22. Charlie
“Before we start today.” Their TA gestured to the screen behind him. “The window to apply for the Lighthouse Fellowship is closing.” He surveyed the room of potential writers, eyes pausing on Charlie. “There’s a lot of talent in this room.”
Charlie’s phone buzzed on the table. Skylar’s gaze pressed against the side of his face as he picked the device up, his father’s name pulsing against his palm.
The man had impeccable timing. The buzzing eventually ended and Charlie concentrated on the girl with the pink hair about to read her assignment out loud.
This was Charlie’s favorite hour of all his classes, and his father wouldn’t ruin this precious time. He listened to the girl’s story of a teacher who encouraged her writing, and Charlie swung between admiring the piece and rewriting it in his head.
Before she finished, his phone vibrated again. Then again and again. His molars locked and he held the power button until the screen went black and the vibration died in his fist.
Twenty minutes later, a knock interrupted the class.
Dean Fairchild’s assistant scanned the room until her gaze landed on him. “Mr. Carnell. May I borrow you?”
Fifteen heads turned and Skylar’s fingers froze above her keyboard.
Charlie closed his laptop and stepped into the hallway.
“Your father contacted the Dean’s office. He urgently needs you to call him.” She put a hand on Charlie’s arm. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
Charlie pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and held the pressure until the taste of copper faded. “Thank you.”
As she retreated down the corridor, he turned the phone back on and dialed. His father picked up halfway through the second ring.
“Finally.” His father’s voice echoed off the walls of the corner office at Carnell headquarters, and Charlie knew he stood at the window that overlooked the fleet of sports cars in the showroom below. “I’ve been calling for forty minutes.”
Charlie kept his voice level. “I was in class.”
“This is more important than that writing foolishness.” His father’s shoes struck the office’s hardwood in a metronome rhythm.
“I’ve arranged an interview for you tomorrow morning.
The Channel 8 sports desk is doing a series on senior athletes entering the draft.
This is the perfect opportunity to show the Morisson Group that you have what it takes to be a brand ambassador nationwide. ”
“I’m reviewing tapes tomorrow with Coach.”
“You’ll be live at 8:45. Coach can wait.”
The cinder block pressed cold between Charlie’s shoulder blades. “But you said…”
“My publicist drafted answers to their questions. I’m sending them to you. A team from Wren the tool made only for destruction.
He thought about his father calling the Dean’s office because a twenty-two-year-old man had silenced his phone during class.
The sledgehammer came down on the printer and the casing split wide open. The impact traveled up through his arms and eased a knot at the base of his skull that had lived there so long he’d mistaken the tension for bone.
The second swing caught the wooden chair and the remaining legs splintered across the concrete. His throat opened. A sound tore from his chest, raw and ragged. The scream of a boy who chose football at eight to make his parents stop fighting and never chose for himself again.
Skylar smashed a bottle against the wall behind him. “This one’s for the Dean’s assistant having to walk across campus to deliver your father’s messages.”
He swung again. Glass exploded. The picture frames cracked. Each impact sent vibration humming through his forearms, clean and bright, the physical opposite of suppression. For the first time in months the pressure behind his ribs moved outward instead of deeper.
His eyes burned. He blinked and moisture tracked hot down his face.
The tears arrived without permission and he didn’t press them back.
He swung through them. The sledgehammer caught another bottle and the glass scattered like ice across the concrete and the tears kept falling and the swinging kept going and for the first time in years, Charlie Carnell allowed every degree of his own fury to tear through him without reaching for the mantra that would shut it down.
The sledgehammer slipped from his fingers. His arms hung at his sides, shaking. His breath came in heaves that rattled his lungs.
Ceramic powder coated his coveralls. The air tasted of plaster and the sharp chemical smell of broken electronics.
Skylar came to his side, her hand on the back of his neck, warm and steady. “You’re okay.”
His forehead dropped against her shoulder and her arms came around him, solid and unhurried, and neither of them spoke while his breathing slowed and the shaking worked its way out of his muscles in long, uneven waves.
“Pretty awesome, right?”
Charlie closed his eyes and let her warmth fill the spaces the fury had emptied. The tightness through his torso loosened. His teeth unclenched for the first time in weeks. His hands, when he turned them over, trembled with exhaustion instead of suppression. The relief was real.
After fourteen years, the backlog behind his ribs had a little more room. The woman who had given him that room tasted, when he pressed his lips to her temple without thinking, like permission.
The evidence of his own violence scattered across every surface and a question pressed against Charlie’s consciousness. Could the man who’d destroyed this room be brave enough to carry this feeling outside the padded walls and safety goggles?