apocalypse | charles leclerc ✓

chapter 8 | forgive and forget

«In my head, I do everything right. When you call, I'll forgive and not fight.»

---

The first time it happened, and in the future maybe they could ponder on it and realise how badly these situations were handled, it was in Hungary. She knew there would be rumours because everybody told her about it. Aurora, Vivianne, some of the girls from modelling circles — Slo, guys in sports are serial cheaters...sometimes you have to turn a blind eye to that, one girl told her once, holding her hand like she was giving some sort of comfort. And anyway, she'd already seen it with her own parents, but at the time, she decided to brush all of it off because it didn't hold that much importance...until it began to.

Sloane didn't like to think of herself as insecure — mentally speaking that was, physically speaking there were some things she had to deal with, always — but surely she had some right to seek reassurance when the situation called for. Whenever someone gossiped about her father possibly cheating on her mother, it never failed to surprise her how the woman reacted to it. Her mother cared, but not because it hurt, no, she cared only because Marjo hated the idea of being seen as pathetic and less.

It was a linear thing. On one side, existed the idea of hating the pain that came along with getting cheated on, on the other, the public humiliation those situations generated, and what people would say. She fell somewhere between that line. Whether she liked it or not, those things made her self-conscious and that wasn't who she was as a person.

Which led to what was happening. 

When Charles opened the door of his room for her, his instant move was to lean in and try to kiss her, the typical greeting between them, but Sloane looked away and the kiss landed somewhere on her cheek. He pulled away, his brows furrowing in confusion at the avoidance. 

"Ma belle?" When her gaze met his, he could tell she wasn't happy. Or excited to see him for that matter.

Taking a deep breath, to gain some courage or whatever, she shot the question with no such thing as a second thought. "Are you cheating on me?"

He blinked. What? Those were not the words he expected from her. "What?"

After giving a once over around, because she was a lot of things but not one to enjoy public scenes, she pushed her way into the room. He managed to step away just in time, but it took him a few seconds for everything to settle. He recovered and closed the door, turning around to face her. Sloane stood in the middle of the room with her arms folded across her chest. Her expression didn't denote any sort of malicious feeling, on the contrary, she seemed rather troubled.

Nothing was spoken for a moment, but different questions lingered in the air for each of them.

"Have you or have you not cheated on me?" She tried one more time, tilting her chin up. Her best attempt to sound and appear confident. It was, of course, a failure. She herself could hear some wobbliness in the strings of her voice. 

"Wha–? What is this about?" He took a step forward, to get closer. She immediately took a step back to keep the distance even. Cue enough for him to don't do it again. "What are you talking about?"

Before things turned into an argument, even if he didn't want to go in that direction, Charles needed to understand how she'd gotten to that conclusion in the first place. She was a creative person sometimes, but he knew she wouldn't come up with those ideas simply because they showed up to her during a manic dream. With Sloane, he had learned, there was a reason for everything.

"I'd love to know as well, you could tell me why am I being told by random people that you were getting too close with some girl a few days ago at a club in Monaco while I was back home? I didn't even give into it at first, everybody is fucking insane, but they're literally tagging me and this girl I've never seen in my life everywhere and it's exhausting...what the fuck, Charles?"