Heartbeat || A Good Girls Fanfic

Chapter 14

A person's home can tell you a lot about its inhabitant. The very place where their secrets lie dormant, waiting for the moment someone lets them free. There are signs everywhere of the owner's personality. Even in the barest place, something gives the person away. Whether it's the color on their walls or a picture on a table, things that are left unsaid can be heard in the walls of their home.

Charlotte wanted to find out what the walls in Rio's apartment told her about who was Christopher. She wanted to find signs of the man she had started to witness. There were aspects of himself that he had either let slip or was revealing slowly to her, and she wanted to pull back those layers quicker. There was a version of himself hidden under the criminal boss persona, and she was intent on meeting it.

It also made her envy him.

Well, she envied anyone who had a place to call home.

Although she had a roof over her head. It had never felt hers. Not entirely. Under the watchful eye of the sister who had raised her, Charlotte never felt comfortable enough to make the small guest house a home. The only things that gave her away were the plethora of medical books and notebooks that littered the wooden desk and the insane amount of unhealthy snacks and drinks in the kitchen. But there were no pictures that weren't of her sisters and Ruby or their families. There were no unique knick-knacks or prints that she could admire. And definitely not much privacy from Elizabeth Boland.

But she couldn't dwell on her feelings of not belonging.

Not when she was standing in the middle of Rio's immaculate apartment.

Charlie didn't know what she was expecting, but it definitely had not been what she was staring at. The loft was beautifully decorated with wooden and industrial elements. Everything inside seemed to have a place and a purpose. Simple yet functional. Warm and inviting. Nothing like she had imagined.

Yet, the décor and the cleanliness was not the biggest surprise. It was the first room she encountered that had her mouth falling open. The first nook to the right when she entered the open-plan loft, was a room designated for a child. If the toys had not given it away, the tiny bed sure would have. It could not have fit anyone but a child no older than her own niece Jane.

"I'm going to assume this room is for a kid since you don't strike me as the kind of guy that would build an entire room for a dog," she chuckled awkwardly as she broke the silence. Her heart hammered as he nodded. "Yours?"

"I have a son," he answered, and Charlie couldn't help the way her chest tightened. Not only was he allowing her into his world, but Rio was also revealing one of the most intimate details about his life he could. "That a problem?"

"Why would it be a problem?"

"I'm an involved parent," he said. "Well, as involved as I can be."

"I'm still failing to see how that should be a problem," she continued before a grin tugged at the corners of her lips. "Unless you see us becoming more involved. I don't think you'd care much about what a little fling might think about you having a son."

Her eyes were trained on his figure a couple of feet away, taking in his rigid posture. As careless as he was trying to appear, he was failing to do so. Rio was leaning against the wall of his closet, on the other side of the apartment, where he had stood as she made a mental map of the apartment. "So, correct me if I'm wrong, but you see this going somewhere. You want this to go somewhere," she said as she inched closer to him, dragging her feet along his hardwood floor. "You want this to get to a point where your son knows that I'm a part of your life."

"You think you know everything, huh?" Rio questioned with a grin as she finally crossed the room toward him. "What makes you think knowing I have a kid means anything? I might tell everyone I sleep with that I do."