Page 80 of Degrees of Control

“Well, you try and change her mind, Jamie, but if she decides it’s not good enough? That you had your chance and you blew it? You have to accept that. Don’t say you love her and get bitter if she doesn’t want to be your girlfriend.”

“I know.”

Kelsey was right, Charlotte deserved to be happy, even if it was without him. No matter how much it tore at him to imagine her going out into the world to find a better lover, he had to let her go. His sister patted him on the back. “If it doesn’t work with this girl, there’ll be others. You know that, right?”

James nodded, but he didn’t believe it. Everyone knew lightning didn’t strike in the same place twice.

They stared out into the night sky for a while. He felt like someone had put a layer of plastic wrap over his chest. He was aching, but it was better than being so exposed. He looked up at the Big Dipper and thought about her smile.Whatever it takes, I’ll show Charlotte that what we have can work. I’ll be what she deserves.

A thought occurred to him. “What do people do when they don’t drink?”

Kelsey leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. “Hell if I know. Ask your girl.”

Chapter 22

If Charlie drank one more cup of tea, she was going to turn into a cup of tea. That’s what Tess would say if she could see the extent of her moping. But her sister was in Australia, where Charlie had apparently left all her good sense.

She was an idiot. A fool. A moron. Despite everyone’s best intentions, including her own, Charlotte Bell, Miss-Least-Likely-to-Ever-Successfully-Negotiate-a-Fling, had fallen in love.

By the time she got home from James’ house, she had already cried enough to drown. For weeks she’d been feeding her listless heart with sex, and without even the illusion of James to look forward to, everything hit her at full force. She howled for so long she woke Belinda from her inebriated slumber. Eventually, her roommate got worried enough to call Charlie’s friends. Hayley showed up within the hour, bearing gifts of double chocolate cookies and tea and together they talked through the sorry affair.

“You know ending things is for the best,” Hayley said, pouring her a millionth cup of Earl Grey. “James is messed up. It might take him years to get his shit together. No matter what you feel for each other and no matter how much dirty sex you have, it won’t work.”

Hayley was right. Objectively, she’d gotten exactly what she wanted from James—an up close and personal experience of rough sex. Now she had to accept it was over. But it didn’t feel over it feltdifferent. When she first met James, he had seemed superhuman and untouchable, now he was flawed, flesh and bone. There was no denying she’d fallen for him. She didn’t know if she had a messiah complex or thought she could fix him, but she’d never fallen so hard or so fast. What she felt was deeper than anyone who had come before him. Still, as Hayley kept saying, she couldn’t save him with kindness. James could only save himself, something he’d straight-up told her he didn’t want to do.

So she curled up with Hayley, watched movies and sobbed a lot and the next day she unplugged her sinuses, forced her ass out of bed and went to work. That was the shitty thing about breakups, life went on and the pain followed. No flowers came, no apologies, no vegan curry. She called Travis and told him she wasn’t going to take a date to Sophia’s wedding. He was a great guy but she’d rather go alone than exploit someone she wasn’t interested in. Days trickled by and still the ache in Charlie’s chest pounded on. She was like a hypersensitive organism, tender and at constant risk of infection. As with Dale, she waited for the feelings to dissipate, but nothing happened. She’d put together a few pieces of a puzzle or read a couple of pages of a book, then find herself reaching for her coat and aimlessly wandering the streets. She saw him everywhere. Every man under the age of seventy became a potential candidate for James. It was all very pathetic. Or as Hayley said, “understandably pathetic.”

A few weeks after she left James’s house, a gorgeous blond guy caught her eye in one of her Monday night yoga classes.

See, there you go, Bell, you’re getting back on the old sex horse. Just because this guy is basically a clone of James doesn’t mean…what the shit?

At first Charlie didn’t trust her eyes, but as her visual cortex kept filtering in more data, it became harder to deny—there was the square jaw, the surfer-boy haircut, the godlike shoulders. He laughed and she literally did a double take.

You need to drink some water, Bell, because there’s no way in hell James is here. Maybe Dale found a skin-mask or something…

But she wasn’t dehydrated and it wasn’t Dale, itwashim, the man of her every waking thought wearing shorts and an Aerosmith T-shirt sittingcross-leggedon ayoga matin the back left corner of her class. Charlie was torn between two powerful emotions. She wanted to throw herself into James’ arms and she wanted to karate-kick him in the face. Why had he come here now? She’d been skulking around with a sackful of garbage for a heart all month. She wasjuststarting to laugh at jokes again. She was maybe going to consider making Pad Thai. He couldn’t just waltz in here and mess that all up. Could he?

Just then, their gaze met. James smiled and her stomach did a loop-the-loop. She was instantly transported back to Sophia’s staircase, looking at him from afar, only this time his expression wasn’t one of disaffected arrogance, it was warm and wide as a summer sky.

What the absolute fuck is going on?

But there was no time to deliberate, all eyes were on her and she needed to stop gaping at James like a blowfish and do her job. She took her place at the front of the room and smiled at the sixteen women, three men and one James seated before her.

“Hey, everyone, I’m Charlie and I’ll be leading you in this class tonight. For old hands, we’ll be continuing our work on enhancing the flexibility of the spinal column. For all newbies, please don’t push yourselves too hard. You might be tempted to try and keep up with the more advanced people but that’s not what yoga is about and you could do yourself some serious damage.”

Like the kind of serious damage you get from falling in love with troubled Southern men who have commitment issues that all your friends warned you about…

Refusing to look anywhere near James, Charlie forced herself to smile again.

“If you can’t tell by my accent, I am Australian. If you can’t understand something I say I’m happy to repeat myself but know that Crocodile Dundee jokes will not be tolerated.”

As always the line got a small laugh. She could hear James chuckle and wanted to flee from the room. “Okay, if there aren’t any questions, can everyone please lie on their backs with their palms turned up to the ceiling and we’ll begin.”

When Charlie first started teaching yoga, it had alarmed her to give orders and see others obey. She kept waiting for someone to shout, ‘This girl has no idea what she’s talking about! Throw her out I say!’

With James in her class, the feeling returned tenfold. He’d seen her in so many intimate positions, but somehow this felt morepersonal. This was yoga; her life, her joy and her future and he was participating in it.

Wherever she moved, she could feel his eyes on her skin and it was as if his gaze had all the heat of a Broadway spotlight. If she so much as glanced in his direction, he was looking at her with something very un-studious smoldering in his eyes. It made her stomach squirm and her face grow hot. She tried to avoid watching him for most of the class but during the forward bends, she couldn’t really help herself. To her surprise, he was quite good at yoga, much more flexible than most guys his age and strong enough to handle his own weight well. He made the poses look masculine and effortless. She wasn’t the only one who had noticed. Her entire class was extremely giggly and all the women kept looking at the back left corner.

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