What He Doesn't Know (What He Doesn't Know Duet, #1)

by Kandi Steiner

“I learned the people we love usually turned out to be one of three things: a home, a holiday, or hell.” — Beau Taplin

They say there are two sides to every story, and I suppose in most cases, that’s true. But the one I lived inside of? It had three. On the northeast side of Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, there was a house. But there was no longer a home.

Charlie Pierce, the girl who always said yes.

Home was the only thing I wanted to find, and now that I was back, I realized how futile that hope was.

Charlie Reid stood before me like a ghost, one that had haunted me for more than a decade, one I longed for just as long but never truly imagined I’d ever see again.

Charlie was five years younger than me, and neither of us would ever forget that. It was those five years that had kept us apart, that had been a constant reminder of what we both wanted but could never have. Now, at thirty-five and thirty, those years were no longer a road block. They weren’t even a speed bump. But the ring on her finger that she played with obliterated the road altogether.

It was the marriage of a blessing and a curse, seeing her again after so many years. The boundaries that used to exist between us had vanished, but the new ones that had taken their place were made of steel, lined with barbed wire, drenched in warning to keep clear. The ring on her finger was a symbol of her commitment to another man.

Charlie Reid was married, she was Charlie Pierce now, and still, it didn’t matter. I loved her, anyway.

“Books aren’t meant to be in perfect shape,” she said when we reached her room. “They’re meant to be read, to be inhaled like oxygen.” Her fingers ran over the spine again, and she smiled. “This book has been breathed. It’s been loved.”

Those marks on your stomach, while they are forever a part of you, they do not define you. They are not a sign of your weakness or of your failure.” I smiled then, rubbing the pad of my thumb along her cheek. “They are a reminder of your strength, of your love, and of the miracle of life.”

Death changes us. It takes everything we thought we knew about our lives and fast pitches it out the window, shattering the glass in the process. Wind whips in, hard and cold, and throws everything we’d had neatly in place flying around the room. No one is the same once they lose someone they love. They just have to learn to exist in the new world, no matter how messy it is.

I didn’t know how long it would take before Charlie would wake up, before she’d see she deserved more, but I knew it didn’t matter. I would wait for her. I would wait forever.

That wedding ring on her finger didn’t mean a goddamn thing. She was mine.

“I’ve waited so long to touch you, Charlie,” I breathed, nose flaring. “Too long. And I want to take my time. I don’t want to miss a single inch of your body or a single second of whatever time I get to have you for my own.” Her eyes searched mine, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. “I don’t know if this is the only night I get to see you like this, to touch you, to have my hands on your body. But if it is,” I said, forcing a swallow as my fingers brushed the sensitive peak of her nipple. “Then I’m going to spend all night long worshiping it.”

In that fort, under the thin, sloping sheets, we were Reese and Charlie. We were together. We were happy. I only hoped we could stay that way.

“But, the simple truth is that I can’t not be with you anymore. I came to you because you made me forget I have a choice. I came to you because it’s always been you, Reese. Even when you were gone, even when there was Cameron. When you came back, I felt it. And I know you did, too.”

“If I am a river, you are the ocean. It all comes back to you in the end.”

But if I was a river, and he was the ocean, then Cameron was the storm that raged over the point where we met. And lightning was about to strike.

“You don’t love him,” he repeated, his gaze hard. “You love the idea of him, the idea of what he used to be to you, and of what he never was.”

They say there are two sides to every story, and it was in that moment, in that dark, desperate snapshot of my life that I realized I hadn’t asked him for his.