“What is it?”
Brighton blinked a bit, her mouth opening and closing before her question finally made it out. “Do you forgive me?”
Charlotte’s own mouth dropped open. Closed. She hadn’t been prepared for that question.
Thequestion, really.
She’d spent the last five years being angry at Brighton, not to mention the last several days, letting that anger keep every other feeling at bay. It was a cleansing fire, keeping her moving, keeping her upright.
And god, she just wanted to lie down.
Because the truth was, she didn’t think she’d ever get over what had happened with Brighton five years ago. She wasn’t sure if that was healthy or not, but she did know this—she shared in their ruining.
She’d been tunnel-visioned and selfish and scared. She’d been career obsessed, and she’d taken Brighton for granted. Brighton had crushed her when she left their wedding…but she’d crushed Brighton too. By simply not seeing her for months and months. Or, rather, choosing not to see her, which was even worse.
Forgiveness wasn’t forgetting. But it was just as real. Just as healing.
“Yeah,” she said softly, framing Brighton’s face in her gloved hands. The truth. “I do. Do you forgive me?”
Brighton’s eyes filled, and she was nodding before the question was even fully free. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Brighton laughed. “Yeah. Good.”
And then they kissed, opened to each other, and it felt like the end of something, the start of something, every kind of something that Charlotte couldn’t name, couldn’t understand, and for now, under the canopy of lights in Colorado, that was enough.
Chapter 24
“I’ve never seen you smilethis much,” Sloane said to Charlotte as she attempted to roll a piece of slimy bacon around a fig. “I’m not sure how to handle it.”
They were at Elements the next evening, Wes and Dorian’s restaurant in downtown Winter River, with the rest of the Two Turtledoves crew. The space was gorgeous—rustic and elegant all at once—with round wooden tables, brushed-nickel light fixtures casting an amber glow over the room, wooden beams crossing the ceiling, and shots of forest green and navy worked in through local artwork on the walls. The restaurant had shut down for the night—Wes and Dorian’s donation for Two Turtledoves—and Wes was giving them all a cooking lesson.
“A romantic cooking lesson,” he’d said at the start of the evening. “A sure way to impress any first date, tenth date, or the love of your life.”
Everyone had chuckled at that, but Charlotte hadn’t missed the way his eyes had found Sloane.
And the way Sloane’s eyes had found him.
Charlotte’s eyes had very carefully and purposefully not found Brighton at that moment, but she’d also been watching Sloane and Wes all evening, wondering at Sloane’s body language, her expressions, even her tone. She’d never seen Sloane in love before, and something about that fact left her unsettled, as though she’d forgotten something but couldn’t remember what.
Still, that didn’t keep her heart from picking up its pace at Sloane’s comment, her mind working back through her and Brighton’s time at Greenbriar Ridge and the gardens, as well as most of this past afternoon, which Charlotte and Brighton had spent entwined on the couch in the basement while everyone else watchedScroogedupstairs.
Charlotte didn’t think she’d stopped smiling since they’d left the ski lodge, to be honest. And right now, working next to Sloane, she smiled again—her facial muscles were legit a little sore—and finished up adding a dollop of goat cheese to her figs. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just…” She shrugged, glanced at Brighton at the next table, where Brighton had paused her work on her own figs and was deep in conversation with Wes.
She was so gorgeous, Charlotte literally lost her breath for a second.
“Jesus, okay,” Sloane said, laughing. “So you’re in love.”
Charlotte froze, goose bumps erupting over her whole body, and not in a pleasant way.
In love.
“I’m not,” she said, looking down as she started to wrap her figs. “I’m just…”
But she wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence.
In lust?
