Page 114 of The Bad Wedding Date

“Then, why do you look so cross?”

I glanced her way, seeing those beautiful doe eyes staring up at me, the pinks of her cheeks making me want to pull the car over and just… I didn’t fucking know… kiss her or some shit. I had all these emotions swirling around in my chest, stomach, and my mind, and for the first time in a long, long time, I didn’t know how to process any of them. The loss of control made me angry, yet I didn’t want to let this fragile, somehow euphoric feeling go.

Staring back out of the windscreen, I pressed my foot down on the accelerator a little harder.

“Fraser,” she said quietly.

“It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen her like that,” I told her. “She had a fire in her today. It’s like you came along and, suddenly, she looked awake again. I’m watching her, and she’s saying shit to you, and—”

“It freaked you out.”

“A little.”

“I’m sorry. Getting people to talk is something I’ve picked up on from the care home. I’ve seen those vacant stares one too many times. That’s the advantage I had over you in that room.”

“She’s my mother.”

“That doesn’t mean anything to a person who is lost inside their own head, Fraser,” she said softly.

I worked the muscles in my jaw.

Charlotte leaned over, pressing her palm to my thigh and sending an electric current through me that no woman ever had before.

“Talk to me,” she said.

“About what?”

“Whatever it is you’re holding back.”

I blew out a breath. “Sometimes I think she hates me,” I found myself admitting, saying the words I hadn’t dared speak to anyone else before now. Not even myself.

Charlotte didn’t respond, but the gentle press of her fingers into my leg let me know she’d be listening when I was ready to say more.

I huffed out a laugh, looking out of the driver’s window at the passing green fields before I had to focus on the road in front of me again.

“You’re like a goddamn truth serum. I’ve told you more in the last two weeks than I’ve told the men I’ve worked with for over a decade.”

“Your mother doesn’t hate you, Fraser. Not even a little bit.”

“Huh. Then, why does it feel like she does every time I’m with her? Every time I speak to her?”

“Can you really not see it?”

Making sure the road was clear, I turned to Charlotte, my hand tightening on the wheel.

She smiled back at me, her brows raised and her smile upside down.

“Are you going to tell me or not?” I asked.

“I think maybe this is something you need to figure out for yourself.”

She let me go, falling back into her seat again, her eyes on the road in front of us, leaving me in utter confusion, wondering how she could twist me up so much with so little effort, and I couldn’t do anything but admire her for it.

Whatever she saw, I’d get it out of her in time.

I needed to.

As much as I needed to get us both somewhere safe so I could lose myself in this woman—the only woman that had the ability to clear my mind whenever things got too foggy up there.

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