Hate Notes

“You shouldn’t be moving around,” he scolded.

“It’s fine.”

I led him to what technically used to be my bedroom. Reed looked stunned to find that it wasn’t really a bedroom anymore at all.

A sheet lay over the floor. A pottery wheel sat in the center of the room. My bed, which was covered with junk, was pushed against the wall. Surrounding shelves held both painted and unpainted pieces.

“Where do you sleep?”

“The sofa in the living room turns into a very nice bed. Recently, I’ve turned my room into an art space. Someday I’ll get to have a bedroom and a pottery room, but for now this is how it has to be.”

He wandered around, gazing at my pieces. “You obviously made all of these?”

“Yup.”

“You mentioned once you went to college for art?”

“I went to Rhode Island School of Design in Providence for a year. But I ended up dropping out.”

“Why?”

“I realized that part of the beauty of being an artist is not having pressure put on you to create. And when that pressure was put on me, that was where my creativity basically ended. I sort of like to just throw raw clay on the wheel and see what happens. A bowl often unexpectedly transforms into a vase and vice versa. Sometimes my work turns into a useless piece of junk, and other times, something beautiful.”

“Like the one I caused you to break that you made for Iris. That was one of the nice ones, wasn’t it?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“That figures.” He smiled. Reed’s smile was like a gift. It was rare, but when it happened, it totally consumed me for as many seconds as it lasted. “Do you have a favorite piece?” he asked.

“You’d be surprised.” I moved slowly over to the corner of the room to pick up a small bowl. “This one, actually. It doesn’t seem like much at first, but if you look closely and become familiar with it, you see it’s perfectly balanced. Small, not flashy but colorful. Really exquisite.”

“Yes,” he said, looking deeply into my eyes. The temperature in the room felt like it was rising. “I honestly had no idea that you were this skilled. It’s very impressive.”

“Wow, I’ve impressed Reed Eastwood.”

“It’s not easy to do.”

“It’s not.”

Reed’s normally hardened expression had gone totally soft. His eyes were searching mine, and I felt something indescribable yet very strong between us in that moment. His body was close, and it felt like he could’ve easily leaned in and kissed me. Maybe that was just because I wanted him to kiss me so badly. Tonight we’d reached a level of intimacy that hadn’t existed before. Perhaps that made the physical need even more intense.

I could feel his breath a little when he said, “You’d better go sit down and get off your foot.”CHAPTER 22

REED

I felt sick.

I think it might have been a reaction to Charlotte’s pixie dust or whatever spell she was casting on me.

I’d driven her to the office for the past few days. My problem was not that I didn’t want to do it; it was the opposite. I looked forward to the longer morning commute while ingesting her scent. I looked forward to her laugh and her ridiculous need to go to two different breakfast spots, one for the coffee, the other for the special kind of muffin.

This feeling had followed me around since the night of her little accident. At her apartment, when we were talking about her birth mystery, I’d seen a vulnerability in her eyes that I’d never noticed before. And when she took me into her art room, I’d been truly blown away by her talent.

When I got home that night, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and spent an hour googling “Saint Andrew’s Church Baby Poughkeepsie.”

There was probably only one thing cuter than present-day Charlotte Darling, and that was the red-faced cherublike version of herself from twenty-seven years ago. I might have printed the photo and tucked it away. And I’d take that fact with me to the grave.

The story was pretty much exactly the way she’d described it—a total mystery. A baby was found bundled up in a basket and left in front of the church rectory. The person rang the doorbell and ran, leaving Baby Charlotte in the hands of the church, then the state, before she eventually ended up in the hands of her adoptive parents.

Maybe it was because of the beauty of the little girl, but the news story stayed in the headlines for some time, following Charlotte’s plight from the very beginning up until she was adopted six months later.

As I sat in my office pondering Charlotte, she happened to walk by, carrying a few packages. I noticed that she was walking perfectly fine—with no limp. Just this morning, that wasn’t the case.

Hmm.

It made me wonder if she was playing some kind of game with me.