September 19, 2014
Charlotte poked her head in the sunroom and found Clayton reclining on the chaise lounge, with his eyes closed, enjoying one of the last days of summer sun. He looked so peaceful, his legs crossed at the ankles and arms folded above his head, that she just stood and watched him for several long minutes. She'd found herself doing that a lot in the three days since he'd come home, just watching him, appreciating him.
Clayton felt her presence and cocked one eye open and smiled, "How's my girl?"
She returned his smile and made her way over to him, "I'm good." She sat down next to him and he pulled her across his chest so that her head rested near his heart. Looking up at him, she touched the dimple in his chin, "It's so weird to have you here in the middle of the day."
"Ah, don't worry, I'll be out of your hair sometime next week."
"But I like you in my hair though and I don't want you going back to work too soon. You need your rest."
He wrapped his hand around her finger that rested on his face, "I won't go back before the doctors clear me," he caught her eye and tilted his head down to her, "I promise."
Satisfied with his promise, she dropped her hand and rested her head against his chest again.
"We should talk about it. It's only going to get harder the longer we wait." Clay ran his hand through her thick red hair and waited for her to respond.
"I know I just…" Charlotte pushed up to a sitting position and glanced at him.
"I guarantee you that what you've conjured up in your mind is worse than the reality, Charlotte."
She shook her head back and forth and quickly headed into the house. Clayton slowly got to his feet and hobbled into the kitchen with help from a cane. "Charlie, where'd you go?"
"I'm in here." She called from the living room.
He paused in the doorway when he found her curled up in a ball on the sofa and laughed under his breath, "It's really not fair for you to be running away from me right now."
She looked up at him, "I wasn't running away."
"Sure you weren't." He winced as he sat down next to her. Without waiting for her to speak, without waiting for the go-ahead from her, Clay began speaking, "I was held for 9 days. For 23 and a half hours a day I was tied to a chair."
Charlie looked over at him, "Clay, please…"
"No, we're gonna get this out now before it taints everything." He relaxed his back in the corner of the couch and faced her, "Ask me something."
She twisted her rings back and forth, there was one question and only one question she really needed to ask him and she hated herself for having that need. She inhaled sharply and then asked in a nearly manic tone, "Was there ever a point that you regretted ever laying eyes on me? Even if it was just a split second, a fleeting thought?"
Clayton closed his eyes and nodded, "I had a lot of time to myself. Of course, I ran the scenarios in my mind. How could this have been prevented, what could I have done to change this outcome?"
"I did the same thing." Charlotte confessed on a light breath.
"But there was no scenario that made me feel better." He leaned toward her and grabbed her hands, "Never meeting you, denying that pull I felt the first time I ever saw you was unacceptable to me."
A tear fell from her eye and landed on his hand before she looked up at him, "Even while T-Tucker was reading to you?"
"Especially then." He wiped her cheeks free of tears and sighed, "I will not lie to you – the things I heard made my skin crawl but that would be true for anyone."
"I am so sorry, Clayton." Charlie couldn't bring herself to look at him.
"For what? For having a relationship with someone else before you ever met me?"
She shrugged, "For all of this. For you having to…"
"Look, did I want to hear those things? Hell no but…" He shifted toward her, "There were four journals that he read from."
She nodded, "One for each year that he's been following me."
"Right, and Booth was part of ¾ of the first one – that's it. He may have written a few paragraphs about the things you did with him but he wrote entire pages about how you looked at me."
"Because I love you." She sniffled while running a hand through her hair.
"Yes, you do." He kissed her on the tip of her nose. "That's one of the things Tucker overlooked, he thought reading those things to me would upset me and some of them did but overall, they just gave me the strength to get through."
