Ben thundered across the room toward Desmond. He took one step back, his calf hit the couch, and he would have fallen backward if Ben hadn’t grabbed his shirt collar and hauled him up.
Charlie stood frozen in place. The concept of someone defending her from her father was making her brain tilt.
“I’m not going to waste my breath telling you to show some respect for your own daughter,” Ben growled through clenched teeth, his face inches from Desmond’s. “Because it’s obvious you’re too stupid for that.” He started walking backwards, dragging Desmond with him. Desmond clawed at Ben’s hands but had no chance of making him let go.
“I have emphysema.”
“I don’t give a shit.” Ben reached for the doorknob behind him and turned it. He threw it open and dragged Desmond into the hall.
Charlie unfroze and ran to the door. She stopped just shy of going out into the hall, standing in the doorway instead.
“Now, do I have to drag you all the way down to the lobby? Because I’m more than hap?—”
Desmond took a swing at Ben.
“Well, I guess I do.” Ben turned Desmond around and frog-marched him to the stairs. Charlie couldn’t see her father past Ben’s broad shoulders as they disappeared down the stairs.
Mrs. Calhoun’s door opened slowly and she poked her head out. She looked at the disappearing men, then looked at Charlie.
“Keeper.”
Charlie could only nod.
If he comes back.
Maybe it was a minute later.Maybe it was an hour, or an entire day later—Charlie had no concept of time in her current state—but Ben came back.
Charlie was standing just inside her apartment, eyes squeezed shut, trying to process… everything.
She listened to him lock the door, then cross the room and sit down on her couch, the creak of the wood hidden somewhere under the upholstery sounding like tired old bones. She felt so much older than she really was, and at the same time she felt like a helpless little girl who’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have but that might not be her fault and then the room was spinning, spinning spinning and she tried to push it all back down inside, deeper than the bottom of the ocean, down in the cold dark?—
“Come here.”
His voice cut through the deep fathoms of where her soul had sunk to. Her shame. Her secret.
“Charlie.”
But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t turn and face him. Couldn’t let him see the devastation on her face. The weakness. The broken fortress.
“Princess. Come here.”
A bolt of pink light shot down through the midnight blue fathoms and found her.
“Come here, Princess.”
She tried to ignore his voice. If she stood here perfectly still long enough, he would leave. And then she could quietly put the fortress back together stone by stone, and make sure the mortar was twice as thick as it was before so that this could never happen again.
Her mother taught Charlie to put on armor and hide what she loved.
She loved Ireland, her homeland more than she loved us, I guess.
She’d left Desmond, went back, married her childhood sweetheart, and never sent for her children like she’d promised.
Charlie heard the couch creak again and knew he was standing, and soon he would walk past her out the door again. He would open it and she would stare at the floor, and he would turn the knob and she would count the rings in the wood and he would close it behind him and she would be alone again and she could put the armor back on in peace.
She felt his weight behind her before he touched her. Before he reached out and put his hand on her shoulder and his hand was so big she couldn’t believe it was real. Was she shrinking? Was she somehow collapsing into herself?
Ben scooped her up and she curled into his chest. She’d never felt so small. She should have felt terrified but she didn’t. He walked with her in his arms down the hall to her bedroom and settled her in. Why was she shaking so hard when it was the end of August? Flo jumped onto the bed and curled against Charlie's legs, a warm, solid presence. Ben wrapped the covers around her and crawled onto the bed. Then he pulled her into his lap and held her until the shaking stopped.
