“Hannah!”
“What? You love him and he’s an idiot if he doesn’t love you back. You’re awesome.” Sometimes it was great having a best friend and sometimes I wanted to strangle her with her fancy scarf.
Mrs. Neal had a smirk on her face, and I got the feeling she knew something I didn’t. “Come on, Hannah. He’s not here. Let’s go,” I said, keeping the ‘drown my sorrows’ part of the saying to myself.
“He’s taken Isla away for the weekend. They’ll be back tomorrow night.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Charlotte,” the soft way she said my name made my eyes fill with tears.
“It’s okay. He doesn’t want to talk to me. I get it.”
“I agree with your friend here. I love Luke. He’s like a son to me, but your friend is right. Sometimes he’s an idiot. He’s hurting as much as you are but he’s too damn stubborn to admit it. If you’ve got something to say, something he needs to hear, something that can fix this … this mess, something that can make you all happy again, then he needs to hear it.”
The tears started streaming down my face. This is why I didn’t want to come here. But booze and Hannah had me standing on Luke’s doorstep, crying like the pathetic fool I was. It was damn embarrassing.
“Come here,” Mrs. Neal encouraged, pulling the tie on her robe tight as she shuffled toward me.
“I can’t,” I sobbed.
“Charlotte. Come here.”
My feet were moving before my brain registered what I was doing. When her arms wrapped around me, the familiar scent of her rose scented perfume assaulted me and the dam I’d been trying to hold back inside me burst.
As she stroked my hair, she whispered in my ear trying to reassure me, “He loves you. He’s just hurt. Give him time.”
“I broke us.”
“Oh, sweetheart. No, you didn’t. You’re just a little cracked. Nothing that can’t be repaired.”
Stepping back, I wiped my eyes, my hand coming away covered in the mascara I’d smudged, and I was pretty sure I looked like a snotty, sobbing panda. “I’ve gotta go,” I told her, feeling the overwhelming need to flee.
“I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
“I ... I … I’m not sure he’s going to want to hear it.”
“You let me deal with Luke. And you,” she pointed at Hannah who was hovering nearby, pretending to be looking at her phone, “you take care of Charlotte here. She’s a good girl.”
“I will,” Hannah promised.
“He’ll come around,” Mrs. Neal added, before kissing my cheek and Hannah led me back toward the elevator.
“Just so you know, you’re staying with us.”
“I’m fine. I can just go home.”
“Charlotte, that wasn’t a question.”
28
LUKE
“You’re making a mistake, Luke,”Mrs. Neal told me from where she was standing in the kitchen flipping blueberry pancakes.
“The sooner I do it, the sooner we can move on.”
“Or you could stop being so stubborn and listen for a change.”
