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“Look, I’m sorry for what happened at my parents’ place at New Year’s,” James began in a mock apology.
“You said. That fucking mother of yours and that bitch,” she began in reference to Billie. “Anyway, skip the apology and let’s move along, shall we?” My chest tightened at the curt way she spoke to James. I felt my hand curl into a fist.
“Well no, Charlotte, first there are a few things I want to get straight before I stick my neck out for you.”
“What few things? If you know what is good for you, you’ll cut to the chase.”
“I think I deserve a minute, don’t you? I mean after all the shit you’ve put me through with my family, aborting my kid? Sexually assaulting me at Aiden’s place, and then threatening to accuse me of doing that to you? Then there’s the continual blackmail—”
“Assaulting you?” she barked. “How did I assault you?”
“Waking up with my cock buried inside you at Aiden’s thirtieth party? I was unconscious, for fuck sake.”
“That wasn’t assault. You rose to the occasion. A woman can’t assault a man, James, that’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? How come I had passed out and came around to you riding me then? What about me pushing you off and when I challenged you, you threatened to run out of that bedroom and tell everyone I had assaulted you?” For a moment she fell silent and when she didn’t protest her innocence, I knew James had been telling the truth.
Opening the bedroom door wide I stepped out, having heard enough and asked myself again if I had I ever known Charlotte at all. It was hard to accept someone I’d lived with for five long years was such a devious character. How had I never seen her like this? And if I’d needed further convincing, how she’d handled the abortion with everything else James had told me, the affair appeared far more one-sided than I had initially thought.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I yelled,making my presence known. Staring in shock, her jaw hung loose, but her hesitation only lasted for a split second before she crumpled in a heap on the floor. It was just like James had predicted, Charlotte broke down in tears and it immediately clicked why James had been so afraid. The scene she created right there on the floor would have melted the hardest of hearts. Her ability to look desecrated and beautifully vulnerable would have fooled most.
It triggered a similar experience I’d witnessed, when she’d done the same thing to me about us living together. Right then I realized James hadn’t been Charlotte’s only victim, she had used me in this way as well.
“Are you fucking sick in the head? You assaulted my brother and then blackmailed him? Why the fuck did you do that? There was no reason for you to behave this way. You had everything you wanted when you were with me. Why did you do it, Charlotte? And don’t say it was because you were missing me. You’ve never worked a day in your life and there was nothing stopping you from coming to see me.”
“I … I don’t know why I did it,” she blurted out, with mascara mingling with the tears that streamed down her face.
“I know why, because you are an attention whore. Your behavior was despicable, and if I ever hear you say a bad word about either of us to anyone in the future, I will drag you through court for defamation of character and ensure the press gets every sordid detail of what you did to James.”
Charlotte’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times but no words came out, and my brother looked devastated by the whole situation.
“What was it you said? Who do I think Sawyer would believe? I guess we have that answer now, Charlotte.” I snickered at James’s comment and although we had a way to go at least in this, we showed a united front. I turned to look at her and thought I’d never seen her so quiet for so long in an argument, and although the situation had felt absurd, I chuckled.
“Don’t ever come near either of us again. If you do, Charlotte, I’m warning you, the world will know what you did. In fact, I’m seriously considering whether your parents need to know this now. You are one sick fuck and they should be warned about the monster they raised.”
Sobbing uncontrollably, her eyes pleaded with me for compassion, but my heart felt as hard as stone when I stared contemptuously back at her.
“We’re leaving, James,” I stated, ignoring my brother’s look of surprise because it was his house. I was thinking ahead and hadn’t wanted her to have anything to blame us for, we were two men against one woman. So instead of us throwing her out on the street and risking her causing a scene, I figured if we left it would keep her off kilter.
“Leave your key and close the door behind you,” my brother told her in an expressionless, flat tone. Wandering over to the coffee table where he’d left his phone, he picked it up and waved it at her before we left. “Before you go spreading more shit, Charlotte, it’s all recorded this time. Every. Last. Word.”
Taking my lead and heading for the back door where I’d come in, James followed me outside and locked his back door. “Now what?” he said, as we both heard her trashing his living room after we’d gone.
“Now we get on with our lives. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you before, but you should have trusted me more from the start. I’d still have been mad about what happened, but this could have been resolved a lot sooner than now.”
“Could it?” Again, he had a point, I was stubborn and hurt either way.
“That was a smart move, recording the conversation,” I remarked, thinking how clever it was he’d had the presence of mind to do that.
He stared at his cell phone and chuckled. “I wished I had when I picked it up off the table, but figured it would do no harm to let her think I had,” he mumbled with a wink.
I snickered and shook my head, thinking it had been a sharp way of keeping Charlotte in her place. I began to turn away from him but before I got far, he flung his arms around me and held me tight in his grip. It felt desperate and I imagined the relief he must have felt at being believed. As much as I wanted to resist his embrace, it felt too good to push him away, but I still couldn’t hug him back.
“I’m not saying it’s all good, James, but today has been a great start. Let’s not push it because I don’t want to be let down again. There’s a lot of work to be done before I can say you’re my buddy.”
Nodding his agreement, he stepped back and bowed his head. “If you let me, I’ll try to be the brother I should have been all along. I know you owe me nothing, and I regret how I behaved toward you every day.” I felt his words, he meant it.
I held up my fist, he immediately bumped it with his before I wandered over to his car. “Give me a ride to my bike and if I were you, I’d stay out of there for a few hours. You’ll need some help to clean up later, she’s an expert trasher from my experience, but I think she knows she’s done fucking with the both of us now.”
When he dropped me off I closed his car door, having said all I’d had to say that day and rode back to Billie feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted off my chest. It was as if I could breathe freely for the first time in a long time. I finally knew how blind I had been about Charlotte, and I wondered how she’d ever managed to snare me in the way she had all those years before.
