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Chapter Twenty-Nine
At least Charlotte had the decency to hide in the bathroom until Sawyer took me by the hand and led me upstairs. "Come on, I'll take you on a tour," he remarked like he hadn't been listening to what had gone down between me and his ex. My heart stuttered irregularly because I figured once we got where we were going, he'd tell me what he thought.
"What the fuck was that about?" he asked, leading me into a bedroom that Colby would have felt in awe of. Sports trophies sat side by side. Above these were various pictures in frames—some in full color, others in black and white—and one gigantic framed photo of Sawyer and his high school baseball team.
Music certificates and awards, music concert flyers, and autographed band pictures filled another wall. Signed leather baseballs, two baseball bats, rare baseball cards, special programs and other memorabilia sat on display in a small glass cabinet near the window.
"Aren't you going to answer me?"
"I am. This room is perfect," I stated, still scanning the place where Sawyer spent years growing up.
"Today?" he asked, a note of frustration in his tone. "What did she say?"
"You heard," I replied, my heart racing because I hated confrontation and being challenged. Was he desperate to know how it affected her seeing him with me? Was he worried about me? Either way, it left me feeling uncertain where his loyalties lay.
"Some of it—the last couple of minutes …"
"Then you heard most of the details. The rest was hot air," I replied, indigent he had put me on the spot. I wasn't a schoolgirl and this wasn't high school. I was about done taking shit from people.
"Tell me," he demanded, and my stomach knotted. I began to think he was more concerned about Charlotte's feelings than mine.
"Why are you so desperate to know? I thought you said it didn't matter what anyone else thought? Did you mean anyone else, apart from Charlotte?"
"Are you fucking serious?" Sawyer's eyes were clouded with anger.
I was stunned when he swore at me in anger, and I swallowed back a lump that formed in my throat that he had. I had no wish to rehash the conversation, but I knew I'd get insight from his body language as to how Charlotte's confrontation of me made him feel.
"According to your ex, your family is simply tolerating me because they have a full house and how they are behaving toward me is out of politeness." He opened his mouth to protest and I held up my hand to stop him. "Let me see … I'm a fool because you're supposed to be with her, and she sees the way you look at her when I'm not around." Sawyer shook his head in denial. "Then she compared us in the mirror, and she didn't have to point out what she was, and I wasn't. Oh, and then she told me I'd better watch out because if she decided she wanted you back—"
"Bullshit," he roared, not letting me finish. "I mean, I don't look at her the way I look at you. I don't see her the way I see you."
I was surprised he'd chosen this to focus on. "I wouldn't know. I'm not there, am I? You said you still love her."
"I'm not in love with her, Billie. I wouldn't be with you if I was. Our families go way back and we used to be close. I loved her as a friend, and if I'm being straight with you, that part of our relationship was the part I missed the most about her—until I met you. Now, I couldn't care if her ass was on fire. After that little manipulation, she pulled downstairs, I don't want to know her. The way I see it, she wants what she can't have—what she will never have again. You're what I want, Billie. All I want." The desperation in his voice left me in no doubt about this. "Charlotte is a child in comparison to you. No, there is no comparison. You are the first real love of my life, and I hope my last. I meant every word I said earlier about you to my sisters. I'd marry you in a heartbeat. Someday I hope I will, but I know you need time."
"If you feel the way you do, why do you tolerate being around her? Why does your family tolerate what she and James did to you?"
"I know this is hard for you to understand, but it's down to business. My father and hers are longstanding business partners, joint CEOs of a Fortune 500 company, and silent investors among an exclusive group of wealthy people who are board members of about twenty other blue-chip companies.
"Gregory, her father, and mine have very convoluted partnerships in a lot of ventures and between them they mentor and invest in many smaller companies by using their annual dividends and bonuses to help those businesses grow. A lot of small businessmen and women would go bust if they were to simply drop their alliance with the boards they serve."
"It's about money? They tolerate what they did to you because of money?"
"No, jeez, it's not that simple, Billie. My parents were as mad as hell at James when they found out what he had done. Dad cut him off financially and kicked him out of the house. James admitted what he'd done was wrong, but then Charlotte spun their affair like she was a victim.
"My mother became sick with the strain of it all. James, my father, and I were at each other's throats, and Charlotte's mother was bitching to anyone who would listen about how James had taken advantage of poor, lonely Charlotte. I was to blame as she'd been left for months on end while I behaved like a musical nomad—"
"I already heard that part from Charlotte downstairs," I interrupted, deadpan.
"When it didn't die down, my mom was hospitalized with stress. It wasn't pretty. The girls then got involved and were gunning for Charlotte's blood. I think if they'd met up with her at that point, they'd have strung her up from the nearest tree for sleeping with our brother, and that wasn't the half of what they wanted to do to James. Anyway, their affair almost tore this family apart. But my mom persuaded my dad to let James come to family events, as none of us could avoid them on other occasions to do with their business associates. Charlotte is an only child and invitations to corporate events were always extended to her."
"I can't imagine how you feel."
"Now, I feel nothing about what they did, not the affair part anyway, but the betrayal is different. I'll admit I was devastated when I found out, and I blamed myself too for working with the band. Previously, Charlotte had always appeared so supportive of my work and that made me wonder how long the affair between her and James had been going on. Guess I'll never get to the truth of that part."
"You lived together," I reminded him, and thought how messy it had been when Logan and I parted.
"Not from that day onward. When I saw what they did, I took off. Disappeared off the face of the Earth for a while. Scared the shit out of my family because they were worried I'd … harm myself. I'd never have done that, by the way," he added quickly. "I'd never suffered from depression, but if I'm honest, I was devastated with how James had treated me. The fact he was at the center of it, really got me down."
