Mateless and Luna Bound (Self Published)

Chapter 9: The First Week

Authors Note: You know when you're in the hospital for any amount of time? It just gets boring, even if you're only in there for a few hours. And then there's that anxious feeling you get when you need to walk around or get away for at least a little while...that's kind of what Charlie gets to go through. Thank you and enjoy!

-Saturn

The first week went by tauntingly slow. Charlie tried to start moving out of bed each day, but was only met with pain. Max's parents visited him to make sure he was okay. It was nice, but he still felt really guilty for taking so much of their time and money. There just had to be some way he could repay them.

Max visited him the most. He still couldn't believe that he had let the handsome red-head convince him to stay. But when he had leaned in so close to him, nothing in his brain seemed to work. His eye's hypnotized him.

Every day he would watch Max put the $200 in his wallet on the counter. He told him that he didn't have to every day, but the burly man insisted.

Stubborn seemed to be a trait of his that Charlie seemed to have to battle with the most. But, if there was anything Charlie learned from working in customer service his whole life, it was how to deal with stubborn people.

When Max would give him the money, he would find ways to slip it back in with Max's things. It was funny to watch the man figure it out, even though he seemed pretty angry about it. Soon it was turned into a fun game between them. Max seemed to be surprised every time he found it in a new place. He had started to check his pockets right before leaving every day.

They wound up talking a lot. It was nice to talk to him, honestly. They had a bunch of common interests. Both of them loved nature and the forest that was around here. That was actually when he found out that the house was in the middle of the woods. He didn't know that there was a mansion in the middle of the forest. If he did, he might have spent a day just walking around trying to find it. The forest always had plenty of secrets that Charlie just loved to find.

"It's pretty far in the forest," Max said. "I don't think you would have been able to find it just by hiking."

"That's true," he laughed nervously. He probably shouldn't have said that. It seemed a little too much like invasion of privacy. "I'm sorry, you guys probably wouldn't like the idea of someone randomly coming here anyway."

"I wouldn't mind you coming over," Max said. His voice was lower when he answered him. It was a tone that Charlie wasn't used to being used towards him.

"It seems like it would be rude," he tried not to stutter his response. Something about the man just seemed to have that sort of affect on him.

"You think everything is rude or your fault," Max shook his head and smiled. "I meant that you would probably get lost trying to find this place and get hurt."

"I'm not really one to get lost in the forest," he smiled with him. The only time he did was recently when he found those wolves. But that was because he didn't have anything to use as markers so that he could find his way back. He wasn't planning on going that far that day.

Max gave him a knowing look and rolled his eyes playfully.

"Sure," was all he said. Charlie would have argued with him, but he liked the way that Max looked when he was teasing.

This man was the first who had ever been able to take his heart so quickly and lock it up so well. There was no doubt in his mind that he liked the burly man. But Charlie was new to this game of love. He was only 19 and had never found anyone who he had ever really wanted to be serious with. He typically just focused on school and work. And, now that school was over, work encompassed his life.