Main Bonus #74: Charlie's Offer - Part One (Patreon)

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WE NEED TO TALK. One phrase that has my head in a rough spin cycle, and I don’t know how to shut it off.

It’s five a.m.

The sun hasn’t risen. I can’t relax against the passenger seat of my Audi.

Farrow is behind the wheel. He asks me something. I miss it.

“Sorry, what?” I blink a ton, trying and trying to be here. In this car. With my husband and not a million miles away in a darkened faraway land of anxieties (is that what they are?)—which I’d rather ditch. Trust me, I’d fling every worry into a fucking volcano if I could climb one.

Maybe I could. Maybe I can.

I work my tensed jaw.

“Moffy.”

My head snaps so fast to Farrow, I almost give myself whiplash. It’s so rare for him to call me Moffy. I don’t like it, but he knew it’d freak me out.

He sweeps my face, then eyes the road with a slight smile. “I love when I carry you a thousand leagues out of your head.”

It does feel like he did that, but in no way am I admitting it. “Ten leagues,” I counter. “And you didn’t carry me. I walked beside you.”

“Sure.” He stops the car at a red light, then assesses me. I wish I could just drown in how much I love him. For a blip, I think I could.

He has a single hand on the wheel, his tattooed fingers loosely gripping the leather, and his complete casualness over this situation is a silent reassurance that it’s not that bad. That life isn’t going to tear apart anyone I love without us being there. That we will handle this.

We can handle it.

Not to mention, he’s hot. I wish my brain would hyperfocus on the cut of his muscles and the ink along his neck or how he’s older. How his eyes rake over me with caring that’d feel uncomfortable if I didn’t want him to care about me. But God, I do.

I’ve wanted Farrow to care about me and love me, probably before I even realized that he already did.

“Are you doing the Wolf Scout thing and packing survival gear or are you obsessing over what this could be about?”

I crack a knuckle with my thumb. “Maybe both.”

“Okay, let’s not do the latter.”

“I’m trying not to, man.” Pressing my skull against the headrest, I can’t loosen the tension in my muscles. My shoulders ache with strain. I might as well be on a starting platform, listening for the beep to signal me to dive into the water and race against a clock. “After Charlie said, we need to talk, I asked him what happened. He literally responded, don’t be late. Then he dropped a pin of his location. That’s it. He’s given me no other context to go on.”

Farrow knows this. I’m just hammering home the fact.

Light turns green. No traffic this early, we have a straight shot to our destination in Philly.

“It could be anything,” Farrow says. “But we’ll be at Calloway Couture in less than ten minutes, and we’re going to figure it out, so there’s no point in spiraling.”

“I’m not spiraling.” I glare. “I’m thinking.”

“About?”

“About whether or not Charlie would come to me if he were in trouble, and a couple years ago, I would’ve said, no way in hell. Not before Janie. Not before Beckett. Now, I’d give it a fifty-fifty chance. Maybe.” I grimace and stare off out the windshield. “Then I think it’s more likely this is about his brothers. But would he want me involved if it were them?” Yeah. I nod to myself. “He would want me to help. He wanted me to move to New York to help and take that responsibility off his hands, even if it’d grate on him. But more likely, it’s probably about my siblings. Because he did come to me about Xander giving out his antidepressants, but what if it’s not him? I mean, Charlie’s been helping edit Luna’s fics. I know that. Maybe they’re closer than I think. Maybe he knows something about my sister that I don’t. Maybe something happened, and it’s killing me because she already broke her arm last month from rolling a fucking golf cart. She doesn’t need to go through anything else.”

I try to exhale a rough, tensed breath, and I realize how much I just purged into the car.

Farrow says nothing, just gives me a pointed look with raised brows.  

I groan out. “Fine, I’m spiraling.” I lick my dried lips a couple times. “How do I stop?”

“Breathe.”

I blink. “Wow, I didn’t think of that one. If that’s what they teach in med school, I’d pass in a few hours.”

He laughs.

Hearing that sound instantly releases weight off my chest. Just like that. I want to smile over at him. I really fucking do, but this morning, it’s harder to capture. “It feels more like descending,” I admit to Farrow. “Not spiraling, because each thought just takes me deeper.”

“If you need to go deeper, Maximoff, then go,” Farrow says lightly. “I don’t mind descending with you.”

I watch him concentrate on the road. “So you can carry me out?”

His lips rise. “Even when you lie and say you don’t like being carried. Yeah. But mostly, I like navigating this shit with you.” He glances briefly at me. “Your mind is an interesting place to be, wolf scout. Don’t ever cast me out of there.”

It breathes oxygen into my lungs. He knows when I need reassurance. It’s a common thread in our relationship, and it’s not one that irritates him. Which I appreciate. He’s a great husband, and if I stole him from the universe, I’ll never give him back.

“Charlie was literally just robbed at the Carnival Fundraiser.” I think out loud. “Maybe it’s about himself. Or Jack—he was hurt, too.” I wince and shake my head. Apparently, the entire carnival ended in chaos for my family, but we avoided all of it because Ripley was fussy. He’s been teething, and so we left early.

Farrow takes out his phone. “I’ll call Oliveira.”

I try to ease because if anyone does have information about Charlie, it would be his bodyguard. But Oscar doesn’t answer.

Farrow rolls his eyes. “That motherfucker.” He tosses his phone into the cup holder.

I instinctively crane my neck to the back. To check on our son. But the car seat is empty. Farrow catches me and frowns. “I thought you wanted to drop him off.”

“Just habit.” I face forward. “It’s good that he’s not here. We don’t know what this is about, and if we need to drive to like Antarctica, he doesn’t need to be with us.”

“Antarctica?”

“Sorry, I meant Jupiter.”

Farrow lets out a laugh. “Just when I forgot you’re a dork.”

I want to smile. Fuck. It’s right there. That feeling. I want to stop myself from descending, but here I go again. “I hate that I woke up my mom to babysit.” It’s been hard for us to let anyone watch over Ripley. He’s not even a year old yet, but he does the best with my parents. Or maybe, we just trust them the most.

“Lily was wide-awake at the door,” Farrow reminds me. “She gets giddy whenever we come over and leave her with Ripley, and she deserves to know she’s our first choice.”

“Yeah,” I nod a few times in total agreement. My mom didn’t exactly get commended for being a mother by her own parents. And the world was hard on her. Not all of you, but some of you nitpicked and dissected every little thing she did.

But to me, she’s the best mom in every universe. I like the idea that she truly knows how much she’s wanted as a grandparent. How she’s not number four or number three, she’s number one in our eyes.

Farrow grips the wheel a little tighter. His lips have flatlined, and a newfound tension carves his muscles.

“What’s wrong, man?” I ask him.

He scrapes a hand through his hair, then shakes his head. “It’s nothing.” His graveled voice is hushed, almost a whisper. But that second palm falls to the wheel, and I can tell it is something.

“I know you don’t descend as often as me, but…” I trail off as he starts grinning like I’m milliseconds from professing eternal love with daffodils and a box of chocolates. “Forget it.”

“Keep going.” He smiles wider. “Tell me how you want to descend with me.”

I make a face. “Pretty sure you said that.”

He’s still grinning. “You want to drop down on your knees, Maximoff.”

No. Maybe.

For him, always.

“This sounds like your fantasy," I counter.

“It’s not a fantasy if you did it last night,” he says matter-of-factly. “That’s my reality.”

“Yeah, so is this.” I flip him off.

He laughs harder, but as the sound fades, seriousness falls again because I think he wants to share and I want to hear him out.

Farrow combs another hand through his hair, then says, “I wish…” He rolls his eyes, more at himself, I think. “It’s fucking…” He sighs out. “Give me a second.”

I would murder time so it stops for him. That’s the truth.

But he barely needs a second. He’s already saying, “I don’t want to wish it. Out of everything I could wish for, this shit should be bottom tier because I have your mom and your dad. But I wish my parents were more like them. I wish…I wish I could give you another option. To say, let’s not wake up your mom, let’s call my stepmom, my dad. But I can’t give you that.”

My brows knit. “I don’t need that, Farrow.”

His hand starts to untighten on the wheel.

I add, “You’re not giving me less. I promise you that.” In my life, he has only ever given me more. “And I’m glad you’ve gotten closer to my parents so you know you have them, too.”

He finds my hand without looking, and our fingers naturally lace. Calmness bathes over me and over him, and for the first time since we left, I ease.

Calloway Couture boutique is on the same street as Superheroes & Scones. Both are closed this early to the public, but Charlie has a key to his mom’s store. The same way I have a key to the comic book shop.

Parallel parked. We pay for an hour. I wonder if this’ll take longer or about five minutes.

I guess we're about to see.

 Thank you so much for reading this month's main bonus scene! We're going to be writing LOTS from Maximoff, Farrow, Jane, Thatcher, Oscar, and Jack's POVs. So be prepared for more in the coming weeks. We wanted to kick off with a Marrow bonus, and it's always like coming home when we return to Moffy's POV. We hope you enjoyed it!

This bonus isn't over yet! You'll get the Charlie/Moffy interaction in Part Two tonight. Stay tuned!

xoxo Krista & Becca

  "Charlie's Offer - Part One," Copyright © 2024 by K.B. Ritchie