This is shorter but it's going to spin us on our heads, I think.

Thank you to all who found strength in Charlotte's character. I think in this chapter, we're all going to remember that despite all the things we admire about her, she's just as human as the rest of us.

Don't forget to vote and comment! =)

***

When the Maxfields threw a party, they really threw a party.

The family's old but magnificent neo-classical mansion was already a highly coveted real-estate piece with its history and sheer size—a rare find in the bustling heart of downtown. In the muted dusk, the grand house seemed to glow and shimmer. To be admitted behind its gates alone was quite a privilege.

The fact that the celebration was for Martin Maxfield's birthday made the event a definite must in the calendar of anyone who was financially, politically and socially important in the city, if not the country.

For all his normally buoyant yet occasionally sly tendencies, Martin was a well-respected figure in the business world, having gained the favor of both the private and public sectors.

It was no surprise that all kinds of people turned out.

I expected businessmen, politicians, celebrities, socialites, and all kinds of important people.

What I didn't expect was... my mother.

Louisa Samuels in the flesh.

"Charlotte? Are you okay?"

The sound of Brandon's voice seemed warbled and dulled, as if he were somehow speaking to me through a bottle.

I blinked and glanced up at him, his handsome face, creased with concern, coming into focus.

"I need to... I need to leave." My voice was no better—it was raspy and broken and trembling at some parts.

I vaguely noticed Brandon's large, warm hand settle on my shoulder. "Babe, what's wrong?"

"She's here," I whispered, backing up a step only to be reminded by the cold, hard wall behind me that there was nowhere to go. I was trapped in a small, discreet alcove where I'd run for cover the moment I caught sight of her face in the crowd.

I was such a coward but what was I supposed to do?

My mother was so far removed from my reality that she may as well be literally a ghost from my past.

Except that ghosts blur with the smoky fringes of the other world. Your mother looks vividly real.

A sense of panic was surging up through me like a nasty acid reflex and I wrestled my shoulder away from Brandon’s firm grip, wanting nothing more but to get away—to dissolve into the wall if I had to.

He wouldn’t let go though. He kept staring at me as if I were a really complicated Math problem he was sure he’d solved before. He didn’t understand that I had to go.

“She’s here,” I hissed urgently, clamping a hand around Brandon’s wrist and wrenching his grip loose. “I don’t know how… I have to go.”

Scowling, he effectively blocked me from where I would’ve launched into a sprint, cradling me close to his side as he swept his gaze around the vast room full of guests.

“She’s here, Brand,” I choked out, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my face against his black suit, not caring if my make up smudged all over it. “I can’t…”

And suddenly, Brandon’s arm tightened around me. I felt his body tense up as he gently extricated me from the tight clutch I had of him, his hand tipping up my face so I could look up to his.

His hazel eyes were sharp and bright—like the blinding glare of the sun in high noon.

“Your mother.”

I nodded and ran a shaky hand through my hair, uncaring of the moussed and teased mess it raked through.

I lifted my eyes to peek just past Brandon’s shoulder, knowing what I didn’t want to see but looking for it all the same.

“Yes.” I bit the inside of my bottom lip until I tasted the tang of blood, my attention zooming in on the lone figure that hovered just by the door, draped in a soft lilac evening gown, her head following the slow sweep of her eyes as she scanned the party.

Even from across the room, her face looked nearly exactly as I remembered it, and it wrenched painfully at something inside of me. The sunniness of her curly blond hair, the oval-shaped face rendered attractively by the neat features that composed it—apparently, the years didn’t cause her looks to deteriorate as much as they did whatever happy memories I had of her.

“She’s here,” Brandon said.

“I know. She’s—” My eyes suddenly narrowed as I glanced up sharply at my husband. “Wait. How did you know my mother’s here? You don’t know what she looks like. Or that she would be here.”

Something flickered briefly across Brandon’s somber face. “I do know.”

I slowly backed a step away from my husband and he didn’t lock me in place this time. “Why would you know such a thing?”

I felt it coming—that sharp but somehow hollow pain that blunted through my chest like the strike of a fist at the very centre of me.

It was a feeling I was well acquainted with—a feeling that had struck me only twice in my life: first when I realized, a couple of years later when I was old enough to understand, that my mother had abandoned us instead of just disappearing at the sprinkle of fairy dust, and second when I finally felt my father’s drunken brutality, after I’d thought that nothing could’ve hurt me more than his neglect.

It was the kind of betrayal that nearly drove me to my knees, brought down by the power only those I so very carefully chose to love could possibly have over me.

That’s the truth of things, isn’t it? When you love someone, you give them the choice to love you back or break you. And you’ve been broken each time, Charlotte, haven’t you?

Before Brandon could even speak the words I could already read in his eyes, tears were rolling down my cheeks, burning narrow, little paths down my cold skin.

“Did you ask her to come here?” The small but hard voice that spoke didn’t sound like me but it must’ve been because each word was lodged painfully at the base of my throat where the sobs threatened to burst from. “Did you, Brand? After I told you that she was dead to me? You had no right!”

He flinched, his face draining of color like someone who was fast losing the blood that kept him alive.

“I wanted you to be happy,” were his faint, trembling words as he reached a hand out to me. “Charlotte.”

“You think seeing her would make me happy?” I demanded incredulously. “Do you even know me at all, Brand?”

“I know that despite your bravado and your adore-me-or-abhor-me attitude, something is still hurting, Charlotte,” he snapped back, grabbing me by the elbow, his eyes fierce once again. “Something is still broken.”

I twisted my arm away in disgust. “So you wanted to fix me? I thought you loved everything that was broken about me, Brand. Suddenly, you want to patch me up. I hate to break it to you but you there’s no point in putting a Band-Aid on an old wound that had scabbed over so many times it no longer bleeds.”

And before he could grab me again, I turned on my heel and ran down the narrow hall next to the alcove, oblivious to the frantic clicking of my heels and the loud swishing of fabric as my dress rustled around my legs, slowing me down I might as well have been wading through the waves in the ocean.

I practically stumbled into the library which was lit intimately by the soft glow of the wall sconces that surrounded the warm, cozy space.

The fact that it abruptly ended the path I was willing to run on as fast as I could for as far away as possible, suffocated me.

I scrambled to the tall windows, shoving the drapes back and fumbling for any kind of lever that would let me crack it open.

Fuck!

The damned dead-end was stifling hot and my breath was stuck somewhere in my chest, trying to pound its way out.

“Charlotte!”

I distractedly heard Brandon’s voice but I ignored him as my hands found purchase and gripped a latch. With furious effort, I twisted it whatever way I could until one pane cracked open.

The soft gust of the cool evening breeze nearly knocked me over and I limply leaned against the window frame, breathing hard and fast.

“Charlotte, look at me.”

I didn’t realize how close Brandon had come and I backed up a step at the sight of him, holding a trembling hand up to stop him in his tracks.

“Don’t.” I swallowed against the lump of tears in my throat, blinking rapidly through the watery vision I had of my husband. “I’m not some injured animal you pick up from the side of the road, Brand. I’ve been on my own, out in the wild for so long, without you, without anybody, and I’m fine being that way.”

Brandon’s lips clamped tightly into a thin line, his expression so stormy I was sure lightning was going to streak the sky outside followed by a roaring thunder, but he kept his ground.

“You can feed me and care for me all you like but taking me to a mother who’d long abandoned me isn’t going to change a damned thing,” I spat out, so so angry that the one person I thought would understand me the most and accept me, scars and snarls and all, was the same person who’d stuck a hand into a wound I didn’t mind having for the rest of my life, pulling at stitches so old and worn, I was starting to bleed all over again.

“I’m not trying to change you, Charlotte,” Brandon ground out, his jaw clenching with the effort. “I’m simply trying to change some of the things that surround you in hope that you wouldn’t have to hurt any more or forever second-guess your worth. While your self-deprecating attitude amuses other people, I know it comes from somewhere painful, no matter how easily you brush it off like it’s nothing.”

I bristled. “You couldn’t fix me before so now you’re going to attempt it? I will never feel like I deserve everything, Brand, because I don’t, and I don’t see that as an issue. You don’t have to put the pieces of my life back together. I like it the way it is but if it’s not good enough for you, you’re going to have to ask yourself why, and maybe the answer is because I was never good enough for you to start with. Now that you’re stuck with me, you’re trying your best to polish away all the scuffs I came with.”

Brandon opened his mouth to speak again but I was far too gone, my anger sending a jolt of adrenaline through me with the strength of an electric shock.

“I have some news for you, Brand. My mother isn’t a little scuff. She’s a big rip at the bottom of my shoe that I will always notice no matter what,” I said vehemently, my voice gathering momentum. “And I’m alright with that. You know why? Because it reminds me to never get too comfortable, and it has served me well in the last twenty years of my life. You just never know when someone will suddenly think you’re not good enough for them and decide to walk away from you.”

“I am not going to walk away from you!” Brandon practically yelled, a muscle in his cheek ticking. “This is not a question about whether or not you’re good enough for me, Charlotte. I just want you to be happy.”

My lip curled up in one corner as I attempted a smile.

My next words came out softly, “I bet that’s what my mother told herself as she was packing up to leave me, Brand. I’m sure she thought I was worth the whole world to her and that by leaving, she was doing me a favor because she wanted me to be happy. After all, what child would be happy with a mother who so obviously wanted me be somewhere else?”

A bitter laugh bubbled out of my throat as I looked away and stared out into the dark night, remembering countless times when I’d done the same as a child, wondering what my life would become as my father drunk himself to death in the next room, hardly sparing me a thought. “I was happy, alright. I was really happy living with a ghost of a father who readied his grave one drink at a time. It was as every ideal childhood should be—full of wonderful dreams—because there wasn’t a single night I didn’t wish I was someone else, living a different life somewhere far away where there were great kings and happy princesses instead of alcoholic fathers and little girls who became adept at mopping vomit off the floor before even she put on her first beginners bra.”

“You blame her,” Brandon said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “You blame her for everything you went through.”

I lifted heavy, wet lashes to look at him. “It’s an opinion formed on a logical sequence of events, Brand. She went and started an affair with someone else, walked out on her family, drove my father to drink, left me at the mercy of a man who had more conversations with his gin bottle than his only child, forced me to depend on myself and endure no matter what. What alternate deductions can you arrive at?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment before his expression steeled with resolve. “Maybe she can rectify her mistakes.”

“Rectify her mistakes?” I scoffed with an incredulous laugh. “I’m now the highly esteemed Mrs. Charlotte Maxfield, with the world at her feet. I should write her a thank-you card. Without her mistakes, I may have never struck out as well as I did. I’ve made do with what she’d broken. I don’t need her, or you, to fix me.”

I levelled my gaze steadily at him, my chin thrust up in defiant challenge. “If you can’t live with that, Brand, then let me go, because I’d rather be who I am now than subject myself to my mother’s good intentions for the sake of her redemption and your misplaced sense of nobility.”

Without another word, I strode past him, my shoulders squared and my head held up high with as much dignity someone walking away from a death sentence could muster.

After all, I’d given him my heart—the battered and bloody thing—and it would seem, upon closer inspection, that it wasn’t good enough as it was.

The prince may love the pauper but she will never be a princess—not with her calloused hands and her gruff ways. She will never forget who she is, despite the crown and pretty dresses and the endless round of parties, and that’s the truth the prince will have to accept.

Blind with the storm raging through me, I marched out of the library and headed for the guest bedroom Martin had given us for the night. I paced for a good half hour before I made up my mind.

I would’ve stayed for Martin’s sake but I couldn’t bear the thought of running into my mother and ruining everyone’s night.

I was just rummaging through our overnight bag when my phone rang.

“What?” was my curt answer with barely a glance at the call display.

My stomach dropped when I heard a familiar sob on the other line.

“Charlotte… it’s me.”

Bessy.

“I lost it,” she whispered shakily. “The baby.”

Cold dread filled my veins like ice as I started pacing, my hand clutching the phone so hard I wondered vaguely if it would shatter.

“What happened?” I asked in an even voice when I wanted to demand out loud and pull my hair. “Bessy, tell me. What’s wrong?”

“H-he was at my apartment… so angry at me. I didn’t think he’d mean to…” Bessy sobbed. “But now I think… he did. He meant it. So that I lose the b-baby.”

“Okay, okay!” I grabbed my clutch and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind me. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Which hospital are you in? I’ll be there. I’ll call Layla and—.”

Damn! She skipped out on Martin’s party because her father was arriving in town to meet Riley.

“No, don’t,” Bessy pleaded. “I don’t want to burden her m-more. I deserve this. I deserve it for all the b-bad things I did. I won’t make a good mother anyway.”

“You don’t know that,” I snapped at her as I hurried down the hall toward the staircase. “There’s no manual for parenthood. People will make a lot of mistakes but they don’t always mean to.”

The rest of my words dived back into my throat when I saw the two people I did not want to be within fifty meters of—Brandon and my mother.

They were having a hushed conversation by the staircase, their words indiscernible to me over the music playing at the party downstairs. My mother was frowning in concern and my husband was speaking with an apologetic grimace.

Great. Now you’re trying to smooth her ruffled feathers because she didn’t get a warm welcome? Whose side are you on?

They both paused and looked up, as if they sensed my arrival even though I’d stopped in my tracks quite a ways back from them.

For the first time in the last fourteen years of my life, I met my mother’s gaze.

Her eyes were still the same startling aquamarine blue. The flicker of emotions in them seemed sincere but I only had six years of knowing this woman, most of that time having been too young to really understand anything, so I had very little reason to trust her.

Despite the rush of anger though, my last statement to Bessy rang clear in my head again.

Sure, people make mistakes when they don’t mean to. But her leaving me wasn’t a mistake—it was a decision she made knowing what it would do to me, whether I even found out the real reason or not.

Parenting manual or not, it didn’t change a damned thing in my opinion.

“Just hang tight. I’ll be there,” I said softly to Bessy on the phone before ending the call.

I averted my gaze from my mother and continued on my way with dogged intent, ignoring Brandon even as he called my name.

I was just trying to get past him after he’d planted himself in my path when I heard her speak.

“Charlotte.”

After fourteen years, having last heard it when I was just six, the sound of my name as she said it had a paralyzing effect on me.

How do you hate something you craved for so long?

It was like an invisible hand grabbed my shoulder and pivoted me around to face her.

Her familiarity, her concerned demeanor, her proximity—they crawled under my skin like a very bad itch.

“I’m sorry. Do I know you?” My voice was amazingly steady and nonchalant.

While I suspected that my eyes were still a bit puffy and red-rimmed from crying earlier, I didn’t have to give her the satisfaction that she could still affect me. Just like a ghost, she couldn’t touch me.

She stiffened, and I could feel her withdraw from the conversation, her cheeks flushing a deep red.

Brandon sucked in his breath audibly, his voice chiding. “Charlotte, don’t.”

I turned to him with what I hoped was a glacial smile. “I’m sorry if I interrupted what appears to be an important conversation. Please carry on without me. I need to see to the party.”

“You don’t have to pretend you don’t know me,” her voice croaked out, small and simpering.

I raised a brow at her. “Oh, I’m good at pretending. Ask my husband. After all, it’s a talent I inherited from you. Isn’t that right, mother?”

Her chin was trembling as she turned to Brandon. “I should go. It was a mistake for me to come here—“