chapter 20

CHARLOTTE

James gave her a disapproving look.

“You didn’t answer my

question. Did you slip again? Are you okay?”

“She did slip and hit her face on the ground,” Finn said before she

could.

Charlotte glared up at Finn, not liking that he outed her. It wasn’t his

place to tell James what happened to her. Finn wasn’t Charlotte’s Daddy

yet.

“Don’t you dare glare at him,” James said.

Charlotte looked over at James and glared at him. She knew she

shouldn’t be glaring at her boss, but Finn had no right to say that she

slipped.

“We both know you wouldn’t have told me the truth. Luckily, if this

gentleman wasn’t here, I would know by the red spot on your forehead,”

James said.

Charlotte’s hand flew up to touch her head, and she winced as pain

spread across.

“Owie,” she whined.

“I could have told you that was going to happen,” Amelia said, giggling

behind her Daddy.

Charlotte kept her head down as tears sprung to her eyes. Sometimes

Charlotte wasn’t the smartest person, but that didn’t mean people had to

point it out.

“Apologize to her,” James said.

Charlotte looked up with wide eyes, not expecting him to tell that to

Amelia. Charlotte had never actually seen James scold her, but she knew

that Amelia got in trouble.

Amelia was a brat by heart, and Charlotte knew that. They had hung out

one time, and Amelia got them in trouble. She wanted to prove to her

Daddy that she could go against his rules, talk back to him, and Charlotte

got dragged into it.

Charlotte didn’t get in too much trouble, but James did give her a big

lecture about not doing something like that again. She didn’t want to do it in

the first place, but Amelia really wanted to and didn’t give her much of a

choice.

That was the last time they hung out. After that, Charlotte got busy and

then came up with excuses about having to clean up the house, go grocery

shopping, hang out with Diana, and other things.

Amelia never called her out on it. Maybe she’d caught on and realized

that Charlotte didn’t want to hang out and was okay with that.

“I’m sowwy,” Amelia mumbled, not looking at Charlotte.

“It’s okay,” Charlotte whispered, but it wasn’t.

She already struggled with a lot of things, and when people made fun of

her, it made everything so much more difficult. Charlotte felt like she could

never fit in anywhere, and she tried so hard.

In the beginning, she would just act like herself, but people told her that

she was annoying, clingy, too emotional, and Charlotte didn’t want to be

those things. So she started to be less clingy and emotional, and people still

didn’t like her.

Now, at this point, she just stuck to herself because she didn’t want to

disappoint anybody else. Charlotte went to the club and played by herself.

She went to the bar and drank by herself. If she went out to eat and Diana

wasn’t there, she would eat by herself.

It was sad, it was lonely, but she’d started to get used to it.

“Now, how’d you slip?” James asked, turning toward Charlotte.

Charlotte looked back down at her feet, not wanting to tell James. How

was he going to react when she told him she slipped trying to get away from

Finn?

“Wait, before that,” James said as he turned toward Finn. “Who are

you?”

Charlotte’s heart stopped beating as she stared up at Finn. How was he

going to introduce himself? Was he going to say that they met at the club

last night?

James and Amelia didn’t know that Charlotte went to the club, and she

wanted to keep it that way. She felt weird if they knew she went there. A

ton of people went to that club, but she’d never seen anyone she recognized.

And she was thankful for that.

“I’m Finn, a friend of Charlotte’s,” he said, holding his hand out.

“James, owner of this bakery.”

James shook his hand before he turned back to Charlotte with a raised

eyebrow. Charlotte took a step back and caved in on herself. She didn’t like

the look James was giving her.

“Charlotte didn’t know I was coming to see her today. Sometimes she

gets a little embarrassed when I show up unannounced. Charlie was trying

to hide from me, and when she went to turn around, she slipped and fell,”

Finn said before Charlotte could say anything.

Her mouth flew open, and she stared at Finn. Did he really just say that?

“Why were you trying to hide from him?” James asked, looking at

Charlotte again.

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