“Baby, I need you.” He squeezes me closer, nuzzling his face in my neck, and everything feels so wrong. Baby, I need you? Since when did he ever call me baby? And he certainly never needed me.
This stops now. I finally push myself away from him to stand. He looks disappointed, furrowing his brow and pressing his lips into a tight line.
“You don’t need me, Beau. You need to grow up,” I argue. “Or maybe you just need someone to finally put you in your place because I’m not going back to the way things were.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how you never once made me feel good about myself while we were together. You talk about how hard your life was…well, have you noticed mine?” I ask, waving my arms around.
“You’ve changed,” he says with a grimace, and I laugh.
“Yeah, I guess I did. Because if you think your dad is such a freak, then I am too.”
He stands in a rush with his eyes wide. “Charlie…” There’s a tone of warning in his voice. “Have you been to that club?”
“Yeah…I have, and I’m not ashamed.” It takes everything in me to hold my shoulders back and look up into Beau’s eyes proudly as I say it. He’s scrutinizing me, letting this new information sink in, like he’s literally imagining me doing whatever freaky shit he thinks happens at that club.
I wish I could tell him more, but I realize that it doesn’t matter what Beau thinks, not anymore. The Charlie four months ago would have never admitted to this, and maybe if Beau had told me about his dad while we were dating, I would have thought the same thing he does. But that was before Emerson opened my eyes. Not to the club—but to myself.
I have someone who really treasures me now, who sees something in me when he looks at me that I never saw in myself. Who makes me feel smart and sexy and perfect.
And at the end of the day, I’d rather be Emerson’s pet than Beau’s girlfriend.
“Tell me the truth right now,” he demands. “Are you sleeping with my dad?”
I scoff, shaking my head. “No,” I reply with conviction, because I’m not. But I really fucking wish I were. “Beau…” I take a deep breath, before continuing, “I love you. I’ll probably always love you because I know there’s good in there, but you and I are never going to work. I’m sorry.”
I expect him to lash out, but he doesn’t. I think he’s still reeling from the Charlie goes to a sex club information. Instead, he looks defeated. “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”
For a moment, I’m taken aback. That’s what he got from this conversation? I don’t answer, and it’s enough to confirm his suspicions. There’s sort of someone else. And it may not be a relationship—hell, it may never be a relationship—but it works for me. I watch his expression for a moment to make sure he doesn’t suspect that that someone else is his dad, but he doesn’t really say anything else. He just looks…sad.
After I broke up with Beau, I was finally alone with myself, and I realized how much I missed…me. Because I didn’t exist around him. He existed as the center of my universe, and I was his shadow.
“Let me take you home,” I say, touching his arm.
He nods solemnly.
Sophie isn’t outside when we leave, but I wish she was. I want her to see him leaving, so she knows this really isn’t what it looks like.
In the car, Beau is quiet. His mom’s house is on the opposite side of town. She lives in a quaint bungalow. I never met either of his parents before we broke up, but just the idea of meeting her, this woman who was once married to Emerson, makes my skin crawl. As we pull up to her house, he freezes in his seat.
“I think my dad will be disappointed,” he says, and I start to panic.
“Why?”
With a snicker, he adds, “He was clearly trying to get us back together, Charlotte.” He says my name like Emerson does, impersonating his father. And I’m not quite sure how that makes me feel.
Strange. It makes me feel very strange.
“Oh yeah. I got that feeling too.” A fact I’m purposefully ignoring for the time being, because it makes me too angry to think about.
“Maybe someday I’ll get my shit together enough to deserve you,” he says with his eyes on the dash, and it shatters my heart to hear him say that. All this time, I thought I wasn’t good enough for Beau, and now…everything’s changed.
Reaching across the seat, I pull him into a hug. “I’m here for you, always.”
He squeezes me back, before opening the door and walking up to the front of the house. Watching him leave has me feeling so many things for this family. They are so broken, both Emerson and Beau at war with themselves and each other. And considering the shitshow that is my family, this says a lot coming from me.
And as I pull away from the curb, I think about what he said, about Emerson clearly trying to get us back together. The more the thought cycles through my mind, the angrier I get.
He thinks he’s the only one making a sacrifice here. He acts like denying this attraction is only costing him, but what about me? He thinks he can just push me off on his son, like it’s just that easy.
Doesn’t what I want count? Isn’t he the one who taught me to go after what I want?
The more I think about it, the more I fume. Heading onto the freeway, I find myself skipping the exit to my house and taking the one after it. I might be crazy, but there’s no way I’m going home when I have so much on my mind that I’m dying to tell him.
RULE #23: IF ALL ELSE FAILS, ASK NICELY.
Charlotte
I’m trembling. It’s after dark and I’m standing on Emerson’s front porch about to rant at him, and I’m still not one hundred percent sure what I’m going to say. I feel the feelings, but I just don’t have the words to go with them. All I know is I’m tired of not having what I want—and I want him.
The light in the foyer comes on just before he opens the door. I hold my head up high and scramble to think of what to say.
“Charlotte?” he asks when he sees me. “Where’s Beau?”
“I drove him home.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want him anymore.”
“Don’t say that,” he snaps.
“Did you read the form? I filled it out. Did you read it?”
A small wrinkle forms between his brows, clearly confused by my rambling. Before he can shut me out, I storm through his front door, directly to his office. I hear his footsteps on my heels, and when I spin to face him, I catch the way he’s still wearing his work clothes from a couple hours ago, but the white shirt is unbuttoned, revealing his chest and the patch of hair peeking through. God, I want to touch it, run my fingers through it. Am I into chest hair now?
He reaches up to rub his forehead, looking exhausted as he says, “Charlotte, we really can’t be doing this. The form, the submission, any of it. We can’t.”
“Why not?” I snap back. If there was any semblance of me guarding my feelings, it’s gone now.
“You are my son’s girlfriend!” There’s so much desperation in his tone and turmoil in his expression.
“Ex!” I yell back.
“Does it really matter? Does it make me any less of a piece of shit if he’s your current or ex-boyfriend?”
“What about what I want? Why am I being denied?” I cry out.
“I never should have hired you. This was all a mistake.” He pulls at his hair, staring at the floor, and I’m left speechless. Too sad to be angry and too angry to be sad.
“Why would you say that?”
Suddenly, his body is pressed against me, one hand around my lower back and the other cupping my jaw. His face is only inches from mine as he whispers, “Because I didn’t expect you to be so perfect. I had no idea keeping my hands off you would be this hard. And then I walked in that day and found you on your knees…” He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing his forehead against mine. “Jesus Christ, Charlotte. You have no idea what you do to me.”