Page 51 of Love He Denied
"You quit," she said.
"I quit."
"Your family's company. The company that's been your entire life since college."
"Yes."
"Because of—" She stopped. He saw her reject the end of that sentence. She wasn't going to saybecause of me. She wasn't going to make herself the reason, because Charlotte had spent months learning to stand on her own and she wasn't going to let his decisions become her responsibility.
"Not because of you, though you influenced me,” he said, reading her. "Because ofme. Because I sat in that office and feltnothing. Because the deals don't matter to me anymore. Because I watched Diego teach perspective lines to a roomful of kids in the Bronx, and I watched you with your students, and I realized that the life I was living was a fraud. A very expensive, very convincing fraud, and I don't want that anymore.”
Charlotte's eyes were bright. “Your parents," she said. "How did they take it?"
"My father told me to close the door on my way out. My mother told me I was making a mistake."
"Are you?"
“No.”
She looked at him across the table. Her brown eyes were full of something he couldn't name and didn't try to.
"You burned it down," she murmured.
"I burned down the system that built me. The one that told me to find someone suitable and propose on a timeline and treat love like a merger. The one that hurt the woman I love.” He held her gaze. "I'm not that man anymore. I don't know exactly who I am yet, but I know who I'm not."
Charlotte's hand moved across the table. Her fingers found his, laced through them, held on. The grip was tight. He could feel her pulse in her fingertips — fast, uneven.
"I'm proud of you," she said.
He'd been praised before, by boards, by clients, by his father on the rare occasions when a deal exceeded projections. None of it had ever felt like this. His Charlie, telling him she was proud of him. He wanted to live inside that sentence.
"I'm proud of you," she said again, as if she knew he needed to hear it twice. "And I'm?—"
She stopped. Her eyes were wet. She wiped them with the back of her hand, the hand that wasn't holding his, and laughed at herself.
"I'm getting there," she said.
He understood. She was on the precipice. He could feel it: the trembling of the last wall, the one she'd been maintaining since the altar, the one that saidI will not give him everything again because the last time I gave him everything he broke me into pieces. But she was close. So close he could see the decision forming behind her eyes, gathering courage.
But not yet. She wasn't there yet, and he wasn't going to push her across. She'd come when she was ready. She'd say what she needed to say when the words felt safe enough to hold.
"Take your time," he said. And he meant it. He’d wait for the rest of his life if he could have her in it.
They finished dinner. He walked her home. At her door, Charlotte didn't pause or deliberate. She took his hand and led him up the stairs without a word.
In her apartment, in her bed, they made love. There was no tentativeness this time, none of the reverent caution of their first night together. Her hands were more sure on his skin, his mouth more direct on the places that made her gasp, the way they moved together was less like a song being remembered and more like one being written.
Charlotte pushed him onto his back. Climbed over him. He looked up at her — brown curls falling around her face, her hands braced on his chest. She sank down onto him and they both exhaled, and she set the pace: slow at first, then not slow, rolling her hips in a rhythm that made his head press back into the pillow and his hands grip her thighs.
She held his gaze while she moved above him, while his hands traveled from her thighs to her hips to her breasts, while his thumb found the place between them that made her rhythm falter and her breath come apart. She came first, head tipped back, his name leaving her mouth like a prayer, and he followed seconds later, pulling her down against his chest, both of them shaking, both of them holding on.
Afterward, she lay with her head on his shoulder, drifting off to sleep. He pulled her closer. He lay in her bed and listened to the sounds of her world. The streetlight threw its orange glow through the curtain. The neighbor in 2B was cooking curry again. He could hear the bodega on the corner closing up, the owner pulling in the sidewalk display of flowers and fruit.
Charlotte's world. The world he was choosing. It was hers, she was in it, and being near her was the only thing that made sense.
CHAPTER 20
CHARLOTTE
