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“She’s still wary.” I calm my voice, bring the volume down, and stroke my ex-wife’s cheeks with my thumbs. “She’s so young. She’s still a baby, and you were absent for a long time.”
“It was only a couple of months,” she bites out. “And only because you put me there.”
“I mean in the years before I sent you away,” I groan. “You left her to raise herself, Jada! You left her to do everything on her own, while you fucked or slept or got high. That’s why she’s still standoffish. But if you just give her time, be patient with her—”
“I lost my baby.” Tears dribble along her cheeks, and snot wets her top lip. But it’s her chest heaving, her inability to catch her breath, that makes my heart sting. “I lost her. You took her.”
“I saved her! And I saved you too. Fuck, don’t you get it?”
“You don’t want me.”
“I do want you! How many fucking times do I have to say it? We want you here. I’m offering you a room in my apartment, even when my closest friends said I shouldn’t. I’m doing everything I can to make this transition easier for you and Moo. But you’re not even trying.”
She shakes her head, devastated and unsteady on her feet. Then she pushes to the tips of her toes and presses a wet kiss to my lips. Her breath races along my throat, and her tongue comes out to tap mine.
It takes me entirely too long to come to my senses. To acknowledge we’re not Jada and Charlie anymore. Young. Free.Together.
“Stop.” Breaking our kiss, I push her back and hate how, under my hands, I know her every curve. Every line. Muscle. Dip. Freckle. Blemish. I know this woman’s body better than I know my own.
But her mind… her heart… I lost those a long time ago.
“See?” Her jaw wobbles, sending splinters of pain through my stomach. “You don’t want me.”
“Not like…” Swallowing, I study her eyes and settle on a gentle shake of my head. “No, Jada. Not like that. Butwewant you in our lives. Me and Mia.”
“Mia doesn’t touch me,” she whimpers. “She literally hasn’t come near me since I came home. She wants a mom, Charlie. She fawns all over those women you work with. But she doesn’t wantme.”
“She lost her trust in you,” I groan. “That’s something you have to earn back, Jada. It’s not freely given, and you being too lazy to put in the work is disgusting.”
“I’m nottoo lazy.” Pressing her shoulder blades to the wall and dragging my hands from her face, she reaches up and swipes the mess beneath her nose. “I’ve tried. But she’s unwilling to want me back.”
“She’s three years old!” I snarl defensively. “She owes you nothing, Jada. But you owe her so much better than what you’ve given her.So much better! Fuck!” I circle away and put six feet of space between us. Because she enrages me.
She was once one of the most revered dancers in the fucking country. Dedicated. Driven. She was the hardest worker I knew, and the most beautiful athlete I’d ever met. Jada Watsonknowshard work and perseverance.
But now, it’s as though her own child simply isn’t worth the effort.
Sickened, I bring a hand up and tug my hair. Try to draw my attention somewhere other than my heart. “Don’t leave, Jada. Come back to the apartment. Be in our lives. I’ll work with Mia and help her trust you again.”
“You never once spoke badly of me, did you, Charlie Fletcher?” Strolling forward, she stops me before I can keep pacing. Reaching up and pressing her palm to my cheek, she studies my eyes and swallows so her throat bobs. “After everything I did to you, after everything that happened, you never told her the bad things that were true about me.”
“No. She’s my baby, and she’s half you.” I weave my fingers with hers. I allow us that contact. “I could never tell her those things and not expect them to hurt her.”
“You’re too sweet.” Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, her gaze flickers across my face. “I’m going to my place for tonight, okay?”
“Jada—”
“It’s where I’m supposed to be.” Smiling, she brings a little levity to a tense conversation. “It’s actually part of the contract I signed when I left the rehab clinic. But I’ll come back.”
“You promise?” I tug her in and exhale when our chests clash.
She’s so small compared to me, a real, true, prima ballerina. I can wrap my arms over her shoulders and press her cheek to my heart. I can rest my chin on the top of her head and inhale until my lungs fill with the smell of her hair.
Which I do now, only for the scent of Mia’s shampoo, which is actually Minka’s shampoo, to hit my senses.
Fuck. I breathe out through my nose. “When will we see you?”
“Maybe tonight for dinner,” she chokes out. “Or tomorrow.”
