Epilogue #4
“Hey, just give me one second,” Charlotte said, bouncing across the living room to grab her messenger bag and shoving a book and her laptop into it.
The guy stood in the doorway, offering me a wave and a “Sir” that was meant to be respectful but didn’t soften my urge to stride across the room, shove him into the hall, and demand he leave my niece alone.
“We’re just going to the bookstore to study,” Charlotte announced. “I’ll be back for dinner. Ready to get that D up to a respectable B?” she asked, breezing past the guy.
Then she was gone, with the kid trailing behind her with a small smile tugging at his lips.
I didn’t realize a growl escaped me until Alara whipped over the back of the couch, eyes and mouth wide.
“Do you know who that was?”
“I don’t think I want to.”
“Oh, please, your hand is already in your pocket, texting Zeno to run a background check on him.”
That wasn’t a bad idea.
“Who is it?”
“That was Asher Morgan.”
“I’m supposed to know who that is?”
“The boy Charlotte had to do a book report with five years ago. God, she bossed the hell out of him to get him to participate. And he clearly kind of liked it.”
“I remember the book report.” And commiserating with Liam that neither of us liked the kid she worked with. “But I haven’t really heard her mention him since.”
“Oh, she has. In passing. He’s the most popular kid in school. Baseball star, prom king, musician. He’s the guy all girls drool over in school.”
“I don’t think that’s Charlotte’s type.”
As much as I hated it, she’d had two somewhat serious boyfriends throughout high school. Both of whom were quiet and somewhat nerdy. Neither had been able to meet my eye when they were around.
She’d never shown any interest in a popular jock who’d probably slept his way through all the popular girls in their grade.
“Oh, please.”
“What? Her boyfriends were book and drama types.”
“Still. That guy is everyone’s type. And he knows it. And while she clearly isn’t interested—yet—he is.”
“She’s just tutoring him.” She’d done it a lot over the years, making a little extra book money doing it.
“Right. And the jock has never fallen for the bookish, quietly gorgeous tutor. That’s not a common trope or anything.”
“This is real life, not a book.” I paused. “And I don’t want her with that kind of guy.”
“She would walk him like a dog, and he would wait happily to be leashed again.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You’re her uncle. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to like it.”
“You’re her aunt.”
“Yeah, but I will always root for the love plot. She’s a grown-up now,” Alara reminded me.
“Don’t say that. She’s still twelve years old and begging to go get sweet treats.”
“I’m sure she is still getting sweet treats,” Alara said. “But she’s letting other men buy them now. How come you never care about Liam’s conquests?”
“Because I trust him to be up-front about his intentions and respectful of boundaries. That guy? I can’t say the same about him.”
“You know what we can say? That Charlotte is smart, savvy, mature, and perfectly capable of making her own decisions. So, let’s take comfort in that. And her black belt,” Alara added.
Like everything else she set her mind to, Alara had thrown herself into martial arts with a fury, taking twice as many classes as the other kids her age, and forcing all the kids in the family to grapple with her for practice. She’d advanced with lightning speed.
An image flashed across my mind of her last competition, where she’d flipped a guy almost twice her size over her shoulder without breaking a sweat.
“That thing was worth its weight in gold.”
“Exactly. So, she totally has this under control,” Alara reminded me. “I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing,” she told me as she came toward me.
“What should I be focusing on then?”
“That we have the apartment all to ourselves. And I have a spicy scene I want to recreate.” She ran her hands up my chest.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yep,” she said, grabbing my tie and dragging me to the bedroom.
Alara - 10 years
The door chimed as I was sticking a creepy old porcelain doll statue in the back of the store, where it couldn’t leer at me anymore.
I turned it so it was nearly staring at the wall, then made my way into the center aisle to see who’d come in.
Only to let out a squeal I wouldn’t have thought I was capable of until that moment.
Because Charlotte was home.
From freaking England.
Where she’d been living and studying for the past four years.
We’d seen her here and there, of course. When she visited home. When we ventured over the pond.
But this was different.
She was home-home.
For good.
She was done with university, and she was back to strike out on her adult life with her shiny new public relations degree.
She’d shocked the whole Costa family (and me more than anyone) when she hadn’t gone into something that had to do with books.
But she’d shown wisdom beyond her years when she shrugged and told me, “I think when we monetize our passions, we lose our love for them a little bit. I want to keep books special. So I don’t want to make them my job.”
I understood her logic and was happy for her to keep her passions while pursuing a career she would find fulfilling and, I hoped, profitable.
Apparently, while working on her degree, she’d built a little name for herself by managing the public relations for several small-time celebrities and influencers, spinning bad media, giving them shiny new reputations.
I had every bit of faith that she would be at the top of the list of the best PR specialists in no time.
“Oh my God!”
I flew at her, sending her back a step as our arms went around each other.
“Why didn’t you have us come pick you up? No. That doesn’t matter. Which bookstore are we hitting up first? That’s the question.”
“The Strand, obviously,” she said as we pulled back. “I haven’t gotten a new mug from them in almost five years.”
“They have so many new totes too.”
“Well, then I need—” she started but trailed off as she looked at the TV behind me.
“Just weeks after seeming to put his last PR nightmare behind him, baseball bad boy Asher Morgan is making headlines again…”
The B-roll was a mix of posing shots of baseball’s golden boy smiling for cameras, playing on the field, and walking red carpets, spliced with recordings of him breaking equipment, stumbling out of clubs with female celebrities, and a viral clip of him in a fistfight just a few weeks back.
I glanced back at Charlotte, trying to gauge her interest.
I never did get a full explanation of what went on with her and Asher in their senior year, where she was tutoring him so he didn’t get kicked off the team.
But I got a feeling that it had progressed beyond something casual.
Though maybe not fully to something romantic.
There’d been no red-rimmed eyes or sad music playing.
One day, she stopped saying his name and never seemed to think of him again.
Everything about how she was watching the screen, though, made me think that I was wrong about the last part.
I let her finish watching the story, but I chose not to harp on it.
“Does your uncle know you’re back yet?”
“Nope.”
“Liam?”
“Nope. I wanted to see you first.”
God, this girl.
I loved her more than I could have known was possible. The bond had become more like friends in the past few years as she built a life away from home. And I was living for the new dynamic.
“Well, I think I need to close up the shop so we can get a sweet treat and then spend an ungodly amount of your uncle’s money on books and merch.”
“See? That’s why you were my first stop,” she said, linking her arm with mine as we walked out of the shop.
Our plans were thwarted, though, when we nearly collided with Christopher and Liam as they made their way toward the store.
The years had changed Liam a lot. Gone was that boyishness that had clung to him for a long time, chiseling out his jaw and hollowing out his cheekbones.
He looked so much like Christopher at times that it seemed strange that they were only uncle and nephew, not father and son.
Especially now that Liam had adopted the Costa capo’s uniform of fancy, well-tailored suits and expensive jewelry.
“Char?” Liam rushed forward, grabbing his sister and lifting her off her feet as he squeezed her so hard I was shocked she didn’t burst.
“Surprise!” she said as she was set back on her feet, only to be enveloped by her uncle.
“You’re back. For good, right?” Liam asked.
“Yep. Ready to start my first big-girl job at one of the best PR firms in the city,” she said, puffing up a little.
“Well,” Liam said, throwing his arm over her shoulders. “Then I think I owe you a sweet treat to celebrate.”
They started off ahead of us as I moved in beside Christopher, sliding an arm around his waist.
“It feels right,” I said.
“What does?”
“Being all together again.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, pulling me into him to press a kiss to the top of my head. “It does.”
“We did something pretty cool here,” I said as we started to follow the kids who weren’t kids at all anymore.
“Yeah, yeah, we did.”
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