AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I was going to tell you we figured it out,” she said, her hand absently rubbing that same spot on her hip. “I mean, I have some damage control to do but pretty soon everything will be normal. No more long hours.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“I didn’t—”
“No big deal,” she said, cutting me off. “You didn’t know she was a snake. Now you do.”
“I wouldn’t have brought her here if I’d known.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I know that. It’s all good, yeah? Sorry if we embarrassed you.”
Kara made a sound of incredulity behind me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Charlie.
“I really am, tired,” she said, smiling halfheartedly at me. “I’m gonna go to bed. Night.”
She walked back out of the bathroom and closed the door softly behind her.
“You’re a fucking moron,” Kara said as Draco pulled at her arm. “You know that? That bitch as you put it—” she pointed toward Charlie’s room. “Wouldn’t let me call Tabitha and Mary out because she said it was unprofessional. She didn’t want to stoop to their level.”
“Come on, baby,” Draco said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. “Leave it.”
“And then you brought her to our house?” Kara spat as Draco pulled her away. “We were nice to you. We invited you to live with us to get you out of the cabbage house and this is how you repay us?”
The only reason she didn’t keep going was because Draco slung her over his shoulder and carried her down the stairs.
I stood there like an idiot for a long time trying to figure out what exactly had just happened. The woman I’d taken out a couple times was one of the people Charlie had fired? She’d been badmouthing the coffee cart and that’s why Charlie was losing the business? Out of all the women I could’ve been introduced to—what were the odds?
I dropped heavily onto the bed, thinking of the way Charlie had looked at me when I’d walked into the kitchen that night, and it finally hit me.
She’d looked small.
Charlie wasn’t big, she was shorter than anyone else I knew and petite—but she’d never seemed small to me.
I closed my eyes and pictured her near the kitchen sink, her hair pulled back in a messy bun, her big t-shirt almost hiding the old running shorts she wore. She hadn’t been wearing makeup.
Charlie, who felt naked without at least a little makeup, had been standing barefaced in her own damn kitchen, when I’d brought in the person who’d been trying to put her out of business.
She’d been the one who was ambushed.
I was an asshole. I’d been so sure that Charlie was being a bitch because she was jealous that I’d treated her like shit. That was on me.
I got to my feet and strode out of my bedroom, not even pausing as I tried her bedroom door. For some reason it felt less like an intrusion because I hadn’t gone through the connecting bathroom—but it was.
She was standing in front of the mirror against the wall, her shorts pulled down to her thighs and her shirt bunched up under her chin as she looked at a big red spot on her hip. As her head jerked up to look at me, my stomach sank.
“I do that?” I asked hoarsely. I don’t know why I knew it, but I did. The red mark was at just the right height for a doorknob. I’d hit her when I’d burst into the bathroom and I hadn’t even noticed.
“It was an accident,” Charlie replied with a shrug, dropping her shirt as she pulled her shorts back up.
“Jesus,” I said, stepping into the room. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“We really need to start locking those bathroom doors when we’re using it,” she replied with a halfhearted smile.
“I was a dick,” I said quietly, walking toward her. “Swear to God, I had no idea you guys even knew Tally.”
“No, I know,” she replied, waving her hand in dismissal. “It was just a shock, seeing her there all of a sudden.”
She laughed, but the sound was husky and broken. “I mean, I didn’t even know you were dating.”
“Only a couple times,” I replied, rubbing the back of my neck.
“None of my business,” she said quickly. “I was pretty clear I didn’t have time, right? It’s not like I expected you to wait or anything.”
There was no accusation in her tone, but with those words I knew—we both knew—that she had expected me to wait.
I wasn’t sure what to do with that.
Defensiveness rose in my chest. I hadn’t done anything wrong, not really. She hadn’t wanted to be together even casually and I’d respected that. Had she expected me to just be alone because she chose to be?
The feeling was gone almost as soon as it arrived, because in that moment, looking at Charlie’s expression, I knew she was holding on to her composure by a thread. If we were never anything else—she was still one of the best friends I’d ever had.
