He looked at Charlotte. “You visited Ward multiple times.”
She met Brad’s powerful gaze. He wasn’t mad. He was determined and demanding.
“Charlotte, Alex was hurt and angry because you clearly needed Ward for something. Alex believed you were unable to let yourself trust him. You were unable to truly return his love.”
Brad dropped the bomb, and her heart broke open. He was right. She felt her betrayal of Alex from her head to her toes. Every set of eyes was on her—Noah, Brad, Ethan, Tristan, Olivia, Jackson, Sophie, Ruth, Molly, Izzy and Graham.
She swallowed hard and looked down. Then up. “Alex wanted to know why I visited Ward,” she said, voice quiet but steady. “I told him… I told him the truth.” Her breaths came faster.
The room stilled.
Charlotte looked at no one. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to say it. “It started during my interrogation. I was carrying Izzy but wasn’t showing. I hadn’t even said the words out loud yet. Not to myself and not to Chuck. But Ward… he somehow knew. He said I was trying to shield my unborn child from evil. Evil to the degree I was unaware of.”
Silence.
“After he was convicted, after the sentencing, he sent me a letter.” Her voice wavered. “He told me he understood me better than even my husband did. He heard some on patrol call me cold. I believed I was. Gideon said I wasn’t cold—I was controlled. I carried my pain like armor.”
Her jaw clenched. “I went to see him to tell him off. To rip into him. To advise him he didn’t know anything about me.”
Even Graham, sitting beside her, looked over with surprise.
Charlotte kept going. “He claimed I used my coldness to control my life. When things got tough, I shut people out.” She gulped. “And damn it… he wasn’t wrong. I left furious. I plannednever to go back…” She longed for Alex’s steady arms around her.
She blinked, once, slowly. “Then Chuck died. And I went back. Not to talk but to prove something. That I hadn’t shut down. That I was fine.”
Her eyes glistened now. “And he looked at me—through that glass—and said the fact I had to tell him meant I had shut down. That I was barely surviving.” She gulped. “He was right.”
Her voice cracked. “He said we shared something. Loss. Grief. Something that eats you from the inside if you don’t let it out. He didn’t tell me who that loss was for him, but I assume it was Elias.”
She took a shaky breath. “I cried. Right there, in front of him. I hadn’t cried once after Chuck died. Not during the funeral. Not until that moment.”
Her voice softened, breaking. “I didn’t cry again until Graham and I came back from the prison. After Ward died. It was a controlled cry.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “Alex was waiting for me, inside my ransacked home. And there he was, solid, empathetic, oh so loving. He knew what I needed. I sobbed in his arms.”
She looked down, then to Graham briefly. He didn’t say a word. Just listened.
“I realized I never grieved Chuck. Not really. It was easier to push people away. I did it to Graham. I did it to my career. I did it to Alex.”
Now she couldn’t stop. The words poured like a wound cracking open.
“Every time he told me ‘I love you,’ I said ‘I know.’ Alex told me that love without understanding and emotion isn’t really love. That until I share what I’m actually carrying… I’m not letting him in. Not sharing me.”
Her shoulders trembled. She inhaled sharply, tried to hold it together, but it slipped: a sob, small and raw.
“I hurt him terribly,” she whispered. “He was right. He said he wasn’t leaving the case… but he couldn’t stay with me until I was ready. He needed to protect himself.”
She finally looked up. At all of them. “After we talked at the college, when I dropped him off at the house to pick up his SUV…” Charlotte’s voice caught, and she blinked hard, trying to stay steady. “I told him I loved him. Really said it this time. And he said it back.”
She paused, breath shaking. “It wasn’t perfect. But it was real. There was this… moment between us, quiet but solid. Like we were finally starting to meet in the middle.”
Her voice thinned, trembling. “There was so much more I planned on saying when he came back. I was going to tell him I’d go to therapy. That I wanted to stop holding back. That I wasn’t scared of the work anymore—I was scared of losing him. And I have.”
She looked up, tears blurring her vision. “I thought I’d have more time. Just a few hours. I was going to meet him at Sophie’s and say everything I should’ve said so long ago.”
A sob slipped loose, sharp and quiet. “I waited too long.”
Tears ran freely now, and her voice shook. “Now I’ve lost him. Before I could tell him—I can’t imagine breathing without him. That, even if it hurts, even if it terrifies me, I would take the risk. I wanted to build something real.”
Ruth slipped from her seat and wrapped her arms around her mother. Silence settled over the table. No one else moved. No one interrupted.
