Page 54 of Snowed In with Three Mountain Men

“You know,” she murmurs, resting her hand against my chest. “This is the same bed we stayed in when we…when you brought me here before.”

My heart drops slightly. We don’t talk about the past much. In the couple of weeks since we handed the journalist that information about James, along with the recording, it’s like a cloud has lifted from above each and every one of us, granting us a little peace in the face of everything that’s been going on. But that doesn’t mean our history is erased, just like that, no matter how much I wish I could put it all behind me.

“I know,” I murmur. I still don’t know how to talk about that part of our relationship. Even now, it’s raw—I can still remember staring down at her as she slept and wondering if I was doing theright thing, and then convincing myself that she would be better off without me.

She trails her fingers over my tee for a moment, probably able to feel the way my heart picks up the pace when she brings it up.

“You ever think about what might have been different, if you hadn’t left back then?” she asks me. The words hang in the air between us. I’m not sure if she’s accusing me or just wondering, but still, I can’t lie.

“Of course I do,” I reply softly, swiping a strand of hair away from her head so I can look at her. “Jesus, Charli, I think about it all the time.”

“Really? What do you think about it?”

I pause for a moment. I’m surprised that she even has to ask, to be honest.

“I regret it,” I tell her. “I regret it more than anything else I’ve ever done in my life. Jesus, if I could go back in time and change it, I would. I wouldn’t even think twice, I…”

I trail off. The emotion gets the better of me for a moment. When I think about all that she’s been through, all that she would have been able to avoid if I had just been there for her instead of walking away, it kills me, and I still don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to live with the weight of it hanging over my head.

“I’m so sorry, Charli,” I murmur. “If I’d known what would happen to you because of that, I…”

“It didn’t happen to me because of that,” she replies, her voice suddenly taking on a firmer edge. “It happened because of James. Because James was looking for a victim, and he foundme. You have nothing to do with the choices he made, Callum. I’m not going to let you blame yourself for them.”

“I know,” I reply. “But I…if I had still been with you, if I hadn’t left you the way I did, you wouldn’t have been hurting so bad, and…”

She lifts a finger to my lips and presses it there.

“Don’t talk like that,” she insists. “You can’t hold yourself accountable for that, you just can’t. It’s not fair to you, it’s not fair to me. It’s…what happened, happened. And it’s behind us now, that’s all that I care about.”

I rest my head against hers for a moment, breathing in the scent of her.

“Is it really?” I ask her.

She frowns up at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I hurt you back then,” I point out. “Badly. And it’s not like I can just…go back in time and undo that, it doesn’t work that way. I know I need to take responsibility for what I did, and I’m not denying that I made a mistake, but I—I can’t stand the thought of you hating me for that. Even though you have every right.”

Something in her face shifts as I speak, like she can hardly believe the words that are coming out of my mouth.

“You think I would hate you for that?” she murmurs, and she sits up on the bed. She reaches out, her hand on my face, her eyes staring deep into mine.

“You think that I couldeverhate you?”

I move to face her, so we’re looking eye-to-eye. Her voice has such a fervency to it that it almost surprises me. She shakes her head, her gaze not breaking mine for a moment.

“I never hated you, Callum,” she assures me. “Never. I was confused, sure, I was hurt—but I knew that whatever you did, you did because of what you thought about yourself. The way that you saw yourself, the pain you were dealing with. If I’d known about it back then, if I’d known about you losing your father and how worried you were about Dax, I would have done everything I could to be there for you. But I got it, even then. I got it.”

Her voice is trembling slightly, and she has to pause for a moment to gather herself before she continues. “And besides, who’s to say that we would have made it work back then?”

I raise my eyebrows. “Charli, I was crazy about you,” I remind her. “I loved you. Still do. Did all those years that we were apart?—”

“I know you did,” she replies. “And I loved you too. But we were different people back then, both of us. I don’t know that you would ever have been able to open up to me the way you have now, not back then. You kept it all to yourself.”

“I didn’t want to burden you with it.”

“I know,” she murmurs. “And I get that. But I guess I’ve burdened you with enough that we’re even now, huh?”

I can’t help but chuckle. “Charli, nothing about you is a burden,” I reply. “Never has been.”

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