Chapter 36 – Charlie
CHARLIE
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bonnie glance my way, her mouth parting before she refocuses on the road. A few minutes later, as we’re turning down another road in the direction of her place, I see her do it again.
By the time she’s parking the car in the garage, she’s a jittery mess, her knee bouncing as she bites her thumbnail.
It’s a habit that I both love and hate to see again. Love because it’s a familiar sight, it’s something she’s done for as long as I’ve known her. But on the other hand, it’s a nervous habit of hers, so I know she’s nervous about something right now.
“Out with it, Bee,” I softly demand, turning in my seat to give her my full attention. She turns to me with surprise, her eyebrows rising and her thumbnail slips from between her teeth.
“Come on Bee, don’t look at me like that.
After all these years, you still do this-” I say, gesturing to her still bouncing knee, and her closed fist with her thumb held out near her mouth.
“-when you have to tell me something, but you don’t want to because you think I don’t want to hear it. Just tell me.”
She smiles, a puff of air releasing on a silent laugh as she turns her head to look out the windscreen. “Old habits, I guess,” she huffs out, this time a giggle slips out before she frowns and looks down at her hands that are now in her lap. “I have to work.”
I frown; pretty sure I heard her correctly, despite the low volume, but I can’t see what the problem is, or why she has been dreading telling me. “Okay, and what about that do you think I won’t like?”
When she looks at me, I’m thrown back to our teenage years when we would coax something out of her because she was worried how we would react to it.
I give her an encouraging smile and reach out and wrap both my hands around her much smaller one. Bringing her hand to my lips, I place a soft kiss on her skin, relishing the blush that spreads across her cheek followed by the shiver that runs through her body.
“Explain to me, Bonnie. What’s got you feeling bad about having to work?” I ask, pulling back when I realise we’ve started leaning toward one another without realising, even though what I really want to do is puller her into my lap and continue to press kisses along her skin.
Bonnie lets out a sigh, a frown marring her face. “Well…what are you going to do?”
“I’m a big boy, I think I can entertain myself for a couple of hours. Besides, I need to do a load of washing.” I shrug.
“I’m being serious.” Bonnie lightly shoves my shoulder, rolling her eyes but there’s a massive smile on her face when she climbs out of the car and I get out with her.
“So am I. Jace’s clothes are starting to smell. He needs a clean shirt,” I whisper dramatically.
“Charlie!” A surprised laugh bursts out of her, and she quickly covers her mouth with her hand.
“Ha! You laughed, I’m off the hook,” I sing, enjoying the sound of her giggles, the laughter in her eyes and the snort she lets out when she tries to not encourage my joke by laughing, but fails.
“You are so childish,” she says with a giggle. “You haven’t changed a bit.” Her voice turns reminiscent, and I keep the smile on my face.
I was always the playful, mischievous one, Jace was the impulsive one with a heart of gold, and Bonnie was the one who tied us together, who cared about everything and everyone around her.
It’s been years since I’ve felt like that person.
As a kid and teen, I may not have gotten into trouble out and about, but I was constantly getting into strife playing pranks on my dads.
But as every year passed that Bonnie and Jace remained absent, it got harder and harder to cling to who I was before.
I’m pretty sure the last prank I pulled on any of my dads was when I went home for Christmas before my last year at uni, before Ariana gave me Mia’s contact information. When I learned what happened to Bonnie in the months I waited to contact Mia…that part of me kind of died.
Sure, I still had fun and made jokes and what not here and there over the years, but it wasn’t the same.
It no longer felt like a part of my personality.
It felt a little stagnant, forced even. It just left me feeling guilty that I was enjoying myself while she was unaccounted for after surviving hell.
It's a sobering thought, and when she turns to leave the garage, I reach out for her hand, spinning her around to face me.
“Hey,” I whisper, taking her other hand and pulling them both behind my back so she wraps them around me, before I do the same to her, resting my chin on top of her head.
Fuck, I missed this. Just the feel of her in my arms, the way her body warmth seeks deep into me. I can’t imagine this feeling ever going away, especially when she breathes me in, melting in my arms.
“Seriously, I’ll be fine by myself for a couple of hours. We’re adults, and adults have to work. If I hadn’t quit my job, then I’d be going into the office today too.”
“You quit your job?”
“Yeah, my boss was a bit of a dick. He likes to threaten to fire someone almost every other day as a scare tactic to control his staff. Worked too. Well, on everyone but his assistant. Birdie just dares him to go through with it, knowing damn well he won’t.
That place wouldn’t survive a day without her, and he knows it. ”
“That sounds horrible.”
“Eh, it was a job. Paid the bills, but the second we figured out where you were, it became inconsequential,” I answer honestly, taking her hand once again as we walk toward the house.
“What? How could you do that?”
“Pretty easily it turns out.”
“Charlie, you can’t just quit your job for me.” She shakes her head as we kick off our shoes.
“Why not? It was the easiest decision I ever made, and I mean, if I really want to I can find a new job, but I’m happy to stay home by myself while you guys work for a now.
” Bonnie pauses at something I said, but I keep going.
“So, to answer your original question, yes I plan on doing a few loads of washing. I also want to check in on Jace’s stream and see how he’s going, and I might start editing a few of his videos. ”
“I just…you threw your career away; years spent at university to what? Be a house husband and do laundry?”
This is a serious conversation, I know it is. One that we really need to have, but the only word I heard in all of that was husband, and it has my cock twitching in my pants at the thought of being their husband.
“I’d love to be your house husband and do laundry,” I muse, winking at her, and she lets out the most adorable, frustrated growl.
“Ugh, is that the only part you heard?”
“It’s the only part that mattered.”
“God, you’re such a male!” she hisses out, mimicking strangling me with her hands. “Can you be serious for five fucking minutes, please?”
My amusement evaporates the second I see tears start to fill her eyes. “You haven’t worked it out yet, have you?”
“Worked out what?” she shouts. “You haven’t said shit! All you’ve done is make jokes about doing laundry and staying at home.”
“Bonnie…I didn’t give anything up by quitting my job. My dream was never to work in some shitty office.”
“Then what? What do you want?”
“You! I want you!” I snap, shouting it out louder than I meant to. “All I have ever wanted is you and Jace. I don’t care about some stupid fucking job. As long as I have both of you, I don’t care what I do or where I am.”
“I-I…” she stammers, and we both just stand there, staring at one another, chests heaving and hands trembling. I want to pull her into my arms, but I’m scared it will scare her off…If I haven’t already.
Fuck. This was too much, too soon.
In the smallest voice I’ve ever heard her use, she speaks, avoiding my gaze and looking down at her feet as she does. “I’m not her anymore, Charlie. I…I’m not the same person I used to be.”
Unable to take it anymore, I close the distance between us, my hands cupping her cheeks as I force her eyes to meet mine. “I don’t care,” I say it with as much conviction as I can muster, begging her to understand and believe me. “I’m not the same person I was back then either, neither is Jace.
“That doesn’t stop my soul from screaming out for the both of you. That’s what I love. The very essence of you, and that will never change. No matter what version of us we become, I will love every single one of them. That’s what it means to be soulmates.”
“You still believe in soulmates?”
“With every fibre of my being. It’s what I’ve always believed. Us, that is my dream. It’s just a little bigger now. Now it includes Charlotte, it has since the day I learned you had a baby, years before I even knew her name. And there’s plenty of room for Mitchell too.”
Bringing our foreheads together, I close my eyes. “That is what I want. Us. All of us. As long as I have that, I have the world.”
“I…I want that too.” We stay like that for several long minutes, just breathing each other in until I feel her tense suddenly, and her hands come up to gently grab my wrists, pulling them from her face.
“Years?”
“Hm?”
“You said years before you knew her name…how long have you known about Charlotte?”
Mentally I go back over what I said, realising I did let that slip. Not that I’m trying to hide it from her or anything, it’s just…we’ve already had so many emotionally heavy conversations since we found her.
Is it wrong to want to protect her from more of them? There’s still so much she doesn’t know, so much we don’t know. A part of me just wants to skip to the end, to where we’re happy and healing from everything.
I sigh, knowing the only way to get to that point, is to have these conversations so I slowly nod. “We knew you had a baby, but that’s all we knew. We didn’t know if it was a boy, or a girl, or…” Or if the two of you survived all these years…
“How?”