Chapter 73
CHAPTER 73
OLIVIA
M s. Burl’s house was a quaint, gorgeous little place not far away from my house. Even though it was a smidgen too big to be considered a cottage, it kind of looked like a place straight out of a fairy tale. Her front garden was beautifully lush and meticulously tended, with all sorts of water features and little figurines hidden between the beds of flowers and the hedges.
Her front door was painted bright pink and her porch had so many potted plants on it that I could barely see the floor. I smiled as I followed the winding, stone path that led to her porch steps, already as enchanted by her as I had been the first time we’d met.
I really hadn’t felt much like coming out tonight, but now that I was here, I was happy she’d insisted. Having supper with her the first time really had been a treat and I suddenly had no doubt that despite my general lack of enthusiasm, I was going to enjoy our night together.
As I knocked on the brightly painted door, it opened and the woman herself stood there grinning at me. Eyes crinkled at the corners, she opened her thin arms and immediately pulled me into a big hug.
“Olivia, darling! It’s so good to see you. Thank you for coming.” She released me and took a step aside to let me in. “Welcome to my humble abode. I’ve made a few changes since my Baxter earned his wings. He never would let me paint the door, but I needed to liven the place up a little bit. It helped.”
“I can certainly see why.”
Only a few steps into her house, I already felt lighter than I had in days. The interior was cool and cozy, with hundreds of pictures on the walls and quirky little statuettes on top of overflowing bookshelves. Her lighting was a warm white, bathing the foyer and living areas in a glow that felt almost otherworldly while the scent of chicken, tomato, and something spicy in the air made me feel like I’d walked straight into my grandmother’s house.
“So,” she said as she guided me to her kitchen. “Something silly happened this weekend. I realized that I actually know your father. We ran into each other at the fair and we got to talking. I had no idea you were Nathan’s daughter when we met.”
“You know him?” I smiled and sighed at the same time. “Why am I not surprised? Sometimes, I feel like everybody knows him around here.”
She chuckled as we reached her kitchen. “That’s not an inaccurate take on the matter. Your daddy is pretty well known around these parts, but yes. I know him. I taught him back when he was a kid. I’d like to think that I was more than just his teacher. I mentored him as well, back in the early days of his career.”
“Wow.” Genuinely shocked, I laughed and sat down on a stool she waved me into. “It really is such a small world. I can’t believe you were his teacher and his mentor. What was he like back then?”
Before she could answer, there was a knock at her door, and as she strode past me to answer it, there was a hint of mischief in her sudden smile. “Your daddy was one of the best kids I ever knew. Another one of those kids is out there right now.”
She crossed the room and went back to her foyer, opening the door to reveal Charlie standing behind it. My eyes went wide, my heartbeat slamming into hyperdrive as I found myself unexpectedly looking at that handsome face for the first time in a week.
In his faded blue jeans and with his boots on his feet, his dark hair was slightly damp, as if he’d had a shower a little while ago and it would be dry in the next few minutes. He held his hat in his hand and there had been a fond smile on his lips until he’d seen me.
As soon as he did, the smile faded and he did a slow double-take, which meant that he hadn’t been in on this. He hadn’t known any more than I had that we would be seeing each other here tonight. It was only a little comfort, but I’d take anything I could get.
“Jack was Nathan’s best buddy, as I’m sure both of you know,” Ms. Burl said as if Charlie had been here for the first part of our conversation as well. “I taught him too. Mentored him growing up. We’ve kept in touch. I know what’s been going on between you two. As soon as we realized I knew you both, your fathers let me in on what happened.”
She looked between us as she waved Charlie inside, shutting—and locking—the door behind him. “Now you listen to me, kids. If you talk this out and decide never to talk again, I won’t force you into another situation like this, but you need to hear each other out first. Love always finds a way, and today, I think that way is me.”
Striding back into the kitchen, she opened the oven and pulled out a casserole. She set it on a pot stand and nodded at a pile of plates on the counter. “Eat. Talk. I’ll be in my bedroom if you need me, but don’t worry, my walls are pretty thick. I won’t be listening in on you. You can yell if you need to. Nothing I end up overhearing will ever leave this house.”
After flashing us each a look that very clearly said do you understand me? she left the kitchen and strode down the short hallway, leaving Charlie and me alone together. I heard a door shut quietly, the latch snicking into place in the sudden silence of the house.
I hadn’t even been aware that it’d been forming, but the next thing I knew, a hot tear was tracking down my cheek. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve known Ms. Burl all my life. After Baxter died, she started calling me whenever she needs something fixed at her house. She called me earlier about her oven.”
Charlie’s chest rose before it slowly deflated again. As he looked into my eyes, I saw raw pain reflected from his, so sharp and real that the sight sliced my own recent wounds wide open again.
“I guess she got the oven working after all.” His gaze slid to the casserole before he brought it back to mine. “I’m even willing to go so far as to assume she wasn’t having any trouble with it today. I suspect I was lured here under false pretenses. I can’t say that I mind, though. At least it means that I get to see you.”
“Charlie…” I had no idea what to say. No idea what to think. What to believe.
He kept his eyes locked on mine as he pulled a super old, crusty phone out of his pocket and held it out to me. “I know that you haven’t wanted to talk to me, but since she’s gone through so much trouble, I figure I owe it to Ms. Burl to at least give it a shot. This is going to sound like a cliché, but I can explain, Liv. It’s really not what you think.”
I glanced at the phone, proud of myself for even finding my voice. He wasn’t wrong about me not wanting to talk to him, but I did want answers. I supposed this was the only way I would get those. “What’s that for?”
“It’s the one I was using when Scarlett and I were dating. That text she showed you was from years ago. On my way out the door tonight, I figured that if I was coming into town, maybe I should swing by your place after I helped Ms. Burl. See if I could convince you to give me five minutes to prove that Scarlett is pure evil.”
I didn’t take the phone, but he didn’t lower his arm, just letting the device sit on his palm between us. “I’ve been breaking my brain all week trying to figure out how she faked a text from me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized my first instinct had probably been right. She didn’t fake it. She just showed you an old one.”
He lifted the phone half an inch higher, blues locked firmly on mine. “Take it. It’s been charged. If you scroll back past all the bull crap she sent me after I broke up with her, you’ll see the last text from me. If my hunch is right, that’s the one she showed you at the fair.”
My hand shook as I reached for the ancient device, but I managed to get a grip on it, and as soon as I pressed the button on the side, it came to life. “No password?”
He shrugged. “I never had a reason to figure out how to put one on. Thank God, I also never had a reason to delete any of those texts. I’m not tech savvy, as you might have figured out by now. I got a new phone after the breakup rather than sifting through all her crap on there trying to work out how to get rid of it all without reliving everything she put me through, but without losing the stuff I needed. It was just easier to start fresh.”
When I glanced down, I saw that he’d already navigated to the messaging thread he’d shared with Scarlett back in the day. Doing my best not to read any of the pleas she’d sent him after to let her explain, I finally landed on his last text to her, and it sure looked like the very same one she’d shown me.
The only difference was that on this phone, I could see the date it’d been sent and it was years ago. I frowned and handed the device back to him, feeling like I was invading their privacy just for holding the thing.
I took in a shuddering breath and exhaled it slowly through the waves of disbelief rolling over me at the revelation of not only seeing proof that the text hadn’t been recent, but also that it meant she might actually have broken into his home.
It was unbelievable, but I needed to hear it from him. “My dad said she stole the ring from your house.”
He nodded, his gaze never leaving mine. “She sneaked in while you and I were on the Ferris wheel and took it from my dresser. To be honest, I knew it was in there somewhere, but I hadn’t even thought about it for years.”
“You didn’t give it to her?”
“Hell no.” He dropped his head back and sent a weird look at the ceiling. “I think my grandma would’ve smote me from up there if I’d tried. She would’ve been right to.”
When he looked at me again, that same confusion I’d seen that day at the fair was back in his eyes. “The only thing I haven’t been able to figure out is how she knew about some of the things you and I did together.”
“The video,” I said numbly, back to being so shocked that I could barely feel a thing. “All those memories she mentioned were things she got from the footage we filmed on the ranch and posted for the world to see. London realized it last night.”
Charlie’s jaw slackened and I practically saw realization dawning in his eyes as he stared into mine. “Yeah, that tracks. Now that you mention it, she did only talk about those things, didn’t she? The things we did together on that video.”
“She did.” My voice quivered, but even though my throat felt like it was getting all clogged up and my eyes were burning with all the emotion that wanted to burst out of them, I knew I had to say this. I had to get it all out. “I just went ahead and assumed that you took her to Waterfall Park and all those other things as well, but she didn’t actually mention any of that.”
He sighed, his lips pressed into a line as he nodded slowly. “I don’t blame you for jumping to that conclusion. All these things put together looked pretty bad, huh?”
“So bad.” I stared back at him from the couple feet separating us, my heart fluttering as all that hope started burrowing deeper than it ever had before. “So you don’t still love her? You don’t want to marry her even after all this time?”
Charlie scoffed and shook his head, his voice fierce and vehement. “You are the only girl I love in the whole world. I love you so much, Liv. I should’ve told you before, but I guess I wanted to take it slow. I thought we had time, but you’re the only one I want a life with.”
I opened my mouth, but he closed the distance between us and took my face in his hands, gaze steady and unwavering on my own. “I love you more than I have ever loved anyone, Scarlett included, and I know you have no reason to trust me. I know you’ve been betrayed in the past and I know what this looked like, but I would truly never put you at risk of being hurt with me.”
Tears slid freely down my cheeks and I let them fall, unwilling to move in case I woke up and discovered this was all just a dream. “I will protect you, Olivia Walker, and I will love you like you’ve never been loved before.”
I wasn’t dreaming. The depth of my joy and relief warring with the hot, wild anger I felt toward his ex could never have existed in a dream. Not even in a nightmare, and this definitely wasn’t that.
A sob tore through me and he wrapped me up in his strong arms in response, enveloping me in his earthy scent as he murmured against my ear. “I love you, Liv. With literally all of me.”
“I love you too,” I whispered through the tears. “I’m so sorry I believed the worst. Especially after you warned me about her.”
“Well, she made it seem pretty fucking believable.” He pulled me even closer, resting his chin on top of my head like he was trying to slot us together in every way he knew how, and it was the best thing I’d ever felt. “It was all lies, but I know why you believed it. What I need is for you to believe me now. Believe me when I say that you’ve never been a rebound to me. You’ve never been second best. You are my one and only and you always will be. Tell me you believe me, Liv. I would never, ever hurt you, but especially not like this.”