Love Renewed (Love Trilogy) (3 page)

As she started to walk off, he grabbed her arm.

"Please Charlotte.
 
Will you go somewhere quiet and talk to me?
 
I would really like for us to become friends again at least," Trevin pleaded, his sadness at her hostility reflecting in his eyes.

"No," she bit off as she ripped her arm out of his grasp. "I can't deal with this right this second. Just...just stop."
 
She walked away, missing Trevin's fists curling in frustration.

Charlotte climbed into her car, knowing that the way she had reacted was childish but not caring in moment.
 
On top of it being the anniversary of her husbands' death, she had to run into the only other person in the world to have broken her heart. Tears rolling down her cheeks, she forced herself to not look in the rear view mirror as she drove away.

He may have put the past behind him but she hadn't and she wasn't sure she ever could.

~*~

"Damn," Trevin cursed to himself as he watched her drive away.
 
He didn't mean to upset her and after all these years, he still ticked her off by opening his mouth before thinking about what he was going to say.

He hadn't meant to bring up the past.
 
It was still so raw to him, because he'd spent months looking for her to no avail.
 
It was like she had fallen off the planet and even though he eventually had moved on, he had never forgotten her.

Seeing Charlotte here at the school had come as a surprise, since he hadn't known she was in town. He would have gone to her mother’s to speak to her if he had known. Her eyes had looked rather sad though and he wondered why she was at the school.
 
Perhaps she was looking for a job as a teacher; he wouldn't be surprised to find out that's what she went to school for. Charlotte had always been excellent with children and he'd thought about what their kids would look like once or twice when they'd been engaged.

She was still just as beautiful as always, with her dark brown hair falling to her shoulders and her equally dark brown eyes sparking when she become all fired up.
 
When they were younger, Trevin had nicknamed her "Sprite" being she was five foot four next to his six-foot frame.

Charlotte had loved him, he'd known that.
 
He didn't know why she'd never confronted him for his stupidity and just ran off instead.
 
At this rate, he'd never find out.

He'd just have to bump into her more often until he could get her to at least talk to him.
 
Otherwise, he was afraid this ache would never go away.

This whole debacle was his fault and it was finally time for him to correct it, if only she'd let him.
 
He knew he wouldn't stop trying to make up for the pain he caused her, even if it was the last thing he did.
 

"Yeah, Trevin. That's easier to say than to do," he remarked to his own self as he walked to his car.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone and glanced at it. Almost nine a.m. and he would have to go inside soon for the board meeting. Sighing, he pulled a stack of papers out of the car and glanced at them, his mouth twisting in annoyance.

His father was a big proponent of making the schools run efficiently and had offered up his son to the school since he had a degree in business; he figured if anyone could get the school on track financially, it was Trevin. He'd helped his father make some good investments a few years back that had set them for life.

Unable to tell his father 'no' was one of Trevin's biggest downfalls. Sometimes he wondered why he wanted to please him so badly when it was obvious that was impossible. It always had been, but more so after his mother had died when he was a child. Being an only child made the expectations unbearable.
 

Trevin wasn't sure helping a school would be as easy in comparison to investments and he was sure his father knew that. Sighing, he headed into the school, his mind on Charlotte once again.

Chapter Two

Storming into her mothers' house, Charlotte let the screen door slam behind her.
 
Anna, her mother, looked up from the book she was reading in the living room, putting it down as her daughter stalked past her.
 
Anna knew Charlotte would be really upset because normally she would notice her mother immediately as the front door led right into the living room.
 
Her daughter had a look of utter annoyance on her face, as if she wanted to slap someone or give them a nice telling off.

Anna knew there was only one person that would be.
 
She got up to follow Charlotte, who had gone into the kitchen and was making herself a sandwich.

"Let me guess.
 
You ran into Trevin?" She'd stopped just inside the kitchen, knowing that approaching her daughter while she was mad just caused more issues than she wanted to deal with.

"I can't believe the
nerve
of that man, to just assume he could approach me and that I would want to be friends!"
 
Charlotte bit off this last word like it was nasty.
 
"How could he ever think I would want to be friends with him after what he did?
 
He broke my heart like it was nothing and just pretends like it never happened!"

Anna listened as Charlotte ranting, knowing that this day had been inevitable in its arrival.
 
It had only just been a matter of time until Trevin approached Charlotte once he saw she was back in town. Anna wished that Trevin had waited a little longer, though. She wasn't quite ready to deal with the drama she knew was inevitable.

"I'm sorry, sweetie. I figured you would have known he was still in town," Anna said softly. "I didn't realize you would be upset to run into him; it has been ten years after all."

Charlotte looked up at mother, shock on her face.
 
"Why wouldn't I be upset?
 
He is the total reason I left this town, the whole reason I married Jack, the whole reason my life is now in shambles!"
Okay well, not the complete reason for any of those
, Charlotte thought to herself, but at this moment she just felt like putting all the blame on his shoulders because she was angry with him.

Anna sighed, echoing the thoughts in her daughter's head.
 
"Your life is not in shambles Charlotte.
 
You have a beautiful five-year old son from a marriage with a man who loved you very much, a good job that lets you have a lot of flexibility and you have your health.
 
That is a lot more than many other people have."
 

Charlotte's shoulders drooped, wishing her mother knew about her marriage in that instant but unable to tell her.
 
"You're right."

Anna walked over to Charlotte, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe you should talk to Trevin and see what he has to say.
 
You haven't spoken to him since you found him cheating on you all those years ago."

Charlotte shook her head vehemently. "I can't talk to him. What would I say?
 
It has been ten years and I still want to yell at him for the way he broke my heart. Why should he get a second chance when he obviously didn't appreciate the first one? And yes, I have Douglas and I love him but that doesn't negate the fact that nothing is as I thought it was going to be. Trevin and I were supposed to be together forever, I was his fiancée!" She sat down abruptly, taking a bite of her sandwich.

Anna sat across from her, clasping her hands together and leaning on the table towards her daughter. "You were nineteen and he was twenty-one. Yes, you'd been together all through high school but maybe he wasn't ready for the commitment. It doesn't give him an excuse for cheating, but all you know is what you saw that day. You don't even know if they had actually gotten around to doing anything or if something else entirely different was going on that you wouldn't have known from your perspective."

Charlotte looked at her mother for a moment, thinking. "I never thought of it that way. I was so upset I didn't even stop to consider the other possibilities. I still think he was cheating on me though; he didn't even come after me!" With that, she just scowled and finished eating her sandwich, her mother looking at her with exasperation.

Anna felt relieved that Charlotte didn't seem to suspect her of knowing anything more about the past than she did already. Having Jack die or her daughter move back to live in the same town again wasn't something she'd ever really expected, so she hadn't planned on every divulging her past interaction with Trevin. After a moment, she knew her daughter was going to be stubborn about her belief of Trevin cheating on her, so she just patted her hand as she got up and then left the kitchen.

~*~

Charlotte knew she was acting poorly, but she hadn't expected to see Trevin today.
 
It threw her off balance, especially since he'd always been able to make her feel things that she'd rather not. Finishing off her sandwich, her mind focused on how good he had looked today.

Trevin hadn’t changed much from what she could see. Oh, he had matured and his face looked slightly older like he had aged a bit more than ten years but other than that, he was just as perfect as she remembered him to be. Him smiling at her had set off the butterflies in her stomach that always came about when he was near.

Disgusted with having her thoughts focused on him, she stood up and put her plate into the sink. After finishing up the cleaning she had to do in the kitchen, she headed up the steps to her room.

She sat down at her computer, intending to do some work she'd yet to get around to, when her mind began wandering to Trevin again, this time back to when they had first met each other.

She had grown up in this small town, but Trevin's father had moved them here when he was in his last year of elementary school.
 
They weren't really friends as she'd be rather quiet and a wallflower, while he wasn't popular yet made friends pretty fast and was outgoing.

They had become friends over the summer before her freshman year of high school, spending most of it with each other - going to the lake for a swim, taking walks in the park and other innocent kid things like hanging out at his house with his parents and listening to music, singing along while horribly out of tune and laughing about their silliness.

By the end of the summer, he had asked her out and they had shared their first kiss. She hadn’t expected it to happen, although she had secretly began to like him as more than just a friend, and wasn’t even aware of how he felt about her until just before school started again.

He had invited her to the lake and had brought along a picnic basket and a blanket. Putting it down on the ground, he had invited her to sit. Before long, his hand covered hers while they laid down looking up at the stars in the dark but clear sky. Turning towards her, he asked her to be his girlfriend and when she nodded, he had went to kiss her on the cheek but she moved her face to make her lips meet his. He had just smiled at her and laid back on the blanket again, their hands still intertwined.

Charlotte starting high school didn't change much between then.
 
They dated and there wasn't really any drama as neither were popular or noticeable all that much. When Trevin graduated at the end of her sophomore year, he decided to go to the University nearby so he wouldn't have to leave her.

She had always found that the hardest to understand. Why would he cheat on her when he had stayed close by just for her, not much longer than a year before the incident? He had just told her the day before that he had loved her, but after catching him with that girl how could she believe that? She still wasn't sure all these years later whether or not he was simply a big liar and if so, how long he'd been cheating on her during the course of their relationship.

Shaking her head to clear her head of that mess, she opened a document up that she needed and set out to finish her work. She was a writer for the local paper and had been working from home because of Douglas. She had offered to work there once he began school, but they told her it wasn't necessary and honestly, she preferred it this way since she was able to take breaks if necessary without interrupting the workplace flow.

After roughly an hour, she was deep into her piece on the festival that was coming up in a month when there was a knock at her door.

Sighing, Charlotte went to the front door and peeked out.

Somehow, she wasn't shocked to see Trevin standing on the front porch.
 
She took a deep breath and then opened the door.

~*~

Trevin had decided after his meeting that instead of waiting until he could "bump" into Charlotte, he was just going to her house to try to speak with her. He knew it was a risk that he would get turned away by her mother being protective, but he hoped since it was early afternoon that she'd be alone so they could talk. He also knew how she had gotten so upset earlier and wanted to apologize for causing her distress. Bounding up the front steps, he pressed the doorbell.

While waiting for someone to answer, he pondered what to say first.
 
He had so much to say to Charlotte, but didn't quite know how to say it. He'd always been awkward with expressing his thoughts and feelings and oftentimes, he didn't understand other people’s emotions.

Just as he figured nobody was coming to answer the door and started to turn away, he saw the curtain in the window move just slightly before Charlotte opened the door. He was quite relieved at that moment and forgot what he was going to say.

"Are you just going to stand there staring at me, Trevin? Some things never change," she remarked.

She was referring to his initial inability to overcome his shyness and speak to her when they first met - a trait he had grown out of rather quickly once they'd spent that summer together.

Trevin flashed a grin at her, amused at her small reference to the past that she obviously hadn't forgotten about either. "Hi there, Charlotte. It's good to see you again, too.
 
May I come in?"