Page 96 of Rival Hearts
“I know it’s not always easy being you,” she said. “I know you always have eyes on you and that makes life a lot harder to figure out. You can’t just fall and learn from it when everyone is watching.”
“Yeah.” She summed up my life so perfectly.
“But I’ll always be here, okay?”
I looked at her, and her eyes were serious.
“I know it’s tough, but it helps to have someone in your corner, and I’ll always be here, cheering you on. I’ll celebrate your successes with you and listen to you when you need to cry on my shoulder about something you didn’t manage to figure out right away. And then I’ll remind you that it’s okay—we get to try again.”
“God, you’re incredible,” I breathed.
I pulled her closer, and she pressed her body against mine. Although we were both naked, it had nothing to do with sex. This was just about me and her being as close as two people could possibly be.
I’d never had someone like Charlotte. Every woman who’d ever wanted to be with me had wanted something from me. Being with me had never been forme, but for what they could get out of it.
Charlotte looked like she really cared about who I was as a person and not what she could get out of it… she didn’t give a shit what I had.
It was an unfamiliar feeling to be wanted completely and wholly for who I was.
“Do you think I’m controlling?” I asked.
“What?”
“Do you think that I’m demanding? Controlling? Like you’re not allowed to just be yourself around me?”
I was more worried about the reaction to that question than I should have been.
“Of course not,” she said. “Where would I even get that from?”
I lay back and looked up at the ceiling. Charlotte lay on her side, her fingers interlinked with mine, our hands on my chest.
“Women always say that. They say I’m too controlling, expecting too much, and I’m too involved in my career.”
“I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Charlotte said.
I glanced at her.
“I mean, I get it,” she added. “I’m pretty involved in my career, too. If you don’t hold on to what you believe in, you’ve got nothing.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah. That’s true. And I know what it’s like to have nothing.”
She frowned at me again, that same confusion that made her so adorable it made my heart ache.
“I’m not really a Blackwood, you know.”
Charlotte stayed silent, letting me speak.
“All four of us are adopted.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You can’t tell?”
“Well, no…” She considered it. “I’ve never met your brothers or anything, but I’ve seen pictures. I guess I just figured your family has a really,reallygood gene pool.”
I laughed, and it was a release of tension.
“My parents couldn’t have children,” I said, the laughter fading again. “They adopted us one by one, saving us from the homes we’d grown up in. The home where I’d started had been…” I hesitated. “Abusive.”
