Dissonance (25 page)

“We have something serious to discuss.”

She turned onto her back and eyed me curiously.

“Eli,” I said. “I need the dirt, babe. He’ met my family and some of my buddies from high school. He’s gotten all my embarrassing stories. Now, it’s my turn to do some digging.”

A chuckle rolled through her as she turned to settle her back against me again. “Oh, I have plenty of that. What do you want? Childhood? High school?”

“Whatever’s best.”

“When he was 9, he saw some made-for-T.V. movie about some serial killer. He was scared shitless. He came to my room and dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night. He barricaded us in the bathroom.”

I snickered. “Hiding from a killer in the tub?”

“Just wait,” she continued, “you haven’t heard the best part, yet. He didn’t bring me along to protect
me
. He climbed in the tub with his teddy bear and told me to watch the door. If someone did come, they’d take me and he’d be fine.”

I couldn’t control my laughter now. Mr. Protective-Older-Brother sure did get off to a good start.

“Mom found us in the morning. When she tried to wake him, he started screaming
‘take her, take her!’
That’s when she realized I’d slept on the tile floor to be bait.

“Eli was grounded for two weeks, one for watching T.V. after he was supposed to be in bed, and another for willing offering me up to some deranged killer. He also had to sit through a lecture from Mom about how big brothers are supposed to protect their sisters. He drew me a card to apologize. He doesn’t know it, but I still have a messy card that says ‘I’m sorry I made you sleep in the bathroom.’”

Hearing Charlotte talk about Eli was something else. She was so carefree in those moments. In my mind, her past was all those terrible things Eli had told me about. It was dark, horrific. Hearing her recount the past showed me the happiness that was there, too. Eli had always given her that, and it sounded like her mother had, too.

“Tell me about your mom.”

I didn’t know what to expect from that request. Eli may have been fair game, but Charlotte talked so little about her mother, I was afraid it might be off limits. I braced myself for a shut down.

“She was something else,” Charlotte answered wistfully. “She worked two jobs as far back as I can remember, but still managed to be so lively when she got home to us. She was a lot like Alex, honestly, that really welcoming, personable type; people loved being around her. It’s probably why Eli and I warmed up to Alex so quickly. We missed that energetic spirit. Nothing had felt the same after we lost mom. Neither of us had that kind of lightness. Alex brought it back.”

“She sounds like an incredible woman,” I offered. Even if Charlotte couldn’t see it, I could see that light in her, too. It may have been dulled by the things she experienced, but it still glowed beneath the surface. It was part of what made her so impossibly tempting.

Charlotte nodded. “She was. She gave everything for us. She’d work all day and still come home to make us dinner, help us with homework, and attend recitals and games. I have no idea how she managed to do it all.”

I wasn’t surprised by that description, either. Their mom was strong, and she’s taught her children how to be, too. Eli seemed to acknowledge that strength in him, at least when it came to losing his mom and taking care of his sister. Charlotte, though, had no concept of her own strength at all. Whatever had happened to her, she still found the strength to live, to smile, to give me a chance. She thought she was weak, but God was she wrong.

“What about your mom?” she asked.

Oh, lord. What was I going to say about Katherine Westfield?

“My mom’s a spitfire. My dad might be powerful in the board room, but no one ever questions who is in charge at our house. She’s an artist and a free spirit. When I learned about Jackson Pollock in grade school, she pulled out a bunch of canvas, paint, and string so Caleb and I could make our own paintings. We did it in the backyard and the grass was discolored for two weeks.

“She’s also never one to mince words. She tells it like it is, no filter. Don’t worry, though. She’s sweet, most of the time.”

“I can’t wait to meet her,” Charlotte said. I could tell she meant it, but the idea obviously felt nervous, too.

“She’ll love you, beautiful.”
Just like I do
.

Wait, what?
No, that wasn’t right, but I didn’t doubt that it would be in time.

We lay around for a while longer. Eventually, Charlotte’s repeated yawns told me she was beat.

“Let’s get to bed, baby.”

She nodded sleepily before making a shaky attempt to stand. Damn, she was cute. I scooped her up and took her back myself.

“I can walk, you know,” she chided.

“This is more fun.”

As we passed her door, she spoke again. “Where are you going?”

“My room.”

“No, I’ll go to mine.”

That brought me to a halt. “What? Why?”

She started squirming around, so I let her down. “If we weren’t roommates, we wouldn’t be sharing a bed so soon.”

We wouldn’t?
I wasn’t so sure. “It doesn’t matter, though. We
are
roommates.”

“I don’t want to push things too fast.”

One step forward, two steps back, every time. “So you expect me to sleep alone knowing that you’re right down the hall?”

She looked down and shrugged.

I was losing her, which should have encouraged me to calm down and deal with this, but I couldn’t. There was no winning with her. Every time I tried to get her closer, I was pushed away.

“Charlotte, you can’t be serious. This is ridiculous. Why can’t you just sleep with me? Why base our relationship on some idea of what’s too fast? Why not do it on our terms?”

“You don’t want it on
our
terms!” she shot back. “You want it on yours!” Shit, I’d really done myself in. “Everything has been on your terms already. You can’t force this relationship to be what you want.”

At the word “force,” I knew I was in over my head. This was bigger than sleeping arrangements, bigger than me, bigger than us. Alex told me that anything could be a trigger for Charlotte, and I had obviously landed on one. I wanted to calm down and backtrack, but we were both too worked up for that. I’d lost that round. Better to retreat than fight her further.

“Okay,” I conceded begrudgingly. “Goodnight, Charlotte.” I placed a quick kiss to her lips, not lingering to feel the rejection if she opted not to kiss me back.

I didn’t turn to look at her as I closed myself in my room. Her constant hesitation may have been warranted, but she never let me in enough to know why. Being pissed about it already didn’t bode well, but I had not expected to hit a brick wall with her so soon.

Tomorrow, I’d do the damage control. Tomorrow, I’d regain that one step forward. But for the night, there was nothing to do. Going to her and groveling wouldn’t help either of us. I wouldn’t build this relationship on fights and apologies. I wanted something stronger. One way or another, I’d learn to get through to her.

It must’ve been several hours later. I was already asleep, and deeply so. Something pulled me toward wakefulness. The first thing that registered was the heat. My back was bathed in warmth. Maybe the covers had bunched up behind me. I shifted. What I felt was no blanket, it was solid.

Then I was awake, barely holding my eyes open, but awake nonetheless. The clock on the nightstand told me it was just after three in the morning. A tickle of warm air moving against my neck had me finally guessing what I was feeling.

Very slowly, I turned my upper body to look over my shoulder. There she was. Charlotte had climbed in at some point and curled up against my back. My frustration from earlier was gone in an instant. She’d come to me. Regardless of what she’d said, she couldn’t stay away.

I turned over as carefully as I could. The last thing I wanted was to wake her. There was no reason to have some confrontation about this. She’d willingly joined me, that was enough. When I finally faced her, I pulled her against my chest. My arms enclosed her soft body. That was all I wanted. Nothing could compare to that feeling. Even in her sleep, she cuddled in until she was as close as possible to me and released the sweetest little sigh. I felt like I could burst with the joy that consumed me in that moment.

Despite the issues, despite that past, she really did want this with me. That would get me through anything. The rest would come.

August

The next few weeks were an adjustment, but one that was worth making for Logan. Somehow, despite having never been in a relationship, he seemed to be a natural. Every morning he would have tea ready for me when I got out of the shower, along with something for breakfast. He still insisted on driving me to and from work. After the first night, we slept together without any more protests on my part. Did I worry that things were getting too serious, too fast? Yes. Was that enough to keep me alone in my bed, knowing the comfort of his arms was so close? Apparently not.

A few weeks after we first started dating, he brought me with to a practice session with his band so that I could meet everyone. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been nervous, but it didn’t last long. They welcomed me warmly.

“So this is the muse?” a guy lounging on a beat-up love seat asked when we walked in. His auburn hair had a natural wave to it, even cut short. Donning a well-fitting plaid flannel shirt and a pair of worn jeans, he looked carelessly attractive – something I’m sure the female fans noticed. Well, that was if they could manage to drag their eyes off of my boyfriend. Logan introduced him as Josh. I knew from watching their last show that he was sort of a jack-of-all-trades. I noticed him play at least three instruments on the occasion that I actually looked away from Logan. I’d seen him on the guitar, banjo, and my personal favorite, the mandolin.

“The muse?” I questioned.

“Lover-boy there wasn’t coming up with shit until you came along.” Their drummer was like a walking stereotype. His voice was sex distilled. Not alluring, tease-me-into-oblivion sex. It was more like a quickie in a dirty club bathroom, something I somehow knew he was familiar with. He extended a hand to me that I was a bit reluctant to touch. Who knew where it had been? “They call me Ripper, hot stuff.”

Logan moved around me into his face. “She’s not your hot stuff,” he turned back to me with a smirk, “and despite his insistence to share names with a pit-bull, we still call him Tim.”