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Maybe he’d understand.
Maybe he’d be willing to have a conversation with her.
Tears blurred her vision.
But maybe he would be angry with her. So angry that what they’d started to build would be torn down once again.
Charli didn’t know what to do. Part of her wanted to call him and get everything sorted out as soon as possible.
But a far, far larger part feared what he would say to her.
She’d been stupid to think that waiting to tell him was the better thing to do. Stupid and scared. It had been a head in the sand approach to the situation that was now coming back to bite her.
When her text alert went, Charli startled, and the phone fell onto the carpet at her feet. The phone was face up, but she wasn’t able to read who the text was from before the screen went dark.
It could have been a text from Janessa or one of her other siblings.
Maybe even one of her fellow teachers.
Charli’s shoulders slumped. Clearly, she was still on the path of delusion.
She should probably be relieved if it was Blake, that he hadn’t called her. Reading a text was better than having him yell at her. But putting off reading the message would not change what it said.
With a shaky sigh, Charli slid off the bed to sit on the floor. She picked up the phone, then paused. She wanted to pray that if the text was from Blake, that he wasn’t mad at her. But that felt selfish. Like she thought she deserved to escape his anger.
But she didn’t.
She didn’t deserve his understanding.
With a sick feeling in her stomach, Charli turned her phone over and over in her hands. Finally, she stopped with the screen facing her and tapped the screen.
The notification showed that the text was, in fact, from Blake. It expanded before she was ready to read it, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from the words.
Blake: I’m not going to be able to talk tonight.
Tears spilled over, making the words blur. Her heart hurt so badly in her chest that it was hard to take a deep breath. This pain was as self-inflicted as if she’d stabbed herself.
With trembling fingers, she opened the app to respond to him. Ignoring the situation wasn’t going to make it go away. She was learning in the worst possible way that sticking her head in the sand would never lead to a good outcome.
Okay.
She didn’t know what else to say. He might not know that Jackson had called to tell her what had happened. But her one word response would probably clue him in.
Bending her head forward, she pressed the edge of her phone against her forehead, her shoulders hunching as her mind raced.
She didn’t know what to do. Her perfect day had taken a horrible turn. She’d had just a few short hours to enjoy something she’d always wanted. Now… now it was gone.
There wasn’t even a flicker of hope in her heart that Blake would forgive her for this. Regret, self-recrimination, and hopelessness dominated her thoughts as she sat there, wondering what she was supposed to do now.
Finally, Charli pushed up to her feet and went to the bathroom. If she was going to get through the next few days at work and around her family, she had to get hold of herself and her emotions.
But she wouldn’t be able to do that until she’d let herself cry out her pain.
After she’d turned on the tap, Charli poured some of her favorite bath oil into the water. She watched it fill for a minute, then removed her clothes and stepped into the tub.
Lowering herself into the water, Charli spent a few minutes trying to breathe away the huge amount of emotion that filled her. She couldn’t believe she was shedding tears over Blake again. Except this time, she had no one to blame but herself.
Never before had she wished for a rewind button as much as she did right then. She should have realized that this moment was inevitable, and by letting her family know they were dating without telling Blake about Layla, she’d invited all of them to witness the heartache resulting from her bad decision.
