The Charlotte Chronicles (Jackson Boys 1)

Yours forever,

Nathan

* * *

CHARLOTTE

I’d promised myself at the Del that I’d shed my last tears over Nathan Jackson, but as they fall on the heavy linen paper I had bought earlier today I make no effort to stop them. They aren’t really tears but a cleanse of my soul. I hadn’t realized how broken I was until I received this letter, slipped under the door of my hotel room at some point before Colin had driven me back from dinner.

As I read, I realize that I am only the shell of a person with no heart or soul. I’d given everything to Nathan when I was a girl, and he kept them. It’s why I’ve been so empty. But he is not only handing them back to me; he is giving me everything in return. Everything I have ever asked for and then some.

I pick up the phone.

“Yes?” His voice is a low rumble resonating in my belly. There’s want and need and, yes, love, swirling inside my body, seeking an outlet.

“Yes,” I say tearfully.

He exhales and the stream of air is so long and forceful that it is as if he had been holding his breath for days. “I want—” he stops himself, clears his throat and begins again. “May I see you?”

“Yes.” This time my affirmation is a watery chuckle.

“When?”

The same urgency imbued in that one word courses through me as well.

“Are you sitting outside my hotel?”

“If I say yes, will you call the cops?”

“Only if you take too long to get up here.”

34

Charlotte

I stand with the door open, waiting for him. The elevator is around the corner, out of my sight line, but there is a faint mechanical noise as it stops on the floor and a ping that signals the doors are opening. I pretend I can hear his footsteps, but the plush carpet is swallowing them. I devour him with my eyes, allowing myself to fully appreciate Nate’s adult form. He fills up the hall space, sucks all the oxygen from the building. I’ve certainly stopped breathing.

“You shouldn’t be out here, Charlotte,” he says as he approaches. His voice has deepened and has a gravelly timbre to it that makes my insides flutter in response.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Very.” He doesn’t stop at the doorway but scoops me into his arms and strides into the hotel room as if he owns it. The door slams shut behind him, and in the next moment I’m sandwiched between the smooth wood at my back and Nate blanketing my front. “Last chance to say no.”

His mouth is a whisker’s width from mine.

“This is your last chance.”

He nods somberly and sets me on my feet. I begin to protest, but he’s not leaving. He falls to his knees and presses his face against my belly. “I know it is.” The words are almost too softly spoken to hear, but I feel them. I feel his regret and sincerity. Nate needs absolution that only I can give him. I move away from the door and cross the room to settle on the end of the bed.

He watches me but does not rise. It’s as if he is afraid that if he does anything wrong, I’ll reject him.

If we hadn’t grown up together, if I hadn’t known what a genuinely good person he is, if I hadn’t felt the genuine torment in-between the spaces of the words he wrote, maybe he would be right.

But we’ve spent too long apart, and I’m ready to move forward even if he’s afraid.

“Would you do something for me?” I ask.

“Anything” is his immediate answer.

“Come over here and let me look at you.” I lean back on my two arms, allowing my loose-fitting nightshirt to fall around me. It’s not the sexiest of bedroom attire, but it’s a T-shirt of his—one that I’ve kept for nine years. He’s always liked it when I wear his clothes. “And take off your shirt while you’re at it.”

He rises immediately and walks toward me. Stalks me, more like it. His shirt comes off in the way that men do—one hand at the back of his neck and then over his head. The reveal is delicious. His arms are muscular and veiny, and his abs are magazine cover perfect without any need for Photoshop. Over the right shoulder are tendrils of a tattoo that covers his upper right back. Other than the arm tattoo there are no other marks on him but the scars evidencing his time in a military. My mind takes a million photographs so that I can pull them out when we aren’t together. He stops about a foot from my bent legs.

I motion for him to turn around. He puts his hands on his hips—as if to say, Really Charlotte?—but this is my show. He pirouettes, slowly, his arms stretched wide. I swear he could almost touch the walls, his wing span is so wide.