CHAPTER 25 #2
She rubs the back of her neck, avoiding my gaze. Her throat works around the words, and for a moment, I think she won’t say them. Then, barely audible, she whispers, “The same thing Jack did. He didn’t forgive me.”
Charlotte turns away and continues fiddling with the radio, as if the static might drown her out.
But I can already see the cracks, the way her shoulders hitch, the way she can barely sit still long enough to finish a full sentence.
She wants forgiveness. Craves it. But she hasn’t even given it to herself.
“Forgive you for what, Char?” I ask softly.
She shakes her head.
“You can say it.”
“No. I can’t,” she rasps.
“I won’t judge you.”
“You should.”
Charlotte stares straight ahead, unblinking, until a tear swells in the corner of her eye. It trembles, then spills, cutting a path down her cheek.
“I stepped out, Lore,” she says, her voice splintering. “On the only man I ever wanted. The only man I’ve ever loved. I… cheated.”
Oh.
I try to keep my expression neutral, pretending her words weren’t the last thing I expected to hear.
People cheat in relationships. I know that.
Mom had a friend who two-timed and still got her husband to take her back.
Edmund walks around with enough nail marks from his mistresses to make a sport of it.
But Charlotte? She loved Jack. She still does.
Something else doesn’t add up, either. Why is Edmund so angry? I understand him being pissed on Jack’s behalf, but not enough to drag Charlotte into a shot duel or bar her from his entourage until he was forced to let her in by our formal agreement.
This feels bigger than the average knife-in-the-back. It makes me wonder if the man Charlotte cheated with wasn’t a stranger in the dark but someone Edmund and Jack both hated. Someone who made it unforgivable.
“Why did you do it?” I ask.
Charlotte wipes her cheeks with a silk handkerchief, but a fresh wave of tears quickly dampens them again.
“I was angry,” she sobs. “Angry about Rosamund. And about Jack never standing up for me when it mattered. I waited, Lore. A year of waiting, watching, hurting. When nothing changed, I knew that even if I loved Jack, I couldn’t keep living like that. ”
Her chest rises and falls, each word dragged out as if it hurts to speak.
“We were at the Royce Club for Jack’s birthday.
It was supposed to be perfect—Edmund, Dickie, and I had planned it for weeks—but when Rosamund showed up uninvited and pulled Jack outside to give him that fancy hovercar, it pushed me over the edge.
I took Bliss, thinking it would help me cope.
But it was a bad batch. Instead of making me float, the drug lit everything up.
My anger. My hurt. All of it. I felt like I was burning alive inside my skin. ”
Charlotte shakes her head and brushes away the tears with the back of her hand. Her face hardens, grief still visible beneath her jaded expression. “I wanted a way out. And I took it. But the cost was everything else.”
I stare at the road ahead, suddenly wishing Charlotte hadn’t told me. Why the hell did I have to be so damn nosy? It’s not that I think any differently of her—I don’t. But when it comes to men, I’ve got no experience. I have no idea how to help her.
“Judge me if you want,” she says with a sniffle. “I’d deserve it. But just know I already hate myself more than Jack and Edmund ever could.”
I look her in the eye, searching for the right words. “Jack… well, he doesn’t seem that angry with you anymore.”
“Yeah, but that makes it worse.” Charlotte’s voice drops to a salt-rock rasp. “He’s moving on. He’s healing. And I’m still bleeding. I thought I could move on, too, but seeing him every day makes it impossible. He’s my anchor in a sinking world, Lore. And without him, I’m going under with it.”
The pain on her face gut-wrenches me. She looks like she’s drifted out into deep water, too exhausted to scream, her arms no longer flailing. And if no one dives in and grabs hold—
I reach over and take her hand.
“No,” I say. “You’re not. I won’t let you.”
Charlotte’s hand trembles in mine, and I tighten my grip to steady it.
“I’m sorry, Lore,” she whispers.
“Why? None of this is mine to forgive. And what was mine to forgive… well, I forgave that a long time ago.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Of course, I do.”
The words seem to sever the last thread of her composure.
With a broken sob, Charlotte leans across the console and clings to me.
I switch the hovercar to autonomous mode just in time, narrowly avoiding a drift into the neighboring vehicle.
Then I hold her back, letting the world blur past in streaks of light and noise.
When Charlotte finally pulls away, she exhales a long, ragged breath that brings color back to her lips. She wipes her eyes, blots her cheeks, and then refreshes her makeup, just as she must’ve done every day before walking into rooms with Jack’s and Edmund’s accusing stares.
I understand now why she changed her face.
It wasn’t for beauty.
It was because the old one knew what she did.