He stared at me with a new sort of confusion and concern mixed together. I could see by the way his brow furrowed that something deep was disturbing him, though I wasn’t entirely sure what.
“Yuri heard through some old friends that Wallace was sneaking around the dock when we left port in New York. He called Yuri ‘bout it cause it seemed strange.”
“What seemed strange?”
“Wallace was rummaging through the shipping containers. When he—when you—” He swallowed hard and hung his head. I took his face in my hands to make him look at me.
“Ben told him he wouldn’t be working with us again, but he also said he wouldn’t be getting paid, neither. Ben and Wallace ain’t never liked each other. Actually, nobody ever liked Wallace, but Wallace said he’d be getting his fair share whether we wanted him to or not.”
“What, so he might be on this ship?”
“What do you mean might?” The abrupt rising of Charlie’s voice startled me. I felt him slip from my hands as his body slumped to the floor. “How else did you get yourself in that hold?”
“I—I was trying to bide my time,” I confessed.
“You went in there by yourself?” He sounded shocked by the mere suggestion.
I nodded.
“Nobody made you?”
I shook my head. “I was trying to stay a step ahead. It’s stupid, I know, but it was the only advantage I had—”
“You were hiding?”
I nodded.
“From me.”
Charlie looked at me then. His lip wavered and his eyes were damp with new tears.
“I could never—”
“I know.”
“I couldn’t ever—”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” He pulled himself up, sighing, and sat on the bed. I let him, trying to deny how good it felt to have him that much closer to me. “When the storm started dying down, I came back up here.” He stifled a laugh. “I didn’t care what the guys said, I was gonna beg you to forgive me, ask you to come away with me when we made port.”
My emotions were going to betray me. I could feel them begin to give way, and it was all I could do not to throw myself into his arms and just make him hold me for the rest of my life.
“But when I got here the place was a mess, more than usual, anyways.” He produced one of his Charlie grins for me. I swear that he must have known it would undo me. “My books were all ripped up, the computer broke. I ain’t real sure what he was looking for.”
“He was here?” My heart stopped altogether. “He ruined your sketches?”
Charlie seethed. “I don’t care ‘bout that, Addie. Damn pillow case got stabbed, and the lamp looked like Polo did something to it! I thought for sure you were a goner, too.”
I looked over Charlie’s shoulder. Large pieces of paint and plaster were missing from the wall where it had been smooth and flat. I could see the smallest shards of glass and plastic that someone had missed during the clean-up. I guessed it was from the laptop, though it could have been from the light bulb of the lamp. In the lamp’s place was a work light with a high fluorescent bulb. I was grateful it was shining away from me, as my eyes still stung from my pity party.
“I still don’t understand,” I confessed. While I was grateful Charlie was safe, and that I had miraculously missed Wallace’s visit, my main priority was the throbbing ache in my chest. Why would Charlie pretend to care about me when it was so much easier to break me?
“If you didn’t mean any of those things, then why did you say them?” I shifted uncomfortably in the cocoon. Maybe this was something I didn’t want to hear. I knew I had to, though; this would keep me from being stupid in the future.
“Everybody knows who you are now,” he explained. “Even when you go home, you ain’t gonna be safe from people like Wallace. Our competitors are going to wanna know as much ‘bout us as the cops are. I figured if you hated me, then maybe you would just tell everybody whatever they wanted to know and they’d leave you alone. Hell, have a press conference.”
His eyes grew a little darker as he gripped the bed sheets. He seemed to be somewhere else in that moment, a place I couldn’t touch even if I wanted to.
“What are you saying? Are there people out there who are going