Chapter 10: Truth Session
The bathroom tiles were cold under her bare feet. Charlie splashed water on her face, the shock of it sharp, pulling her back from the edge of the confession her dad had carved out of her. She watched the droplets slide through her mascara, creating faint gray trails on her skin. Afraid of how much you like being his. The words echoed, a hot brand on her conscience. She pressed a towel against her closed eyes until red patterns bloomed in the darkness, swallowing back the tremor in her hands. Ten minutes. She counted each breath, each second, rebuilding the walls brick by brick until her reflection showed only calm blue eyes and a practiced, neutral mouth.
The living room was a wave of sound and heat. Mariah Carey sang from the speakers, competing with the roar of the football game Taylor and Logan were arguing over. The scent of roasted turkey, pine, and cinnamon whiskey wrapped around her as she slipped back onto the couch beside her father.
“Everything alright, Chuck?” Logan asked, not looking away from the screen.
“Fine. Aunt Mel just needed a hand with the wine.” The lie was smooth, automatic.
Chief O’Connell’s gaze was heavy on her profile, but he said nothing, just passed her a bowl of honey-glazed carrots. She took it, her fingers brushing his, feeling the calluses earned from decades of holding a gun, a steering wheel, the shoulders of grieving families. She forced a smile, laughed at Taylor’s terrible joke, passed plates, and nodded along to stories of precinct antics. The performance was exhaustive, each genuine smile a victory wrestled from the turmoil inside. She watched her brothers, their easy camaraderie, her father’s quiet pride, and felt like a ghost haunting her own life.
Hours later, the house settled into a contented silence. Wrapping paper scraps littered the floor like colorful snow. Empty glasses sat on coasters, each a ring of condensation marking the night. The tree lights cast a soft, multicolored glow over the worn furniture. Charlie moved through the room, collecting debris, stacking plates with a quiet clatter.
She felt him before she heard him. A presence in the doorway, solid and still.
“Leave it, kid. We’ll get it in the morning.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, not turning, wiping down the coffee table. “It’s… peaceful.”
His footsteps were quiet on the rug. He bent, picking up a stray ribbon, rolling it slowly in his hands. The big, stoic man, reduced to fidgeting. “You held it together tonight. For them.”
Charlie straightened, clutching a damp cloth. “I always do.”
“I know.” He sighed, a sound of profound weariness. “That’s the hell of it. I always trusted you the most, Charlie. Your brothers… they’re reaction, all impulse. You’re all calculation. You think. You weigh. I never had to worry about you making a stupid mistake.”
“Until I did.”
“Until him.” The name hung unspoken, toxic in the fragrant air. He finally looked at her, his face etched in the dim light. “I read his file, you know. After I saw the way he looked at you that first time. I read every line. I can’t… I cannot understand it. A man like that. A world like his. How you could…”
His voice broke, not with anger, but with a desperate, bewildered grief. It was worse than shouting. “I want you happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted since your mother…” He cleared his throat. “I won’t have him in this house. I can’t. And God help me, I hope you come clear of him. I hope one morning you wake up and this… fixation is just gone.”
He took a step closer, his eyes searching hers. “But you’ve felt like this for two years. Through school, through everything. You’re not a fool. If it was just some crush, it would’ve burned out.” The admission seemed to cost him dearly. His jaw was tight. “So if it’s still this… real… maybe you need to try. Maybe you need to see it for what it is, not for what you dream it is. And if it breaks you…” His hand came up, cupped her cheek, rough and warm. “You come home. And we’ll put you back together. Just… try living, Charlie. Stop waiting for permission.”
The tears came then, hot and silent, spilling over his thumb. She leaned into his palm, the last bastion of safety, even as he gave her leave to wreck herself. She turned her head and pressed a kiss to his leathery cheek. “Thank you, Dad.”
She pulled back, swiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand, a wet, shaky laugh escaping her. “But it’s not just your judgment. It’s not just the job, or the family, or… any of that.”
She looked toward the dark window, seeing only her own ghostly reflection superimposed on the night. “I’m stopping me. The most. Every single day.”
Every single day.
The words rang in her ears long after the kitchen light was switched off. Upstairs, her bedroom felt alien, a museum of a girl who no longer existed. The posters, the trophies, the organized desk for a law career she still wanted but now saw through a fractured lens. She changed into worn cotton pajamas, the fabric soft against her skin. She lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling.
Sleep was a taunt. Her mind replayed her father’s hand on her cheek, the weight of his reluctant blessing. It replayed Aunt Mel’s piercing question about liking the danger. She turned onto her side, punching the pillow. She flipped onto her other side, the sheets tangling around her legs. The digital clock burned 2:17 AM into the darkness. A hollow, aching need pulled at her ribs, a physical suction she could no longer rationalize away.
She wasn’t thinking. She was moving.
The old Mini Cooper started with a reluctant shudder. She drove across the sleeping city in her pajamas, bare feet on the pedals, the chill of the floorboard seeping into her bones. The city lights blurred into streaks of gold and white. She didn’t think about protocol, or family, or the monstrous file her father had read. She only followed the magnetic pull in her chest, a compass needle swinging violently to true north.
The private elevator to his penthouse accepted her keycard with a silent, green glow. It had always been a secret surrender. The doors opened directly into the cavernous living space. It was silent, profoundly so. “Dimitri?”
Her voice was swallowed by the expanse of concrete and glass. Moonlight gleamed on the sterile surfaces. No low music. No shadow in the study doorway. No scent of his cigar or his whiskey. The emptiness was absolute. It pressed on her eardrums.
She walked to the center of the room, the cold floor biting her feet. He was nowhere. The reality was a slap. Her bold, stupid pilgrimage was for nothing. The hollow ache in her chest cracked wide open. A sob escaped, ragged and ugly in the pristine silence.
She stumbled toward his bedroom, pushing the door open. His scent here was stronger—sandlewood, expensive soap, the faint, undeniable spice of him. It was a physical embrace. She crawled onto the vast, made bed, burying her face in a pillow that smelled purely of his skin. The tears came then, hot and hopeless, soaking the linen. She cried for the confusion, for her father’s broken trust, for the terrifying force of this want. Exhaustion, deeper than sleeplessness, dragged her under.
She fell asleep surrounded by his essence, her body curled tight around his pillow.
Three hours later, the elevator hummed. Dimitri stepped into the penthouse, the weight of the night in the set of his shoulders. He tossed his keys onto a side table, the sound metallic and sharp. The air was wrong. He stilled, his instincts firing. There was a new note in the sterile atmosphere—faint, sweet, out of place. Orange blossom and salt.
He breathed in, frowning. His brain, tired and wired, offered a cruel trick. It had tortured him with her phantom scent for weeks. He shut his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fucking madness,” he muttered to the empty room.
But it persisted. He followed it, a predator drawn by the most vulnerable of lures, to his bedroom door. He pushed it open. Moonlight had shifted, now silvering the figure in the center of his bed. For a full ten seconds, he didn’t move. He was imagining things. A desperate, detailed hallucination born of fatigue and obsessive want.
Charlie. In his bed. Her blonde hair fanned across his pillow, one hand tucked under her cheek. She wore thin cotton pajamas covered in tiny clouds. She looked heartbreakingly young and utterly real.
He wanted to wake her. To demand what she was doing here, to shake her and kiss her and ruin this fragile peace. But she would leave. The thought was a cold blade. One of the things he wanted most, a secret even from himself, was her sleeping in his arms. The trust of it. The quiet.
Silently, he shed his clothes: the tailored jacket, the shoulder holster, the shirt, the trousers. He left them in a heap on the floor. He slid into the bed beside her, the sheets cool against his skin. Carefully, he moved closer, fitting his body around the curve of hers. He felt her warmth seep into him.
He buried his face in the hair at the nape of her neck, inhaling. Orange blossom. Salt from dried tears. Her. His chest expanded, a deep, shuddering breath that felt like the first one he’d taken since she walked out of his life 2 years ago. His arm came around her waist, anchoring her to him. He closed his eyes. For now, this was enough.
For now, this was enough.
The first thing she felt was heat. A solid wall of it along her back, seeping through the thin cotton of her pajamas. The second was weight. An arm, heavy and possessive, locked around her waist, pinning her in place. Her breath hitched. Reality assembled itself piece by piece: the unfamiliar linen, the scent of sandalwood and man, the silent, sunlit expanse of his bedroom.
She was in his bed. And he was wrapped around her like a second skin.
Memories from the hazy, desperate night flooded back—the drive, the empty penthouse, her tears on his pillow. A sharp curl of embarrassment tightened in her stomach, quickly burned away by a hotter, more potent thrill. He was here. Solid. Real. His breathing was deep and even against the shell of her ear, his chest rising and falling against her spine. She lay perfectly still, terrified of breaking the spell.
Her mind was a riot of her father’s fractured blessing and her aunt’s razor-edged question. Afraid of how much you like being his. She liked this. God, she did. The absolute claim of his hold, the way her body fit backward into the hard planes of his as if designed for it. She swallowed, her throat dry. She needed to see his face. She needed words, an explanation, something to anchor this surreal peace to the complicated daylight.
“Dimitri.” Her voice was a sleep-roughened whisper.
He didn’t stir. She shifted minutely, trying to turn within his embrace. The arm around her waist tightened, a silent, unconscious command. His nose brushed her hairline. “Charlie.” Her name was a low, sleep-thickened rumble against her neck, more vibration than sound.
“You’re awake.” She stated it, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“I am now.” His lips moved against her skin, sending a lightning bolt of sensation straight down her spine. His hand splayed flat on her stomach, holding her still. “Don’t.”
“We need to talk.” The words felt absurd, trivial, given their position. “About …. About… everything.”
He let out a long, weary breath. His entire body seemed to soften into hers, his grip transitioning from possession to something closer to surrender. He nudged her hair aside with his chin and pressed his mouth to the juncture of her neck and shoulder. The kiss was soft, lingering, full of a quiet hunger that stole the air from her lungs.
“I know we do,” he murmured into her skin. His voice was gravel and fatigue. “And we will. I will give you every fucking word you want. Answers, explanations, promises you probably shouldn’t believe.”
He pulled her even closer, until not a sliver of light could pass between them. His next words were a plea wrapped in a sigh. “Just give me one more hour of this, solnyshko. One more hour of peace.”
The endearment, russian and tender, unraveled her completely. The fierce, untouchable man she’d fantasized about and feared was asking for a ceasefire, for quiet. Her hand found the one anchored on her stomach, and she laced her fingers through his. He let out a sound that was almost a groan, of relief or defeat, she couldn’t tell.
She nodded, a slight movement he would feel. She gave him the silence he asked for. She gave herself the hour.