Chapter Twenty-Nine
CHARLIE
Asoft snore stirred me awake—sharp, wheezy, unmistakably canine—and it took me a second to remember where I was.
The candles were still burning low across the windowsill, casting slow, warm shadows across the living room.
The TV screen had frozen on the credits, some long forgotten names glowing white on black.
I eased back and glanced toward the sound.
Tally was curled on the couch, one arm folded beneath her, the other resting over the small rise of her stomach.
Her legs tucked in, her body turned inward, as if she could protect what she loved by keeping it close.
Nancy Reagan slept in a ball at her feet, snoring with the kind of raspy determination only an old poodle could muster.
I should’ve woken her and told her to move to the bed to get some proper rest. But instead I sat there, watching her sleep in the flickering candlelight, caught in a silence that felt too sacred to break.
It was strange what a handful of days could do. How we had teetered on the edge of this for months, and now it was finally here, and nothing in the world felt more comfortable than this moment between us.
She’d swept into my life like a tornado, shaking the foundation that I’d been so proud to stand so firmly on, knocking down the walls that I’d spent so long trying to keep up, keeping everyone in my life tucked safe inside.
Tally Aden didn’t just rattle those walls. She made me want to knock them down and look at all the parts of myself I’d kept sealed off, too busy taking care of everyone else to wonder if I even liked the life I’d built for myself.
She wasn’t fixing me. That wasn’t her job. But somehow, in her messy, relentless way, she was changing my heart, one day at a time.
I could have watched her sleep all night, but the thought made me sound a little less like a man teetering on the verge of falling for this woman and a little more like a serial killer, so I gently nudged her awake.
“Why don’t you lie in bed, baby girl?” I said as she stirred, my voice still rough from sleep.
She blinked up at me, slow and sweet, the corner of her mouth curling toward a smile.
Her sweater hung loose off one shoulder, and everything about her in that moment—rumpled, flushed, impossibly soft—pulled at my chest.
“It’s pretty late,” I added, half hoping she’d take the hint, half terrified she might.
Tally stretched, arms overhead, her hand brushing against mine before dropping into her lap. When she met my gaze, I saw it. That shadow of desire—unspoken, but clear as day. A beat of silence settled between us, heavy with this impossible thing we kept circling, never quite brave enough to touch.
Then she nodded, quietly. “Yeah. Okay.”
She stood, gave me one last glance that should’ve been illegal, and padded down the hall with Nancy trailing behind her, tail swishing like she knew she’d won her mother all to herself.
I stood there for a second too long in the stillness, then turned, blew out the last of the candles, and lowered myself onto the too-small loveseat that had already wrecked the left side of my body that week.
She wasn’t even in the room anymore, and I still felt the echo of her—her laugh, her breath on my neck from earlier, her hand in mine as we walked home. I closed my eyes and saw her smile, the way she’d looked at me under that damn gazebo, rain clinging to her lashes.
The cushions were lumpy, the expensive—probably cashmere—throw blanket barely covered my chest, and the streetlight outside was flickering maddeningly, casting a disco ball–like stream of light over the living room.
But the worst part—the absolute worst part—was knowing she was right down the hall, tucked into bed, that soft, delicate sweater wrapped around her in a way that I wanted to be.
And I couldn’t stop imagining what it would feel like to crawl in beside her, to pull her close, and pretend we had more than this borrowed, strange moment between us.
***
Before the sky even thought about lighting, I was already up, elbow-deep in Doyle and Jordan’s junk drawer, sorting things that didn’t need sorting.
The acrylic containers were already lined up like a showroom display, but I rearranged them anyway—tape rolls by size, post-its by color family, pens laid out in neat rows, even though I was pretty sure half of them didn’t actually work.
It didn’t do a damn thing to calm me down.
I was halfway through debating whether to alphabetize the spice rack or kick open her door and show her, in great detail, what other fun things my mouth could do, when I heard the faint click of claws on tile.
Nancy entered first, her nails tapping out a disapproving rhythm, as if she could read my thoughts.
Tally followed a few seconds later, hair shoved into a messy knot, one sleeve falling off her shoulder, eyes still puffy from sleep.
She didn’t say anything as she stood there watching me crouched over a drawer, every nerve on edge, trying to remember why I cared so damn much.
And then her expression eased, barely enough to notice. Not a smile, not even softness really—just a little looser around the edges. Whatever it was made her look less like she was already halfway out the door. For the first time since she got here, it felt like she wasn’t passing through anymore.
But whatever that moment was, it flashed and vanished.
“Doyle’ll be back soon,” she said, heading to the fridge like this was any other morning. “Guess that means you’ll be off the hook. What’ll you do with yourself once I’m out of your hair and everything goes back to normal?”
She said it breezily, but tension ran beneath the words. A thread pulled tight, waiting to snap. She was daring me to open my mouth, to admit I didn’t want her to leave.
I squared my shoulders, bracing myself with a hand on the counter. When she looked at me again, her gaze lingered for a heartbeat on my chest, and the look she gave me this time wasn’t quite teasing. It had teeth.
And because I’m a dumbass, I opened my mouth and said the worst possible thing.
“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”
Her expression froze long enough to register the hit. Then she blinked and reached for a glass like I hadn’t just punched her with my insecurity.
“Pretty sure everyone knows what happened when Nick showed up here a few weeks ago,” she said. “So, no. No boyfriend.”
“Right.” My voice came out rougher than I meant it. “So then, there’s not someone here, in Savannah? That you went to coffee with not that long ago.”
She stopped mid-motion, the glass in her hand barely hanging on. “Come again?”
“At Savannah Coffee Roasters. Sutton said you were… canoodling. With someone.”
Her stare went flat. Then she barked out a laugh so loud it bounced off the marble backsplash.
“Canoodling? Jesus, Charlie. That was Dig. We were having one of those bestie moments in front of the fireplace, and Sutton happened to walk by. But, no, definitely not canoodling. Unless you count having to listen to Dig recite a monologue about a misbehaving crawfish as foreplay.”
I dragged a hand across the back of my neck, still standing there like I’d forgotten how conversation worked. Idiot didn’t even begin to cover it.
Tally had almost reached the lanai before she stopped. She turned slowly, arms folded tight across her chest, mouth set in that unreadable way she had when she was either about to tear me apart or crack a joke.
“So let me get this straight,” she said, voice calm but with an edge enough to slice me clean.
“You chased me through the streets in the rain, kissed me under a gazebo like we were starring in a Nicholas Sparks fever dream, spent half the night looking at me like you were trying to crawl in my pants and set up shop there—and that whole time, you thought I had a boyfriend?”
I opened my mouth. Not a single word made it out.
She didn’t look mad. Not exactly. She looked amused. Dangerous.
“You ever think to just, I don’t know, ask me?”
I blinked. “Guess I didn’t want the answer.”
She let that hang there for a second, tilting her head like she was trying to figure out what part of me was most emotionally constipated.
Then she grinned. Slow. Familiar. A little smug.
“You’ve got it bad,” she said, already stepping backward through the open door. “And trust me—I can smell that sort of thing from a mile away.”
She wasn’t wrong.
I followed her out onto the patio, the tile warm from the morning sun.
The light caught her in a way that made her look almost otherworldly—hair haloed, the river spread out behind her, the Talmadge Bridge standing tall in the distance.
She rested one hand on the curve of her belly, fingers curling there like it was the most natural thing in the world, her gaze fixed on the horizon as if it might give her the answer to some question she hadn’t asked out loud.
I wanted to be the one with a camera in that moment, wanted to catch her exactly like this, so I could look at it later and remember the ache in my chest.
“Would you think me forward if I asked a question?”
She didn’t look away from the water. “You’ve asked me a lot of questions, Charlie. What’s so different about this one?”
I came to stand beside her, leaning my elbows on the railing. “Do you plan on staying? In Savannah, I mean.”
Her eyes stayed on the river. The silence stretched long enough that I wondered if she’d answer at all. When she finally turned toward me, it was slow, deliberate.
“I have a problem… staying places.”
I let out a short laugh. “Care to elaborate?”
She crossed to the iron chair and sank into it, the sun sliding across her face. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve always thought that when I found where I’m supposed to be, I’d know it. Like everything would somehow click into place, and I’d be home.”
I sat down next to her, my arm brushing the back of her chair. “I can’t say I get that. I was born eighteen miles from here and never really left. My whole life is here. Everyone I love is here. Savannah’s as much a part of me as I am of it.”
She set her hand in mine, light and tentative, and looked down at the swell of her stomach. “I’ve never felt that before. But it’s all so different now.”
I knew what she meant in ways she probably didn’t expect because the thing that was different for her was changing me, too, in ways I hadn’t planned for.
“I thought Nick was different,” she said, her gaze flicking toward me like she was checking for signs I might pull away.
I didn’t move. I wanted to hear her out.
“But before him, I’d fallen in love in Australia—hard.
The kind you don’t bounce back from quickly.
He wanted the wild, table-dancing version of me, the one who stayed out all night.
But I got tired of that. I wanted something more… steady.”
Her voice trailed, and she smoothed her hand over her thigh.
“When I went back to New York, Nick and I became friends first. I guess I didn’t realize he was more of a rebound than anything real.
Or that he was telling me what I wanted to hear to get what he wanted.
He got it, and then… well, you know the rest.”
I studied her, the light shifting on her face, the small set of her jaw. “So he didn’t see the real you. He saw the version you let him see.”
She tilted her head toward the river again, the bridge holding steady in the distance. “Most people start out loving the wild version of me. But eventually, they want less. Or more. And then they try to change me into the person they wanted all along. Like they just… settled with me.”
Without thinking, I reached up and brushed a tear from her cheek. “Only a fool would call it settling with you, Tal.”
She gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and I gave her one back anyway.
“I see you, Tally,” I said, my voice low, careful.
“You keep asking for someone to love you, but don’t you see?
You are love. You smile at strangers. You wave to babies.
You cry when old couples walk by holding hands.
You whisper prayers when an ambulance passes.
You cheer for people, even when they don’t cheer for you.
You make space for those who feel like there’s no room left in the world for them at all. ”
Her eyes blinked, holding mine, and I could see it land—like she was letting herself hear it, really hear it.
“Can I tell you a secret, Charlie?” Her voice was quiet, almost unsure. “I think motherhood is going to change me more than anyone or anything else ever could. And that scares the shit out of me.”
It might change her. Or it could take the wild parts of her and shape them into the best kind of mother this baby could ever have. But she was already changing, rooting herself into this city, into this life, whether she knew it or not. We were all watering her in our own ways, little by little.
“They’ll never be bored, that’s for sure,” she sighed.
And right then, I hoped I never would be either.