Shattered Dreams (Dream #1)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Autumn

“I don’t know about this,”

I mutter from beside him, my feet up on the dash as I move them side to side, looking out the window at the trees zooming by. I’ve been like this for the past three hours of the drive, and we have an hour left. “Like, isn’t it going to be weird?”

I ask again for I think the hundredth time.

He reaches out his hand to put on my leg, the heat from his hand warming me. “It’s only weird if we make it weird.”

My head flies to look at him, shocked he would say it was weird. “But it’s weird.”

I tuck my hair behind my ear. He’s sitting there wearing a white T-shirt, his biceps making my mouth water. His hair is pushed back from the shower he took this morning before we left my house. After work, I went to his house while he packed his bag, and then we went to my house, where I packed. We left this morning when we woke up, stopping along the way for coffee and donuts.

“It’s not weird,”

he corrects himself, “and if you feel weird, we can always leave.”

I gasp, putting my hand on his and linking our fingers on my leg. “Not only am I going to be the weird one, then I’m going to have you leave, so now I’m a bitch.”

“Baby,”

he soothes, bringing our hands to his lips and kissing my fingers. “Everything will be fine. It’s not going to be weird. It’s going to be fine, and it’s going to be great.”

He looks at the road, and then his voice goes lower. “Baby,”

he calls me, and I look over at him, “I need to tell you something.”

“I knew it,”

I say, making him laugh. “It’s weird, right?”

“No.”

He shakes his head. “Not that.”

He tightens his fingers with mine. “I lied to you.”

My feet fall off the dash as I sit up straight. “Not really lied to you. That was the wrong word.”

My heart beats so fast I can’t even say anything. “I don’t have to go home for work.”

I wait, knowing there is more. “Yesterday morning, I caught that reporter guy sneaking around your place.”

My mouth opens in a gasp. “I went out to confront him. He’s not a reporter.”

“What is he?”

I ask, my head spinning at this information.

“I think he’s a private investigator, but he was hired by the Cartwrights.”

The minute he says that, I feel like I’m going to get sick. I pull my hand from his, putting both of my hands on my stomach. “He was trying to find information about you being involved with the accident.”

I can’t help but snort out at that part.

“How?”

I shake my head. “Like, how would I be involved? I was sitting in the back, and he was literally crushed to the steering wheel. How did they think I could spin this?”

I look at him, and he looks like he’s hiding something else. “What else?”

“He might have alluded to us being an item back then, which is why Waylon was drinking.”

“Oh my God,”

I snarl, looking up at the roof of the cab, “are they insane?”

I go from feeling sick to my stomach to angry. “Forget I asked if they are insane, one hundred and fifty percent fucking insane to think that we were hooking up before. They are so delusional that they can’t see the only one to blame was fucking Waylon, and obviously them for enabling his bratty fucking behavior.”

I shake my head. “How did you find all this out?”

“I may have threatened to beat the shit out of him and have him arrested for stealing your mail.”

I throw my hands up in the air. “I called my grandfather, and he said that we should maybe not be home this weekend.”

“My brother and my father.”

My mouth suddenly goes dry.

“They’re fine. Brady knows—”

he starts to say and stops when I shriek.

“Brady knows?”

My eyes glare at him. “Wow.”

“I needed to get you out of town.”

He tries to plead his case.

“So instead of, I don’t know, telling me the truth. You lied to me.”

I laugh and pfft out. “Great.”

“It’s not like that.”

He reaches for my hand.

“It’s exactly like that.”

I let him slide his fingers through mine and bring them to his lap. “It’s one thousand percent like that. You lied to me.”

“I wanted you safe,”

he refutes, his voice tight, “and I’d do it again.”

“What are we doing? I mean, we love each other, but what does that mean, exactly? Like, what are we doing with each other?”

I ask. He just looks over, his eyebrows pinched as he pulls over to the side of the road and puts the truck in park before he turns to stare at me. “Because if we are together and doing whatever with each other, we can’t be lying to each other.”

In one move, he reaches over, unbuckles my seat belt, and reaches down with his other hand, putting the seat back before plucking me out of my seat and pulling me onto his lap. “That’s the first time you said you love me.”

His voice is a whisper, making my heart soar.

“Did you not know?”

I ask, my fingers playing with the collar of his shirt. “I thought you—”

“Autumn, I’m in love with you and only you. And I lied, but it wasn’t technically a lie.”

I raise my eyebrows at him. “The point is, I’m telling you now.”

“The point is, you should have told me this when it happened.”

I maneuver on his lap to straddle him. “I can’t take lying.”

“I know, baby, I’m sorry.”

“This is the last time,”

I warn. “There won’t be another time. I can’t do the lying thing.”

“Noted,”

he says, and I’m irritated.

“Don’t ‘noted’ me, Charlie Barnes.”

I move to get off him, and he grips my hips, pulling me back down on him. “What are you doing?”

“We just had our first fight,”

he mumbles, his hands moving up to take my shirt with him, and I smack his hands away.

“You do not think I’m going to have sex with you on the side of the road,”

I gasp, “in broad daylight.”

I get off his lap. “Maybe if it was nighttime, but definitely not now.”

“So first course of action,”

he plans, putting his seat belt back on and getting his seat back into his place, “make-up sex.”

I shake my head as I fasten my own seat belt, and he pulls onto the road. “So what did we learn from this?”

I look over and ask.

“That in one hour, I’ll be having make-up sex.”

He smirks my way, and my heart literally jumps in my chest at his smile. “And I’m never to keep anything from you.”

“I mean not in that order, but…”

I smile, looking outside and realizing if this would have happened three months ago, it would have probably broken me. It would have cut me off at the knees, but not today. I take it with a grain of salt. They’ve broken me once; I refuse for them to break me again. “Yes.”

We pull up to his house in forty-five minutes, and the minute we do, he groans. “What are my parents doing here?”

he whines. “It’s time for make-up sex.”

His hand goes for the door handle as I slide my feet in my flip-flops.

“Charlie, don’t you dare say anything to them,”

I warn between clenched teeth when I see the front door open and Willow come out, followed by Quinn.

“What are you guys doing here?”

Charlie asks as soon as he gets out of the truck, and I meet him in the front of it. The last time I saw his parents was two weeks ago after they visited Charlie for a couple of days. Each day, they would eat at the bar at night, and he would spend the night with me, no matter how many times I told him to go home.

“We brought over some food,”

Willow explains, looking at her son and then looking at me. Charlie comes to stand next to me and slides his hand into mine. Her eyes go big. “Oh my.”

She looks up at Quinn, who tries not to make eye contact. “You knew?”

“No,”

he lies. “I might have suspected this, but this is a shock to me also.”

He gasps. “You two are together?”

He rolls his eyes. “Maybe if we laid off the special blend, we would have seen what was in front of your face.”

I turn my head to laugh against Charlie’s shoulder as she glares at him.

“We’re leaving.”

She shakes her head. “And you”—she points at Charlie—“we are going to have words later.”

She then looks at me, and her smile comes back. “It’s good to see you, Autumn, I’m happy you’re here.”

She then slides her eyes back to Charlie. “You, not so much.”

She walks to the truck, getting into the driver’s side, and we all hear the sound of her locking the doors.

“Willow,”

Quinn says, walking to the pickup and trying not to laugh. He pulls to open the door and the handle drops back while she starts the truck. He knocks on the window. “This isn’t funny,”

he says, and Willow just puts the music louder in the truck as she adjusts her seat.

“She’s going to leave him here?”

I say, shocked as she backs out slowly.

“Nah,”

Charlie says, “if she wanted to leave him here, she wouldn’t have backed out so slow.”

He lets go of my hand, walking to the truck, and knocks on the window. “Mom, can you stay for lunch?”

She stops the truck at the same time Quinn walks over to stand next to me. “I hope you know that he’s exactly like his mother.”

I put my hand in front of my mouth as Charlie talks his mother into staying for lunch.

“I’ll get the bags,”

Quinn offers, walking to the back of the truck and stopping when Willow comes to stand beside him. “You almost ran over my foot,”

he accuses, and she ignores him but doesn’t walk away from him. “Our son is home. Give me a kiss and let’s have lunch.”

She looks up at him, the look of love written all over her face.

I’m so engrossed in them I don’t feel Charlie put his arm around me, looking up at him. “See, it’s not weird.”

He bends his head and kisses my lips softly before whispering in my ear, “Don’t think I’ll forget about make-up sex.”

I laugh at him as he turns, and we head into his house.

“Are you done with this?”

I get up from my chair and walk over to Charlie’s side of the table to grab his plate. His hand comes out as he rubs the back of my leg. I look down at him as he looks up at me. The smile on his face makes his eyes light.

“Yeah, baby,”

he replies softly, and I know I shouldn’t care that he’s calling me baby in front of his parents, but I do a bit. But not that much because I lean down and kiss his lips, because I want to. Because it feels right. But more importantly, because I can.

I grab his plate and see Willow watching us, her hand going to her own plate as she gets up and grabs Quinn’s plate. The two of them made up by the time they walked in. “You don’t have to clean up,”

I say. “Charlie can help.”

“He has to get the bags,”

Willow says, and I look over to see the bags at the door, but I just walk back into the kitchen with the plates in my hands. “I’ll go get the rest,”

she tells me but doesn’t move. “So you and Charlie,”

she starts, and I put the plate down, trying not to be nervous but failing.

“I know it’s a shock,”

I start, my voice quivering, “and trust me, we weren’t expecting it to happen.”

The tightness in my chest gets even tighter. “It’s not just for fun. I know I’m rambling, but I can’t help it. I ramble when I’m nervous.”

I lift my hands and drop them into the sink.

“There is no reason for you to be nervous.”

She smiles at me as she blinks away tears. “We owe you more than words can say right now.”

“What?”

I question her, confused as she grabs one of my hands.

“I just had lunch with my boy, and he sat there, and he smiled—not a fake smile but a real fucking smile that went all the way to his eyes.”

I try not to laugh at her saying the F-word, especially since she whispered it. “I sat there, and he laughed like I haven’t heard before. Like I’ve been praying for for the last eight years. He sat there, and I could tell he was happy. He wasn’t faking it. He wasn’t saying it to say it. He was actually happy, and he’s thriving, and you are part of that reason.”

I start to say something, but she holds up her hand. “You brought me back my boy. I didn’t think I would ever see him again.”

She wipes the tears away. “You brought my boy home.”

She smiles at me. “Now, we’ve been in your hair long enough.”

She turns. “So I’m going to let my husband,”

she shouts toward the men, “take me home and make up for the fact that he lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie to anyone. Did you ask me?”

Quinn defends himself from the table in the other room. “No, you didn’t.”

She winks at me. “So now I have to ask you things, and you not tell me?”

She puts her hands on her hips and walks into the room. “What else are you keeping from me?”

He groans, and I hear the chair creak across the floor before I see him bend. The next thing you know, she’s over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“You are begging to fight with me.”

He smacks her ass. “I’m going to give you something to fight with me about.”

He walks out the door and slams it after him. I look over at the dining room when I hear the sound of the other chair scraping the floor.

Charlie now comes to my side as he bends down and picks me up over his shoulder, and I laugh. He slaps my ass. “You owe me make-up sex.”

He walks over to one side of the house. “Plus interest.”