Her Last Wish (17 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Three

Charlie

“Charlie! Charlie, open
up!”

I slowly backed away
from my front door. It warped and bubbled as Jackson beat it with all of his
strength. I knew it was only a matter of time before he got through. I had no
idea what he would do once he got in, but the idea of him getting that far was
terrifying.

“We need to talk,
Charlie!” he screamed through my door. His voice was so loud it sounded as if
he’d already made it inside and somehow single-handedly surrounded me. Was it
possible to yell in surround sound?

The back of my legs hit
something hard. I looked back to see my coffee table, full of my British lit
papers, which I could have sworn I’d turned in. But apparently there they were.
Awesome. Not only did I have a crazed ex at the door, I’d also forgotten to
turn in my finals. Just fabulous.

I looked back at the
door to see that the entire thing had disappeared without a trace. No
splinters, no split door chunks, nothing. However, there in the doorway stood
Jackson, bigger and angrier than I’d ever seen him.

“Why are you running
away from me, Charlie? I can make everything better. All you have to do is give
in to me. Let me have what I waited so long for. I put up with your crap for
years. I earned it.” He wrapped his hand around my neck. He’d usually been
verbally upset with me, but I’d never had him grab me before. What kind of
nightmare was this? I tried to wake myself up, but I couldn’t.

Although I was stuck in
this hell, I decided wouldn’t buy in to his threatening gestures. I was
convinced it was a dream, anyways. It had to be. And as such, he couldn’t hurt
me in it. “No. You cheated on me,” I spat.

“You made me do it. If
you would have just given me what I needed from you, I’d never have had to run
to them for it.” He released me and then used that same hand to backhand me
across the face. I was shocked when it actually stung. At least, I thought it
did … After a few seconds, I wasn’t so sure. “This is all your fault!”

I shook it off. “It’s
not my fault you’re a cheater.”

“Oh, but it is,” came a
voice from behind me. My heart sank when I recognized it. I slowly turned
around, praying someone else could have the same voice.

Instead of the man I
suspected, I found no one. However, when I turned back to Jackson …

“Connor,” I gasped. I
put my hand on my cheek. Had Jackson hit me? Or had Connor? I couldn’t
remember, anymore.

“You spend so much time
teasing me and never following through,” he said. “It’s no wonder he left you.
You’re not even a whore. You’re worse. You’re a tease. At least whores keep
people happy for as long as they’re around. You don’t do any of that.”

I felt a strange
popping sensation in my stomach. I looked down to see that my bump had
disappeared, and a baby slept peacefully in my hands. “Connor?”

“I don’t want him,
anymore,” Connor stated, walking out the door. “You keep him.”

“But he’s not my baby!”
I protested. “He’s yours! And your wife’s!”

“She would have made a
better baby. You contaminated him with your prudishness. He will be miserable
and alone, just like you are.”

I shot up straight and
searched frantically throughout the room. I breathed a sigh of relief when I
found that I was no longer in my apartment. Instead, I found myself alone on
Connor’s couch, as I had been for several nights. The normalcy in its
appearance was slightly comforting.

Even though the dream
was full of my petty frustrations and fears, my heart ached because of Dream
Connor’s words. I knew that it had just been a nightmare. One that seemed
random and out of the blue, even. But I wondered how much of it had actually
been accurate. Jackson’s anger had clearly been exaggerated. At least, I hoped
so. He’d never actually hit me before. But what about Connor’s anger? He told
me that he was okay with not doing anything, but did he actually mean it? What
if he was just saying that to make me happy?

Had I actually been the
reason that Jackson went to someone else? Would we still be together if I’d
have given him what he wanted? I had accepted our split, and I was happy in my
new relationship with Connor. But I still couldn’t help but wonder.

And what did that mean
for Connor, exactly? Would Connor give up on me and leave if I denied him my
body for too much longer? Would he just go find someone else, or
two
someone
elses as in Jackson’s case? What if he resented me for it, as Jackson had? Was
sex really that important? And why did it hurt me far more to simply
think
about losing Connor than it did to
actually
lose Jackson? Should that
not have been reversed?

Tears flowed freely
down my face. I didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. I just knew
my own confusion and the pain caused by Connor’s words, even if it was only
just a dream. My subconscious really knew how to torment me. I seemed to have
far more insecurities than usual. Since my relationship with Connor had been
the only thing in my life that I’d felt secure in anymore, I decided I needed
to do something. If not for him, for me.

***

Connor

I couldn’t sleep. My
mind seemed to be filled with every complicated thought I had ever had in my
entire life.

At the top of that
list, the baby would be here in March, and I still had no idea what to name
him. I wasn’t ready for him to get here. Sure, I was
prepared
. I just
wasn’t
ready
. Charlie had helped me set up the nursery, but that still
left me knowing jack about raising babies. I’d never been around one. I’d even
made a point to avoid them at one time in my life. I’d certainly made a point
to avoid
making
them. Before Elizabeth, regardless of what girls told me
about their birth control methods, I had always brought my own protection to
make sure the chances were barely existent. I’d be flying blind, unless Charlie
knew about them and felt like guiding me through it. She was definitely more
mothering than I had ever been. But I couldn’t exactly demand that of her. It
wasn’t her responsibility.

And when my temporarily
nameless baby got here, I had no idea what that meant for Charlie in general.
Would she want to stay and help me look after him? Sure we were dating, but I
couldn’t even guarantee she wanted to stay the rest of the
week
. I
hadn’t heard her call her neighbor to see if that ex of hers still plagued the
halls, but that didn’t mean anything. Just because I hadn’t heard that call
didn’t mean she hadn’t made it. But overall, she didn’t seem to be in a hurry
to leave. I was pretty thankful for that. I sure as hell wasn’t in a hurry to watch
her go.

But even then, we’d
only been officially together for two weeks, even though by that point I felt
like I’d known her forever. But I still figured asking her to permanently move
in might be a bit on the premature side. But that time frame would mainly apply
to a
normal
relationship. How would you even begin to set timelines for
a relationship that started with her being implanted with your dead wife’s
embryo while she was dating some other guy, who turned out to be every bit the
psychotic asshole you suspected, causing her to crash on your couch just to
avoid him, and you just happened to start dating after? Yep. The whole
relationship sounded like some insane soap opera that I never understood the
point of watching. But there I was, happily living in it.

And it sure didn’t
feel
like a normal relationship to me, even without all the other details. I’d only
been in one relationship that even remotely compared on an emotional level.
Elizabeth. Was the idea of knowing what I wanted out of my relationship with
Charlie so early on a little frightening to me? Definitely. But I wasn’t about
to run. She was worth it.

I looked over to
Elizabeth’s side of the bed to find that the book she had been reading was
still there. It was a collection of poetry that she had read dozens of times.
She always said it helped calm her. Unfortunately, looking at it didn’t help
calm
me
. It only made me feel guilty. If she were looking down on me,
would she feel as if Charlie had replaced her? I wanted to think that she would
wish for my happiness, and I knew Charlie could never
really
replace
her. They were two very different people. And I cared about them both. But what
if I was wrong about Elizabeth’s wishes? What if I was supposed to be alone
until I reunited with her in death?

I took the book and
shoved it in the nightstand, locking it away in the darkness. It would suffice
until I could put it with her pictures in the closet. I just couldn’t handle a
physical reminder of her at the moment. Everything was already complicated
enough.

I buried my face in my
hands. Why did I waste so much time asking myself the opinions of the dead? And
why did I actually care what said opinion would be? I knew that the answer was
because I still loved her. And I probably would for the rest of my existence.
She was the first person I ever
really
loved. But did that mean that I
should be miserable and alone for the rest of my life just because she was
taken from me way too soon? I couldn’t bring myself to think that I should.
What kind of existence would that be? Certainly not an enjoyable one, that’s
for sure.

A knock on my door
frame startled me out of my thoughts. I looked over to see Charlie standing in
the open doorway, looking more conflicted than I’d ever seen her before.

“Is something wrong?” I
asked. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied,
though I could tell something weighed heavily on her. “I’m fine. Look, Connor,
I know I said that you wouldn’t be my teacher, anymore. But I …” She took a
deep breath. “I want you to teach me one more thing.”

“Now?” I raised an
eyebrow. “What could you possibly want me to teach you at two in the morning?”

Instead of answering,
she slowly pulled off her blue nightgown with black lace around the collar,
revealing matching black lingerie. She nervously dropped the gown by my
nightstand.

I sucked in a breath
and stared, awestruck. I’d gotten a decent feel of her body on Thanksgiving,
but this was the first time I’d ever seen her so exposed. The look on her face
told me that she was just as emotionally bared as she was physically. The bulge
of her midsection was visible, but it didn’t mar any of her beauty. For me, it only
added to it. Her new curves were nearly as graceful as she was in every other
way.

I cleared my throat and
tried to pry my eyes away. It was harder to do than I anticipated. “Charlie,
this isn’t necessary. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I told
you that we can wait until you’re ready. I meant that.”

She crossed the room to
me and gently kissed my lips. Her kiss showed me exactly how vulnerable she
felt. As I kissed her back, however, some of that tension dispersed.

She slowly pulled away.
“Have you changed your mind about me, already?” she asked. “Have you decided
that I’m too much trouble for you to want in this way?” I could tell the words
cut her on their way out. What in the world had come over her?

“Of course I haven’t. I
just want to make sure that you’re ready to take this step before we actually
do. I don’t want you to regret anything.”

“I’m ready,” she
replied, clearly doing her best to sound sure of herself. She kissed me again,
hard and demanding. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to convince herself or
me. Either way, what restraint she’d had only a few moments earlier didn’t
hold. I had to place my hands behind me on the bed to steady myself. She used
it to her advantage, immediately yanking my boxers right off and breaking our
kiss apart. As I knew it would, my body betrayed my statement of patience by
springing forward to meet her, rigid and ready to go. She stared at it, as if
it were some foreign object. And I supposed it might have been to her. I knew
she had never had sex with anyone, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know her way
around the male form. She had never visibly exposed any skin to me, nor I to her,
but that didn’t mean she hadn’t done so with others in the past. But all it
took was one glance to know that she was far more innocent than I’d even dared
to imagine. Thanksgiving apparently
had
actually been the closest she’d
ever come to losing that innocence. How had I earned that privilege?

Instead of even
bothering with the awkward questions, I simply studied her expression. She
tried so hard to hide it, but I could tell that she was afraid. She was
certainly at least nervous, and who could have blamed her? It was a huge step
for her and for our relationship. And it was one that we would never be able to
take back.

I decided I needed to
make sure she was actually ready to take it. I would never forgive myself if I
helped her do something she’d regret. “Is something wrong? You don’t have to do
this.”