Chapter 13 #4
Reeze looked at the two men who had already been separated.
“You’ve already sorted it.”
“Yep.”
He stared at Billy while Billy calmly took another drink from his beer.
“Rollo thought we should interrupt you before the rest of the pub got a hard-on.”
Mark snorted and Jocke burst out laughing.
Reeze seriously considered punching Billy.
“I hope someone runs you over with a truck.”
“Love looks different to different people.”
“Billy.”
“I’m just saying, people had started taking bets on how long you’d stay in there.”
“No one fucking did.”
“All right, Tony did.”
“That’s almost worse.”
Rollo arrived before Billy could continue.
“Leave him alone.”
“Thanks,” Reeze muttered.
“Wasn’t for your sake.”
Rollo glanced at the two men who were still swearing at each other.
“We would’ve stopped this anyway.”
“Exactly my fucking point.”
“I know.” Rollo nodded towards the door leading out to the yard. “Come on. I need a word.”
Something in his tone made Reeze take his attention off Billy.
“About what?”
“The delivery.” That was enough.
Reeze followed him outside while the noise in the garage carried on behind them and Billy had already begun explaining to someone that he still thought his theory about the entire pub getting a hard-on had been perfectly reasonable.
When Reeze returned, he could hear the music from the bar before he even reached the room. Someone laughed farther away and a door slammed hard enough to make the walls vibrate faintly.
He opened the door and, at first, thought Charlie had fallen asleep.
Then he saw her. She was sitting in the far corner of the bed with the covers wrapped tightly around her and her phone clutched in one hand. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, but she didn’t appear to be reading it any more. She was simply staring. Something cold moved through him.
“Charlie?”
She flinched as though she hadn’t heard him enter, and the moment she looked up, he knew something was wrong. She wasn’t crying, not yet, but that alert tension was back, the one he had seen flicker through her before whenever she was startled or someone unfamiliar came too close.
Reeze crossed the room in a few strides.
“What happened?”
Charlie swallowed and handed him the phone without saying anything.
He took it and read the message. Something inside him went completely still.
Outside, another burst of laughter came through the wall and someone shouted for more beer.
Life in the clubhouse continued exactly as it had before while the words on the screen seemed to burn themselves into his eyes.
I see you, Charlie. Always.
He read it once more before putting the phone down on the bedside table.
“He wrote to me,” she whispered.
Her voice sounded thin and unfamiliar.
“I saw.”
She pulled the blanket more tightly around herself.
“I knew he’d do it sooner or later.”
Reeze sat down on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through his hair. Only a few minutes earlier he had been outside with Rollo discussing club business after listening to Billy run his mouth and two half-drunk idiots shout at one another. It had been a perfectly normal evening.
Now the air in the room suddenly felt heavier.
Charlie wasn’t looking at him any more. Her gaze had fixed on the wall beyond his shoulder as though part of her had already gone somewhere else.
“Hey.”
He waited until she reacted.
“Look at me.”
It took several seconds before she finally met his eyes.
“He isn’t here.”
She tried to smile and failed.
“Not yet.”
Those two words cut straight through him.
Reeze took her hand and pulled her closer, and only then did she seem to realise how badly she was shaking. He could feel it through her fingers as they closed around his shirt as though she needed something solid to hold on to.
“Charlie.”
She closed her eyes. “I hate that he can still do this to me.”
“I know.”
“It doesn’t matter how far away I move or how many times I change my number. One message is enough and suddenly it feels like he’s standing right behind me again.”
Reeze didn’t answer immediately. He simply pulled her against him and felt her fold into his body without resistance, as though she was too tired to keep holding herself together.
Outside, someone was still laughing at a joke that apparently became funnier with every beer, but the sound seemed very far away now.
“Listen to me,” he said quietly.
Charlie didn’t move.
“You’re never dealing with this alone again.”
Her breath trembled against his neck. “Do you promise?”
The question was so quiet he almost missed it. Reeze rested his cheek against her hair. “Yeah.”
There was no quick joke afterwards, no flirting and none of the easy words that had come so naturally between them over the past few days.
Just the promise.
When Charlie finally began to cry, she did it with her face buried against his shoulder. Reeze didn’t try to quieten her or make her stop. He simply stayed where he was with his arms around her while the night carried on and the clubhouse lived its life on the other side of the walls.
And he held her for as long as she needed.