Page 4 of Sleigh My Name
The air is sucked out of the room as my eyes clash with Charley’s. They’re heavy, filled with something deep and mysterious that calls to me. She always hadsomethingabout her I couldn’t shake. Truth be told, it’s the damn reason I isolated myself out here. I didn’t want anyone to shatter me the way she did.
Yet even with all the pain and anger in my heart for her, I hate the sorrow I see in her eyes now. My hollow heart experiences a pain I thought I’d buried all those years ago.
It’s been almost a decade since I last saw her. Years spent running, hiding from the magnetic pull of her spirit and the intoxicating chaos of us together.
I swallow hard, the dryness in my throat echoing my inner turmoil. After Charley, I closed myself off, refusing to get entangled in another web that could destroy me. I couldn’t stand the idea of being hurt again, but here it is, staring back at me with a loaded gun aimed directly at my heart.
“I don’t think we’re gonna have time for Christmas stuff this year, Penny. Remember, we talked about it in the car. We won’t be imposing on Mr. Liam for long, maybe a few nights, and then?—”
“Oh, I’ll need Penny here for more than a few nights,” I interrupt, pointing at Penny as I sit down. “I like your idea. You and I can help Ms. Linda organize the Christmas pageant she’s been talking about. And I’ll need plenty of help with the horses once winter sets in. Then with the spring cleanup, well, I should just offer you a job and your own official badge.”
“That sounds great! I love horses!” Penny shrieked.
“Wait a minute…” Charley was already shaking her head. “Did you say spring?”
I catch her eye, arching an eyebrow. “Got better plans?”
She clamps down on her bottom lip, eyes wavering with some unspoken emotion that makes me feel every bit the asshole I am. But that regret is squashed by my rage. I hold on to it like a man drowning in a turbulent ocean, grasping a lifeline. If I were smart, I’d let her go, kick her to the curb, but my intelligence is muzzled with the need to take care of her. The same need Ihad as a lovesick teenager rears its ugly head from the mangled rubble of my heart.
“Not yet.” Charley shoves up from the table and slips out the door.
I follow, my senses attuned to her. “Hey…” Catching her by the arm, I cage her against the wall out of sight of Penny. I suck in a breath of her fresh scent, my fingers impulsively grazing her hairline as my eyes trace the lines of her beautiful face. She looks so different, so grown-up, yet every bit the same girl I fell so hard for all those years ago. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’ll get us out of this. Penny and I won’t need your charity for long, Liam Evans.” Her eyes have a hard edge now as they meet mine unflinchingly.
I narrow my gaze, dropping it to the prim neckline of her collared shirt. Something stirs deep inside, something long buried that I never expected to find again. “I should have known that, right, Charley?” I trace the shell of her ear with my nose. “I already survived losing you once, so of course you’d have no issue making me do it all over again. Why the fuck would you care about me? It was always about what you wanted anyway, wasn’t it?”
I drink her in; the fragile curve of her neck, slumped shoulders, and the weariness that echoes mine. The shudder of our painful past rolls through her body like a silent earthquake rippling beneath the surface of her skin. It’s not a conscious recognition, nor a verbal confession. It is a visceral understanding.
A chilling realization hits me in a synchronized dance of sorrow and joy. A flicker, a spark, a fragile ember in the desolate landscape of my soul. No matter what I do, I’ll never shakeCharley. She’s there under the surface, a shadow lurking in the darkness, a memory etched in my very being. Charley is mine whether I want her to be or not. And I’m hers.
But I can’t move past our history. I’m unable to draw a line through that chapter of our lives to write a new one.
“It wasn’t my fault,” she murmurs.
“You didn’t keep in touch.”
“They wouldn’t let me,” she retorts.
“Oh, please.” I move closer, invading her space and pressing my chest to hers. “Were your wardens watching you all the time? Were they with you when you were at university? Were they watching you every moment?” Planting one hand over her head, I dance my lips over the curve of her neck. “What about when you turned eighteen? Or twenty? Twenty-Five? You couldn’t even send a fuckin’ DM? It’s not like I was hard to find.”
Arousal and anger surge in her eyes as she clutches my waist, pulling me against her heated core and pushing me away in the next instant. She’s on fire, and she is fucking gorgeous.
“It’s complicated.”
“My love for you wasn’t,” I answer honestly. “My love for you was the ocean and the sky. The valley and the mountain. My love for you was steadfast and everlasting, but I guess I was a fuckin’ fool, huh?”
Her gaze falls to the floor as her hands drop from my waist. I move away, putting distance between us.
I almost apologize, but I don’t. I can’t. Instead, I lower my lips to the shell of her ear. “You broke my fucking heart a little more every day you stayed away.”
She shakes her head, eyes nailing me with unshed tears that I want to taste. “And now? How is your heart now?”
“Now?” I step closer, invading her space again, and let the harsh truth flow through my words. “Now, I don’t have a heart to break.”
CHAPTER 4
Charley
