“Keith’s my son!”
Chapter 20
Grey
December 21, 2014
EVERYONE FROZE AT Charlie’s words. The only sounds in the house were Charlie’s quiet sobs as we all stared at her. Jagger and me in shock, Mrs. Easton with a look that was beyond my comprehension. She looked like the very incarnation of evil, and all of that evil was directed at her daughter.
“Shut up!” Mrs. Easton hissed, and I watched as Charlie shook her head back and forth.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for more than you could ever imagine,” she cried as she looked from Jagger to me. “Keith is my son.?
?
“Charlie, no,” Jagger finally said. “Don’t do this—don’t try to save Mom. She’s not the kind of person you think she is.”
“I know all about her,” Charlie responded with a sad smile. “We hid the pregnancy from you. It wasn’t hard since you were always with Grey that summer, and I just wore loose shirts the more I started to show and stopped leaving the house when it became obvious. Then you didn’t even come home that winter break after Keith was born—it wasn’t hard to play it off as Mom’s son. I’d given up custody before I even gave birth to him because Mom didn’t think I could handle being a mother. That’s why I never went away to college, and that’s why I don’t like leaving here. I can’t be away from him for long, and Mom refuses to give custody back to me.”
“She’s lying!” Mrs. Easton cut in. “Don’t listen to her. She’s just trying to take the blame so you won’t have to.”
“Just stop!” Charlie shouted. “Stop with everything. You are hurting everyone, can’t you see that?” She took deep breaths in and out, and we waited long moments for her to continue. “Grey, you know I loved Ben. I’m sorry for loving him when he was yours, just as I know Jagger was sorry for loving you when you were Ben’s.”
I went still. I wasn’t sure if I was breathing. I wasn’t moving or blinking. All I could do was think about the couple of times Ben and I had been in Thatch in the months before his death, and that Charlie was now crying about her baby and because she’d been in love with Ben. Jagger turned to look at me when he felt how still I’d gone, but I couldn’t look at him.
A choked sob burst from her chest, and she dropped her face into her hands. “Spring break of your sophomore year at Washington State, you all came home. You all had gone to a party that first night you were home, and Jagger didn’t come home after, he went to LeAnn’s.”
“Charlie, where are you going with this?” Jagger demanded.
“Jagger,” she pleaded. “Ben came over sometime after the party ended looking for Jag, but he wasn’t there. Ben wasn’t drunk, but he was definitely tipsy, and I let him in to make him something to eat because I didn’t want him driving like that. We started talking about random stuff while I was cooking, and I finally asked him why he’d come looking for Jagger if they’d just been together . . . and that’s when he told me he hadn’t.”
The room went silent again except for Charlie’s quiet cries. Jagger had gone just as still as I had at her last few words, and Mrs. Easton had stormed out the side door a couple minutes before. I released Jagger and stumbled past him into the living room, where I sat down roughly on one of the couches, my eyes never leaving Charlie’s—and hers never leaving mine.
“He—”
“Don’t,” Jagger ordered as he sat next to me and gripped one of my hands. “Do not finish whatever you’re about to say.”
“No, Jagger, let her,” I somehow forced out. “I need to know.”
“Grey . . .”
Glancing at him for a split second, I tightened my grip on his hand before looking back at Charlie. “It’s fine.”
After another few seconds, Charlie continued. “Ben said he’d never been more confused in his life, and when I asked him what he was confused about, he said everything. He said he was confused about what he knew others wanted and deserved, what he wanted, and how he didn’t know what to do or how to feel about what he wanted. I tried to make a joke about it, saying he thought too much when he drank and that it was probably a bad time to start thinking. He just came up next to me and turned the stove off and said, ‘You’re right, and that’s my problem, I finally start thinking about everything I normally push away. But now I can’t stop thinking about it, and now I’m here.’ Before I could say anything else, he—uh . . . h-he kissed me.”
Jagger stood from the couch and began stalking around the room, but I couldn’t look at him, and I could no longer look at Charlie.
“I didn’t know he was about to kiss me, because Ben and I had always talked, and I’d always been in love with him, but I never thought—I don’t know. But at that moment I just thought I was finally getting what I’d always wanted. He said, ‘Why do I want you so bad when I love her? And why do I love her when I know she should be with him?’ He asked if I wanted him too, and I told him how I’d always felt.” Charlie stopped when it got too hard to speak, and Jagger and I stayed silent waiting for the rest. “I gave him everything that night and the next, and I thought everything was finally going to be how it should be. Me with Ben, and Jagger with you, Grey. The day after that second night . . .”
“We got engaged,” I finished for her, and finally looked back up at her.
“Yes,” she whispered, her face full of a pain and sorrow I knew so well. “I was—I was heartbroken, I was pissed, I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t know why we were going to a party at your house that night, Grey, only that Jagger said he needed me there. When I heard you’d gotten engaged I knew why he said that. Because it was killing Jagger . . . but he had no idea it was killing me more than anyone could’ve possibly imagined. Ben came after me that night and I started screaming at him, asking how he could get engaged to you after all that had happened between him and me. He said what we’d done was a mistake.”
Her voice broke, and she took shuddering breaths to try to compose herself. “I tried everything, I asked how he could tell me that you and Jagger belonged together and then two days later ask you to marry him. I asked how he could be confused and reminded him that he hadn’t been drinking the second night we’d been together . . . I asked him how he could suddenly be so sure. He said if he were selfless, he would let you go, and let you be with the guy who’d always loved only you. But that he still loved you too much to let you go, and after everything the two of you had been through, he couldn’t risk losing his life with you for someone he loved, but wasn’t in love with.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, my head dropping into my hands as tears fell quickly down my cheeks.
It felt like I was being suffocated, and I couldn’t figure out how to breathe again. My heart was broken, but I didn’t understand the feeling. My heart had shattered when Ben died, and Jagger had pieced it back together. Years later, Jagger became my new life, and I knew he was everything I would ever need or want from there on out. To learn years after his death that Ben had cheated on me days before we got engaged was the most confusing kind of heartbreak I’d ever experienced. Like I couldn’t be upset enough, because my world had already been rocked by his death. Like I’d been betrayed, but somehow knew that my heart hurt for Charlie too. Confused. Devastated. And somehow whole because of the man behind me.