A/N: Hi, everyone! Sorry, this took a while. This was a pretty long entry to write (in comparison to the other entrires in this journal). This also covers Chapter 10 - The Dangers of Falling In Love, which is a pretty epic chapter in TMMM. My apologies for the delay and my apologies for another one coming up. I'll be traveling in the next couple weeks so I won't have the time or amenities to write and post another chapter right away.
Hope this will tide you over for now. Thanks!
***
I'm good at what I do because problems don't stump me. That means I could figure them out. The more problems resolved, the better for everyone. The same logic usually applied to women and my intimate relations with them.
Somehow, Charlotte didn't fit into the same category which meant I couldn't figure her out, which meant I couldn't solve the problem, which meant it was hell for me and everyone else around me.
In the last couple of days, since that ugly fight we had at Dad's house, she'd been feigning indifference. It's not my ego saying that she's handling it just as badly as I was. Charlotte's tough, but she's the kind of girl who wore her heart on her sleeve, no matter how battered and miserable the thing was. She'd hike up a shoulder, sniff back her tears and march on.
That made me feel worse than an ass and I wasn't already being kind to myself in the slightest. Charlotte kept a good distance—the kind that would swallow you alive if you tried to cross it. But there was no choice about it. We're about to become husband and wife in a couple of days. Charade or not, I'm not going to meet her at the church like this—like she would willingly marry the devil over me if she could.
I was going to talk to her the moment I could get her alone. It wasn't going to be an easy feat because everybody needed some damned thing from the bride before her big day that I could barely drag her somewhere private to talk.
I considered staring people down until they willingly dug a hole for themselves to crawl in but Charlotte wouldn't appreciate that. She would think it autocratic and arrogant of me and those were only two of the many unflattering adjectives she'd have on ready for me. I didn't doubt she'd have at least one from A to Z. Despite her lack of academic overachievement and social polish, Charlotte's intelligence was sharp and incredibly sexy. It was probably one of the things about her that infuriated her critics further. I held my own but she had diced me up so neatly and precisely the first time we met. I was still putting parts of me back together two weeks later.
So I gave her time to let off some steam. But breaking down the fresh walls Charlotte erected around herself was a round-the-clock job and I wasted no time.
The evening before our wedding rehearsal at the church, I was in my condo with a handful of women. Other men would probably pat me in the back for that in approval but no, it wasn't remotely close to any sort of sexual congregation. That would be quite disturbing, actually, since two of them were my younger sisters, along with two of Charlotte's closest friends, Aimee and Felicity, and my personal assistant Marissa.
It was quite clandestine though, arranged in secret and set up late into the night so that Charlotte was already having her prescribed her beauty sleep when we all met up. It sounds a bit dramatic, as if we're plotting a military strike. It might as well have been since my marriage to Charlotte was at stake. I must've sounded desperate enough when I called each woman I invited because they all showed up, eager, even my sisters who weren't big Charlotte fans to begin with.
It was a brainstorming session, much like ones I'd have when strategizing at work except that this time, the goal was to formulate the best honeymoon I could surprise Charlotte with.
She was giving up a year of her life to me—I wanted to convince her it was going to be worth it, not counting the million dollars she gets out of it. More importantly, I wanted her to be happy.
Just like everything else in the world, there's a process—a formula—to get her there. A honeymoon to remember, whether we fulfill our marital vows or not, is one of those first crucial steps.
Problem is, I've never been married before. I haven't really had any longterm, serious relationships either. Many of the gifts that went into my brief affairs were courtesy of Marissa's tasteful choices. She knew me well enough to pick something I would get if I had the time and chance to do it.
Project Honeymoon isn't exactly something I could ask her to plan for me. That just didn't feel right. But she was there to make notes for all the necessary arrangements the plan would require.
As for ideas, there wasn't a shortage of them when one sat in a group of five romantic-hearted women. Well, maybe four, since Marissa was as perfectly neutral as she'd always been in the last eight years she's worked for me. She threw in some suggestions though, and by the time our secret meeting was adjourned, I had enough ideas I could write a guide book to the perfect honeymoon.
Alone at last, I sat in my office and stared at the half a dozen sheets of paper I'd scribbled on, trying to finalize a list. They were all great ideas but I needed only the ones that were, at heart, unique and specific to Charlotte. This was all about her, after all.
I sat there for God knew how long, staring at the wallpaper on my laptop and trying to fathom the girl beaming at me, beyond the pixels that made her up on the screen, and certainly beyond the black text that will link her name with mine on a legally binding document of marriage.
For a girl who wore her heart on the sleeve, Charlotte was an enigma.
It was a late, restless night for me, the list still unfinished, and the sight of her the next day, glowing like the sun but at such a distance I could never get close enough, didn't help my disposition. The fact that she and Jake certainly warmed up to each other well enough that they were as thick as thieves nearly turned me barbaric.
We were at the church we were getting married at, rehearsing our wedding, and she was giving me the cold shoulder while Jake got her bright smiles and sweet laughter.
And my traitorous best friend, the one I'd known most of my life and who'd never once tried to steal a girl away from me since it was never worth his trouble and because there were so many others for him to choose from, was soaking it all up. He had a smug grin on his face, tempting me to rearrange it. He wasn't specifically doing it to goad me. It was a no-brainer that he was smitten with my girl, because like me he was completely defenseless against her arsenal of mischievous charms, but he should really try harder to stay away. If he's incapable of it, I'd be happy to bodily remove him from her side and toss him halfway around the world.
I had to tamp down on my temper though. The last thing I wanted was for everyone to notice that Charlotte and I were barely talking to each other when we were just days away from our wedding. After the disastrous engagement party, I didn't want to do anything that would put her in the spot again. Me mending my friendship with Simone had embarrassed her. It probably wouldn't look too good either if I started to systematically dismember Jake for being too friendly with her. So I stood there and bore it, trusting that she would soon satisfy herself with my punishment.
She'd reluctantly admitted she wanted to linger at the church after rehearsals, to take some pictures and enjoy the countryside scenery, and since I was her fiancé, she couldn't dispute it when I declared that I would stay with her and take her home.
On a short break toward the end of the rehearsal, I finally found a chance to draw her away from Jake with the guise of talking to her about her stuff being moved to the condo.
At first I couldn't say anything. It felt like it had been so long since I had her alone to myself.
As we stood there by the church yard, it hit me that she was very much like the place we were marrying at—a humble beauty, a touch rustic in the elegance that was all her own, and disarmingly charming with a bit of whimsy. Not everyone was going to love her at first sight but she was the kind of beautiful that grew on you, long before you know it.
She still wasn't perfectly happy with me but as she stood there, finally talking to me and giving in to a smile here and there, albeit a little reluctantly, I felt incredibly relieved. I also felt equally determined to never give her cause to shut me out again because from where I'd stood, on the other side of that ocean she'd put between us, it had felt quite cold and lonely.
She chattered on about our honeymoon, about her trousseau, her eyes clearly displaying her not-so-innocent thoughts. It turned up the heat but I was happy to burn as long as I was close to her. I wanted to be closer but it would have to wait because she still had a few traditions to keep before the wedding. As unconventional as our arrangement was, I'd made sure that Charlotte didn't miss out on anything as a bride.
I'd let Aimee plan a bachelorette party, with an explicit plea to exclude male strippers or anything that might require me to show up unexpectedly and take the bride away. She promised me it was going to be all clean fun. Before she left to start making plans, she smiled at me and patted my arm, saying: I wish she knew what you're doing for her. She hasn't had a lot of people in her life who put her first, you know? But now she has you and I have a feeling you're going to make up for all that she's never had.
I couldn't quell away the pang of guilt I felt at that because I knew that despite of what I'd been feeling toward Charlotte lately, she was in this complicated lie with me not because I put her first. In fact, she was in it because she was a necessary element to what had been my end game. I wasn't marrying her because I loved her and couldn't live without her. I was marrying her because she was simply a means to an end—an end that didn't have her in it.
And that end... Well, it honestly looked damn bleak without her.
She may not have been put first when this whole mess was first orchestrated but I had about eleven months and two weeks to move her up that priority list.
I tied her shoe-laces, mentally promising her that it wasn't going to be the first time someone took care of her. She had a lot of heart to give but so little of it that she ever got back.
I wanted to stay there with her after the rehearsals, after everyone was gone and it was just the two of us, but a deal that had been packaged and tied with a pretty ribbon suddenly collapsed. I had to head back to the city to fix it and clean up the mess—my first test of priorities no more than half an hour after I promised I would put Charlotte first.
And with the way she waved off her obvious desire to stay so we could both head back to the city broke me inside a little. She was clearly used to making the sacrifice. I decided then that I would stay—especially after Jake conveniently offered himself up to cover for me, again. Charlotte may think him harmless all she liked but she hasn't seen the trail of broken hearts he'd left behind. But I had to trust him, didn't I, if I wanted to put Charlotte first. I wasn't going to rip away her chance to do something that made her happy simply because I was busy and jealous.
I wasn't thrilled but I reminded myself that it wasn't about me.
As soon as I was off, I texted Jake. I left him with some threats, teasing as they might have sounded, but just between the two of us, without the attempt to keep things light to maintain some semblance of pride, I pleaded instead. I texted him: Please take care of Charlotte for me. I trust you with my life but she's far more precious than that.
I imagined he probably leaned against a tree and threw up his lunch. He would never let me live it down, not when we'd had more than a decade of love 'em and leave 'em attitude when it came to women (more Jake's style than mine but still). I haven't exactly been myself since I met Charlotte. Why bother to wonder about it now?
But Jake surprised me more when he replied: Fine. And only because I agree with you.
It was both something to be relieved and worried about.
I was in a frantic conference call at the office when a photo came through my phone in an email. It was the beginnings of a sunset, the sun flooding the sky with a dark golden light, spilling over the seemingly endless stretch of countryside. With it was a short note from Charlotte: Hope everything's okay. A day like this can't be that bad.
Distracted from the urgency of the crisis, I smiled at her email and messaged her back: It's not too bad. But it would be better if I were there watching this with you.
She didn't reply after that and I didn't mind. With my head clear, at least for that time being, and the edge I'd been feeling all day dulled by the realization that I did these difficult things so that life could be easy for the people I cared about, like Charlotte, I was able to focus on the task at hand and resolve the issue.
It was late when I got home. After a quick shower, I was just rifling through my closet to find something to wear when I saw some of Charlotte's luggage that Felicity had brought over today. They weren't unpacked yet. It was a mismatched set of three suitcases—old, scuffed, barely holding up—and they were mostly covered with worn stickers and tags.
I forgot about getting dressed. In nothing else but a towel, I sat on the floor and studied the different stickers on them. Some of them were baggage identification from her trip to Paris—the only other place she'd really been to outside of Boston. The rest were an odd mix of labels from different French cafes, like ones that came from paper bags and coffee cups, and a bunch of colorful stickers of different cities all over the world. Upon closer inspection, the destination stickers were scribbled on with a permanent marker on a discreet corner. They were numbers that didn't quite make any obvious sense until I found the sticker for Paris with the number one on it. I found the other stickers by number sequence until it occurred to me why they were labeled in such order. It wasn't because Charlotte's been to the rest of them. Her background report detailed any out-of-country trips and that list was awfully short. She'd labeled them according to the sequence she wanted to follow when she's able to travel.
Without really knowing exactly what I was doing, I ransacked the library for a map of the world. Then I came back to the closet and started plotting the different countries she'd stuck all over her suitcases, matching them up by numbers.
The list wasn't very long but it was a good start. Charlotte deserved to see the world. On her own, it'd be a while before she can become financially comfortable to do all of that, even with the million dollars. But it was something I could do for her—something that would stay with her forever.
I was there for quite a while before my cellphone rang. It was Jake asking if I was home. He knew I'd passed up having a night out with some of our friends, despite their insistence at a stag party. I wasn't in the mood to be good company but I could tolerate Jake for a few hours. I put the map and my notes away and got dressed just in time to hear the door buzz.
He came armed with a bottle of scotch and a small, boxed up cheese platter from one of his favorite restaurants in the city.
I raised a brow at that because I couldn't remember the last time he brought booze and food over to my place. We were a little too old to be getting wasted, really, but he shouldered his way in, headed for my office and starting pouring each of us a glass from the wet bar.
I want to talk to you about Charlotte, was the first thing that came out of his mouth.
If Jake had somehow discovered my arrangement with Charlotte and came over to talk me out of it, it was going to be a long night indeed, so I sat down, accepted my glass and nibbled on a crumble of blue cheese.
Jake made himself at home in the armchair across from me but it was a while before he spoke again.
He asked me if I loved Charlotte. I didn't dignify the question with an answer, just a mere arch of my brow yet again.
I'm asking because I've known you all my life, Brand. Before I left for Bangkok a little over two weeks ago, you were quite satisfied with your exclusive hook-up with Simone.
I met his direct gaze and told him that two weeks was enough time to fall in love with someone and want to marry them.
I expected him to argue, because to most people—people who didn't have believe in fate and true love like Jake—it would sound a little preposterous. But he didn't. He smiled broadly and told me that he's not surprised and that Charlotte would make any man rethink his priorities in life. I scowled at him for that, saying that his priorities had nothing to do with Charlotte, and he laughed, telling me that he no longer needed an answer to a question when it was staring him right in the face.
He left it at that. Jake clearly believed I was in love with Charlotte, which was great because that meant he would back the hell off. It just didn't help to know that he believed that because he could see it happening to himself. It left me uneasy because despite his casual flings, Jake was a romantic. It was what got him into bed with so many women. He always had a way of saying the right things that swept women off their feet. Charlotte, despite her tough exterior, was a romantic too. She might find Jake irresistible if he pulled all the stops with her. But he wasn't going to have a chance. I wouldn't give him one.
It was quite late but we talked for another hour, even after we'd stopped at a glass each. Jake had just mentioned he was heading out when I got the call from the police with the news that Anna and Charlotte had been mugged and injured.
I felt a shot of cold, slimy dread wash through me as I sat there and listened, my brain flipping through all kinds of horrific scenes. Jake got one good look at me and bolted from his seat.
We took off in my car without another word. I drove, white-knuckling the steering wheel while Jake tried both women's phones to no avail. He called my lawyer and echoed the orders I barked as I raced to the hospital without killing ourselves or anyone else on the road.
It's kind of hard to describe it now, this panicked state I was caught in as we scrambled through the hospital door, tracking down the room they were in and finding Anna there still talking with a couple of cops who'd hung around until I arrived.
My fists clenched at the sight of my sister deathly pale except for the dark bruise forming on her right cheek. She told me she was okay, and the doctor quickly briefed me on her condition. The cops cornered me the moment I stepped away from her. Distractedly, I listened to their report about what happened, my eyes searching every corner of the room for a sign of Charlotte. When I realized that she wasn't in the same room, I excused myself abruptly, shoved Jake at them to deal with, and strode out to check the nearby rooms, my blood turning into ice inside my veins as it became clear very quickly that no one had a fucking clue where she was.
She was injured and frazzled and probably very lonely and no one was taking fucking care of her.
I stopped a few of the hospital staff, asking for her until one of them was able to tell me she was somewhere in the emergency ward. I marched my way over to the billings department, to tell them to prepare a suite and everything for Charlotte and that I'd take care of her account. She'd given my name as a contact but they couldn't really tell me a lot because from the looks of it, Charlotte had opted out of all medical aid, with nothing more but an ambulance-use fee and basic first-aid as if a fucking Band-Aid would fix it all.
The anger that had been simmering inside me exploded right that second. I was in the middle of interrogating the staff when Jake caught up with me and yanked me away before the guard who'd been trying to get me to calm down could throw me out. I would've welcomed a fight because I needed to hit something at that moment, preferably those muggers who laid a hand on Charlotte and my sister. Since they've already been hauled to jail, I satisfied myself with giving my lawyer the explicit command to make sure they rot in prison, never to see daylight again. But it wasn't enough to get me back to a good place because the idea of Charlotte lying injured and alone somewhere was still tormenting me.
Jake and I tracked down the emergency ward and wandered through the maze of beds and waiting areas until I finally spotted a blond head hanging low. She was out on the hallway on the other side of the ward from where we came in. She was sitting on a gurney with a nurse patching up her knee.
Charlotte was filthy, her hair a tangled mess, her complexion pasty white and smudged, her clothes dirty and ripped on some spots. She had one wrist bound, and her hands and knees were bandaged. Her stiff posture and the slow, awkward movement of her body indicated her pain but it wasn't until I looked into her eyes—large, glassy with tears and devoid of their usual spark—that I felt the impact of the whole incident crash into me.
I seriously wanted to put a fist through the wall at the sight of her.
She shouldn't be sitting out here, getting scraps of medical help, barely holding it together. She needed to be on a hospital bed in her own private suite, clean and comfortable, fussed over by the best that top-end health care could buy. She shouldn't be squaring her shoulders like she was ready for another round, no matter how beaten and bruised she was. At my outburst, she gave me a steely look of indignation as if daring me to yell at her more for downplaying her condition because it didn't occur to her that I would gladly pay a king's ransom for her comfort.
She was close to tears, her exhaustion literally dimming the light in her eyes, her stubborn chin quivering as she pursed her lips in an attempt to scowl at me for lecturing her.
It'd be a cold day in hell before I allowed Charlotte to be reduced to this so before I knew what I was doing, I picked her up in my arms without thought to the extent of her injuries. When a broken cry ripped from her throat, my legs nearly gave out in terror that I might have damaged her for good.
From there, my descent to a frenzied madness took off at full speed.
I snapped at every provocation, spoiling for a fight and aging a hundred years every minute we spent there at the hospital. When the doctor finally gave her a clean bill of health—as clean as it could be without counting her large bruises, her sprained wrist and collection of cuts and scrapes—I used every trick I had in my book to convince her to let me take her home.
Yes, home.
Our home—the one she'd already invaded even before she'd stepped foot in it, with her rugged suitcases and her luggage stickers and her young, hopeful ideals about a life that I suspected had been rarely kind to her.
To my immense relief, she agreed, but not before putting up a resistance I didn't think she had the energy for.
It should've seemed odd, walking into the condo with her happily draped over my arms, but it didn't. I did my best to settle her in bed comfortably and went to putter around the kitchen for some oatmeal, mentally resenting the fact that for all my money, I couldn't give her one of those instant chicken noodle cups which were apparently her favorite. She needed her comfort food and I had none to give her at that moment. Ironic, really.
When I came to bring her the food, I halted by the bedroom doorway, arrested for a moment by the sight of her all small and fragile amidst the soft, dark gray sea of my large bed. Her hair was twisted into a messy bun on top of her head, almost like a golden crown. Her skin was smooth, if a little pale, making her look younger and more innocent as she laid there, sleeping quietly, lips slightly parted, a bandaged hand curled around the top of the covers as she clutched them close to her chin.
I didn't want to wake her but I did, knowing she needed to eat something especially with all the medicine she'd taken to dull the pain of her injuries and allow her some rest.
She looked surprised when she saw me holding the small bowl of oatmeal but she didn't protest when I began to slowly spoon-feed her. Her color got better almost instantly that I finally felt some comfort but it was short-lived. She proclaimed she needed to shower, articulating with difficulty (which said something about how bad off Charlotte really was) that she needed it, as if it could somehow wash away the grim memories of the night.
I carried her to the bathroom, taking my time to let down her hair, somehow aware that something happened tonight beyond her injuries and the frightful shock of the attack.
I've never seen her this vulnerable, this shaken, but somehow resigned to it. Why would she be? This wasn't her fault. She couldn't have known about it but there was something on her expression that told me she wasn't surprised.
I helped her with the hospital gown, summoning all my attention and will power to the task of getting her into the shower—not ogling her body. After what she'd suffered through the hands of those crude bastards, the last thing I wanted was for her to feel unsafe.
It was a struggle—to keep my other instincts at bay especially at the sight of her in nothing more than a fluffy white towel—but I did it.
I wanted her badly but I wanted more than her body.
I wanted to see her smile again, to hear her snort and laugh when she thought I said something utterly ridiculous, to have her give me that impishly defiant look she gets about her when she was toying with me.
I wanted Charlotte and all the layers that made her strong but also made her difficult to see into.
And I think, despite all the ugly things about that night that I wish I could undo, the odds somehow turned in my favor because as she stood there in the middle of the bathroom wearing one of my button-down shirts, tired and hurting, more vulnerable that she's probably ever been in her life, I knew, without a doubt, that she trusted me.
She trusted me enough to let me see just how badly she was hurt, to let me close enough to offer her some comfort and know that I wouldn't harm a hair on her head.
Whatever desert or ocean we may have had between us since the engagement party disappeared.
Distance can be as vast as we imagine it to be, really. It can take a lifetime to cross it—or it could take nothing more but one small act of trust.
As I watched Charlotte brave a smile on her face as she made a joke, I decided that I would always want to reach her, and all her light, no matter how long and prodigious the journey may be.
As long as she wanted me, I'd be there. When she asked me to stay with her after I tucked her in, I offered no protest, no matter how torturous it might prove to be given how badly I ached for her.
It was worth the suffering, holding Charlotte close and knowing that she was finally safe.
It amazed me to realize how my world spun out of its orbit in those moments when I grappled with the possibility that I might have lost her. Guilt nagged at me, knowing that as much as I loved my sister, it was Charlotte who nearly drove me out of my mind with worry.
And I would've had no reason to worry, for either of them, if Anna hadn't acted so foolishly.
I don't like her situation with Jason but she claims to be in love and I guess people in love often acted irrationally.
They temporarily lose their senses, they act in haste, they overreact, they are driven to reckless decisions that could cost them everything—all because of that one person they couldn't live without.
Well, that sums it up, I guess, and I don't know whether I should be relieved or terrified to finally figure it out.
I, Brandon Christopher Maxfield, am critically on the verge of falling headfirst into this highly sensationalized, frequently misrepresented, and poorly understood condition called love.
Dammit, I am in love—with Charlotte, no less, only a mere couple weeks after I swore off her unexpected and inconvenient appearance in my life.
Charlotte—the same girl who artfully carved out a place for me far beneath her when I was an arrogant ass, who stubbornly matched my every move with hers, who unknowingly lured my heart out of my chest and right into her hand with every quirky smile and cheeky grin, who threw herself at thugs to get my sister away, who refused to be looked after because she's not used to it—she's my choice, after all.
Oh, I'm royally screwed but I couldn't care less.
I'm good at what I do because once I've made up my mind, there's very little anyone can do to change it. And once I've decided to do something, I become determined to get quite good at it.
I've chosen Charlotte.
I'm going to marry Charlotte.
And she's going to let me spend the next year of our lives together convincing her that we're good to go for a lot more—a lifetime or two, maybe.
She's going to fight me, because it'll scare her to realize how much I want her beyond our stupid arrangement, but she's going to eventually say yes because I'll wear her down. Either that or she'll take pity on me. She's quite a softie, you know.
Suddenly, I can't wait to start making strategies.
I'm about to make the biggest acquisition of my life and I'm playing all in.
Charlotte is worth every risk, after all.
- B
***
So, what do you guys think? The challenge in writing these journals is that they cover most of the same events you've already seen in TMMM but I've got to somehow show you something a little different, beyond Brandon's POV. It's like building mini sub-plots in the small gaps here and there of an established story. But I hope you do like it as you continue to see into Brandon's mind. You get an idea of how different (slightly) his journey was from when this all began to how it will eventually end. We were there with Charlotte as she struggled with her feelings for Brandon, wishing the same time as she did that he would somehow give us a sign that he felt the same way. And then to go into Brandon's mind and know his thought process during the same scene—there's a degree of reader satisfaction in knowing what the other characters don't know about each other. =)
Let me know what you think!
♪♪♪Journal Soundtrack: Fix You by Coldplay ♪♪♪
When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
And high up above or down below
When you're too in love to let it go
But if you never try you'll never know
Just what you're worth
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you