9. Charlotte
— ? —
Charlotte
I braced my hands against the sink and stared at the mess I had become.
The bathroom mirror showed me exactly what I expected.
Mascara smeared beneath both eyes. Lipstick bleeding past the corners of my mouth.
Hair falling out of its careful twist in pieces.
My uniform was wrinkled where his hands had fisted the fabric, where he had pressed me against the wall, where I had wrapped myself around him like I had any right to want him.
“Stupid,” I said to my reflection. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
The word echoed off the tile. I turned on the faucet and let cold water pool in my palms, then pressed them against my burning cheeks. The shock of it helped. Not much, but enough.
I had told him everything. I had stood in that hallway with his hands on my body and his mouth on my neck and I had given him the one thing I had sworn to keep locked away forever. The truth. The humiliating, devastating truth that I had waited for him in a wedding dress and he had never come.
The tears started again. I pressed my wet hands harder against my face and willed them to stop. They didn’t listen. They never listened anymore.
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the cold tile floor, my knees pulled up to my chest, my back against the bathroom door.
A knock on the door made me flinch.
“Charlotte?” Kiera’s voice, muffled through the wood. “Are you in there?”
I didn’t answer. I pressed my hand over my mouth and tried to breathe through my fingers.
“Charlotte, I know you’re in there. I saw you come in twenty minutes ago.” A pause. “I’m coming in.”
The door pushed against my back. I scrambled to my feet, wiping my face with the back of my hand, trying to look like something other than a complete disaster.
Kiera slipped through the gap and closed the door behind her. She took one look at me and her expression shifted from concern to alarm.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing,” I said. My voice came out rough, wrecked. “I’m fine.”
“You are not fine,” Kiera said. “You look like you just watched someone die.” She stepped closer, her eyes moving over my face, my hair, the state of my uniform. “And your neck. Charlotte, what is that on your neck?”
I pressed my hand to the bruise below my jaw. The one his mouth had left. The evidence of everything I had let happen.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“That’s not nothing,” Kiera said. “That’s a hickey. That’s a very obvious hickey that everyone in that reception is going to see the second you walk back out there.”
“I know,” I said.
“So what the hell happened?” Kiera asked. “You disappeared for almost an hour. Sean’s been asking where you are. And now you’re hiding in the bathroom with a hickey and mascara all over your face.”
“I can’t explain it,” I said.
“Try,” Kiera said.
I looked at her. At her open face and her worried eyes and the way she was standing between me and the door like she was ready to fight whatever had done this to me.
I had spent six months not telling anyone anything. Not about my family. Not about the wedding I had run from or the man I had loved or the life I had burned to the ground. I had kept it all locked inside because keeping it inside felt safer than letting it out.
But I was so tired of carrying it alone.
“I was married,” I said. “Before Newport. Before any of this.”
“Okay,” Kiera said. She didn’t push. She just waited.
“I loved him,” I said. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone.
More than I thought I was capable of loving someone.
We were married almost two years. And he…
” My voice cracked. “He was never there. He was always working, always distracted, always somewhere else. I kept waiting for my husband to show up, and he never did.”
“What happened?” Kiera asked.
“I left him,” I said. “I filed for divorce. I couldn’t keep loving someone who was never there.
And then, about a year after it was final, my family needed money.
” I swallowed. “This other man’s family had it, and I was the price.
An arrangement. Like something out of a period drama.
Except it was real. It was my actual life. ”
“Charlotte,” Kiera said softly.
“I went through with it,” I said. “Most of it. I put on the dress. I walked down the aisle. I stood at the altar and waited for the ceremony to start.” I closed my eyes.
“But I couldn’t do it. I kept looking at the door, waiting for my ex-husband to come stop it.
Waiting for him to finally show up when it mattered, even after everything, even after I was the one who ended us. ”
“Did he?” Kiera asked.
“No,” I said. “He didn’t. So I ran. I left everyone standing there and I got in my car and I drove until I ended up here.”
Kiera was quiet for a long moment. I could feel her processing, could feel her rearranging everything she thought she knew about me.
“The man from before,” she said finally. “He’s here. Isn’t he. At the hotel.”
I nodded.
“The one who’s been staying in the Harbor Suite. Sean keeps talking about him like he’s royalty.”
“Sutton Lynch,” I said.
“And he’s the one who…” She gestured at my neck. At the bruise. At everything.
“Yes,” I said.
“Okay,” Kiera said. She took a breath. Let it out slowly. “Okay. That’s a lot.”
“I know,” I said.
“That’s a whole lot of information to process,” Kiera said. “But we’re going to get through it. You hear me? We’re going to figure this out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out,” I said.
“I told him everything. I told him I waited for him and he never came. I told him I ran because of him. And now he knows, and I can’t take it back, and I have to see him every day for the rest of the summer because he’s staying at this hotel and I work here. ”
“So you told him the truth,” Kiera said. “So what? The truth is the truth. It doesn’t change just because someone else knows it now.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “I spent six months convincing myself I was over him. I built this whole new life. I was finally starting to feel like myself again. And then he walked through those doors and everything fell apart.”
“Did it fall apart?” Kiera asked. “Or did it just get more complicated?”
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
“The difference is that falling apart means you can’t put it back together,” Kiera said. “Complicated just means you have to work harder.” She stepped closer and put her hands on my shoulders. “Look at me. Charlotte. Look at me.”
I looked at her.
“You survived a divorce and an arranged marriage on top of it,” Kiera said.
“You ran away from your entire life. You moved to a town where you didn’t know anyone and you built something from nothing.
You are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met, and I’ve known you for six months without knowing any of this. ”
“I don’t feel strong,” I said.
“Nobody feels strong when they’re falling apart,” Kiera said. “But you’re still standing. You’re still here. That counts for something.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “He’s going to want to talk about it. He’s going to want to explain and apologize and make sense of everything. And I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I can let him back in.”
“Then don’t,” Kiera said. “Not yet. Not until you’re ready. You don’t owe him a conversation just because he wants one.”
“He’s a guest,” I said. “I have to interact with him.”
“You have to be professional,” Kiera said. “You smile, you do your job, you don’t engage with anything personal. That’s it. That’s all you have to do.”
“It’s not that simple,” I said.
“Why not?” Kiera asked.
“Because I still feel things,” I said. The words came out before I could stop them. “I still feel everything I felt before. And I hate it. I hate that he still has that power over me.”
Kiera was quiet for a moment.
“Feelings don’t control you unless you let them. You can feel things and still choose not to act on them.”
“Can I?” I asked.
“You can try,” Kiera said. “And when you fail, because you will fail, because everyone fails, you forgive yourself and you try again. That’s all any of us can do.”
I took a shaky breath. Then another. The panic in my chest was starting to ease, replaced by something that felt almost like calm.
“I need to fix my face,” I said.
“Yeah, you do,” Kiera said. “You look like a raccoon who got into a fight.”
I laughed. It was a weak sound, but it was real.
“Come on,” Kiera said. “I’ve got concealer in my bag. We’ll cover up that hickey and fix your makeup and you’ll go back out there and finish your shift like nothing happened.”
“And tomorrow?” I asked.
“Tomorrow you wake up and you figure out what you want,” Kiera said.
She handed me a makeup wipe and I started cleaning the mascara from under my eyes. My hands were steadier now. My breathing was almost normal.
“Thank you,” I said. “For listening. For not running away screaming.”
“Please,” Kiera said. “My last relationship ended when I found out my boyfriend was also dating my cousin. Your drama is practically wholesome by comparison.”
I stared at her. “Your cousin?”
“My cousin,” Kiera confirmed. “At my grandmother’s funeral. I caught them in the coat closet.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
“Right?” Kiera said. “So trust me when I say your situation could be worse.”
We finished fixing my makeup in silence. Kiera found a scarf in the lost and found that covered the mark on my neck. I twisted my hair back into something resembling professional.
“Ready?” Kiera asked.
“No,” I said. “But I’m going anyway.”
We walked out of the bathroom together. The reception was winding down, guests starting to filter toward the exits, the bride and groom making their rounds to say goodbye. I scanned the room automatically, looking for him.
He was gone.
The spot where he had been standing was empty. No Sutton. No Spencer. No Vivienne with her sharp eyes and her proprietary hands.
I should have felt relieved. Instead I felt something that might have been disappointment.
“See?” Kiera said. “He left. Crisis averted.”
“For now,” I said.