unmoored soul. I stared at the view out of the windshield, the blue haze over the mountains reminding me of their permanence in the middle of life’s uncertainties.
“I don’t like working with you,” I said, as I kept my eyes on the peaks and ridges in the distance.
Charlie let out a breath. “I see we’ve come to the brutally honest part of the conversation.”
“I’m not trying to be mean, but you’re kind of…” Jerky? Stubborn? No, I probably shouldn’t go there. “Except for a few minutes up there in your apartment… well, and last night… you’ve been kind of cold,” I said. “It’s, like, it’s not even you.”
“I’ve heard that before,” he admitted. “I can flip the work switch on really easily, but then it’s kind of hard for me to flip it back off.”
I thought of our months of long-distance chats and realized something for the first time. “When you call me at night, you always wait at least an hour or two until your shift has ended. Is that why?”
“I guess so. It takes me time to decompress. This job is pretty stressful. Even when we don’t have a murder on our hands, someone is upset about something: a parking ticket or a domestic dispute.
It varies day to day, but I’m not good at going in and out of work mode.
” His eyes found mine. “I promise I’ll try to be better.
But, Dakota, you’re good at this work. You found Mr. Finch’s murderer. ”
It was true, and I’d enjoyed the problem-solving, especially the way it had let me use my medical knowledge.
“How about this? We can figure out the work part later, but for now…”—Charlie restarted the engine, putting the car back into gear—“you ready to finish this thing?”
I knew he meant the investigation, but the question resonated more deeply than that.
“Ready,” I said, as he pulled around the circular drive and let me out of the car.