The Man In The Mirror

I stood there gaping like a demented goldfish until she came to me and put her arms around me. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. I should have kept my big mouth shut.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ll be fine. Time will sort me out.” I flashed her a fake smile. We went into the living room and I chewed uninterestedly at my pizza while I listened to her talk about Yuri and her baby. I was glad she had come. It took my mind off Brett. I had pushed the plate away when the doorbell rang.

I groaned. “It’s that damn new postman again. Why can’t he just leave it behind the flowerpot like the other one used to do?”

“I’ll go,” she called as she headed off to answer the door.

I picked up my empty plate to go to the kitchen, when April called out to me. Something in her voice made me stop in my tracks. Slowly, I moved towards the hallway. One step at a time. It was not the new postman.

Standing at my apartment door was the man I had not been able to keep out of my mind for more than three seconds for the last three days.

She couldn’t stop looking at him as she spoke, while his gaze had already moved past her to me.

“You have a guest,” she said.

I gripped the plate hard. I couldn’t breathe.

“Charlotte?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I squeaked out.

“Okay, I’ll leave now,” she said, giving me a wink. “I don’t think I can stand here and watch you turn into a creepy awestruck stranger.”

She went through the door and he came in. I tried to settle my erratically beating heart, but it was beating so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if he could hear it. I took a deep breath as my eyes hungrily roved over him. He was dressed immaculately in a double-breasted navy blue suit. His presence seemed to dwarf my entire apartment. My hands itched, the need to touch him an almost possessing force.

“Brett,” I said.

“You left,” he accused.

“I wasn’t exactly given a choice. How did you find me?”

He shrugged. “I found the name of the agency from a letterhead Jillian had left in the drawing room, but the agency wouldn’t give me your address so I bought it.”

I shook my head at the lives of rich people. “Just like that, huh?”

“What did you expect me to do? Just leave it?”

“No, but…”

“You made no attempt to contact me,” he said. Something dark slipped into his eyes then and it made me sad. I truly, truly more than anything else … more than even my desire to be with him, wanted him to be happy. Thoroughly and boundlessly.

“You were not really mine and I was put in my place.”

He took a step towards me. “You’re mine,” he said harshly. “If you didn’t want to be then you shouldn’t have worked your way into my heart in the first place. But as you did, I’m not letting you go.”

Hot tears filled my eyes. My heart felt like it was ready to burst. “I don't know that she will let us be. She will always be in the way poisoning you and Zackary.”

“I apologize that you had to deal with Jillian. It must have been so humiliating for you, but Jillian will never trouble us again.”

“How can you say that? She is Zackary’s mother. She will always be in the picture.”

“After I found out you’d gone, I told her to move out. She got very drunk and stormed out of the castle and ordered Barnaby to bring her car to her. Unfortunately for her, she met with a really bad accident. She got thrown out of her car just like I had. But unlike me she damaged her spinal cord.”

“What?” I gasped, my hand coming over my mouth.

“Yeah, it’s hard to even imagine it, but Jillian is paralyzed from the neck down.”

“Oh, my God!”

“It was her own fault. She liked riding the danger train in more ways than one and it was only a matter of time before something bad happened to her.”

“Where is she now?”

“In one of the best hospitals money can buy.”

“That’s horrible. I detested her, but I didn’t want that for her.”

“When I went to see her she thought I had come to gloat, but I took no pleasure in seeing her like that. When I was in a wheelchair she showed no pity or empathy so it was as if fate decided to teach her what it feels like to be helpless and stuck inside a body that doesn’t work. I will pay to keep her in the best care possible. I owe that to her father.”

“What about Zackary?”

“He’s confused and frightened, but time will take care of that.”

“Poor thing,” I whispered.

“So you see. I am the only one you need to worry about now. It’s me and you … and nothing else, and no one else. Do you understand?”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Who lives that way?”

“We will,” he said. “You and me and Zackary and all the other children we will have together.”

He came forward and pulled me into his arms, lightly moving his nose from my hair and down my face to my neck, inhaling, reveling.”

“How I missed you,” he said. “I would have come to you sooner but all these other events were in the way.”

I pulled away to stare into his eyes. “You’ve known her since you both were children. She has to be more than an unfortunate event to you.”

“She is,” he responded, and I could see the deep sadness in his gaze that he was as usual trying to hold at bay … to mask. “Especially when I think of her father. She will have the best care and assistance that she needs, but my road together with her ended a long time ago, even before ours began.”

I released a deep breath which made my entire frame quiver.

That made him laugh. “Relax,” he said to me and placed the lightest of kisses on my forehead that made me want more.

“I love you, Charlotte Conrad.”

“Me too. I love you so much I could die.”

“Don’t you dare do that.”

I grinned.

“We’ll take it one day at a time, okay,” he stated.

“I couldn’t ask for more,” I replied, and slid my arms around his neck.

“You’ve been crying,” he noted as his gaze searched mine.

I nodded, comforted by his warmth and strength. The tears and sadness seemed far away.

“Never again,” he ordered.

Nodding obediently, I crushed my lips to his and gave in to the incomparable taste of home.

Epilogue

Brett

I Say a Little Prayer For You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBbyglq37E

4 years later

It was our second day in Languedoc, and our first return to the South of France since our wedding three years earlier. The villa was one of our favorite homes.

A short distance from us, our Chef was working the grill and the smells of meat cooking filled my nostrils. With my eyes shut and a pair of sunglasses shielding them from the late afternoon sun I lounged in the warm infinity pool overlooking the deep blue of the Mediterranean.

My kids, there were three of them, looked very small playing together on the beach beyond. They were watched by Mr. and Mrs. Boothsworth. Yup, they made it official and tied the knot.

Sliding the sunglasses up to my head, I looked down at the woman clinging to me. Her beautiful gold hair was damp and clinging to her neck from an earlier swim. My arms were spread out as I leaned against the edge of the pool, while her arms were around my neck and head rested on my shoulder.

Every inch of her was plastered to me, my cock resting against her stomach, was slowly getting harder and harder. She felt my gaze, and lifted her head to meet my eyes, a dazzling smile across her lips. This woman had plucked me from the dark, lonely hell that was my life and put me into a brand new world full of light and color. She single-handedly changed my life.

Loving all of me, even my scars. She even managed to change Zackary’s fear of me. One day, when he was six, he asked me to show him my scars. I took off my mask and

he looked at me for a long time, then he smiled and said, “Charlotte was totally right. They are like one of the paintings hanging in the modern art gallery she took me to.” I laughed then. Only Charlotte could ever come up with the idea that my ugly face was a work of art.

“Sleepy?” I asked her.

She nodded lazily.

I brushed her hair behind her ears. “We just got up from a long siesta. Why are you already exhausted?”

She looked at me from underneath her lashes. It could have been the sun in her eyes, but I was going to take that as an invitation, and I never passed up invitations from my wife.

Holding her neck in place, my tongue slipped into her mouth and danced with hers, teasing, tasting, and loving. Putting both my hands into the water, I grabbed her cushiony ass to crush her hips to mine.