At first, I just collapsed back into the pillow, letting him have his space to act like some stupid asshole who wanted to leave first thing in the morning. But as I closed my eyes back shut and thought about how this was playing out, I decided I had to double down on the honesty not for his sake, but for mine.
I couldn’t have worked to better myself if I was going to suddenly act like a coward afraid to call things out for what they were when they most needed it.
The breaking point for me was when I felt LeCharles’ weight come off the bed, telling me he was either looking for clothes on the ground or preparing to move entirely.
“LeCharles.”
I sat up and looked at him, standing in the frame of the door. I was naked from the waist up, and LeCharles had full view of everything that he had groped and touched last night. But that didn’t faze me in the slightest. If he was going to be distracted by my breasts so much he couldn’t get the message, then that was on him.
“I know last night got weird, and I know you don’t want to talk about it right now, and that’s fine,” I said. “But I’m not going to play this game anymore. If you want us to build toward something, then let’s build toward it, or at least consider doing so. But if you mock me, belittle me, and criticize me as you have for the first couple of weeks that I’ve been here? Then I’ll recognize that you have changed. And not for the better. And the LeCharles that I once fell in love with is dead and gone, replaced by someone much worse.”
I could see the words hit him way harder than even I anticipated. It was like his body was literally caving in, the way he seemed to shrink before me. I didn’t think anyone had spoken to him so honestly before; certainly no woman ever had.
But a side effect of that was that he had nothing to say. He shared eye contact with me one more moment before he walked out. I heard him saying goodbye to Shiloh, followed by the door opening and then closing.
I knew he’d gotten the message. If I had to guess, I figured he would make an effort to treat me better at first.
But would it last? Would it continue to get better? Would it be a sustainable kind of change?
Only time would tell on that.
For now, as Shiloh came back to my room and jumped on the bed, immediately cuddling me, I knew where my focus had to lie—on improving myself and my financial situation. It had to lie with making my life better.
Even as I kept LeCharles on my mind, I had to act like LeCharles was not in the picture. Strength, it seemed, was a bit of a paradox. It was acknowledging that the person of interest existed, but also pretending like that person didn’t exist for the sake of goal-setting and progress.
No wonder being a strong person was so damn hard.
Axle
Ireally don’t know Rose at all.
The Rose I thought I knew never spoke so honestly.
But the Rose I know right now, or what I know of her... what is going on?
I made my exit from her apartment relatively quickly, mostly because I needed some space to process everything that had happened. I had to admit that coming that close to getting off and then having it stopped before she had even stroked me was disappointing. It had taken quite a bit of self-control not to lash at her with some sort of smartass remark when she decided not to have sex.
But it only took a few seconds for me to realize that she had made a great point. Even though sex itself was something I got pretty regularly and not something that I struggled with, sex with Rose was a very, very, very different matter. If I went inside of her, especially after all of the events of that night, there was no telling what would happen. There was no telling what sort of fights or passionate moments we would have as a result.
So, yeah, it made sense for us to make sure we had a stable ground to build off of first.
But damn, blue balls sucked.
And so did having to try and make sense of an incredibly complex and awkward night and morning.
So I just left. At least Rose had been nice enough to give me instructions as clear as anything else I’d ever heard. But she wasn’t the only one who needed something.
I needed to see what in the world was going on with Rose’s life. What had driven her to the point of choosing to go to fucking Brewskis on a Friday night like that? Even if she didn’t realize how bad things were...
And then I remembered she had left her car at Brewskis.
I let out a long sigh. It was going to be really fun having to go back up there and explain why I had returned. It wasn’t really something I wanted to do, but, well, I guess I was done being an asshole.
I walked back up, knocked, and put my hands in my pockets. When Rose opened the door, she didn’t look the least bit surprised to see me. I guess she didn’t get that many guests on a Saturday morning.
“Need a ride back to Brewskis?”
She chuckled.
