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“She taught you that?” she croaked out in a quiet voice as she turned to look at me with reddened eyes and a vulnerable soft look that made me want to draw her close to me and protect her.
“Yeah,” I said. Charlotte was Kelly’s favorite family member to talk about. When we’d first started dating, she told me about Charlotte and how she used to sing that to her when she was sick.
She’d done the same thing to me when I came home bloodied from my match. I thought that was when I fell in love with her. Up until that point, I’d never received that sort of tenderness from any woman and was convinced Kelly was an extraordinarily kind woman.
Charlotte was quiet for a few seconds, looking thoughtful, and then she suddenly leaned deeper into my side. She used one hand to rub under her nose in a way that was so endearing that I had to look away.
“Did you love my sister?”she asked softly.
The question came out of the left field. At this point, I should be used to her blurting out everything on her mind, but I didn’t think there was a way to get used to it.
I thought about the answer before she could start a lengthy apology again.
“Yes,” I answered truthfully. I truly believed I was in love with Kelly, at least in the beginning. I thought she hung the moon and stars and was so beautiful and kind-hearted. For a woman like her to be in love with an orphaned brute like me…no other woman came close to her in my eyes.
But over the years, as she changed, my feelings of love for her turned into something more like an obligation. Being with her felt like being with an atomic bomb that would go off at any time, and I couldn’t predict when it would.
Charlotte stared at me, and I didn’t know if she believed me or not. But then she nodded.
“So how come you never came to visit us?” she asked.
“Your family wasn’t a fan,” I said.
“They only didn’t like you because you didn’t let her visit much.”
“I had no issue with her visiting you guys,” I said with a frown. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She looked surprised. “Really? Because Kelly always said you didn’t like us and didn’t want her seeing us.”
Ah, so that was the story she fed them.“If you haven’t noticed, your sister tends to embellish the truth sometimes, especially when she gets paranoid.”
She frowned as though offended on Kelly’s behalf, but she didn’t deny it. “So you didn’t hate us?”
“I didn’t know you,” I said, and that seemed to make sense to her. She nodded, turning back.
“We were very unfair to keep Casey from you,” she finally said, turning to me with a genuinely remorseful look. “We were willing to believe the worst of you without even really knowing you. I’m sorry.”
I nodded. I thought I wouldn’t care what anyone thought, but truthfully, the apology touched my heart. Speaking of Casey… “How was he? When he was younger…”
“Oh, don’t even get me started…” A smile tickled her lips as she rolled her eyes. “He was a giant ball of energy. He would not stop moving. But he was also always getting scraped up because he had this thing about climbing onto really high places when no one was looking and eventually falling off. Little daredevil. I was afraid the doctor would think we were neglectful, what with how many bruises he had, but the doctor said it was perfectly normal. He was just very energetic.” Her words were in the background as I focused on how her eyes glowed with love when she spoke of my son. The clear protectiveness she had for him was obvious.
Something uncomfortably soft lit up in my chest.
“Anyway…” she concluded, tapping her khaki-colored knees. “We should go.”
“Why were you crying?” I asked, and the smile dropped from her face.
“Nothing, just a bad day,” she mumbled, avoiding looking at me.
“Were you crying because of me?”
“Not entirely,” she replied with a smirk. “Although what you pulled this morning was a jerk move.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, and that seemed to be enough of an apology for her because she nodded.
“I just didn’t want there to be any confusion,” I explained. “I know you mean a lot to Casey, but I do want a relationship with him, and I don’t want anything to complicate that.”
“No, I get it,” she said offhandedly, shrugging. “But nothing says we can’t be friends. It would probably be better if we were.”
