The Monsters Who Loved Him

by donnotknow123

Summary:

When Charlie Swan was fourteen, he vanished from Disney World and reappeared almost a year later, scarred, traumatized, and the sole survivor of a massacre no one could explain. Almost twenty years later, Charlie is convinced that if he never leaves Forks, the monsters that took him will never find him again.
He’s wrong.
Because the Cullens just moved into town, and they are more dangerous than anything he’s ever survived. The monsters who nearly took his life might be the same ones who end up taking his heart.

Chapter 1: The Unremarkable Swan

Charlie Swan is dead asleep, face-down, drooling into his pillow. It’s the first real rest he’s had in days. Usually, his demons keep him up. The house is perfectly dark thanks to the thick November fog, and the bedside fan gently caresses his face. His eyes crinkle every time it blows his bangs into them. A soft, steady snore fills the house.

And then,

“Help! I NEED SOMEBODY!”

Charlie jerks awake and slams his head into the headboard.

“Jesus Christ!” he shouts.

His phone vibrates violently on the nightstand, screaming the chorus of Billy Black’s favorite Beatles song at full volume. Charlie still has no clue how to change the volume or the ringtone since switching from his old flip phone to an iPhone. Billy changed it for him months ago when he asked for help changing his alarm.

Charlie reaches over to grab the phone and instead knocks over a glass of water.

“Shit!” He lifts the glass quickly and snatches the phone. Water droplets dot the screen. He wipes it off with the corner of his sheet. Bella assured him that phones these days were waterproof after he dropped his into the toilet and called her in a panic. It fell right out of his pocket. His old flip phone never did that. It too thick, basically a brick.

The song restarts just as he tries to hit the “X,” but his finger slips on the slick screen. The phone shrieks one last, “Help! I NEED SOMEBODY!” before he finally succeeds and blessed silence fills the room.

He exhales and drags a hand through his tangled hair. His gaze drifts over his bedroom: the pile of clothes slumped on his chair; the empty white walls; the useless clock Renée hung years ago. The batteries died long ago, and he’s never found the motivation to replace them or to toss the damn thing out. It’s stuck at 12:17 forever, even though it’s, he checks, 6:45 a.m. It bothers Bella every time she visits. It should bother him too. It doesn’t.

Too many memories.

He laughs under his breath, bitter and soft.

“I really do need somebody,” he mutters. “Preferably a licensed professional.”

He rubs his eyes, yawns loudly, and stretches until his shoulders pop. The wood floor chills his feet the second he steps out of bed, and he hisses at the cold. Hopping quickly to his laundry chair, he spots a pair of mostly-matching white socks. He lifts them to his nose, immediately regrets it, and puts them on. No one’s going to sniff his feet today anyway, or hopefully ever.

His back cracks loudly as he straightens.

Charlie pulls a shirt over his head, wincing as the fabric grazes his scars. Thin, pale lines, raised and faint, cover far too much of him, and they itch terribly in the cold. The ones on his face always itch the worst. He ignores them the way he ignores everything else he can’t fix.

Phone in hand, he checks for messages. There’s only one, from Bella:

Call me while you eat breakfast?

Warmth blooms in his chest, and he smiles. He sends a quick thumbs-up and nearly drops his phone again as he trips on the last step of the stairs. He shoves it safely into his pocket before he can injure himself or the phone.

He really should visit her soon. Escape the Forks fog, get some sun, refill his vitamin D levels. For a moment, the warmth spreads, until something cold and sharp replaces it. His chest tightens. His breath quickens.

It isn’t safe to visit Bella.

He would love to leave Forks, Washington, to see her, to live somewhere brighter, but he can’t. If he leaves, the monsters will find him again. Forks is the only place they can’t.

And he will never let them find her.

The thought settles over him like a cloud, heavy and low and ready to burst. His house feels smaller, darker. He feels trapped inside a tomb that just happens to have windows.

When Charlie imagined his life growing up, he imagined this house filled with people he loved. He imagined kids running down the hallway, crayon drawings taped to the walls, and a clock whose time actually mattered. A clock that ticked through days full of laughter and warmth.

He never imagined that at thirty-three, he’d be alone. That the person he loved most in the world would live 1,508 miles away. That the woman he once promised his life to would be the one to take his baby and his future away from him.

What hurts the most is that Renée knew, knows, that his crippling anxiety would keep him from chasing them.

He groans and presses a palm to his face. Digs his fingers into his eyes until he saw stars flashing in and out.

Yeah. He really does need a shrink. Probably medication too. Shame it’s too early to crack open a beer, especially with a shift looming over him in a few hours.

He needs to get out of this house before he implodes. Jittery, he slips on his running shoes and ties them with shaking fingers. He pulls his hoodie from the hook by the front door and yanks it over his head. He should have fixed his hair, but whatever. He also puts on his fanny pack with his water bottle. Bella thinks it’s hilarious; he thinks it’s practical.

The cold morning air slams into him the second he steps outside. He rubs his hands together, wishing he knew where the hell his gloves had gone.

He stretches once, barely, before bolting into the street. He should start with a calm warm-up jog, but Charlie loves to run. He loves the way the air burns his lungs as he pushes himself faster and faster.

It’s a hurt that feels good, like pressing on a toothache or tearing off a hangnail.

And today, he needs the hurt. He needs something to remind him he’s alive, and that he has something to live for.

The first stretch of Charlie’s run leads him into the woods. Local forest rangers have repeatedly warned civilians not to run out here this time of year. Between the slick weather and hunting season, it’s asking for trouble. Charlie even knew a guy back in middle school who ignored the warnings, went jogging, and got shot in the buttocks. Poor bloke couldn’t walk straight again.

Ironically, Charlie has always been terrible at listening to people in authority. One of the many reasons he’s still assigned to grunt work, like SRO duty. If someone tells him don’t do that, his brain immediately interprets it as absolutely do that. He doesn’t mind the high school, though. The kids remind him of Bella. She is now a freshman, bright and stubborn and too far away. A student named Jessica insists on keeping him company whenever he’s on campus. She’s harmless enough, if not sometimes inappropriate, nd weirdly helpful when it comes to brainstorming gifts for Bella or coming up with ideas on how to redecorate Bella’s room for her next summer visit.

Charlie slips on a patch of ice. For a fleeting moment, he’s certain he’s about to biff it, but he catches himself at the last second by grabbing a nearby tree. The bark scrapes his palm like teeth.

“Shit,” he mutters. The word echoes between the trunks, sounding too loud, too human. He grimaces. It feels like he’s just ruined the stillness, like he’s tracked mud into a cathedral.

He’s always loved the woods. Always felt more at home here than in a place like Port Angeles. He loves the green, the hush, the rare moments he glimpses wildlife. Even alone out here, he never feels lonely. The woods are too ancient, too full of the breath of animals and the ghosts of people who lived and died long before him, to allow loneliness. It’s why he loves fishing with Billy and Harry: the ritual, the silence, the sense of something older watching over them.

Charlie’s never been much of a churchgoing man, but nature is the closest thing he has to a religion. And out here, he is devout.

He snorts at the thought of himself as any kind of saint. He’s seen the devil, looked him in the eye, and you don’t come back from that unchanged.

He bounces on the heels of his feet a few times before taking off again at a slightly slower pace. He may ignore the ranger warnings about avoiding the woods (he’d love to see someone try to stop him), but he also doesn’t want to crack his skull open anytime soon.

The air shifts when Charlie exits the forest trail and enters the nicest neighborhood in Forks. There aren’t many houses, but the ones that exist are enormous. They are practically mansions. They’ve got to be worth twenty million dollars each, at least. Renée used to insist on walking Bella’s stroller through here just to look at them. She’d spin theories about what the wealthy residents did for money, each more ridiculous than the last.

“Okay, that house?” she said once, stopping dead in front of a three-story monstrosity with an unnecessary turret. “Definitely a retired mobster. Three identical black SUVs in the driveway? I bet they have more in the garage. Charlie, don’t look at me like that. That man has buried bodies.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow. “Mobsters don’t retire, Ren.” He raised his eyebrows a lot at Renée. Still does, on the rare occasions she makes the time to call him.

“Well, this one did. Got into real estate. Happens more often than you think.”

Another time, she pointed at a sleek, all-glass modern home and whispered conspiratorially, “That family is in witness protection. No one voluntarily has that many security cameras.”

Charlie snorted. “Or maybe they just don’t want raccoons breaking in again.” He also laughed a lot with Renée.

Renée waved her hand. “Oh, please. Raccoons don’t need twelve cameras pointed at the azalea bushes.” They were actually rhododendrons. Charlie learned quickly, in their short marriage, never to correct Renée when it came to flowers. Or anything, really.

She'd walk on, pushing Bella’s stroller, narrating her architectural conspiracy theories as if she were hosting a true crime show. Bella usually slept through it. Charlie pretended not to enjoy himself.

The people who live here are private, which Charlie assumes is why they paid twenty million dollars to hide in towering trees and silence. His own neighborhood is cramped; he barely has a backyard. Everyone knows everything about everyone else in his neck of the woods.

But here? These people are mysterious.And he gets to see them in rare, vulnerable moments, when they’re stepping out onto their porches, coffee in hand, just starting their day, unaware they’re being observed by a nosy, overthinking, underpaid cop on a morning run.

The first house he runs past is only two stories high, but ridiculously long. It always reminds Charlie of the shopping mall he takes Bella to when she visits. The family that lives there must be Mormons, because there are a lot of kids running around. Charlie smiles as he hears happy shouting from inside.

The next house is the three-story monstrosity Renée was convinced belonged to mobsters. Charlie snorts when he notices another black SUV parked in front That makes  a grand total of four. An older man with gray at his temples and a bald spot on top if his head stands beside his trashcan, staring at it like it’s a math problem he’s been assigned against his will. He’s wearing only a robe, which gapes dangerously over his beer belly in a way that borders on public indecency.

Charlie slows and gives him a wave. The man raises a hand in absent-minded acknowledgment before Charlie stops completely.

“You okay, neighbor?”

The man looks up, really looks, and seems surprised to see him.

“Is it not trash day? They didn’t pick it up. And you know the elk get into it if it’s too full.”

Charlie nods and scratches the back of his neck. His scars are itching badly this morning. He hopes it’s not a bad omen.

“It’s only,” he checks his watch, “7:30. They usually come by around eight or so in this neighborhood.”

The man nods slowly, still looking troubled. “Ah. Right. Right, that makes sense.” He rubs his stomach in a way that suggests he’s forgotten he’s outside. “Well. Thanks, Officer.”

Charlie stiffens at the word Officer. He had no idea this man even knew who he was. He gives an uncomfortable smile and is about to resume his run when the man snaps his fingers.

“Oh! Hang on. My wife made sourdough. She’s on a sourdough kick. Every week it’s a new loaf. You want a loaf?”

Charlie shakes his head and gestures to the road. “I’m on a run, so I can’t hold a loaf.”

The man snaps his fingers again and nods deeply, as if Charlie has said something profound. “That’s right, that’s right. What about a small slice with some blackberry jam and homemade butter? That way you can run and not get a cramp.”

Charlie pauses. That actually sounds really nice, and he doesn’t want to be rude. He nods. “That sounds great. Thanks.”

The older man shuffles to the door and calls inside, “Honey, do we have any of the bread left?”

Charlie blinks. He can hear Renée’s voice saying:

“Mobsters have wives who bake sourdough, right? They could. Who’s to say they don’t? Maybe that’s how they launder money now—artisanal carbs.”

The man returns moments later with the promised slice of sourdough spread with blueberry jam and presses it eagerly into Charlie’s hands. Then he just… stands there, staring.

Charlie stares back before realizing the man is waiting to watch him eat it.

He lifts the slice to his mouth and practically moans on the first bite. It’s warm, soft, sweet, and melts instantly on his tongue. He scarfs it down before he even realizes it. The man looks ecstatic.

“She makes the best bread. She made way too much. Bless her heart, she thinks we’re feeding an army. Feel free to stop by anytime you run. We see you a lot. My wife likes your physique.”

Charlie chokes and struggles to swallow. He grabs his water bottle from his fanny pack and takes a quick swig. “Uh… thanks. Tell her it was really great. She has a real talent.”

“Will do!” The man beams, then lowers his voice. “And hey… you didn’t see me like this, okay?”

Charlie blinks again. “Like what?”

The man’s eyes dart left and right before he whispers, “In a robe.”

He hurries back inside.

Charlie stands there for a moment, watching the door click shut.

Maybe Renée was onto something. Something isn’t exactly right with that guy.

He snorts at himself, shakes his head, and starts jogging again.

Further down the road, Charlie groans as he spots his arch-nemesis: Mr. Pickles. Mr. Pickles is a wildly untrained Yorkshire terrier who has made it his personal mission to destroy Charlie Swan. Charlie has watched the dog trot past every other jogger without so much as a blink. But the second Charlie comes near? Mr. Pickles becomes seven inches of pure, unfiltered hatred.

The woman who walks him always looks shocked, as if this isn’t a weekly event.

Charlie grits his teeth and crosses to the opposite side of the road. Mr. Pickles’ ears flick forward the instant he senses Charlie’s presence, and the hair along his tiny spine rises like he’s preparing for battle.

Charlie keeps his eyes straight ahead as he approaches, briefly daring to hope the dog might behave today. He raises a hand and nods politely to the woman. She’s tall, fit and blonde in expensive workout gear, late thirties or early forties.

“Morning!” he says in his best fake-cheerful voice.

He doesn’t even finish the word before Mr. Pickles launches all seven furious inches of himself at Charlie. The woman is yanked forward, stumbling toward him as the leash goes taut.

Charlie lets out a very manly yelp and dodges sideways with surprising grace.

“I am so sorry!” the woman calls, mortified. “I have no idea what he has against you!”

“It’s okay!” Charlie shouts over his shoulder as he sprints away.

He glances back, only to see her standing there, holding the leash, staring very obviously at his ass.

Charlie flushes bright red and instinctively squeezes his cheeks together out of pure embarrassment before accelerating to escape velocity.

About a mile down the neighborhood, Charlie sees moving trucks. He slows again and gives a friendly wave to the men unloading furniture. The house they’re working on isn’t the biggest in the neighborhood, but it was always Renée’s favorite. It’s the one with the ridiculous number of windows. It’s older than the rest, cottage-like, tucked deep in the trees. Whoever built it worked around the forest instead of leveling it.

It’s been empty for as long as Charlie’s been living in Forks, which is his whole life. He’s pretty sure it’s been empty even longer.

Huh, he thinks. Finally, someone rich enough to heat the place.

He lifts his phone and snaps a picture. His thumb hovers over Renée’s contact. He imagines her voice, the way she’d hum in admiration at all those windows, how she’d talk about natural light and “storybook cottages.”

Charlie hesitates.

Then he sighs, deletes the message, and pockets the phone.

A hush settles over him so suddenly it steals his breath. The hair on the back of his neck prickles; goosebumps ripple across his arms. He feels watched, not by a neighbor or a curious homeowner but by something that sits higher on the food chain.

He glances around. Nothing moves in the trees. The only sounds are the movers’ voices, laughing and shouting instructions, completely oblivious. Too normal. Too loud for the silence pressing around him.

When Charlie looks back at the house, a figure stands at one of the large windows.

A man. Broad-shouldered. Blondish hair catching the weak morning light. But Charlie can’t make out his face He can just see the shape, the stillness. The kind of stillness that isn’t human stillness.

Charlie freezes. He feels caught, guilty, like a kid caught stealing cookies. He supposes, if it is the new tenant, he’s been taking pictures without the man’s consent.

He swallows, lifts a sheepish hand, and waves.

The man raises his hand slowly and waves back.

Charlie’s stomach drops.

He turns away from the house and sprints, hard, choosing the route that takes him home the fastest.

By the time he gets back to his house, Charlie is panting so hard he thinks he might pass out. The adrenaline is still buzzing under his skin, and he doesn’t feel truly safe until he steps inside and locks the door behind him. He rests his forehead against the cool mahogany wood and breathes deeply.

He knows he’s overreacting. Nothing was going to hurt him. But he can’t shake the feeling that something wanted to, and he wouldn’t have been strong enough to stop it.

He pushes away from the door and walks to the sink. He turns on the faucet and splashes water onto his burning cheeks, then bends down and drinks straight from the tap.

Charlie’s dad hated when he did that. He would throw a cup at him from the couch, one of the hard glass ones. The memory stings as sharply as the cold water, and Charlie winces, shutting off the sink.

He’s sinking fast, and he knows exactly who can pull him back up.

He grabs his phone and texts Bella:

About to heat my bagel 😊

He heads to the freezer and pulls out a microwavable breakfast bagel stuffed with eggs and sausage. He pops open the microwave to place the bagel inside, then reaches for the bottle of hot sauce he keeps in the pantry beside it. The sauce is mandatory for making the bagel remotely edible.

His phone vibrates just as he sets the bagel inside.

Yuck. Learn to cook, old man.

Charlie chuckles and starts the microwave. His phone buzzes again.

I’ll be ready in five minutes. I’ll FaceTime you then.

It’s silly, but Charlie always feels a small spark of giddiness when Bella schedules their morning calls. They don’t talk much, not really, but it’s never uncomfortable. Sometimes Bella even reads a book aloud to him when there’s nothing new to report, and they make small commentary on that. Or he shows Bella one of his new paintings.

It’s a call he always tries to make.

The microwave dings, and Charlie reaches in to grab the plate, only to yank his hand back when it scorches his palm. The plate slips from his fingers and clatters to the floor.

“Shit,” he sighs.

He tugs his sleeve down over his hand and bends to retrieve the plate. Thankfully, the bagel is still wrapped in plastic, because it definitely hit the floor. For a moment he wonders if he’s supposed to take it out of the wrapper before heating it, but he decides he doesn’t care nearly enough to find out.

He’ll risk whatever BPAs or mystery chemicals are leaching into his breakfast. At this point, something else will probably kill him first.

Charlie isn’t as clumsy as Bella, though Bella would absolutely argue he’s more clumsy, because she’s only half of him and Renée is whatever the opposite of this hereditary disaster is. But he still manages to injure himself on a weekly basis.

The stains on his walls prove it. Half his kitchen looks like a crime scene of ancient food splatters he can’t scrub off no matter how hard he tries. It’s not that he can’t cook; he can. It’s just too dangerous for him. He just sticks to the diner or microwave dinners.

He has just sat down at the table when his phone starts to ring. He fumbles to accept the call, and Bella’s face fills the screen.

She’s getting so old and so beautiful. People say she’s the spitting image of him, but all Charlie sees is Renée, through and through. The only things Bella took from him were his pale skin that never tans, the scatter of moles across her arms and face, and his dark brown hair that never sits quite right and curls at the ends.

Renée insists Bella has his nose, but Charlie isn’t convinced. Isabella Swan is far too gorgeous to look anything like him.

“Hey, Dad!” Bella beams at him, and he can’t help smiling back.

“Hey, kid! How’s life in the dry, disgustingly hot desert?” he teases.

Bella wrinkles her nose. He thinks, for a moment, maybe he can see his nose on her. Works better on her. Upturned noses aren’t exactly manly on men.

“Better than cold, miserable, dreary temperate rainforest. You turn into a Yeti yet? I see fur growing on your face.”

He rubs a hand over his scruff. He hasn’t meant to grow a beard; he just hasn’t gotten around to shaving lately. Honestly, he thinks the scruff looks good.

“Hardy har har. Now, for real, how goes it?”

“I got an A on the essay I read to you last week.”

A rush of pride fills his chest. He knows he had nothing to do with how smart Bella is. Lord knows where she gets her brains.

Well, that’s not true. Definitely Renée.

Renée may be scattered and a free spirit, but she’s brilliant. She devours books, memorizes facts no one else cares about, and once fixed their blender with nothing but a bobby pin and sheer rage. Her mind is a storm: chaotic, unpredictable, and incredible.

Bella starts to say something else, but the screen freezes. The internet out here is garbage, and their calls tend to glitch. They make do.

The frozen frame catches Bella mid-sentence: her mouth stretched wide, one eye half-closed, the other comically round. Charlie snorts, takes a screenshot, and sends it to her.

His phone buzzes immediately. She sent one back. His own screenshot shows his eyes squeezed shut and his face scrunched like he just smelled something awful.

The screen unfreezes.

“Dad! Hello? Oh good, you’re back. Did you see the picture I sent? You look like you’re sniffing a fart.”

Charlie lets out a loud, genuine laugh, one that comes from deep in his gut. It wasn’t even that funny; it’s just that talking to Bella makes everything in his world feel lighter.

“Probably my bagel,” he says, lifting it and taking a dramatic bite.

Bella gags theatrically. “How are you alive? Look at this instead.” She lifts her plate to show off chocolate chip pancakes. He groans.

“Damn, kid. You know you make the best pancakes. Why you gotta show me that?”

Her smile softens, and dims just slightly. She sets her plate down, avoiding the camera for a second. His heart sinks. He knows where this is going. One of those mornings.

“You could come to Phoenix and eat them,” she says quietly.

Charlie sighs and runs a hand through his hair. The curls stick everywhere, chaotic in the small reflection box on his screen.

“Bells, you know—”

The call freezes again. Bella’s face is caught mid-hurt, mid-hope, and the sight punches him in the chest. He imagines how he must look frozen on her end. Neither of them sends a screenshot this time.

The call unfreezes.

He opens his mouth to try again, though he has no idea what he even planned to say, when Bella beats him to it.

“Don’t say anything yet, Dad.” She runs a hand through her hair, and the gesture looks eerily familiar. “Just… think about it.”

Charlie’s appetite evaporates. He pushes his plate away. The familiar anxiety creeps up, quieter than usual, because nothing is ever too sharp when Bella is here, even on the phone, but still lingering, still aching.

He tries to lighten the mood. “You know planes and I… we’re not on speaking terms.”

Bella opens her mouth, but Charlie lifts a hand to stop her. “But…I’ll think about it.”

Bella’s face brightens instantly. She does a tiny dance in her seat, and then takes a triumphant bite of pancake. Charlie tries very hard not to feel jealous, and fails. He hates himself for not being able to hop on a plane right this second. He wishes he could.

“Your mom in?” he asks. Bella shakes her head.

“She had an early shift.”

Charlie nods. Even though he sends money every month, Renée has always worked hard. She’s never kept a long-term job, but she’s never been without one.

“She still seeing that Kevin guy?”

Bella rolls her eyes. “You know his name is Phil.”

It’s Charlie’s turn to roll his eyes, but before he can reply, a honk blares from outside on Bella’s end.

“Shit.” She jumps up and carries her plate to the sink. There’s still a bite of pancake left. Charlie would’ve killed for it.

“Language,” he says, with zero heat.

“That’s my ride! Love you, Charlie!”

“Alright, love you too, Isabella.”

She gives him a quick wave before ending the call. The screen goes dark, and his reflection stares back at him.

Loneliness creeps in immediately. As much as he loves their calls, they’re nothing like having Bella sitting across from him—real and warm and safe. He wants her here more than anything.

Where nothing can hurt her.

Charlie stands up from the table and just… stands there. Aimless. Untethered. Sometimes he wonders how different his life would’ve been if Renée had stayed. If they would’ve been happy. If he would’ve been enough.

When Charlie met Renée, she didn’t know anything about him.
That was the miracle of it.

She didn’t know he was the boy who disappeared and the only one who survived. She didn’t know he was known in Forks for his scars, his nightmares, for being the police chief’s quiet, broken son. She didn’t know his mother had abandoned him when he was young.

To her, he was just Charlie.

Back then, Charlie was unraveling. His nightmares were at their worst. His home life was unbearable. It was the year he started drinking, and if Billy Black hadn’t been his friend, Charlie is almost certain he would’ve spiraled deeper.

Billy and his sister Rachel worried about him constantly. He thinks now they were afraid he might hurt himself. He tells himself he wouldn’t have. He’s not sure he believes it.

So when Billy, lover of music and chaos, dragged him to a tiny music festival in Seattle, Charlie went. Billy said he needed “real human socialization before he rusted shut.”

Seattle felt too big and too exposed for Charlie. Too many people. Too little sky. Too much noise.

And then he saw her.

Renée.

Red hair, tan skin, freckles like constellations, and a wild, bright smile. She was visiting from Arizona with friends, escaping her own demons. The rain hadn’t worn her down yet. She danced barefoot in the mud like it was baptism.

Charlie must have looked ridiculous, standing stiffly under an umbrella, gripping a churro like it was a lifeline.

Renée noticed him immediately.

“Why are you indoors while outdoors?” she teased, hands on her hips. “You a tourist or something?”

Like she was the Washington native, not him.

She made him throw the umbrella away. He felt like a wet dog. She laughed. Her laugh was light and chimed like wind against glass. That sound had made something in him loosen.

They spent the entire day together. She talked endlessly, and he found himself talking too, really talking, in a way he hadn’t in years. Everyone in Forks acted like they knew him so well they didn’t need to ask questions. Renée asked everything.

Maybe that’s where he went wrong with her later. At some point, he stopped asking questions back.

But that night, she saw him. The real him.

They danced under a tent while rain hammered the canvas. She asked him what he was afraid of, and Charlie, God help him, answered honestly.

“I hate my dad,” he told her quietly. “But I’m scared to leave home because I’m scared monsters will find me.”

Renée didn’t laugh. She didn’t recoil. She touched his hand and said, “I get it. I’m scared my life will never start.”

She told him about her mother, about bullies at school, about feeling trapped in her own skin. He loved her for her honesty. She loved him for trusting her.

Then she leaned in to kiss him and missed. Her lips landed awkwardly on his chin. Renée was quite a bit shorter. They both giggled. Charlie cupped her face in his hands and looked into her blue eyes. Her cheek was rougher than he expected a girl’s cheek to be, textured with sun and wind and stories. He kissed her softly; she kissed him back hard.

For a moment, it felt like the whole world clicked into place. Like maybe he had a story outside of pain.

The next morning, Charlie’s throat tightened as he watched her climb into her friend’s convertible. Renée sobbed like she was leaving her best friend. He just knew he was never going to see her again.

Billy just shook his head and muttered, “Jesus, Swan. I said to socialize, not elope.”

Charlie had laughed, but it hurt.

Two weeks later, Renée proved him wrong. She showed up in Forks with bags full of clothes and books and chaos. She said she only meant to pass through, but she stayed for Charlie.

They got married three weeks later. Seventeen years old, almost eighteen. Unable to wait. Ridiculous. Perfect. Unstable and utterly in love.

Renée loved him hard and fast. Charlie loved her quietly and forever.

They rented a room in a tiny duplex not far from where Charlie lives now. Renée became pregnant with Bella. For a little while, they were happy, two kids pretending they knew how to build a family. Both wanting one so desperately.

But Renée couldn’t chase away Charlie’s demons forever, and Charlie leaned too heavily on her light. The prison he lived in became hers too.

The monsters he thought he escaped wouldn’t let him have happiness. Not entirely. Not without cost.

Charlie lets out a breath and grips his hair, trying to chase the memories away. He already knows the answer: if Renée had stayed, he would’ve destroyed her.

Charlie’s phone buzzes on the kitchen table, cutting through the fog in his head. He blinks slowly, as if waking up from a dream he didn’t mean to fall into. His thoughts feel heavy. He feels like he’s still outside, running in circles in that endless Forks mist.

He reaches for the phone. God, even that feels like dragging his hand through wet cement.

Billy’s message lights the screen:

Fishing on Sunday at butt-ass dawn? Harry says he’s bringing Sasquatch Donuts. Gonna grab those disgusting jelly ones that taste like expired Band-Aids.

The tension in Charlie’s shoulders eases, and a small smile tugs at his mouth.

He texts back:

How do you know what expired Band-Aids taste like? Can Band-Aids even expire?

Three dots. Then:
I grew up with sisters. And yes.

Charlie barks out a laugh and sends a quick I’ll be there, before slipping the phone into his pocket.

Charlie is lucky he has a friend like Billy. Billy is a few years older than him, but they clicked instantly. Rebecca, Billy’s younger sister, tested into the gifted program at Forks Elementary. The Quileute tribal school partnered with Forks for advanced placement, so Rebecca ended up bused to Charlie’s school that year.

Charlie also tested in…somehow. Even now, he’s convinced it was a clerical error. Charlie Swan is in no way, shape, or form “gifted.” Just completely unremarkable.

He was quiet and awkward, and the other kids didn’t know what to do with Rebecca. They teased her for being Quileute. They would make that stupid hand-over-the-mouth “woo woo woo” noise kids think is funny. Rebecca took one look at Charlie, saw another misfit, and glued herself to him on day one.

No matter what he did, he couldn’t shake her. She decided they were friends, and so they were.

They spent recess drawing comics together. Rebecca is the reason he learned he liked art and that he was good at it. She could only draw stick figures, but even Charlie’s earliest drawings looked like they were ready to leap off the page. Rebecca loved their stories so much that she would force Charlie to make costumes with her out of whatever craft supplies their art teacher, Mrs. Brown, threw at them. Rebecca would act out the plot dramatically, and Charlie would stand beside her, stiff and painfully self-conscious.

One afternoon, she invited Charlie over. He was terrified, not because the reservation felt unfamiliar, but because he had never been to a friend’s house before. What if she realized how weird he actually was?

But the Black family welcomed him like he’d always belonged. Billy’s mom fed him until he physically couldn’t move. She had made a slow-cooked venison stew he still dreams about.

Billy walked in with long black hair, a denim jacket, cargo boots, skinny as a rake, face dotted with zits that looked ready to explode, braces glinting every time he opened his mouth. He was older, taller, and impossibly cool. At least to Charlie.

When Billy spoke, his voice was stuck somewhere between kid and teenager, a cracking, awkward register.

“You look like you like country music.”

Charlie blinked at him. He didn’t exactly, but his dad listened to it while working on his car. It was basically the only music Charlie knew.

“…What if I do?”

Billy gave him a deadpan look and jerked his chin, telling Charlie to get up and follow him.

“Then we’re gonna have to fix you.”

Charlie immediately tripped over the rug. Billy reached out instinctively, snorting as he steadied him. But he didn’t comment on the clumsiness, didn’t make fun of him for it.

“Black Sabbath. Looks like you need them in your life.”

Charlie didn’t need Black Sabbath. But he definitely needed Billy Black.

After that, Charlie visited the Blacks every week. He spent time with Rebecca and her twin sister Rachel, playing dolls (his father would’ve called him a faggot if he had ever found out), going on pretend adventures in the woods, whale-watching in La Push, skipping rocks into the ocean. Fishing trips with Billy turned into fishing trips with Harry Clearwater too.

For the first time in his life, Charlie felt normal.

And then Disneyland happened, and Rebecca went away. Forever, along with the rest of his class.

Charlie takes a slow breath and heads for the sunroom. He can’t sit and stew, not if he expects to survive his shift later. He needs to do something that pulls him out of his own head.

The sunroom, despite the constant lack of actual sun, is his favorite place in the house. He never really knew his mom, but his dad built this room for her before Charlie was born. It used to be a greenhouse. A living, breathing place full of plants. His father let them all die after she left.

Now it’s Charlie’s art room. It’s an absolute disaster. Paint splatters across what used to be nice wood floors, canvases are stacked against each other like fallen dominoes, and art supplies are scattered across the old table Harry gave him for his birthday years ago.

Charlie paints mostly people. Faces. He never forgets a face. They stick with him, lodged in his brain like photographs he should’ve took. Sometimes the department calls him in to sketch composites when the forensic artist isn’t available. Not often. Forks isn’t exactly a crime hot spot.

He sets up his easel, places a blank canvas on it, and studies the empty space. He could paint Bella again, his favorite subject, or the forest. But his mind keeps circling back to the man in the window. That stillness. That shape. The way the light seemed to hold him.

Before he’s even fully aware of starting, he’s mixing paint: cool grays, faint golds, and his brush begins gliding over the canvas. The room fills with familiar sounds: the soft scrape of bristles against canvas, the quiet clink of jars, the gentle rinse of water against glass. Charlie hums Solitude by Black Sabbath under his breath, barely audible.

For a moment, a thin shaft of sunlight breaks through the cloud cover and paints the room in pale gold. His breath freezes, letting the warmth settle on his shoulders. Everything inside him goes still. Peaceful. Quiet.

And then his hand stops moving. The painting is done.

He steps back, wiping his fingers absently on his sweatpants. Paint has become a permanent resident beneath his fingernails; it doesn’t matter how hard he scrubs.

The painting isn’t frightening at all, not at all like the moment actually felt. It’s soft. Dreamlike.

On the canvas, the house is caught in morning haze, trees blurred into watercolor edges, windows reflecting faint blue fog. The figure stands at the glass, not threatening, but bathed in the rare morning light, gold bleeding gently across his hair, turning it almost halo-bright. His features are indistinct, just shadow and shape, but something about the light makes him look… serene. Almost tender.

Charlie stares at it.

The moment had felt cold. Paranoid. Like danger breathing down his neck.

But here, on canvas, the man looks like a quiet miracle. An angel caught in a beam of light, existing for one impossible second before the clouds swallowed him again.

Something about the new painting pulls at him. It’s like a tug on a thread he didn’t realize was loose. Charlie scrunches his brow, trying to place the feeling. Then he crosses the room to the corner where he keeps older canvases stacked like forgotten memories.

He flips through them, Bella at five, a rainy forest, an old fishing boat, until he finds the one he’s looking for. His pulse ticks faster.

The canvas shows a face Charlie has been trying to forget since he was a teenager. A face he first saw in a different painting, somewhere he can’t quite make himself think about yet. A face that sometimes still visits his dreams.

The only kind face in the prison he’d found himself in.

Soft blond hair, falling in gentle waves over an unusual hairline. Smooth, elegant features. A mouth that tilts upward just enough to look reassuring, as if the man is quietly promising that everything will be alright.

But the eyes…

The eyes have always frustrated Charlie.

No matter how many times he paints them, he can never get them right. They always look too human.

And the man Charlie remembers, the one burned into him like a brand, had eyes that were anything but.

_____________

Charlie pulls into the spot adjacent to his usual parking space at the precinct because someone has parked in his spot. He stares at the cruiser for a moment, then looks at the number on the side. Of course. Chief Waylon Forge, even though he has his own assigned spot nearer to the entrance.

Lately, Forge has been going out of his way to press Charlie’s buttons.

Charlie opens his door a little harder than necessary and steps out stiffly. His legs protest immediately, and he silently curses himself for not stretching after his run. The stiffness makes his uniform feel even tighter than usual.

Honestly, he wishes Forks PD would take a note from Callum County and switch to stretch fabrics. Tradition be damned.

Charlie’s uniform is regulation: dark navy button-up, shoulder patches, his name pinned neatly above the pocket—SWAN. Most officers opt for short sleeves, even in the cold rain, but Charlie prefers the long-sleeve version. The scars on his arms, especially inside his wrist, draw more attention than he can stomach. People stare, and Charlie hates when people stare at him.

His duty belt is heavy: radio, handcuffs he constantly misplaces, a flashlight that probably needs new batteries, and the same worn leather holster he’s had for years. His trousers match the shirt, but they’re a little too short and crease at the knees from hours behind the wheel…and just as many hours stuck at his desk doing grunt work.

He tries to keep everything neat, but Charlie somehow always looks a little rumpled. Hair that refuses to lie flat, boots immediately splattered with mud the moment he steps outside, jacket collar turned up to keep the rain off his ears.

He always looks a little too young to wear this uniform. It makes him feel like an imposter in his own skin.

A sharp wind slaps him in the face, and Charlie grabs his jacket. He hates driving with the thing on. He slams the car door behind him. He’s just about to reach the staff entrance when his foot hits a patch of ice. He tries to steady himself, but the jacket in his arms throws off his balance, and he can’t reach the brick wall fast enough.

Unlike this morning, he completely biffs it.

The fall is both fast and agonizingly slow. Then a heavy thud and the breath leaves his lungs. He lies there for a moment, staring up at the gray sky. Rain splatters his face, and he blinks when a particularly large drop lands right beside his eye.

God, he wishes he were still in bed.

A shadow shifts over him. Charlie squints up and finds Rachel Black grinning down at him like Christmas came early.

He groans and covers his face with both hands.

“What’s the count so far this week, Swan? Five? Six?”

Charlie glares up at her. She reaches out a hand, and he takes it. She hauls him to his feet like he weighs nothing.

Rachel Black may be four feet eleven inches, but she has the strength of a seven-foot Olympic weightlifter.

“Leave me alone, Black.”

Rachel snickers, hands slipping into her pockets. “I mean, we could install training wheels. Budget might cover it.”

“If you tell the rest of the boys, I swear–”

Rachel smirks. “Oh, I’m definitely telling everyone else. I’ll call it ‘Swan Slip Incident #234.”

Charlie scowls. “I hate you.”

“Emotion is healthy. I encourage it.”

Rachel, or he should say Detective Black, gets to wear regular clothes instead of the itchy standard-issue uniform. If Charlie had the choice, he’d live in jeans and plaid. Rachel dresses like she’s starring in her own crime drama. Charlie swears she has a different pantsuit for every day of the month.

Jessica once saw Rachel when Charlie was on SRO duty, while she dropped off some lunch for him, and whispered, “Slay Queen.” Charlie thinks that’s a good thing.

Rachel’s hair is always slicked into a bun, makeup perfect. Rachel was always the fashionable of the Black twins.

Charlie grimaces slightly at the thought and coughs into his hand so he doesn’t get lost in it.

He points at her. “Seriously. Don’t tell the others.”

Rachel presses a hand to her heart. “I won’t. Scout’s honor.”

Charlie doesn’t quite buy it.

They step inside. Artificial heat floods over them, and Charlie sighs with relief. He shakes off his jacket, spraying droplets everywhere, and hangs it up on a hook. His hair is soaked too, so he shakes that out like a golden retriever.

“Hey!” Rachel shrieks as water hits her blazer, just finishing hanging up her raincoat next to his.

Charlie grins. “Oops. My bad.”

Rachel wipes her blazer dramatically. He didn’t get that much water on her. Barely a drop or two. 

They step out of the locker area into the main workroom. The sound of talking hits Charlie’s ears, and he looks around. It’s a decent-sized space, and everyone has a desk, though each two desks are pressed against each other to create room. Charlie shares his space with Rachel. He grabs a chocolate off her desk and unwraps it before he sits in his own chair. He leans back, then immediately forward. His back’s going to bother him for a while after that damn fall.

In the office is Senior Patrol Officer Mark Dwyer, the only one in the main area who doesn’t share a desk space, and his is significantly larger than everyone else’s. He’s a man in his late fifties and completely bald. He has been for as long as Charlie has known him, and that’s pretty much Charlie’s whole life. Officer Dwyer worked with Charlie’s father.

He’s a quiet man who exudes a calmness that nothing seems to shake. Most of Charlie’s non-work conversations with him consist of grunts and thoughtful hums. Charlie likes him, and he thinks Dwyer might like him too. If he can help it, he always goes to him with work-related problems.

Sharing a desk space next to him and Rachel is Officer Kevin Chen. Chen was two grades behind Charlie in school. They’re often paired up for patrols. Charlie likes him a lot; he’s smart and sees things most people don’t. He gets stuck with a lot of tech stuff, which he’s actually pretty good at, though Charlie sometimes wonders if there’s bias in the assignment. Chen doesn’t share his desk with anyone because there’s a vacant position. No one is going out of their way to join the force here in Forks. 

At the tables closest to the window sit Officer Brady Keller and Officer Miguel Sandoval. Brady is the newest recruit, other than Rachel, who lateraled in from the La Push Police. Brady’s in his early twenties and still has an idealized view of police work. He’s from Port Angeles, but there were no openings, so he ended up here in good ol’ quiet Forks where nothing really bad ever happens much to Keller’s chagrin. For some inexplicable reason, he looks up to Charlie, constantly asking for his opinion. Charlie reaches his conversation quote whenever Keller’s around.

Officer Sandoval scares the shit out of Charlie. He’s tall, towers over Charlie, who isn’t exactly short. He’s in his forties and former military police. Sandoval was the one who trained Charlie. Once on patrol, a normally quiet and awkward experience because Charlie never wants to get on his bad side,  Sandoval punched a guy who came at Charlie with a knife and knocked him out cold. The guy was in the hospital for a week.

Sandoval doesn’t technically outrank Charlie anymore, but Charlie still calls him ‘sir.’

He isn’t exactly sure if Sandoval likes him. Charlie is pretty sure Sandoval thinks he’s weak, clumsy, and a liability, someone who needs protection more than a partner. Whenever Charlie ends up on a call that might turn even a little unsafe, Sandoval volunteers to go with him, not out of camaraderie but out of grim duty. On scene, Sandoval hovers behind him like a silent shadow, watching, measuring, and waiting to step in. If Charlie hesitates, Sandoval reaches past him. If Charlie stutters, Sandoval talks over him. Charlie never knows whether Sandoval is trying to keep him alive, or proving that Charlie shouldn’t be here.

The only person in the department who has their own office, door always closed, is Chief of Police Waylon Forge. Forge was Charlie’s father’s best friend. He used to come over on Sundays for football, sprawled out on the couch, yelling at the TV like he lived there. He would also join his dad in making fun of Charlie, like being his dad’s best friend gave him that right. 

Charlie would often be the one to bring them their beers while they watched whatever game was on. He hated the sound of the bottles clinking together, hated the sour smell of the alcohol, but his dad would snap his fingers at him and jerk his head toward the fridge, like Charlie was the designated waiter.

The worst part was that they never let him go upstairs, even though it was obvious they didn’t want him sitting with them either. If Charlie so much as hovered near the doorway, his dad would bark at him to “sit down and watch the game like a fucking normal boy.” 

They got meaner the longer they drank. The jokes shifted into jabs, the jabs into something sharper. 

One time, when he was about ten, Waylon’s team missed the catch for a touchdown and, furious, hurled his empty beer can across the room. Charlie barely saw it coming, just a flash of silver, and then a sharp sting above his eye.

He gasped and covered his face, and when he pulled his hand away there was blood running down between his fingers. A lot of it. His vision blurred and his stomach rolled. He didn’t even remember deciding to cry; his body just did it, instinctive and frightened.

Waylon leaned back in the recliner, sneer twisting into something cruel.

“Your kid is a fucking pussy, Swan,” he slurred loud enough to be heard over the announcer. “Crying over every fucking thing.”

Charlie looked at his dad, waiting, hoping, praying for something. A word. A look. Anything.

But Geoffrey Swan just drank, jaw clenched, eyes glued to the television as if Charlie weren’t even standing there bleeding in front of him.

“Weak like his mother.”

When Charlie’s dad, former Chief of Police, died from a heart attack, Forge was voted in. He’s held the position for thirteen years now. From what Charlie can tell, Dwyer does most of Forge’s work.

Forge is often out of the office. Charlie doesn’t know for sure, but he’d bet his left arm that when Forge leaves he is sitting in a bar in the next county.

The slam of a file drawer jerks him back to the present. Charlie blinks at the desks, the chatter, the stale coffee smell.

Coffee. Coffee sounds like a good idea.

He gets up and heads to the machine. It makes the worst coffee known to mankind, but it does a decent job of jolting someone awake. Charlie grabs his usual chipped blue mug, pours a steaming half-cup, and takes a sip. He grimaces, but the heat feels good. His uniform is still damp, and Forks rain isn’t exactly warm.

A sharp whistle cuts across the room.

“Damn, Swan!” Officer Chen calls. “You piss your pants? That’s a massive wet spot.”

Charlie’s face burns. He turns so everyone sees the less-drenched side.

Rachel leans back in her chair, twirling her pen. Charlie shakes his head at her, but he can already see the mischief forming in her eyes.

“Swan biffed it on the same patch of ice again,” she announces.

The room erupts with laughter. Charlie sighs and trudges back to his desk. As he sits, he crumples a scrap of paper and tosses it at Rachel. She catches it one-handed and flicks it right back, hitting him in the forehead before bouncing off.

Chen rolls his chair over to the little whiteboard mounted near the windows. In bold letters, it reads:

Swan vs. Gravity: Weekly Scoreboard

He adds another tally.

Charlie scoffs. “I have not tripped seven times this week.”

Chen holds up a hand and starts counting on his fingers.

“No? Monday morning you slipped outside the staff entrance, classic black-ice situation. Monday afternoon you tripped over the curb, which, for the record, was not invisible. Tuesday, you ate floor in the locker room because of that puddle from someone’s raincoat. Wednesday, you ignored an actual wet-floor sign in the hallway. Thursday morning you fell over your own gym bag, witnessed by half the station, mind you. Today, parking lot. Again.”

Everyone bursts into another round of laughter. Charlie drops his head into his hands and groans.

Then, without a word, Sandoval stands. The room goes dead quiet as he strides over to the supply closet, pulls out a battered plastic pail labeled ICE MELTER, grabs his coat from the rack, and shrugs into it like he’s about to deploy for a mission.

A beat later, he walks straight out the front doors, letting them slam behind him.

They remain quiet for a little longer before they get back to work. Officer Chen rolls back to his table and gives Charlie a pat on the back as he rolls by. 

Across the room, Officer Dwyer, who has remained at his desk through the whole exchange with a newspaper spread out and a pencil poised, finally lifts his head.

“Swan.”

Charlie straightens instantly. “Sir?”

Dwyer squints down at the page. “What’s the season between printemps and automne?”

Charlie doesn’t even need to think about the answer even though Dwyer’s French is awful. “Summer. Eté. Spelled E-T-É.”

Dwyer nods once, satisfied, and fills in a few neat boxes on what Charlie assumes is the daily crossword puzzle. He hums quietly in approval and goes right back to filling in squares.

Charlie glances at Rachel; she lifts a brow. He shrugs and turns back to his computer. A few unread emails wait in his inbox, mostly reminders about health insurance enrollment.

Thrilling.

He sighs and leans back in his chair, eyes drifting up to the ceiling tiles. Nothing much happens in Forks. Moments like these, when the entire squad is actually sitting in the same room, are rare, but honestly? No one needs to be out right now.

The front doors open again. Everyone instinctively turns.

Sandoval steps inside, the pail still in hand. He walks straight toward Charlie and stops beside his desk. His jacket is speckled with rain, cheeks flushed from the cold, buzz-cut hair darker from being wet. He looks Charlie directly in the eyes, and Charlie instantly wishes he had somewhere else to look. He has a hard time staring people in the eye.

“You shouldn’t slip there anymore,” Sandoval says, voice low and gravelly. “The salt should keep the ice away.”

He doesn’t move. Just keeps staring.

Charlie’s brain empties. “Um. Thank you, sir.”

Sandoval nods, once, slow, and stands there a moment longer, like he’s checking to make sure Charlie really understood. Then he sniffs, turns, and heads back toward the storage closet without another word.

Charlie swallows, heat creeping up his neck. God, he must think Charlie is absolutely helpless.

The door swings open again, and every head turns once again.

Marianne, the precinct’s secretary, rushes inside like she’s been chased. She’s tiny, somewhere in her sixties, with oversized tortoiseshell glasses dangling from a gold chain. Her bleach-blonde hair hangs long around her shoulders, and today she’s wearing a bright turquoise wrap dress with giant pink hibiscus flowers and matching dangly earrings. Marianne never dresses for the rain.

She’s breathing hard and looks like she just witnessed the second coming of Jesus. She sways, and the entire room jolts to their feet. Charlie reaches her first and grabs her by the shoulders, steadying her. Her eyes are shiny, almost teary.

“Marianne,” Charlie asks, gentle and concerned, “are you alright?”

Marianne lifts one trembling hand and places it dramatically right on his chest, over his badge.

“Oh, Charles,” she whispers loud enough for everyone to hear. Her voice trembles. The entire room leans in, practically holding their breath. Marianne opens her mouth, closes it, takes a huge inhalation, and then dreamily announces:

“I just saw the most beautiful man.”

Immediately, the room erupts in groans. Chairs scrape as everyone turns away. This isn’t Marianne’s first dramatic pronouncement about a handsome man.

Charlie keeps a steadying hand on her shoulder, she still seems like she might faint, and gives her an amused smile.

Rachel throws up a hand. “Wait. Absolutely not. I want to hear about this man.”

Officer Keller begs, “God, no! Last time it was the UPS guy. I can’t even look at him.”

Chen nods vigorously. “I can’t look at that guy without noticing his thighs. They’re…umm….” Chen lets the thought die.

Charlie quietly escorts Marianne to her chair so she can sit before she collapses.

“Well, I want to hear about the guy.” Rachel rolls her chair over to Marianne’s desk, rests her elbow on top, and props her chin on her hands. “Let’s do some girl talk.”

Charlie walks back to his desk with an exasperated eye roll. He turns to his computer and pointedly faces away, but Marianne’s voice carries.

“Well, you know, dear, that my back has been hurting me.”

“Yeah, the ibuprofen I gave you didn’t work?”

“Not at all. So I went to the hospital this morning to make sure I didn’t break anything. I was expecting the usual doctor… what’s his name again?”

“Dr. Gerandy?”

“Yes, him. Nice fellow, but not exactly nice to look at.”

Rachel hums sympathetically.

“Well, I’m sitting on that table thing they make you sit on—”

“Examination table,” Charlie supplies, still not turning.

“Thank you, Charles,” Marianne says sweetly.

Charlie glances around; the rest of the officers are aggressively pretending to work—except Keller, who is staring right at them, fascinated.

“What happened to Gerandy?” Keller calls over.

“I think he retired. The poor man was getting so old he’d walk into the room and give people the wrong diagnoses,” Marianne says, directing the comment toward Keller. Then she turns back to Rachel and leans forward conspiratorially.

“And in walks the new chief doctor, Dr. Carlisle Cullen.”

She presses a hand dramatically to her chest, eyes fluttering like she might swoon. 

Rachel’s expression tightens, and she slowly leans back in her chair as if suddenly done with the conversation. Marianne continues, not even noticing the shift.

“Tall,” she breathes, then looks at Sandoval. “I think he’s even taller than you, Miguel.”

Charlie glances at Sandoval, who does not look pleased by that. Marianne refocuses on Rachel.

“He has shoulders that look like he could carry a full-grown woman…” She winks. “Or even two up a mountain without breaking a sweat. And his hair is like a golden halo. I wanted to run my fingers through those locks and just yank.”

Keller gags loudly, and Dwyer, with a smile in his voice, calls out, “Careful, Marianne. You’re in a government building.”

Marianne waves a hand at him. “Oh hush, Mark.”

“But his eyes…”

Charlie spins his chair around fully. It’s useless pretending now.

Marianne continues, stars practically glittering in her own eyes: “They were the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen. Gold.”

Chen snorts. “There’s no such thing as gold eyes.”

“But he really did have gold eyes! It was like looking into melted honey in sunlight.”

Charlie feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He knows of exactly one person with gold eyes, a face he’s only ever seen in paintings. One of those portraits sits unfinished, slightly off, in his sunroom.

“No way that guy was that good-looking,” Chen says, giving Charlie an am-I-right? look. Charlie offers a weak smile.

Marianne is about to protest when Chief Forge’s door slams open and out steps Forge.

“What are you lazy farts doing out here?” Forge’s gravelly, from years of smoking, voice cuts through the room.

There’s a split second where no one moves, like the air has to catch up, and then everything happens at once.

Marianne snaps toward her computer, the one facing the glass doors of the patron entrance. Her desk forms a square-shaped station in the middle of the room, giving her a direct view of the lobby on one side and the officers’ workspace on the other.

The dispatcher room, the little enclosed space where the 911 calls come in, is sealed off behind a separate door, out of sight from where the rest of them sit. Beyond that, down another secured hallway, are the holding cells and interrogation rooms, completely hidden from public view and barely visible even to the officers unless they go back there.

Chairs scrape, and the atmosphere of the whole station shifts. Gone is the easy camaraderie; in its place is stiff, practiced professionalism.

Rachel, as if she wasn’t just gossiping two seconds ago, smoothly stands and pushes her chair back to her desk.

“Thank you, Marianne, for the message. I’ll be sure to look into it,” Rachel says in her best official tone.

Marianne lifts her head from her keyboard and winks at Rachel.

“Be sure to do that, dear.”

The phone rings. Marianne snatches it up with practiced speed, her voice flipping into polite receptionist mode, and the conversation about the attractive new doctor is officially over.

Forge starts his slow patrol around the room, peering over shoulders at everyone’s computer screens as if he expects to catch them reading romance books instead of working.

He stops briefly behind Charlie.

“Swan,” Forge grunts. “You planning on marrying that email inbox, or you gonna do some actual police work today?”

Charlie clicks open a message he definitely won’t read. “Yes, sir,” he mutters. Anything to get Forge off his back.

Forge snorts, unimpressed, and moves on.

He pauses at Rachel’s desk and leans a hip against the edge, angling himself in just enough that she’s boxed in her chair. Charlie stiffens immediately, pulse tightening, and his gaze flicks instinctively around the room.

He’s not the only one.

Chen’s posture straightens, eyes sharpening over the rim of his monitor. Keller stops typing mid-keystroke. Even Sandoval, who barely reacts to earthquakes, lifts his head slowly, shoulders squaring just a fraction. No one says anything, but the air shifts—quiet, coiled, ready.

If the lewd way Forge leers at her bothers her, Rachel doesn’t let it show. She calmly flips through a folder, pulls out a document, and pretends to review it. Charlie’s skin crawls with every second Forge just…stands there, staring at her.

He wonders how long she’ll let him linger.

Finally, Rachel lifts her gaze from a photo of a severed hand and looks up at him.

“Is there anything I can assist you with, Chief?”

Her tone is textbook-professional, but Charlie hears the edge beneath it, the steel, the warning, the I am not afraid of you ringing clear and sharp.

Rachel, like the rest of the Black family, has dealt with racist and sexist pigs her whole life. Charlie knows she’s tough, steel wrapped in elegance, but he wishes more than anything that she didn’t have to be. Especially in a place like this.

Forge smiles, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s the kind of smile that makes Charlie feel ten years old again.

“I was just thinking,” Forge begins, scratching his chin theatrically, “that we needed someone to make the place look prettier.”

He laughs like he’s delivered a masterpiece, waiting for the room to join in.

No one does.

Charlie catches the flash of open judgment on Dwyer’s face, cool and controlled, disgust in the tiny tightening of his jaw.

Rachel’s expression doesn’t change, but Charlie sees the slight tension in her shoulders.

She arches a brow.

“I thought that’s what Swan was for.”

A beat, then hesitant but genuine laughs break out.

Charlie’s smile dies the second Forge turns his gaze on him, slow and cutting and hateful.

“Guess we could’ve put you in a dress and called it a day.”

It’s not even the worst thing Forge has ever said to him. Hell, it’s technically along the same vein as Rachel’s joke. But the way Forge says it, low and deliberate, strips all humor out of the room. In his mouth, the words aren’t teasing; they’re a reminder.

Forge has made it clear, again, that he thinks Charlie Swan is less than everyone else.

Charlie swallows, Adam’s apple catching like it’s trying to choke him. His palms go slick. The moment feels heavy, like Forge just dropped a weight on his chest.

Even as an adult, Charlie never stood up to his father. You didn’t talk back to the man who raised you. And this is his boss. He loves this job, needs this job. It’s the one thing in his little prison of a town that gets him out of bed most mornings.

He sees Rachel’s mouth open, anger sharpening her eyes, but before she can say something that might get her fired, Senior Patrol Officer Mark Dwyer steps in.

“Detective Black.”

Rebecca turns toward him. Dwyer is already on his feet, closing the small space between his large desk and their cramped corner. It forces Forge to shift back, breaking his stance and nudging him along his self-important patrol.

“Officer Kiranika Douglas from Callum County called,” Dwyer says evenly. “She has more information on the Johnson case.” He hands Rachel a sticky note. It’s an address scribbled in Dwyer’s neat handwriting. “She said she’d meet you here around 1:30.”

Charlie glances at the clock. 1:00.

Rachel takes the note and nods.

“Thank you, sir.”

Dwyer nods once, then turns to Charlie.

“Swan, you’re up for patrol.”

Charlie stands immediately. Dwyer starts to assign his partner, but Keller leaps out of his seat so fast he knocks over a cup of pens. They scatter everywhere.

Charlie actually feels a flicker of relief seeing someone else be the clumsy one for once.

Keller scrambles to pick up pens, cheeks flushed.

“Sir, I’d love to join Officer Swan,” Keller blurts, way too eagerly.

Dwyer looks at Charlie, clearly asking without words if that pairing is okay. Charlie gives a small shrug. Keller talks his ear off on patrol, but he’s a good kid who works hard.

Dwyer nods once. Keller’s face splits into a grin so big it nearly blinds the room. Dimples, bright eyes, practically bouncing on his heels. The pure excitement is ridiculous and stupidly contagious. Charlie tries not to smile, and fails. He gives a cough and hides it by gathering his things.

“Don’t forget your raincoat,” Officer Sandoval warns, pointedly eyeing Charlie. “Rain’s heavier.”

“Yes, sir,” Charlie replies, just a shade more indignantly than he means to. He’s a grown man, damn it. He knows how to put on a raincoat.

Sandoval clocks the tone and gives Charlie a hard stare.

“You remember your gloves this time?” he asks with a slow drawl.

Charlie’s ears heat up. He hears Chen snicker behind him. Luckily, at some point, Forge crawled back into his cave and shut the door, sparing Charlie the added humiliation.

Charlie scratches the back of his head and shakes it. Sandoval rolls his eyes, opens a drawer, and chucks a pair of gloves at him.

Miraculously, Charlie catches them with grace. He blinks down at them and recognizes the little tear near the thumb. Huh. These are his.

“You left them at the diner Monday,” Sandoval grumbles.

Charlie’s blush spreads to his neck.

“Um, thank you sir.” This time any indignation is very much absent. While embarrassing, he’s glad Sandoval found them for him.

Outside, Keller, Rachel, and Charlie stand under the awning, staring into the wall of rain. It isn’t just falling; it’s pouring sideways, blown in sheets so thick the world beyond the parking lot turns into a gray blur. Water spills off the awning in a continuous curtain, hammering the concrete like someone up there turned on a fire hose. Every gust sends droplets misting under the shelter, cold needles tapping Charlie’s cheeks.

Forks doesn’t rain all the time, but it rains enough—over 150 days a year. Usually it’s a soft drizzle, but sometimes? Sometimes the sky decides to punish the entire Olympic Peninsula at once. Days like this, trees go down, cars spin out, and Keller might finally get his much-wished-for “busy day.”

Charlie glances over at him.

“I’ll drive,” he says flatly. He hates letting anyone else drive, especially in weather that looks like the apocalypse.

Keller nods, yanks his hoodie up, and bolts into the downpour. Charlie hits the unlock button and his cruiser gives a single blink, yet Keller still goes to Forge’s cruiser, grabs the handle, and looks utterly baffled when it doesn’t budge.

Charlie rolls his eyes and gives his own car a beep. Keller lights up like a Christmas tree, shoots Charlie a huge thumbs-up, and awkwardly sprints to the right vehicle.

Charlie takes a breath, preparing to make his own sprint, when he feels a hand close gently around his arm.

He turns and looks down at Rachel. Most days her height disappears behind her presence, but right now she looks small, apologetic, rain-blurred, like something heavy just landed directly on her shoulders.

“I shouldn’t have made that joke in front of Forge,” she says quietly. Her voice wobbles just a hair. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”

He hates this, hates that she feels bad. He shrugs, staring at the wet pavement.

“It’s honestly no big deal, Rachel. You don’t have to apologize.”

Rachel shifts so she’s angled up toward him, lifting her chin so she can meet his eyes.

“Charlie, look at me.”

He does.

“I’m serious. I should’ve said Chen or Keller.”

Charlie’s chest tightens. He doesn’t want this moment, doesn’t want her guilt or her pity or anything that reminds him of all he’s already taken from Rachel and Billy. He forces a lightness he doesn’t quite feel.

“What?” he teases. “You don’t actually think I’m pretty?”

Relief flashes over Rachel’s face, like someone turned the lights back on. Humor returns fast, thank God.

“You know I think you’re pretty,” she says, shoving his shoulder, “but you are very much not my type.”

Charlie laughs, and it’s real this time.

A sharp honk echoes through the storm. They glance over: Keller is waving frantically from the passenger seat, gesturing like Charlie might drown if he doesn’t hurry.

“Stay safe, Swan,” Rachel calls over the downpour. “Don’t crash into a shopping cart again.”

Charlie shoots her a glare. “You know that cart came at me. The wind had it out for me.”

“So you say,” Rachel smirks before jogging toward her black Toyota Camry parked in a visitor spot.

Charlie looks up into the cold, bitter Forks sky, takes one resigned breath, and sprints into the rain to join Keller.

—--

An hour into patrol, with only the occasional static crackling from the radio, Charlie thinks his head might actually explode.

Keller has not stopped talking. Not once.

Most of it has been about his buddy on the Port Angeles force. Apparently this man has the newest gear and has seen a lot of “real action.” Charlie hears all about the time the guy arrested someone dressed like Santa who tried to drive a sled off a mountain because he thought it would fly. Magical powers, apparently.

Charlie isn’t one to tell someone to shut up, so he just endures it. He nods at the appropriate times, hums in the right places. He hasn’t gotten a word in, not that he particularly wanted to.

“He’s made seventy arrests, Officer Swan. Seventy! Can you believe that?” Keller practically vibrates in his seat, hands everywhere. He turns toward Charlie. “Do you know how many arrests I’ve made?”

Finally, silence. Keller is genuinely waiting.

Charlie risks a glance over. “Um… two?”

Keller huffs, whips back toward the windshield.

“One. I’ve made one. And it doesn’t even count because the guy walked into the station to turn himself in for—”

“—stealing thirty library pencils.”

Keller groans. “Marianne just made him return them. I didn’t even get paperwork out of it.”

Silence again. Only the relentless drumming of rain, somehow heavier than before. Charlie leans forward, squinting through the downpour, even though his eyesight is perfect. The roads are almost empty; smart people stayed inside today.

Charlie glances at Keller again and sees how genuinely bummed he looks.

Charlie gets it. Early on, he sometimes wished for more action too. But over time, he learned that the quiet work matters more.

He clears his throat. Keller snaps attention to him like a golden retriever hearing the fridge open.

“What you’re doing…” Charlie starts, then stops, awkward already. He exhales. “It matters.”

Keller blinks. “Sir?”

Charlie keeps his gaze on the road, voice stiff like he’s reading from cue cards.

“People trust us here. Most places, people don’t. They don’t feel safe around cops. But here, they wave at us. They call us when something feels off. They actually want our help. That’s… rare.”

They pass a small blue house. Charlie nods toward it.

“Mrs. Ramirez lives there. Lost her husband two years ago. She calls the station every time her porch light flickers, because she thinks it’s a ghost.”

Keller snorts unexpectedly.

Charlie shrugs. “We don’t arrest her. We fix her porch light. And she sleeps through the night.”

He pauses, uncomfortable with the sudden sincerity crowding his throat.

“Your friend in Port Angeles…he knows a lot of criminals. Good for him. But how many people does he know? Really know?”

Charlie swallows, wishing he could stop talking already.

“You’ve got stories, Keller. Important ones. So… tell him that.”

It sounds clunky coming out, too earnest, but Keller stares at him like Charlie just delivered the Gettysburg Address.

For a moment, Charlie almost feels proud of it. Then he realizes Keller is still staring at him and immediately regrets opening his mouth at all.

Suddenly, Charlie is exhausted. Absolutely wiped. He’s hit his word quota for the day, hell, maybe the week. Between his morning run, the unusually hard conversation with Bella, the Forge nightmare, and this endless car monologue? Charlie doesn’t need to speak to another living human for a month.

He clears his throat, mostly just to fill the silence that’s threatening to turn sincere again.

“So,” he says, aiming for casual, “how’s the girlfriend doing?”

It works. Keller lights up like someone flipped a switch, and for the next thirty minutes, he gushes about his girlfriend in Seattle, studying Mechanical Engineering at UW.

Charlie zones out for most of it, nods here, hums there, but even through the fog he can tell the girl is brilliant. And Keller is completely, hopelessly in love.

Charlie hopes it works out for them. Someone should get a happy ending.

Before long, they’re on the highway, following a stretch of dense forest near the Hoh River. The river winds through some of the oldest temperate rainforest in the country, glacial water running cold and fast even in the dead of summer. Moss hangs thick from the trees like green curtains, and the trunks are enormous, ancient evergreens towering high enough to blot out most of the cloudy sky.

Even from the road, Charlie can hear it sometimes: a low, steady roar, like the river is chewing through boulders somewhere out of sight. When the rain hits hard, as it’s doing now, the water swells quickly, rushing silver and angry toward the ocean. Fallen logs jut out like ribs, and the fog settles low across the banks, making everything feel older, wilder, untouched.

Keller whistles as he looks at the water through a break in the trees.

“I don’t think I’ve seen the river that high before. How high and fast do you think it is right now?”

Charlie doesn’t need to stare at it long. He’s grown up with this river, watched it rise and swallow half the bank more times than he can count.

“Close to cresting,” he says quietly. “Maybe a foot or two from spilling over. And moving fast. Faster than it looks from here. When the Hoh gets like this, the current’ll drag a grown man under before he gets his bearings.”

He grips the wheel a little tighter.

“If I waded into that right now, it’d probably hit my chest. Might go over my head in some spots. Looks shallow on the edges, but it drops fast.”

“You know everything, don’t you?”

Charlie looks shocked and turns his head quickly to stare at Keller. He gives a sharp sort of laugh, looks back at the road, and shakes his head.

“I don’t know where you got that impression. I don’t know a damn thing.”

In Charlie’s peripheral, he sees Keller roll his eyes. The audacity.

“That’s not what Sandoval says. He says you’re the smartest person he’s ever met.”

Charlie laughs loudly and is shocked. He keeps laughing. His smile is so big that his eyes crinkle at the corners, and he feels warm in his chest.

“Now I know you’re pulling my leg.” He glances over, still half-laughing. “Sandoval? You’ve met Sandoval, right? The guy thinks I’m a walking hazard sign.”

Keller shakes his head, adamant. “No, seriously. He said it during training once. He said you ‘see things most people miss.’ And that you’re ‘quiet, which is preferable to stupid.’”

Charlie blinks, the laugh dying in his throat.

That… um… actually sounds like Sandoval.

The warmth in his chest shifts, less amusement, more something he doesn’t have a word for.

He clears his throat, looks back out at the rain-blurred road.

“Well. He must’ve been in a good mood that day.”

Keller shrugs like it’s obvious. “Or he meant it. Though talking to you right now makes me think you’re an idiot since you don’t realize just how smart you are.” He smiles softly at Charlie to let him know he’s teasing.

Charlie has no idea what to say to that, so he does what he always does: focuses on driving, and lets the windshield wipers answer for him.

Suddenly, through the thick sheet of rain, a shape appears, maybe two, three hundred feet ahead.

“Shit!” Charlie shouts, slamming on the brakes as hard as he can.

The cruiser fishtails. Keller yelps and grabs the oh-shit handle, knuckles turning white.

Charlie holds his breath. Tires scream against the wet asphalt. The closer they skid, the clearer the shape becomes, just a kid. Maybe twelve. Hands lifted like he’s trying to stop the car himself, eyes huge and terrified, drenched head to toe.

They finally, miraculously, skid to a stop only a few feet from him. Both of them lurch forward and slam back against their seats.

“Holy fuck,” Charlie hears Keller breathe.

Charlie takes only a second to catch his breath, then shifts the cruiser into park, flips on the hazards, and yanks the door open. He slams it behind him and instinctively hits the lock.

Though it’s the middle of the day, the storm makes it feel like night. His headlights carve two bright tunnels through the rain, catching the kid in a pale, trembling glow.

“What the hell, kid?” Charlie shouts, bending down and grabbing the boy by the shoulders. He scans him head to toe, making sure he’s not hurt. Charlie is shaking, part adrenaline, part fear.

He recognizes the kid. Jansen Kelly. Good kid. Always running around on the weekends. Usually seen with his friend Milo Hendricks, and Billy and Charlie have seen them fishing down by the river a hundred times. Charlie’s even offered them pointers once or twice.

Jansen is shivering hard. He just shakes his head, water flying off his hair.

Charlie hears the cruiser door slam behind him, then Keller’s voice at his shoulder.

Keller grabs his mic and speaks into the radio, voice tight:

“Dispatch, this is Unit Three. We’ve got a juvenile on the roadway near mile marker eleven. Requesting EMS check, possible exposure.”

“Are you hurt?” Charlie asks when the kid still hasn’t spoken. He guides the kid off the road, and Jansen just points, arm shaking toward the river. His breath hitches, eyes huge, and then he breaks into full sobs.

“Milo,” he gasps. Charlie’s stomach drops.

“He fell into the river! He’s on top of a boulder, but I think he’s gonna slip off any minute!”

Charlie doesn’t lose a second.

“Call it in, Keller!” he yells, already sprinting back to the cruiser. He pops the trunk, grabs the rescue duffle, and points squarely at Jansen. “You stay right there.”

Behind him, Keller’s voice comes sharp over the rain as he keys his mic:

“Dispatch, Unit Three, we have a juvenile in the river near mile marker eleven on Highway 101. One child still in the water, clinging to a boulder. Request Fire and Swift-Water Rescue. Repeat, juvenile in the river, immediate response needed. The water’s rising fast, send anyone you’ve got!”

Charlie slings the rope bag over his shoulder and books it towards the river.

Branches whip across Charlie’s face as he crashes through the brush. Mud sucks at his boots, each step heavier than the last, and cold water seeps right through the “waterproof” fabric, chilling his toes.

He breaks through a wall of wet ferns and slides to a stop just inches from the riverbank, dirt and gravel spraying out from under his boots. Keller bursts out behind him, breath coming in frantic gasps.

And then Charlie sees him.

Milo, just a tiny shape, clings to the top of a massive boulder midstream. The river isn’t merely rushing around it; it’s hammering the rock, every surge smashing against Milo’s legs, trying to pry him loose.

He shouldn’t still be up there.
By all rights, the river should’ve torn him away already.

Charlie cups his hands around his mouth and shouts over the roar, “Milo! Hang on, kid! We’re gonna get you, just hold on!”

Milo’s scream cuts through the storm, thin and terrified. “Help me! I’m gonna fall!”

Charlie’s stomach drops.

“What’s the ETA for rescue?” Charlie calls, already unzipping the pack and yanking out the rope and life jacket. His fingers are shaking, whether from cold or adrenaline, he’s not sure.

Keller keys the radio, voice tight. “Dispatch, requesting ETA on rescue.”

The answer comes slow, too slow. Static, then a female voice crackling through the rain:

“Rescue ETA approximately twenty minutes.”

Charlie freezes for half a second, just long enough to look at Milo clinging to that boulder while the river keeps hammering against him.

“Twenty minutes?” he mutters, mostly to himself. Milo doesn’t have twenty minutes. He’s barely got twenty seconds.

He throws the rope bag to Keller. “We’re not waiting!”

Keller’s voice jumps an octave. “Charlie, do you even have swift-water training?”

Charlie shakes his head, already dragging the rope loose.

“That’s—Jesus, that’s against protocol! You could—”

“Fuck protocol!” Charlie snaps, louder than he means to. “That kid is gonna drown if we stand here arguing. He doesn’t have twenty minutes, he doesn’t have five.”

Keller just stares at him, soaked and pale, curls plastered to his forehead. Charlie suddenly sees how young he is, how green.

Charlie softens, just barely. “Keller, please.”

Keller swallows hard, nods once, and clamps both hands around the rope bag like it’s the only stable thing in the world.

“Good,” Charlie says. He scans the bank, heart hammering, until his eyes lock on a thick cedar just inside the tree line. It’s the right angle, good distance, solid trunk.

He points. “Anchor there! Two wraps and a lock!”

Keller bolts toward the tree without another word.

Charlie turns back to Milo. Still on the rock. Thank God.

“I’m coming, kid!” Charlie shouts.

He checks the carabiner on his harness, old rescue gear, scratched from years of use, but solid. He curses himself for not checking it sooner. The rain suddenly hammers harder, and he swears the river climbs another inch.

Keller barrels back toward him, panting, mud streaked up his legs. “Line’s secure! Twice around and locked.”

“Good job,” Charlie says, and gives him a quick pat on the shoulder before grabbing the rope. He threads it through his harness ring and clips it with a snap, fingers trembling.

Keller’s voice comes out higher than usual, but loud enough to carry over the roar. “Milo! Keep low, don’t stand up! Hold with both hands! Officer Swan’s coming to you!”

Milo’s sobs cut through the thunder of water. He’s shaking so hard Charlie can see it from shore, like a hummingbird in hurricane wind.

Charlie is walking towards the water when he shouts over his shoulder.

“Call dispatch again,” Charlie says. “Tell them victim’s conscious but unstable, possible fall any second. Request rope rescue team and fire water unit. And get SAR if they’re available.”

Keller nods and steps back, voice shaking into the radio.

“County, this is Keller. Victim on a rock mid-channel, about to go in, officer preparing tether entry, request immediate rescue units!”

Charlie wipes rain from his eyes—pointless—then crouches low, feeling the river’s pull already roaring through his bones.

He takes one breath.
Two.

And then he steps into the water.

Like he told Keller earlier, the river is deceptively deep. One second his boots scrape gravel; next, something invisible and furious grabs him from underneath and yanks him clean off his feet.

He’s under before he can even shout. He only catches the first half of Keller yelling his name.

Cold knifes into him. Not rain-cold, older. A glacial, punishing cold that feels like the river itself wants to freeze him solid. Darkness swallows him, and for a horrifying moment he can’t tell whether his eyes are open or shut. Everything is black and violent.

The current spins him sideways. He loses all sense of direction: up, down, night, day. He is just tumbling. A body, not a person.

Pressure clamps around his ears, sharp and crushing. It’s like his skull is being squeezed in a vise. The roar of the world disappears; sight and sound vanish all at once, like the river has decided he doesn’t get those anymore.

His lungs seize instantly. They scream for air, though he knows he’s only been under seconds. He clamps his mouth shut. He knows the protocol: don’t inhale, don’t panic, but panic floods anyway. Cold water forces past his lips, burning down his throat. He coughs underwater and chokes, swallowing more river.

He claws out blindly, reaching for anything: rock, root, the riverbed, but the current spins him like a toy, dragging him further.

Then, impact. His shoulder slams hard into something underwater. White-hot pain detonates through him, and the shock jolts him upward.

Light explodes above him, silver through rain, and suddenly he’s rising.

He breaks the surface with a ragged, tearing gasp, coughing river water out and dragging air in like it’s the first breath he’s ever taken.

He blinks hard, water forcing into his eyes again and again as the current slaps against his face. Somewhere behind him Keller is shouting his name, but the river is too loud and Charlie forces himself to block everything out except one thing: Milo.

He twists his body, letting the current spin him, and the river—thank God—cooperates. Relief punches through him when he realizes they chose the right angle: the line is carrying him straight toward the boulder.

And Milo is still there. Still clinging. Still alive.

Charlie is almost to the boulder now, close enough that his boots scrape the slick stone beneath the surface. Milo lifts his head, eyes huge and terrified, but when he spots Charlie he actually manages a watery smile.

Charlie can’t help smiling back. “I’m almost there, kid, just hang on.”

Then Milo makes the worst possible move. He reaches toward Charlie.

Charlie’s heart lurches. “Kid, don’t—!”

But gravity gets there first. Milo’s eyes flare wide and then, like someone pushed him, he’s gone. One slip, and the river swallows him whole.

“Shit!” Charlie roars, throwing his arms forward, trying to fight the current and launch himself after him. His body slams against the boulder, and the rope snaps tight across his harness.

For one awful heartbeat, all he sees is churning water and the empty space where Milo used to be.

He whips his head downstream, scanning the churning gray water, and then, unbelievably, Milo breaks the surface twenty feet away, coughing and flailing. His little arms slap uselessly at the current.

Charlie’s brain does the math automatically, not neat equations, just numbers flashing in instinct:

current roughly 6 feet per second,
kid maybe 90 pounds,
Charlie around 190, plus buoyancy from the vest…

If he pushes off hard and swims flat-out, he figures he can gain a foot every second, maybe more if he angles with the current instead of against it.

He can reach him.

His hands are already on the carabiner, fingers fumbling for the gate.

On shore, Keller is a blur through the rain, but Charlie sees his eyes go huge. Keller knows exactly what Charlie’s about to do.

“Don’t you dare unclip that, Swan!” Keller’s voice cracks over the storm.

Charlie has always had a problem with being told what to do, especially when someone’s drowning in front of him.

And Milo is being yanked farther every second.

Charlie’s jaw clenches. The world narrows to a single choice.

Keller is shouting again. His voice distorted by rain and panic, but Charlie only catches the fear. The rope jerks hard, Keller trying to haul him back, and Charlie swears under his breath. There’s no way in hell he’s letting Keller stop him.

His fingers twist the carabiner. Click. And just like that, he’s free. The rope slaps the surface beside him and disappears behind. In the same heartbeat, the river grabs him instead and flings him downstream like a rag doll.

Charlie gasps as a wall of water smashes into his face. Every instinct screams at him to fight back, to swim toward Keller, to cling to something solid, but Charlie forces himself to go with it. He angles his body, kicks sideways, flattens himself on his stomach, praying he doesn’t slam headfirst into a boulder or a submerged log.

He counts in his head: twelve seconds, maybe ten, if he’s lucky, before he can reach Milo.

And he pushes every muscle he has to make that number true.

One Mississippi: something slams into his ribs, a jagged log or rock, and white-hot pain shoots up his side. He coughs, river water burning down his throat.

Two Mississippi: he’s forced under again, the world turning black and cold, and for a terrifying beat he can’t tell which way is up. He can’t stay down long; time is running out.

Three Mississippi: he breaks the surface just long enough to suck air, only to get hammered sideways by another wave that nearly knocks the wind right back out of him.

Four Mississippi: he thinks he hears someone screaming his name, but it isn’t Keller this time. It’s higher. Younger. Milo.

Five Mississippi: Charlie fights the instinct to claw back toward shore, to safety, God, just a breath of safety, but he forces himself forward, kicking with everything he has left.

Six Mississippi: he mumbles something—or maybe thinks it—some desperate prayer to a God he hasn’t believed in since he was fourteen. “Please, please, not this kid… not this kid too.” In a flash, like his life is ending, he sees the faces of every one of his classmates, just as scared and pale and tiny as Milo.

Seven Mississippi: Milo’s head surfaces again, only his head, and Charlie’s heart seizes hard enough to hurt. God, he’s so close.

Eight Mississippi: the river yanks Milo sideways. Charlie screams, maybe in his head or maybe out loud.

Nine Mississippi: the kid goes under. Fully under. No hand, no face, nothing. Just water swallowing him whole.

Ten Mississippi: Charlie dives, arms spearing into the current, completely blind, and his fingers brush cloth, a jacket, a sleeve, something small and terrified beneath the surface. He grabs and holds on like his own life is the one depending on it.

And then Milo is in his arms: small, shaking, alive. Charlie drags him tight against his chest, and the kid gasps, choking on air. He’s warm somehow against Charlie’s freezing skin even through his thick clothes, and the shock of it nearly knocks Charlie’s breath out again. Tears sting his eyes, unbidden.

The next moments blur together fast, frantic, like time has suddenly decided to sprint.

Charlie clamps Milo to his chest and lets the river take them, keeping his body between the kid and every rock, every log that surges past. Something slams into Charlie’s back, a floating branch, and he grunts, curling tighter around Milo.

“Hold on, buddy, just hold on,” he gasps.

Another hit, this one sharp. He sees a bloom of red in the water. For a second his stomach drops, thinking it’s Milo, but then the coppery warmth on his forehead tells him it’s his.

Head. He’s been hit in the head. Great.

The river bends, dragging them toward a fallen tree angled across the current. It’s half-submerged, bark slick, branches reaching downstream like claws. One wrong move and it’ll drag them under.

Or… if Charlie can angle right… it could be the only thing keeping them alive.

“Hang on,” Charlie sputters, turning his body sideways, fighting the pull just enough to catch the current at the right angle. The river shoves them forward. He braces—

They smash into the trunk. Charlie’s ribs explode with pain, air blasting out of him in a wheeze. He nearly loses Milo.

He slams his forearm across the bark, hooking himself, sucking for air. The bark scrapes skin, shredding sleeves, digging into muscle. Milo’s arms are locked so tight around his neck Charlie can barely breathe.

“Kid, ease up, ease up—”

But Milo only squeezes harder.

The river tries to take them under, sucking at Charlie’s legs, trying to peel him away from the tree. His arm feels like it’s going to be ripped from the socket. He screams, raw and involuntary.

With his free hand he fumbles at his belt, fingers numb, trembling. He gets it loose, prays he doesn’t drop. iF that goes, they’re done. Something else definitely goes, keys, radio, who knows, and he has a brief thought: Marianne is going to kill me.

He loops the belt around the trunk, around his wrist, anything to create tension. The leather strains, and suddenly the current becomes a pull-point, pivoting him slowly around the trunk like the arm of a compass.

“Hold on, Milo! Hold on!”

Inch by inch, he drags them sideways, using the river’s own force to edge closer to the shallows. His boots skid, scraping against bark and then nothing—water, water, water—until finally his toes scrape something solid. Mud. Roots.

He screams with the effort, feels the bark tearing his pants and maybe his skin, but he gets a foothold, then another.

“Almost…there…”

His boots slip again, a terrifying lurch, and Milo shrieks in his ear. Charlie lunges upward, slamming his knee into roots, using every muscle he has left to lift the kid.

Finally, his foot plants solid. He heaves Milo upward with a grunt, practically throwing him toward the bank. Milo scrambles, grabbing brush, hauling himself onto the mud.

Charlie claws up after him, lungs on fire, legs trembling, the river trying to take him even now.

And then, finally, he’s kneeling in the mud beside Milo, gasping, shaking, alive.

Charlie lets out a laugh that’s sharp, hysterical, and too loud. He probably looks like a complete lunatic, soaked in blood and river muck, but he doesn’t care. Milo is coughing, breathing, eyes wide and terrified and here.

Charlie wraps an arm around him, more like a desperate squeeze than a proper hug. And it hurts like hell because his ribs are screaming, but he holds on anyway. Professionalism can go to hell.

“We’re okay,” he croaks against Milo’s hair. “Hear me? You’re okay.”

Milo nods against his chest, sobbing.

The river roars behind them, furious at having lost two prizes.

Charlie just holds on tighter.

Charlie releases Milo, who collapses onto the mud and just lies there breathing like he might never move again.
Charlie kind of wants to do the same, but he needs to call this in.

He glances upriver and calculates without meaning to. They probably drifted at least half a football field from where Milo first slipped. Long enough that Charlie can’t even see the original bend in the river anymore.

He turns back toward the tree to grab his belt and radio, except the trunk is bare. His belt, his radio, everything he clipped is gone.

“Fantastic,” he mutters under his breath. “Probably halfway to Alaska by now.”

Charlie really hopes Keller ran after them.

As if on cue, Charlie hears crashing through the brush, and about ten seconds later Keller skids into the clearing. He’s soaked, pale, mud up to his knees, honestly looking rougher than both Charlie and Milo combined.

Keller’s breathing hard, eyes huge, scanning the river like he expects one of them to vanish any second.

“Are you—oh my—Charlie, are you alive?” he blurts. Then he seems to remember protocol and tries to straighten up. “I mean—Officer Swan, do you require medical assistance?”

Charlie, still kneeling in the mud, stares at him. “Keller, I think I require… everything.”

Keller drops beside Milo and starts fussing, hands hovering like he’s afraid to touch him. “Kid, you hurt anywhere? Talk to me. Blink? Something?”

Milo manages a nod.

Keller lets out a breath he’d clearly been holding. He glances back at Charlie, eyes wide. And shit, that little hero worship Keller looks at him with is even stronger now.

“You’re the coolest person I know, sir. ”

“Just call it in, Keller. And for heaven’s sake, stop looking at me like that.”

Keller looks at him even more like that.

Charlie growls and wrenches the radio out of Keller’s hands. Even pressing the button hurts.

“Dispatch, Swan. Juvenile recovered, conscious, needs medical. We’re at Hoh River access, about a quarter mile south of Mile Marker eighteen.” He hesitates, swallowing pain. “I’m… fine, mostly. Just send medical. Over.”

He releases the button, breath shaking. Milo coughs beside him, small and alive, and Charlie lets himself sag in the mud for just a second, just one.

Suddenly, he hears sirens cutting through the storm, and orange lights flicker through the trees. The sound grows louder with every second. Charlie checks his watch: exactly twenty minutes.

Dispatch crackles in: “Copy that, Swan. EMS just arrived on scene. Meet responders at the access point if you’re able. Advise if juvenile condition changes.”

“Help Milo,” Charlie grounds out to Keller. Keller jolts into action and helps the kid stand, slouching so the kid can sling his arm around his shoulders.

Charlie tries to stand and manages exactly one step before the world tilts hard. He goes down again and face-plants straight into the mud.

He groans, rolls onto his back, and spits grit out of his mouth.

“Shit!” Keller yelps, letting go of Milo and sprinting toward Charlie, only to realize Milo has toppled sideways into the mud as well and immediately whirl back to him. “Shit—okay—stay there—don’t move—Charlie, don’t move either!”

The poor guy looks completely torn, officially past the point of professionalism. Charlie would comment on it if he hadn’t just broken every protocol in the book.

“Call it in,” Charlie moans.

“Dispatch—uh—this is Officer Keller. We have—uh—two injured, I repeat, two—no, one juvenile and one adult—both conscious, both… muddy—very muddy—requesting immediate assistance at, uh—”

He looks wildly around, like the trees might shout the location back at him.

“Hoh River access, south of Mile Marker eighteen! And send—uh—extra blankets! And maybe a stretcher! Actually—definitely a stretcher!”

Charlie groans into the mud. “Keller, please stop talking.”

Keller hits the transmit button again like it’s a life raft. “Dispatch, you heard him. Please stop me.”

“Don’t tell the boys I tripped again,” Charlie mutters. Blessedly, the rain has stopped. About time.

“Oh, no, that’s definitely going on the board,” Keller says.

Charlie throws an arm over his face. His head is pounding. Ironically, he needs water.

Shouting and heavy footsteps echo through the trees, getting closer every second.

He hears Keller whisper, “Thank God,” before he straightens up and yells at the top of his lungs:

“Over here!”

Charlie hears what sounds like Officer Chen shouting, “They’re over there! I see them!”

And then the clearing explodes with light, flashlights, headlamps, strobes cutting through the trees, and suddenly there are people everywhere.

Charlie squints through it all and realizes he recognizes practically every single person: every officer (minus Forge, thank God), plus all the firefighters in town, and what looks like the entire EMS crew.

Damn it. Why did the whole force show up when it was just two people?

Charlie blinks, vision swimming, and suddenly Officer Sandoval is kneeling beside him. Sandoval’s usually steady face is a shade paler, almost scared. One hand steadies Charlie’s jaw while the other shines a penlight into his eyes.

Charlie flinches, trying to bat the light away.

“Concussed,” Sandoval says flatly.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Charlie mutters, injury peeling away whatever filter he normally has around Sandoval.

Before Sandoval can reply, a voice cuts in, sharp, familiar.

“Is he dead?”

And then small hands, surprisingly gentle, are on his cheeks. Charlie forces his eyes open and finds Rebecca kneeling in the mud beside him, rain jacket nowhere in sight, her suit absolutely wrecked.

He croaks, “Oh no… your suit.”

Officer Chen’s face appears over Charlie next, upside-down and grinning like an idiot.

“You are one lucky son of a bitch,” Chen says. “Keller was giving us the play-by-play the whole time.”

Charlie groans. “Of course he was.”

He is so over this. Why are they hovering over him when there’s a civilian—two civilians.

Charlie suddenly remembers Jansen.

His stomach lurches. He grabs Sandoval’s arm, fingers trembling.

“Is Jansen okay?”

Sandoval gives him a firm nod and gently pries Charlie’s hand off.

“EMS has him. He’s fine. Scared, cold, but fine. They found him upstream by the road.”

Charlie’s shoulders sag in relief.

Sandoval adds, more quietly, “Good job.”

Charlie’s head hits the ground and tears sting his eyes. He squeezes them shut so no one notices. Though he can’t see him, he hears Dwyer shouting at people in the distance. He honestly can’t believe they are all here.

“Out of the way,” someone barks, and suddenly hands are moving his team back.

It’s Greenfield. Good. Charlie likes Greenfield. Jones joins him a second later.

Cold fingers press against his neck, jaw, side. He’s being poked and prodded, lights in his eyes again, and Charlie tries not to flinch.

“BP’s low,” Greenfield mutters.
“Pulse rapid, thready,” Jones answers.
“He’s hypothermic,” Greenfield says, louder. “Get a blanket pack on him.”

Charlie hears the crinkle of foil as they tear open a thermal blanket.

“Conscious, disoriented, pupils reactive,” Jones says, talking to someone over his shoulder. “Possible concussion, chest trauma, possible rib fracture.”

Someone says, “Head lac, bleeding controlled,” and Charlie wants to correct the grammar just to feel useful.

He hears radios crackling around him:

“Copy, transport ETA three minutes, stretcher inbound.”
“EMS to station, juvenile stable, requesting warm blankets and assessment on arrival.”
“Notify Forks Hospital, adult male incoming, trauma with possible concussion and suspected rib fracture.”

Hands slide under him, straps tighten across his chest, and then he’s lifted. The world tilts and his stomach lurches.

Embarrassment hits him out of nowhere, sharp, ridiculous. He’s a grown man, a police officer, and they’re carrying him like a broken thing.

He clenches his jaw and hopes to God nobody is taking photos.

——-

Thee hospital bed is stiff as a plywood plank, and Charlie is awkwardly propped up on two thin pillows that keep trying to slide out from under him. He is wearing a faded hospital gown and the itchiest pair of hospital-issue briefs known to mankind. They ride up every time he shifts, giving him a permanent wedgie.

They had cut his uniform off the moment he arrived, pants included. Mortifying. There had been at least three people in the room at the time. The nurses insisted it was standard procedure, wet clothes, hypothermia risk, possible spinal injury, but still. There should be laws protecting a man’s dignity.

When he first rolled in, everything blurred together. An oxygen mask pressed to his face, a cold stethoscope against his chest, rapid-fire questions he barely remembered answering. Someone slipped a pulse-oximeter on his finger. Someone else started an IV, warm saline flowing into him while they cleaned blood from his forehead. They stuck heart monitors to his chest and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm that kept squeezing every five minutes as if it were checking whether he was still annoyed.

They sent him for X rays while he was still shivering: chest, ribs, maybe his skull. He lost track after the third click. Then they wheeled him back and layered warm blankets over him like tin foil lasagna. Someone mentioned mild hypothermia, possible concussion, bruised ribs, and that they would wait on imaging before worrying about fractures. Charlie took that to mean they were not planning to saw anything open immediately.

Now everything is quiet for the first time in hours, and he is just… waiting. The only company he has is the uneven thump of his own heartbeat on the monitor.

It’s the first time he has been in a hospital for himself in almost twenty years. The last time was when he was fourteen. They kept him for almost a month. He had been half-starved, covered in wounds, dangerously low on blood, and one more bad day away from a full collapse.

When he was twenty, he came to this same hospital again, but only to sit beside his father’s bed and watch him die.

Hospitals feel too personal. They ask too much of people and offer almost nothing back in return. Any second, a door can open and someone can walk in with news that destroys your entire world.

The lights are too artificial and bright, humming faintly like insects. The walls feel like they’re glowing. The air tastes like disinfectant. Even the voices in the hallway sound distant and hollow. The nurses who pass by are kind, but they are still at work. They are tired. They have seen too damn much. Charlie has always felt like hospitals carry the weight of every bad story that ever started in one. There are too many ghosts stuck in bad memories here.

There is a soft knock on the door followed by, “Mind if I come in, Officer Swan?”

Charlie looks up from his scraped hands. Josie, a red-haired nurse he has known for years, stands just inside the doorway. She gives him a warm, familiar smile.

Charlie clears his throat. “Of course.”

Josie steps in and moves with quiet efficiency. She checks his IV line, then his pulse, and listens to his heart. After a moment she flips open his chart and nods as she scans the page.

“You’re due for another round of pain meds in about forty minutes,” she says gently.

She looks back at him with genuine concern. “You feeling any warmer?”

Charlie is freezing under the pile of blankets. His shoulders tremble and his teeth are close to chattering, but he doesn’t want Josie running around on his account. He forces a small shake of his head instead of admitting how cold he is.

Josie narrows her eyes in a way that tells him she absolutely does not believe him, although she lets it go for now.

“You also sure you don’t want to call anyone? Not even your daughter?”

Hell no. There is no universe where Charlie is calling Bella about this. If he has any say in it, she will never know how close he came to dying today. She worries enough as it is.

He shakes his head again, firmer this time. “No. I’m good.”

Josie gives him a long look but doesn’t push. She moves as though she’s about to walk away, then pauses. Charlie tenses when she rests a hand on his arm and gives it a gentle rub with her thumb.

Personally, he thinks it’s a little inappropriate and definitely unprofessional. But what does he know. He isn’t a nurse.

And he is also feeling grumpy. His whole body aches despite the meds, and the pounding in his head hasn’t eased at all. He has been touched far too much today, handled and grabbed and checked and prodded. More than he’s been touched in years. And not even the fun kind.

“Remember, press the call button if you need anything,” Josie says, her tone pointed as if she can sense he won’t do it. Yeah, Charlie is not pressing that button if he can help it.

Then she really does turn to leave, her footsteps clicking softly down the hard floor until they fade into the hallway.

The room goes quiet again.

Charlie adjusts the blanket across his chest and stares at the ceiling tiles. The ache behind his eyes pulses in time with his heartbeat. He tries to relax, but every muscle in his body feels locked in place.

Whatever they gave him must be working, because he begins to drift. It isn’t sleep, not really. More like sinking into cotton. Heavy. Dull. Somehow more exhausting than staying awake. He jolts out of it when there is a soft tap on the door frame.

His eyes snap to the clock. Forty minutes since Josie left. It doesn’t feel possible.

“Hi, Officer Swan,” a man says from the doorway. Charlie’s vision is still a little fuzzy, so he lets his head fall back to the pillow and waits for the room to steady. “I’m Dr. Carlisle Cullen.”

The smell hits him before the words register. Sweet. Lilac. Honey. Clean, but wrong. A smell that should be pleasant but twists his stomach instead.

He knows that scent. Even now, years later, it crawls straight up his spine.

It’s the smell that follows him in grocery store aisles when someone opens a jar of honey. It’s the smell that drifts from lilac bushes in the spring and makes his throat tighten. It’s the smell he can taste in his nightmares.

It’s their smell.

Charlie jerks upright, breath catching. His hands fist in the blanket. He keeps his eyes away from the doctor because looking feels impossible.

Dr. Cullen steps further inside. Charlie can barely hear his footsteps. His voice is calm and light, like he doesn’t notice Charlie has gone stone-still.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” the doctor says. “Even before today. The nurses here can’t stop talking about you. Quite the reputation.”

He gives a soft laugh. A friendly one. A normal one.

Charlie can’t swallow. The sweetness in the air is thick enough to choke on. It feels like it’s coating his tongue, sliding down his throat, filling his lungs.

The room tilts. His pulse jumps.

The monsters smelled like this.

Charlie forces a breath in through his nose, then out through his mouth, slow and shaky. It doesn’t help. The scent clings anyway.

“Officer Swan?”

Charlie senses the man stop beside his bed. The only thing he can force himself to look at are the doctor’s shoes, polished enough to catch the fluorescent lights. “Are you okay?”

If this were a normal moment, with a normal man standing beside him, Charlie would have said something snarky. Something like, ‘Of course not. I’m in a hospital.’

But nothing is normal. Not the smell.  Not the way Charlie’s lungs feel like they are folding in on themselves.

He cannot form a single rational thought. His breathing turns sharp and fast, each inhale a ragged scrape in his throat.

A hand reaches toward him.

Charlie reacts before the thought catches up. He swats the hand away, hard. The shock of the man’s skin hits him like a fist. It is cold. Not regular cold, not a winter wind, but a deep and unnatural cold that shoots straight into his bones. Memory slams into him so violently he recoils as if burned.

Cold fingers. Cold wrists. Cold hands pinning him down.
The monsters.

“Vampire,” he breathes. The word slips out, barely audible. He sees the hand in front of him twitch.

Dr. Cullen’s feet, which was slowly inching forward, freezes for a fraction of a second. Then he gives a soft, professional laugh, the kind designed to calm frightened patients.

“Officer Swan, I promise you I am very much human,” he says gently. “You hit your head and you are hypothermic. Sometimes the brain fills in frightening blanks when the body is overwhelmed. You are safe here.”

The denial is steady, warm, and calm. It sounds practiced. It sounds exactly like something a doctor would say to a patient who is hallucinating. Charlie isn’t hallucinating.

The heart monitor beside his bed explodes into frantic beeping. The steady rhythmic tone becomes a shrill, uneven alarm as his pulse skyrockets. His breathing is too fast for the machine to interpret cleanly. The wires flutter with every panicked movement.

Charlie pushes backward as if the bed can swallow him whole. He tries to stand, tries to get away, but his legs are weak and his coordination is shot. His foot tangles in the blanket and he slips sideways off the edge. He hits the floor hard. The floor is bitingly cold against his bare skin.

The IV line jerks tight.
A searing bolt of pain shoots up his arm.

The pole wobbles and crashes against the wall. The sudden motion yanks the cannula in his hand nearly free. Charlie gasps, then grabs instinctively at the tube, which only makes everything worse.

He tears it out without meaning to.

Pain spikes through the back of his hand, sharp and immediate. Blood wells instantly from the torn puncture, dark against his skin. Drops slide down his wrist and drip onto the floor. The heart monitor screeches at this point, a flat-out alarm rather than a warning.

Why else is no one running in? Charlie looks and sees that the door is shut. He is trapped in this room with this creature.

He braces on the floor with one hand while the other clamps uselessly over the bleeding spot. The room spins hard enough to blur Dr. Cullen’s outline into nothing more than a pale shape. Charlie’s breath rasps, too fast, too shallow, too much.

Charlie finally looks up. He doesn’t mean to. His head jerks on instinct, like a flinch, and his gaze meets the doctor’s.

Dr. Cullen stands frozen in place with his hands raised slightly away from his body. Not close enough to touch Charlie, not far enough to pretend nothing is happening. His palms face outward, fingers relaxed and visible. It is the universal medical gesture for I am not a threat.
A slow, careful posture meant for panicked patients. Trauma-aware. Controlled.

And he is—damn it all—exactly as Marianne described. Just as striking.

The overhead fluorescent light catches in his hair, turning the pale gold strands almost white. His face is too perfect for a hospital room: clean angles, smooth skin, symmetrical in a way that looks less like genetics and more like craftsmanship. The line of his jaw is sharp, his cheekbones almost unreal, and his mouth is soft in that effortless, classical way that should belong to marble statues and Renaissance portraits, not real men.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. An expensive white coat draped over scrubs that, on him, look tailored.
The kind of man who would stand out anywhere. Yet, somehow looks like he belongs here, like sterile light bends itself to flatter him rather than wash him out.

Charlie feels his stomach cave in.

Because he knows this face.

Not from town. Not from a chance meeting. Not from Marianne’s swooning monologue.

From a canvas.

From two canvases.

He is the man Charlie saw from his window this morning. Just a split-second silhouette in the rain, too distant to be real.

And he is the man whose portrait Charlie saw years ago in a castle in Italy.
Volterra.

Aro’s home.

The painting had been centuries old according to Aro. Its subject elegant, luminous, impossible. Charlie told himself it was only myth, only history, only brushstrokes and varnish.

But the man in front of him is the same man.
The same impossible face.

Except for one thing.

His eyes.

Marianne swore they were gold. Warm. Gentle.
But the eyes staring at Charlie now are pitch black—deep, empty, hungry in a way that rips open something old and buried in Charlie’s chest.

Aro’s had been black too.

Charlie’s pulse spikes so sharply that the heart monitor leaps into a frantic alarm. The sound is loud and shrill in the small room, a rapid stuttering beep that matches the panic thundering against his ribs. His breath is too fast, too shallow. He tastes metal.

He does not remember speaking, but suddenly he hears his own voice, thin and breaking.

“Please… please don’t take me back to him.”

The words fall out without permission. His throat tightens and more spill out in a rush.

“I did what he wanted. I swear I did. I won’t run again. Please don’t take me back.”

Dr. Cullen who looks like a painting, a ghost, a monster, takes one slow, impossibly controlled step backward, hands still raised, voice low and steady as water:

“Officer Swan,” he says, careful, soothing, deliberate, “please look at me. You’re safe. No one here will hurt you.”

Suddenly Charlie feels it, an old, distant familiarity he hasn’t felt in years. It begins as a faint pressure around his temples, like someone wrapping a band around his skull and pulling it tight. Charlie gasps and clutches his head. He distantly hears himself whimper, the sound small and broken, but he can’t help it.

He wants to tear it off. Every instinct screams at him to fight, but another part of him remembers what happened the last time he interfered with something like this. He has no idea what will happen if he tries to stop it.

The pressure grows stronger. It tightens and tightens, as if something is trying to force its way into his mind. It is a horrible sensation, like cold fingers clawing behind his eyes, trying to peel his thoughts open.

He needs it to stop.

He yanks. Not physically, not with his hands, but with some instinctive part of himself that jerks inward and swats the presence away as if slamming a door.

He braces for the world to explode.

But nothing happens.

Or at least Charlie thinks nothing happened until Dr. Cullen inhales sharply.

Charlie lifts his head. The man..no, the vampire...stares at him in utter disbelief. Charlie can hardly believe he is letting himself think the word, but there is no other explanation. Shrinks told him for years that vampires were just trauma-made shadows in his mind. Monsters invented to explain what he refused to remember. But he remembers. He always remembered. And this creature standing in front of him confirms it.

Dr. Carlisle Cullen looks at him as though Charlie has just rewritten the laws of nature. His expression is wide-open in a way that is both fascinated and reverent. There is something hungry in it, and something worshipful too, as if Charlie has done something impossibly precious.

Slowly, Dr. Cullen lowers his hands. Something in his posture shifts. His shoulders loosen, but the rest of him becomes unnervingly still. His head tilts in a way that is not quite human, as if he is studying Charlie from an angle humans never think to use. For the first time, Charlie sees the creature beneath the white coat.

His voice is almost a whisper. “How did you do that?”

Charlie has no idea what he is talking about. He has no idea what he has done.

He scoots backward on the floor. The movement reminds him horribly that he is wearing nothing but a thin hospital gown and a pair of cheap hospital briefs that are riding up and cutting into him. He grimaces as his back hits the wall nearest the bed, and he scrambles upright. His fingers claw at the paint as if the wall might open and swallow him to safety.

He leans against it heavily. His head is pounding. The heart monitor on the floor beside the bed is still shrieking, a single continuous tone that drills straight into his skull. The wires tug at his skin, sticky pads still half attached. He rips them off one by one. Each one snaps free with a sting. The monitor immediately shifts into one long high alarm, almost worse than before.

Charlie forces himself to look away from the doctor. He scans the room. His vision swims, but he can still make out shapes. Cabinets. A counter. Supplies. And there, close enough to reach if he moves fast, is a pair of bandage scissors. They are not sharp like surgical scissors, but they have a metal edge and a hooked lower blade meant for sliding under cloth. The tips are blunt on purpose, rounded for safety, but the rest is sturdy steel that glints under the fluorescent lights.

Charlie dares a quick glance back at the pale man. Dr. Cullen has not moved. He only watches him, eyes so dark they look bottomless, curiosity blooming in them.

That curiosity terrifies Charlie even more.

He bolts.

His feet slip slightly on the linoleum, but he manages a fast, clumsy lunge toward the counter. His fingers close around the scissors, cold metal biting into his palm. He yanks them up and spins back toward the doctor, breathing hard.

Charlie brandishes them between them. His hand shakes so violently that the scissors jitter in the air.

“Stay back,” he rasps, voice breaking. Weaker than he would like. “Stay away from me.”

Charlie’s head spins. The trauma from the day and the lack of oxygen entering his lungs crash over him at once. The floor tilts. He feels his balance slip and thinks he is going to topple forward.

He never hits the ground.

Something moves. Fast. Too fast.

In a blur, Dr. Cullen is suddenly holding him upright. There was no sound, no shift of air, no footsteps. One moment Carlisle is across the room, the next he is steadying Charlie by the shoulders as if he had always been there.

Charlie tries to stab him with the scissors, a weak, shaking attempt, but the metal only taps against Carlisle’s coat. It feels like hitting a wall made of marble.

“Easy,” Dr. Cullen murmurs. His voice is low and soothing, almost hypnotic. A gentle hushing sound follows, like someone calming a frightened animal.

Charlie tries to jerk away, but his limbs feel heavy and useless. A small sting touches the side of his arm. A needle. He gasps. The scissors clatter onto the floor.

Carlisle injects him with something.

Charlie’s throat tightens as tears rush up without his permission. He cannot remember the last time he cried, not like this, not openly. The shaking won’t stop. His chest won’t expand right.

And then it hits him again.

The pressure.

That invisible band clamps around his skull, the same awful, ancient sensation he remembers from childhood. Something is trying to press into him, to pull something out of him, to open him like a door.

He claws at the air, at his own hair, anything to relieve it. Instinct takes over. He yanks at the sensation with whatever part of himself is being grabbed.

It stops.

The air cracks with silence.

Carlisle’s eyes widen as if Charlie just split the world open. The pitch-black irises swallow the room, swallow Charlie’s reflection. He sees himself inside them. Pale, shaking, afraid.

“Remarkable,” Dr. Cullen breathes. His voice vibrates through Charlie, too deep, too calm. Cold breath ghosts across Charlie’s cheek.

A hand lifts, slowly, carefully, and cups the side of Charlie’s face. The touch makes Charlie flinch, but the doctor isn’t caressing him. He gently turns Charlie’s head left, then right, examining his pupils. It is purely clinical, precise in a way no human doctor could ever manage.

“Tracking is slow,” Carlisle murmurs, half to himself. “Respiratory distress. Adrenal surge. Severe panic reaction.”

Charlie’s eyelids grow heavier. His muscles loosen against his will. The medication sinks into him like warm sand.

His head tips forward and lands against Carlisle’s chest. The doctor’s torso is unmoving. Solid. Cold. There is no rise. No fall.

He isn’t breathing.

Charlie realizes distantly that his feet are no longer touching the ground. He is floating. No, he is being carried. Dr. Cullen lifts him easily, as if Charlie weighs nothing at all.

In the next moment, he is back in the hospital bed, blankets drawn over him with a delicacy that doesn’t match the inhuman strength behind it.

“It’s going to be all right,” Dr. Cullen whispers.

The words are the last thing Charlie hears before the sedative drags him under, soft and irresistible, pulling him into slumber he cannot fight.

Notes:

First, before I write a whole novel of notes, I want to say thank you for reading this. It means so much to me. I have been inspired by so many incredible fanfictions for this pairing that I finally decided to sit down and write my own. Please feel free to leave a comment. I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts.
I also have a question for you. Would you prefer the next chapter to be a flashback to Charlie at fourteen, or should we stay in the present timeline for now? I am torn.
Almost twenty years ago, I posted my first Twilight fanfiction on fanfiction(dot)net. It was terrible in the best way, yet it somehow received a surprising amount of attention. I was a teenager and became overwhelmed, so I deleted it.
I have always loved writing, but over time I let pressure and negative self-talk get in the way. I eventually stopped altogether. It has been almost five years since I have written anything consistently.
My New Year’s resolution this year was to begin the first book in a novella series I have been dreaming about, but getting back into writing was difficult. I felt extremely out of practice, which you can probably tell from this chapter.
Then I started writing this fic, and suddenly the words began to flow. Writing felt fun again. I started researching and watching cop shows. I make no promises that the police information in this story is completely accurate, but I really did try.
In the past, my chapters were usually between 1,000 and 5,000 words. I had no idea this one would grow into nearly 20,000. I did not plan for that, but here we are.
I cannot promise the next chapter will be this long, but I also cannot promise it will not be longer.
If you have written stories for this pairing, whether here, on Tumblr, or anywhere else, please tell me. I would love to read them and be part of the community.
I hope you enjoyed the original characters as well.
A quick note about Officer Dwyer. I completely forgot that Renee’s maiden name was also Dwyer until I typed her tag. I am attached to the name now, so I decided to keep it.
This story will explore dark themes, but I hope there is a lot of light too.
In this fic, Carlisle is not a good man, but he is a good vampire. He has never thought like a human and never will. He is hundreds of years old and operates with a different moral compass. He may or may not have a power, and you will learn more about that later.
Charlie is similar to Bella, but stronger. I will be exploring that as well.
Aro is obsessed with Charlie, and I am excited to dive into that dynamic in future chapters.
Thank you again for reading. It means everything to me. Please let me know what you think. I am also not attached to the title. If you have suggestions, I would be very happy to hear them.