Chapter 13 #3
She tipped her head, auburn hair spilling over her shoulder and I tried not to let it distract me. “You mentioned being adopted?”
I nodded. “My parents struggled with infertility for years before they adopted me. I was two. Then about a year later, my mom got pregnant with Kohen.” I paused, searching for the right words to explain something I’d spent most of my life trying not to examine too closely.
“I think my parents worked so hard to make sure I never felt different because I was adopted that Kohen ended up feeling overlooked instead. Not intentionally. But kids notice things.”
Charlotte listened quietly.
“He always resented me,” I continued. “Like I was competition just by existing. Even though there were four years between us in school, he turned everything into a competition. It didn’t matter if it was sports, grades, girls. We fought constantly.”
“How did he react when the scandal happened?”
I considered the question. “He insists that he believes I’m innocent…but he’s made comments.”
Charlotte’s expression sharpened. “What kind of comments?”
“That maybe it was inevitable. Like I’d spent my whole life being the perfect, responsible son—in his eyes—and it was only a matter of time before karma struck.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “That’s a pretty awful thing to say to someone who got framed.”
“It wasn’t really about the scandal.” I stared down at my hands. “Kohen was always the one getting into trouble growing up, and I was the kid my parents held up as the example. I took that role seriously. Too seriously, probably. I think he saw it as me siding with my parents against him.”
“And when your life fell apart...”
“It felt like vindication to him, I suppose. Proof that I wasn’t perfect or better than him. I don’t think he’d put it that way consciously, but the underlying satisfaction was definitely there.”
Charlotte was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “That kind of family dynamic doesn’t just go away.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. “Things are strained with all of us now and I barely see my parents anymore. I can’t shake the feeling that I disappointed them somehow. Like I failed to live up to who they believed I was.”
Charlotte’s gaze softened with empathy. “You can’t disappoint them when it wasn’t your fault,” she said quietly.
“I hope things get better between all of you eventually. Family relationships are messy, but that doesn’t mean they’re beyond repair.
” She hesitated briefly before adding, “I don’t think the people who truly love you stop loving you because your life got complicated.
And for what it’s worth, I think the distance is probably hurting them too. ”
She wasn’t wrong. And maybe that was what hit me the hardest—that Charlotte somehow understood the thing I’d never been able to say out loud to anyone else.
Beneath all the anger and shame, beneath the bitterness and isolation, there had always been this gnawing fear that my family looked at me differently now.
That even if they believed I was innocent, I’d still somehow failed them by becoming the center of something so ugly and public.
But right now, Charlotte wasn’t looking at me like I was broken or tainted. She looked at me like I was someone who was worth vindication, or at the very least someone worth fighting for.
The quiet certainty in her voice loosened something painfully tight in my chest that had been there for the past two years. And God help me, it mattered far more than it should have that she was the one saying it.
Charlotte’s expression suddenly changed, her eyes brightening. “So, you said Kohen needs something to fight against. Have you considered asking him to help you find out who framed you?”
I shook my head. “He’s a cop, like I used to be. The last thing I’d want to do is drag him into my mess and put a target on his back, too.”
Her brows rose in surprise. “He followed you into law enforcement?”
“Yeah, never quite understood why, honestly.” I let out a quiet huff of laughter.
“Growing up, Kohen hated rules. The second someone told him not to do something, he wanted to do it twice just to prove he could. He was always pushing boundaries, always testing limits.” I shrugged.
“Part of me thinks becoming a cop was just another extension of our rivalry. Kohen always had this anything you can do, I can do better attitude when it came to me. Only problem was, he never really wanted the same things I did. I think he just hated the idea of me succeeding at something he couldn’t.
So, in some ways, it wasn’t a huge shock that he became a cop, too. ”
“Maybe he admires you more than he’d ever admit,” Charlotte offered. “Even to himself.”
I considered that. The idea felt foreign—Kohen admiring me?
We’d spent so many years locked in competition that I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a conversation that didn’t carry some undercurrent of tension.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe the rivalry itself was evidence of something he couldn’t quite articulate.
“Maybe,” I conceded. “We’ve never been good at talking about any of this. Discussing feelings isn’t exactly our strong suit.”
“Shocking,” Charlotte said dryly. “Two emotionally repressed men struggling to communicate. Truly unprecedented.”
Despite myself, I laughed. A real laugh, not the bitter approximation I’d gotten used to. Charlotte’s eyes warmed at the sound.
“What?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious.
“Nothing.” But she was smiling. “I just…it’s nice to hear you laugh. Really laugh. I mean, not the sarcastic version.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. The observation felt too intimate, too perceptive. “It’s been a while,” I admitted.
“I know.” Her voice was quiet. “I remember what your laugh sounded like before. At the club, when we first met. You laughed and smiled easily then.”
She looked at me, the look in her eyes both soft and sad.
“Charlotte…” I started, not entirely sure what I was going to say.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, breaking eye contact. “I’m just glad to see glimpses of him again. That’s all.”
The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was charged.
Heavy with things neither of us was ready to say.
I found myself studying her profile, the stubborn set to her jaw, the faint shadows under her eyes that spoke of sleepless nights and relentless worry.
She’d been carrying so much weight. The story.
Ruth’s death. The fear of what Calloway might do to her.
And here she was, sitting on my couch, trying to help me repair my relationship with my brother.
This woman was infuriating. Reckless. Too stubborn for her own good.
But she was also brave and principled and kind. She saw things in me I’d stopped seeing in myself, and despite every reason I had to keep her at arm’s length, I found myself wanting to move closer instead.
Dangerous , I reminded myself. This feeling is dangerous .
But the warning felt hollow. Because somewhere between the angry confrontations and the grudging confessions, between the grief we’d shared and the truths we’d finally spoken aloud, Charlotte Massey had stopped being the woman who’d ruined my life.
She’d become something else entirely. Not the ruthless journalist from the headlines in my head. Not the woman I’d blamed for every shattered piece of my life.
Now, when I looked at Charlotte, I saw the woman who carried old wounds behind relentless determination.
The woman who chased the truth because she’d grown up surrounded by lies.
The woman who’d sat beside me tonight and listened instead of judging.
Who’d looked at my broken relationship with my family and somehow managed to ease a fear I’d been carrying for years without even realizing it.
I saw her vulnerability now. Her loneliness. Her stubborn integrity. And it made me want to protect those fragile parts she’d shared with me instead of weaponizing them against her.
She reached for the TV remote, turning it on and flipping through channels with the casual ease of someone settling in for the evening. The domesticity of it wasn’t lost on me. The two of us on this couch, nowhere to go and nothing to do but exist in each other’s space.
I should have felt trapped. Restless. Eager for this assignment to end so I could return to the solitary life I’d created for myself after everything fell apart.
Instead, I felt something alarmingly close to contentment, because the woman I’d spent the past two years hating was quietly becoming the thing I wanted the most.