Chapter 24 Charlie
CHARLIE
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” snaps Charlie, trying but failing to stay calm when Tess eventually picks up the phone. “I told you to stay away from her.”
“And I told you that you don’t get to tell me what to do,” says Tess.
“I had one simple request, and that was to stay away from my wife.”
“What can I say?” says Tess. “She seemed like she needed the break, though from what, I can’t imagine.” The barbed snipe hangs in the air.
Charlie’s hackles stand to attention as blood rushes to his head. “Does she know? Have you told her?”
Tess draws out a long sigh, as if she’s enjoying his obvious discomfort. “We’ve been too busy talking about everything that’s wrong with your marriage.” There’s a pause. “Which has been enlightening, to say the least.”
A searing heat rushes to Charlie’s head as he imagines the conversations the two of them might have had, or might be about to have, if he doesn’t find a way to stop them.
It only needs to be one comment, a throwaway remark, and the house of cards that he’s taken such care to balance will come tumbling down.
He’d assumed that it would be a flash of conscience that would see the deck begin to topple.
That one or other of them wouldn’t be able to live with the deceit any longer and feel compelled to purge their secret so that they could live guilt-free.
Though Charlie knew it would never be him to crack, and the disappointment that it might be her drills into the core of his being.
Everything he’d ever worked for balances on the cliff edge.
Would she push him off? Would she jump after him, knowing that her life would never be the same again?
“You need to make your excuses and leave,” he says, almost to himself.
“There you go again, making demands that you have no right to make.”
She’s right. And he shouldn’t be putting her in this position, but it’s so hard to trust that she’s going to do right by Freya.
That she won’t take her to the brink and then push her off the precipice.
He rubs at his beard, knowing that the power’s in Tess’s hands—at least for this weekend—and he’s just a pawn in the game who can only stand on the sidelines and watch it play out.
“But just so you’re clear,” Tess goes on. “I’m not going anywhere. I have a massage booked for tomorrow morning, while your wife goes riding, which she is very much looking forward to, and tomorrow evening, we will be having dinner together and inevitably talk more about why she’s unhappy at home.”
Charlie wonders if he shouldn’t just go back there, drag Freya out, and remind Tess what she’s dealing with.
Because she’s clearly in denial of what’s at stake.
But that’s his fault. If he’d not approached her in the hotel bar that night, he wouldn’t be in this position, feeling as if his world is about to implode.
He’d watched Tess from afar before making his move.
He wasn’t one for knee-jerk reactions, but it had taken all his restraint not to interrupt as she shared a bottle of wine with her friend.
And as soon as she was on her own, having convinced himself he was doing the right thing, he walked over and sat down on the barstool next to her.
“Hi,” he said, looking at her, waiting for her to recognize him.
But if she did, she pretended she didn’t. Tilting her head coquettishly to the side instead.
“Hello,” she purred.
“Can I buy you a drink?” asked Charlie.
She smiled, and he held his breath, hoping he’d got it all wrong.
Maybe she hadn’t actually had any of the wine.
Maybe it was nonalcoholic. It shouldn’t have mattered to him either way, but he’d been affected by the story she’d told at the meeting, and he hated seeing her recovery called into question.
Though what he could do to stop her falling off the wagon, he didn’t know.
“I would love a gin and tonic,” she said, shattering the tiny hope that Charlie was holding on to. “A large one.”
“You heard the lady,” said Charlie to the bartender. “And I’ll get a…” He’d looked at the twinkling optics on the mirrored wall, their liquids a dance of color, their taste on the tip of his tongue. “… lemonade, please.”
“Not a drinker?” Tess asked.
He’d looked at her, gauging how best to play it. “I gave it up a few months back.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Yeah, me too, but it was vastly overrated.”
“You have to be pretty committed,” he said. “It’s not easy.”
He’d wanted to give her a chance to remember him, to know that he understood how hard it was to stay on course when it seemed that everything was working against you. But there was nothing registering other than where the next drink was coming from.
“I’ve got a feeling we’ve met before,” he said. “My name’s Charlie.”
It was a painful watch as the penny slowly fell into place.
“Oh my God,” she choked, the cogs and reels still turning, as she laughably pushed her gin and tonic away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you.”
Charlie’s eyes widened, pretending that he was still catching up. “Oh shit, sorry,” he offered apologetically. “I’ve just realized … it was at the meeting last month, wasn’t it?”
She looked as guilty as if she’d been caught smuggling twenty pounds of Class A across the border. “You were with your wife,” she said, flustered.
“Yeah, Freya.”
“Freya, that’s it.” She looked around furtively. “Is … is she with you?”
He’d shaken his head.
Tess had visibly relaxed, putting her hand on top of Charlie’s—as if in unspoken solidarity. But the look in her eyes suggested it was so much more than that. “You must think the very worst of me,” she said. “After my holier-than-thou vow of repentance.”
“I’m not in a position to judge,” he said. “But if there’s anything I can do to help…?”
A softness had blurred the hard edges of her face as she smiled, and despite himself, a frisson of something had sent an electrical charge to Charlie’s fingertips.
“There might be something you can do,” she said, her wide-set eyes devouring him. He was left in no doubt what she was alluding to.
He grimaced, knowing that taking her up on the offer and going upstairs was the easy part. It was the living with himself afterward where the struggle would lie.
“It would be our little secret,” she said, as if able to hear his conscience.
Charlie knew what he should have said, but stopped himself. “I won’t tell, if you don’t,” he said instead.