33. Charlie
December air bit through his jacket as he crossed the porch, hand hovering over the door.
His stomach pulled tight against his spine.
Every step across the porch brought him closer to the door and further from the version of himself that could still pretend the damage was survivable from a distance.
He owed her his face. Whatever she needed to say to that face, he owed her the stillness to hear it.
One thing remained.
He knocked.
Footsteps approached, the lock turned, and Skylar stood in the frame wearing a sweater he didn’t recognize, her dark hair loose, one hand gripping the door.
Her eyes found his.
Gold. Warm, liquid, unbearably present.
The breath Charlie had been holding for nine days released in a single, unsteady exhale. “Skylar.”
“Thanks for coming.”
His skin crawled. The sight of her whitened knuckles on the door undid him, because he put the grip there. He was the reason this woman held on to the wood between them like she needed the barrier.
She stepped back. “Do you want to come in?”
Her invitation unlocked a muscle at the base of his skull, the relief so sudden his vision swam.
Skylar crossed to the kitchen counter before he’d finished closing the door. Arms folded over her chest, spine pressed against the edge, chin level. But her eyes stayed amber, and that color kept his knees from buckling.
“I’m so sorry I hurt you.” The apology came slow, each word set down with the care of a man who’d practiced them and still didn’t trust them to land.
“It’s the thing I’ve been terrified of my entire life.
Hurting the person I love the way my father hurt my mother.
Then I stood in that room and I became my worst nightmare. ”
Skylar’s arms tightened across her ribs.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been running a play on myself.
Next play, move on, don’t look back. Every time my father raised his voice, next play.
I get hurt, next play. Never stop moving, never let the feelings catch up, never let anyone close enough to see what I’m running from.
” He flexed his fingers. “Then you happened. You showed me what it was like to live without flinching. To laugh without calculating the cost. To say something honest and not brace for the punishment.” His hands hung at his sides.
“Feeling things again scared me. But feeling things with you was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Then why did you use them against me?” Her arms tightened but her jaw held steady, and the steadiness was worse than any shout.
Charlie closed his eyes. When he opened them, he let her see everything.
“After the game, when my father was tearing into me, you stepped between us. You defended me. No one has done that since my mother left.” Charlie’s esophagus constricted.
“You can’t fathom how much that meant.” He swallowed.
“Then he turned on you and all my suppression methods disintegrated. The rage I’ve carried for years broke loose.
I heard his rage coming out of my mouth.
Aimed at you. The person who had just tried to protect me. ”
His hands opened wider, as if the gesture could show her how empty the fury had left him.
“I’m sorry. More than I will ever be able to put into words.
” He inhaled. The words he’d practiced in Dr. Linden’s office, the ones that cost him more than any sentence he’d ever written, pressed against his teeth.
“But I’m not sorry I got angry. My therapist and my friends are teaching me that anger is a natural emotion.
It’s allowed to exist.” He bit the inside of his cheek.
“What I did with the anger is what I’m sorry for.
I turned your grief into a weapon, and I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that. ”
A muscle in Skylar’s jaw flexed. “Your therapist?”
“Grant’s sister suggested Dr. Linden and we talked .
. . a lot.” He swallowed past the tightness.
“My whole life, I tried to protect the people around me by smoothing over the bumps and crack, be Good Time Charlie, bury anything that caused friction.” He rubbed the base of his neck.
“The therapist is showing me that you can’t dismiss your emotions.
You have to sit inside them until you understand what they’re telling you.
But you do that without turning the people you love into targets. ”
He straightened. “I’m done hiding. From my mom on our calls where we both pretend everything is fine.
From my father’s blueprint for a son I never wanted to be.
From the woman I love who showed me I was worth knowing without the facade.
” He held her gaze. “I understand if I broke what we had, but if you can see a way to forgive me, I will never be that way with you again. I only want to protect you. That’s the only thing I ever wanted. ”
The radiator ticked. Charlie’s pulse counted the seconds between each tick, and every second she didn’t speak was a second the floor could still open beneath him.
“Thank you for explaining.” The gold in her irises shimmered, wet, and she blinked twice, fast. “I need to tell you a few things too.” Skylar’s hand went to her collarbone, the reflexive touch he’d seen a hundred times, the gesture that meant the next words would cost her.
“I was so busy protecting myself from getting hurt that I guaranteed I would get hurt. Your father told me at the gala that I had an expiration date.”
The blood drained from Charlie’s face. “He said what?”
“He reminded me of your previous girlfriends, how they didn’t last more than a few months. That I should enjoy the ride while it lasted.”
Fury climbed Charlie’s throat, hot and immediate, the old fire that belonged to his father’s name.
He caught the fury before it reached his jaw.
Named it the way Dr. Linden taught him. Anger.
At my father. For poisoning the person I love.
He let the anger exist without letting the anger drive.
Skylar’s chin lifted. “I couldn’t believe I was different.
Every good morning, every Wednesday at the diner, every night you read to me on that couch, I filed under temporary.
I spent weeks waiting for the clock to run out. ”
Every moment he’d believed was real, she’d been counting down. The ache behind his ribs went so deep it found bone.
“There is no expiration date.” He crossed the space between them.
“There has never been an expiration date. Not for a day. Not for a semester. Not for any version of the timeline I’ve imagined since the day of the football photoshoot and I got to hold you without guilt, never wanting the moment to end.
” Another step. “You’re not a phase. You’re not temporary.
You’re the rest of my life, if you’ll let me earn it. ”
Skylar went still.
“It wasn’t just the expiration date.” Her gaze dropped to the counter. “I told myself I didn’t belong in your world. That the money and the condo and the cars made us fundamentally different. I used every dollar you spent as proof that I was right to keep one foot out the door.”
“Money has never mattered to me.”
Her mouth twisted. “Spoken like a man who’s had money his entire life.”
Charlie absorbed the hit. She wasn’t wrong. He’d never worried about a bus pass or a charger that sparked or an electrical panel that could kill his grandmother in her sleep. The gap between their lives was real, and pretending otherwise was its own kind of dishonesty.
“You’re right. I can’t pretend I understand what money means to you, because I’ve never been without it.
” He closed the distance between them by another half step, careful not to crowd her.
Enough that the next words belonged only to her.
“But I need you to hear me. I never looked at you and calculated what you were worth. I looked at you and saw the bravest person I’d ever met, and the only thing I wanted to do was make your life easier because you were running yourself into the ground trying to carry everything alone. I saw someone who I wanted to help.”
Skylar’s jaw trembled. The defiance held for another beat, then the muscles in her face softened. “Turns out I’m not good at accepting help.”
Charlie let out a sharp laugh. “Seems we have that in common.”
She held his gaze for a long beat. Then she turned and reached beneath the kitchen counter. When she straightened, she held a leather-bound album, the cover a simple, dark brown.
“I made this for you.” Skylar held the album against her chest, her fingers pressed white against the leather. “Because I wanted you to see yourself the way I see you.”
She extended both arms and placed the album in his hands.
Charlie’s fingers trembled as he turned the cover.
The first photograph stopped his breath.
Him at the diner, elbows on the counter, writing on his phone.
He remembered that night, the assignment he couldn’t crack, and he had not known a camera was anywhere near him.
That was the thing his ribs caught on. He hadn’t been performing.
He never performed when he wrote, because writing was the one place he forgot to.
He turned the page. On the couch at his condo, laptop open, lost in a sentence.
The locker room with Grant and Booker, mid-laugh, his whole face undefended in a way he never allowed it in front of a lens.
His whole life, cameras had found the version of him his father built.
She had pointed hers at the version he kept hidden and pressed the shutter anyway.