“I can’t,” she cried out. “I’m so tired of being away from you, Declan. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t be happy without you.”
“Me either,” he said. “I’m glad you can admit it too.”
They said nothing for a while. There wasn’t anything they could say that their bodies couldn’t express better than words ever could.
********
An hour later when they were both spent and on the verge of falling asleep, Declan spoke.
“Why did you come here this time?” he asked as he ran his fingers up and down her arm. She was laying in the crook of him, her eyes closed.
“I had a breakdown of sorts,” she confessed.
She told him the story of Melanie Hopp. Somehow she was able to get through it without crying.
He held her tight against him, his heart broken that it wasn’t a story with a happier ending.
“So it brought up so much from my past that I had pushed down,” Charlotte explained. “I couldn’t do my job the way I need to do it. It wasn’t right. And I felt like such a failure. Just like I did when my mother died.”
Declan shook his head, “Why would you be a failure when it came to your mother? It’s not your fault, Charlotte. We know whose fault it is.”
Charlotte sighed, “I often go over in my head how if I had only just agreed to go with her, things would have been different. All she needed was 30 seconds. If she’d left 30 seconds later, she would have missed that light. Your mother would have still sped through it, but my mother wouldn’t have been there to take the hit.”
Declan turned her face towards his, “That’s not you being a failure, Charlotte. That’s called being incredibly, colossally, unlucky. And what if you had gone and she’d still been hit? You’d be gone too.” Declan shook his head. “The thought of that makes me sick. I’m so sorry.”
Charlotte touched his face. He was still so handsome, even more handsome than he’d been.
“You didn’t do it,” she said. “You are not your mother. And you were right about what you said. Punishing you changes nothing.”
“I still fucked up,” he said. “I should have told you as soon as I knew. I was just so scared. My mother… She needed me. When she told me she’d kill herself if I told anyone…”
“Baby, I know,” Charlotte kissed his mouth softly. “It’s terrible that she put you in that position.”
“It is,” he agreed. “But at the same time, it clearly ate at her, what she’d done. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but she wasn’t a bad person. She was really sick, yes. She needed help and none of us could see it. Or maybe we could see it, but we dismissed it as rich lady problems. I don’t want to defend her. What she did is indefensible. I’m sorry.”
“She’s your momma,” Charlotte said. “If you don’t defend her, who will?”
Declan smiled, “I guess. But it’s you. She hurt the person I love more than anything.”
“I wish we could back in time and stop everything from happening,” Charlotte said. “But then I might not have ever met you at all.”
“But you’d have your mother,” he said. “And I’d have mine. And I like to think, when two people are tied to one another like we seem to be, our paths would have crossed somehow. Even in a different life.”
Chapter Eighteen
They woke up late the next morning. The tide was in and the Atlantic was lapping at the shore a mere twenty feet from Charlotte’s back deck. She sat in an Adirondack chair, naked with a blanket wrapped around her, sipping instant coffee.
She’d thought about Declan all night. Watching him sleep next to her, it brought her such comfort. And despite the revelations about his mother’s part in her own mother’s death, she couldn’t let him go. She didn’t know how any of this could work, but being with him again was like coming home. Except home wasn’t a place, like she always assumed it was. Charleston wasn’t home.
Declan DeGraff was.
********
She’d awakened Declan by mounting him. He was hard under the sheets and she couldn’t help it. She needed him inside of her.
“Fuck,” he said, his eyes fluttering open. He watched her riding him, slowly. Her hips bucked, her large breasts bouncing, the nipples rigid.
“Make me come,” she begged. “Please.”
“Not a problem,” he said, placing his hands on her waist. “Ladies first.”
Afterwards they’d laid there quietly, panting from the exertion.
“This is going to sound weird,” he said. “But do you mind coming with me to see my dad today? He’s probably wondering where I am. I don’t think he even realizes I went to the ball last night; he was asleep when I left.”
Charlotte sat up, “I don’t know. You don’t think it would be weird?”
“He knows you’re here,” Declan said. “So it wouldn’t be that weird. Just a little weird.”