Caroline pokes her head out of her room. “Dinner reservations are at seven! Are you two coming?”
Charlie answers before I can. “We might stay in tonight, Mom.”
She nods immediately, eyes flicking to my face with soft maternal worry. “Rest. Both of you. We’ll bring dessert home.”
Not long later, the penthouse is quiet, the family gone for the night.
Charlie turns to me. “Hot tub?”
“God, yes.” I groan. “If I don’t soak in boiling water in the next ten minutes, I’m going to fossilize.”
We change into swim shorts, well, I change slowly, wincing at every bruise I find. My ass looks like abstract art. Charlie tries not to react, but I catch the guilt flickering across his face.
“Stop it,” I warn him.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your eyebrows apologized just now.” He huffs out a tiny laugh, then grabs towels, and we step out onto the enormous terrace. The entire balcony is covered in a soft layer of untouched snow. The frozen lake below sparkles like crushed diamonds. Steam curls lazily from the hot tub.
“This is ridiculous,” I say as we climb in. “This is obscene luxury.”
“Yeah,” Charlie says, taking off his leg and placing it on the side before sinking down beside me. “Mom doesn’t do things halfway.”
The heat is instant relief. My muscles sigh. I sigh.I might actually melt.For a while, neither of us talks. We just float in quiet warmth, snowflakes landing on our hair, dissolving instantly. Then Charlie shifts beside me, arms resting along the edge of the tub, gaze fixed somewhere far away.
I nudge his knee underwater. “Talk to me.”
He swallows. “About last night …”
“I knew this was coming,” I murmur. “Go on.”
“I’ve had episodes before,” he says quietly. “Flashbacks. Nightmares. But it’s been a long time since the last one. I really thought maybe I was done with it.”
“You’re not broken because your brain remembers something scary,” I say gently.
He rubs a hand over his face. “I hit you, D. That’s, I can’t even say it. It makes me sick.”
I move closer until my knee brushes his firmly. “You didn’t hit me. The nightmare hit me. You weren’t awake.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“It does,” I counter. “Because the man who loves me would never raise a hand to me consciously. I know that. You know that.”
He looks away, jaw tight. “I could’ve hurt you worse.”
“But you didn’t. And even half-asleep and terrified, the second you recognized me, you stopped. That tells me everything.”
His throat works as he swallows hard. “You weren’t scared?”
“I was,” I admit. “And the punch definitely sucked. But scared of you? No. Not for a second.”
He lets out a small, shaky breath. “You should be with someone who doesn’t come with this baggage.”
I sit up straighter, heart kicking. “Okay, absolutely not. Don’t do that. Don’t turn this into a reason I should walk away. Trauma doesn’t disqualify you from being loved.”
His eyes flick to mine, vulnerable in a way that breaks me open. “But I don’t want to drag you into it.”
“You’re not dragging me anywhere. I choose you,” I say. “I choose all of you. Even the parts that hurt.”
