Page 95 of My Favorite Lost Cause
I don’t even have to ask the question. Of course that would be better for her.
And Andrew might even be okay with it.
The food, when it arrives, is probably delicious, but I taste nothing as I weigh the possible solutions in my head. Andrew is kind. He’ll be a good dad and a decent husband. He’ll make my child’s life better, and he’ll let Charlie off the hook, so he really solves every problem aside from one: I’m head over heels in love with someone else, and I think that’s never going away.
I walk back to the hotel slowly, struggling not to cry. This entire trip was a fucking failure, some misplaced gambit to have my ownEat, Pray, Loveexperience in which the necessary life lessons are delivered in a timely fashion, and I go home happy with my choices. But all I’ve learned is that food tastes like nothing when you’re sad, even if it’s good food, and that sometimes acting in someone’s best interest will break your heart.
I check the time. It’s noon at home. As good an hour as any to ask a man who’s never even kissed you how he feels about raising your stepbrother’s kid.
I step through the lobby doors, bracing myself to call Andrew.The worst he can say is no, I guess, and for my daughter’s sake, I’ll sink a lot lower than this. I’ll just?—
A man steps into my path. A large, livid man with circles under his eyes.
A man I’ve longed for desperately for the past forty-eight hours and never expected to see.
“Charlie?”
He looks past my shoulder as if expecting someone else and swallows, his jaw set hard.
“How did you know where I was?” I ask.
“You’ve been sharing your location with me for months,” hebites out. “And it took flying to three fucking cities to catch you, so let’s have a chat.”
I nod, wide-eyed as I look around me—at the subdued staff dressed in head-to-toe black, the vibrant palm wallpaper behind them. “Here?”
“In yourroom, Maren,” he growls.
I don’t know why he’s so angry with me. Is it the way I left? I only did it because I wouldn’t get through a drawn-out goodbye without crying.
He wraps a hand over my elbow, steering me toward the glass elevator.
“Floor,” he barks. I hit five and, in spite of what a dick he’s being, I press my face to his chest. Because this is all I’ve wanted since I took that pregnancy test, all I’ve wanted since I arrived, all I wanted when I saw the woman clutching the candle, all I wanted while I ate alone. I wanted my face pressed to Charlie’s chest and his arms wrapping around me the way they are right now.
Even when he’s furious, he still wants to comfort me.
“Why’d you leave like that?” he whispers. “Just tell me the fucking truth.”
Am I really going to continue lying about this? I wanted to spare him. I have no idea what to say. “I needed to think.”
“AboutAndrew?” he asks. There’s no mistaking the accusation in his tone.
I nearly laugh. He thinks I left because ofAndrew? He must have no idea how crazy I am about him to even suggest it. Yet…we both know Andrew offers something he does not. So maybe he’s got a reason to be jealous.
“No,” I reply. “Not really.”
He stiffens but says nothing as we exit onto my floor. Inside the suite, he scowls at the broad terrace, at the glass cake plate stacked high with macarons. “Little nicer than Riverbend,” he grumbles.
Is it? It never occurred to me. The entire time I’ve been here, all I’ve longed for is a cottage with insufficient air conditioning and noisy dogs sleeping nearby while I curl up against Charlie.
I open the doors to the wide veranda and walk out. When I start to take a seat on the cushioned sofa facing the room, he snatches me to him, pulling me into his lap. He’s still mad, but he wants me close.
I love that and I hate that, both.
“Okay, please tell me what you’re doing here a week early if it’s not ‘really’ about Andrew.”
“I came here to have myEat, Pray, Lovemoment,” I tell him. “I thought I was going to learn life lessons and come back with my head on straight and able to see things more clearly. Why areyouhere?”
I expect him to make some surly comment about Andrew. To my surprise, he pushes my hair out of my face and pulls my mouth down to his. “Because I don’t want to spend a single night without you. And I never again want to discover through a fuckingnotethat you’re gone.”
