“He came to my flat the morning of the wedding. You may remember that he was dating my sister at the time—and it was my sister who took the liberty of calling my guests and telling them the wedding was off before I knew anything about it.”
Her eyes close for a moment. “So that’s why none of your guests were there.”
“Yes. And he persuaded me that it would be the end of my career in every meaningful sense if I married a student—not to mention it would have ended your career too, before it had ever started.”
The furrow between her brow hasn’t gone away, and I kiss it because I can’t help myself. “I don’t see how my career would have been affected.”
“Can you not? How many people would’ve assumed that you’d fucked your way to prominence instead of earning it on your own merit? We’d know differently, but that hardly matters when the doubt would’ve pervaded every space you worked in. I couldn’t lose my work, Charlotte, but just as much, I refused to lose yours. I couldn’t bear the thought of stamping out your future just so I could stamp my name on your legal existence.” But my hold on her tightens as I consider that none of it mattered anyway. She still lost her future.
“Then why didn’t you answer my calls? Why didn’t youshow upto tell me this? Why didn’t you face the aborted ceremony with me? Why didn’t you find me that night? Why didn’t you find me the next day?”
This. I’m ashamed of this almost more than the decision not to show up to my own wedding. I owed her everything, and I especially owed her the truth. “It took me two or three hours to persuade the director not to make our engagement known, even after I decided not to go the wedding. We’ve never gotten along, him and me, and he was torn between finally having some kind of political leverage over me or being tainted by association, since he was fucking my sister. By the time I’d convinced him not to poison my career and yours, the wedding was long over—it was why I’d sent the car, you understand. Not to be high-handed or dismissive, although I admit I’m often that, but because I was determined to save the future before I fixed the present, and I wouldn’t leave him until I had his word he wouldn’t tarnish our names.”
She searches my face. “I don’t forgive you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“You did it as much as for yourself as you did it for me.”
“I did.” I bend my head down so I can smell her neck, her hair, nuzzle my cheek against hers. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. It was selfish and hollow and arrogant of me. I thought if I gave up my chase for God, I’d be giving up myself. But of course, I lost myself the minute I gave you up, and it didn’t matter. I damned myself that day, and for nothing.”
I can feel her breathing underneath me—the fast, panting swell of her ribcage against mine, the thrum of her pulse against my nose as I run it along the column of her neck.
“And that night, I—” I spare telling her the whole truth, the truth of what I became and what I did to my own house as the horror of what I’d done unfolded inside me. I’m still finding shards of glass four years later. “I wasn’t fit to come to you. And when I was more composed, I felt you were owed an explanation beyond a phone call. So I came to your flat to find you the next day.”
“I went to the library to use the public computers to look for a job,” she says. “I wasn’t home.”
“I waited for a while, but I was—I’m afraid I still wasn’t in the right frame of mind.” I’d been like a wounded animal that day, snarling and snapping at everything, and I’d dimly recognized in my hurt and anger that I was likely to shred something between us that couldn’t be stitched back together. So like an animal in truth, I’d followed my instincts to the water. I watched night blacken the Thames into a slick of oil, reflecting as much light as it swallowed, and I imagined that cold oil as my shame, coating everything inside of me until it was ready to be lit on fire. Charred to oblivion because everything already felt charred without Charlotte in my arms. Worse than charred.
A world without my little one was a world too dead to burn.
“And I came to find you the next day,” she recalls, and I think of a memory colder than that night by the Thames.
“Yes, you did.”
At the time, I’d been still too raw, still too arrogant to consider that it was truly the end. She’d walked into my office and set the engagement ring on my desk, and a desperation like I’ve never known clawed hold of me.
“You can put that ring anywhere you’d like, but you’re still mine.”
“I believed that until two days ago, Church. I don’t think I believe anything right now, especially since you won’t tell mewhy.”
Panic. Terror. Shame.
If I told her why, she’d leave. She’d leave and she’d never come back.
Fear boiled in my veins as I tried to convince her and deflect from the terrible truth at the same time.
“We don’t need a wedding, Charlotte, nor a marriage nor a mortgage together to prove what we have.”
“We don’t have anything. Not anymore.”
I’d kissed her then, getting to my feet and hauling her into my arms, feeling her shiver and cling to me just as she always did. Feeling her mouth open to mine and accept me. “I acknowledge I’ve fucked up, little one, but you can’t lie to yourself about what we have or don’t have. I still need you in my bed and you still need to be there. The rest we can figure out in time.”
“I won’t go to another church alone,” she said against my lips.
The mere mention of what she suffered at my hands made my bones ache and my body throb. “Maybe churches aren’t for us. But my bed is. But this is.”
I pulled her back to my mouth and she let me. She let me take a deep, lingering kiss.