The Charlotte Chronicles (Jackson Boys 1)

“I think you’re still in love with Gen and I . . . I’m still screwed up over Nathan. I don’t want to lose your friendship. My relationship with you is one of the great things in my life,” I say.

“I hate to tell you this, but if a friendship with a guy you see twice a year is one of the great things in your life, you have a pretty sucky life.” I don’t deny it. He exhales. “Did you see Nathan recently?”

“A few hours ago,” I admit. “I think you can guess what happened. You don’t need to tell me I was being stupid. I know it already.”

“I would be the last person to berate you.” Colin laughs ruefully. “If Gen showed up, I’d throw her down on the bed and fuck her silly. After, I’d spend the next day drinking away my self-loathing. Since you’re not going to forget your sorrows on my dick, why not go down to your hotel bar and get smashed? Once you’re too drunk to stand up, you’ll forget all about the asshole. It works for me.”

“What happens when the alcohol wears off?”

“Rinse and repeat, Charlie. Rinse and repeat.” He sounds so tired.

“Come down here. Spend the week with me. We’ll go sailing or, hell, just lie on the beach together. And after, you and I can go somewhere. We could fly to Japan and eat at that sushi restaurant in that documentary you made me watch,” I suggest impulsively. We need to get away from the source of our hurts, and maybe if we were alone we could open ourselves up to finding something better than happiness. It would be less painful.

“If I do, I’m insisting on double beds. I don’t want you attacking me in the middle of the night because you’re lonely. I’m not a toy.”

He says this as a joke, but I think half of him is serious. He’s tired of being treated like a toy by women and, honestly, I wonder if I’m Nathan’s toy. Something to pick up, play with, and discard. Colin hangs up, saying that he has a few things to take care of before he can drive down. He’ll text me in a couple of days. I make another list of all the things I need to do for Christian and his family and buckle down to do my work. I manage to keep Nate out of my thoughts for thirty minutes at a time, which I figure is some kind of mild success. Work isn’t as numbing as alcohol, but it’s probably better for me.

I work through dinner, and it’s almost ten before I put away my phone and computer for the evening. When I crawl between the clean, crisp sheets, I nearly cry tears of relief that I’m not back at the Del in the room where Nate imprinted himself on every surface in the short time he was there.

But when I close my eyes, I can see him—and me. I can see me pressed up against the mirror in the bathroom, my hands making starfish prints as I brace myself against his thrusts. I can hear his harsh breathing, his commands to come, come now, Charlotte. There was that passage of time that felt endless when he was between my legs, licking me softly and leisurely as if there wasn’t anything in this world that gave him more pleasure than helping me find my own. I touch myself, but it’s useless. My body wants one thing: Nathan Jackson.

I’m on fire and the ache of want is so acute it’s like a knife in my chest. I’ve had multiple surgeries, chemo treatments, radiation but that’s nothing compared to what I feel now.

Time and distance had dulled my pain and that my desire and love for Nathan had actually started to ease only to be stoked into high, hot flames by his reappearance in my life.

He is the poison and the antidote.

32

Nathan

“What do you think you’re doing?” Cabby demands. He showed up at my doorstep thirty minutes ago and used his keys to come in when I refused to let him in. He’s watching me pack.

“I’m going after Charlotte.”

“The letter girl,” he says flatly.

Annoyed, I snap, “Will you stop calling her that? She has a name.”

“Really? Because for like years you’ve never said her name once to us. We’re your family, man. Your brothers who have fought with you, and all I know is that for a while you got a shitload of letters from Chicago, Switzerland, and sometimes LA.”

LA. I never understood why she was ever in LA. Charlotte wasn’t a LA sort of girl.

“You took your letters and hoarded them like the fucking dragon in The Hobbit.”

“I didn’t want any of you assholes jerking off to her. She’s not spank bank material,” I growl.