Page 28 of Dirty Mind
Icouldn’t believe I’d lost it like that. I’d been swearing, pounding the tile beside her head while unleashing on her, and after my meltdown, she… held me. Kissed me. Looked me in the eye like I wasn’t some kind of monster, but a man who just needed her. And goddamn did I need this woman.
I dropped my head into my hands. What the hell was happening to me? I couldn’t be falling for Charli. That would be the worst mistake I could possibly make. She was the little sister and sister-in-law of two of my best friends. I didn’t want to lose Knox and Cece. And I sure as hell didn’t want to hurt this sweet woman who’d just bared her soul to me.
“Hey.”
She was standing between my bedroom and bathroom while I sat in an armchair in the sitting room of my bedroom, trying to unscramble the messed-up thoughts tangling my mind.
“Hey.” I could barely look at her. She was so beautiful. So strong and sexy and smart. The kind of woman I would have given my first million to marry the first time around. “I’m sorry about—”
She held up her hand to silence me, her eyes telling me that I’d hurt her by trying to apologize again. “No more. Please. No more apologizes, no more regrets, no more recriminations.” She shook her head. “I get it, Dade. I do. Every time we’ve been together, it’s like you’ve been unleashing this beast inside of you. It’s okay. I’m the first woman you’ve been with since your ex. Naturally you still have some issues and some of them can only be worked through… during sex.”
I hated that I still had so much rage inside of me, but she was right, it came out with her. During intimate moments. Maybe because I was so angry that my past meant I could never be the man she needed.I could never be the man she needed.That possibility unfurled a burning tension inside of me that spiralled until I was practically seething.
She walked toward me, dropping to her knees in front of me. “Tell me what you’re thinking. No holding back.”
My gut was trembling as I imagined my future. Alone. In this empty house. No one to talk to. I glanced at my big bed, the indent of my body on one side. Pristine on the other. Is that the way it would always be? Sleeping in half a bed. Using half a house. Living half a life?
“I can’t be the man you need, Charli.” My voice was raspy and the admission felt like shattered glass inching through my throat. “I’m so wrong for you. In every way.”
She was so young, innocent in so many ways. So many hopes and dreams, with her whole life ahead of her. I couldn’t let her get stuck in my chaos.
“You really believe that?” She was searching my eyes, trying to read me. “Because if you do, I need to know. I promised myself I wouldn’t waste any more time trying to change a man who didn’t want to change. I’ve wasted too many years doing that.”
My heart felt like it was twisting painfully. I looked at her and saw so much potential. So much raw honesty and authenticity. Like she said earlier, I saw everything I’d ever wanted in her… but could never have.
I didn’t have it in me to do this again. To try and fail. To announce to the world that I’d found the love of my life only to watch it reduced to ashes months later.
I clasped her hands in mine. “Please try to understand,” I said, kissing her hands. “This thing between us feels good. So good. Right now. But what about six months or a year from now, when real life sets in and you realize you don’t want to be married to a ghost?”
“What?” She frowned, looking at me like I was crazy. “Did someone tell you that, that being married to you was—”
“Like living with a ghost.” My first wife. I could still hear her sobbing, throwing things around our bedroom as she had a complete meltdown and claimed I was driving her crazy because I was so self-absorbed. Music was the only thing I cared about, she said. I was blind to the hell she was going through. Maybe she was right. Maybe I had been selfish, but I’d grown up a lot since then and wouldn’t do to Charli what I’d done to her.
“I don’t pretend to know what happened in your previous relationships,” she said, softly. “But I’m sure there was plenty of blame to go around. Maybe you just weren’t right for each other and—”
“Three women,” I reminded her, releasing her hands. “Three different women. All wrong for me? Maybe I’m the problem.” I inched back on the chair, trying to put some distance between us. “And I don’t want to be your problem.”
She looked over her shoulder, into the bathroom we’d just vacated. “So, let me guess, you think that was a mistake too, right?”
I closed my eyes, wondering how I got so messed up that I could waver between needing this gorgeous girl more than my next breath and wishing I’d never met her.
“Don’t answer that,” she said, standing. “I can’t stand to hear it again.”
She was making her way out of the room and I knew she was probably less than a minute away from ordering an Uber to take her as far away from me as she could get.
“Charli, stay.” I sounded desperate, and maybe I was. Desperate for her warmth, her compassion, for someone to look at me the way she did. That probably made me as selfish as all of my exes claimed I was, but if I was already going to hell, I may as well steal as much time as I could with this woman first. As long as I kept it zipped from now on maybe we could work together without me causing more damage. “Please. My job offer stands. I need your help.”
“You need my help,” she echoed, turning to face me. “You’re right. You do. Question is, will you accept it?”
* * *
After I’d had another quick shower to collect myself, I made my way downstairs, expecting what I found. A spotless, empty kitchen. And no Charli.
“Damn,” I whispered, wandering to the bank of windows in the kitchen. It wasn’t supposed to hurt this much, I reasoned. I didn’t know her well enough to feel this sense of… loss. But it had felt the same way when she’d left me in that old farmhouse. I’d tortured myself with thoughts of her the entire flight home. Found an excuse to go after her. But I couldn’t continue going after her, couldn’t keep hurting her like this. I’d let her know the job offer stood, but she clearly couldn’t stand to be around me, and I had to accept that.
I was just about to fire off a text to my head of security to ask that someone shadow Charli to keep the rag reporters at bay, when I saw her walking up the stone path from the guest house.
She was still here. She hadn’t left. My reaction was visceral as I watched her walking through my world, like she belonged here. My heart was battering my chest, my hands curled into fists as I wrestled the urge to haul her back into my arms as soon as she stepped through the door.
