Page 92 of Love By The Falls

Charlotte breaks free from my arms and rushes past me to her son. “Yes, Charlie?”

He lowers his voice to a whisper. “Can you lie down with me for a bit?”

Charlotte nods and ushers Charlie back inside his room. She looks over her shoulder and her eyes are like two embers in a fire.

“Good night,” she mouths and closes the door behind her.

My body wants to follow, but my head knows I can’t.

I rub both hands over my face and wonder how I got in this deep.

22

Charlotte

Charlie falls asleep shortly after I lie down with him and while my body screams at me to get back to Caleb and finish what we started, I know it isn’t possible. Not now. Not here. Not with everything so damn complicated.

Yes, I’m having Caleb’s baby. But we never discussed being a couple. He lives in Manhattan and has shown no interest in moving to a small town, and I can’t blame him since his entire career and life is in New York City.

I could never leave my parents, my friends, or move Charlie away from his school. I’ve planted too many roots here.

Yes, I’m having his baby, and yes, I would love to sleep with him one more time, but this could never work.

I wake up the next morning, still in Charlie’s bed. I get up as slowly as possible so as not to wake him and tiptoe out of his room.

When I turn the corner, I spot Caleb in the kitchen making coffee. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and graysweatpants. The pants do nothing to hide his bulge, and I remind myself to keep my gaze up and away.

“Morning,” he calls, pouring a second cup of coffee. “Two milks, one sugar, right?”

I smile. “That’s right.”

“I don’t remember you being such a morning person,” I say, taking a seat at the kitchen table while he brings us our coffees.

“That’s because you kept me up all night in St. Kitts.”

“Ikept you up!” I laugh. “I’m pretty sure it was the other way around.”

“Oh, no, that fine ass of yours is to blame.”

Sage walks in wearing her pink woolly robe and matching fluffy slippers. “Ugh, I thought sleeping together last night would get this out of your system,” she says.

“We didn’t sleep together last night,” I inform her.

“Ugh,” she groans again, pouring herself a cup of coffee. “I’m taking this back into my room. I can’t handle this sexual tension first thing in the morning.”

I shake my head. “Sage!” That woman has no filter. She would say the most outrageous things in college and get us into heaps of trouble, but it’s one of the things I love most about her.

Caleb sips his coffee and watches me over the rim of his cup. His eyes send a heat flash through me strongerthan this steaming cup of coffee and I place a hand on my chest, trying to cool myself down.

“She’s right, you know.”

“I know.”

“There’s always been this intense energy between us.”

There was—or still is. But we’re not in St. Kitts anymore. We’re in a house with my roommate and eleven-year-old son.

There. That’s better. Imagining getting caught by Charlie cools me off like a bucket of cold water over my head.

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