AN: So... You know, I vote we just forget that I haven't updated in months and am a horrible person and be happy I'm updating now, what do you think? No? Well, it was worth a shot...

Lots of POV hopping and general confusion here. It's the beginning of the end, people! Just remember, it's got to get worse before it gets better.

If there was a God, he was a bastard with a cruel sense of humor. And apparently screwing up Charlie's life was one of his favorite pastimes. Because it was too much to ask for just one thing to go right. To much to ask to let her have this one little thing.

It was like a roller coaster - slowly, terrifyingly, things started to look up... And just when she got used to it, she plummeted back down. And then it did it again. And again. And again and again and again.

If there was a God, Charlie hated him just as much as he seemed to hate her.

oOo

She was glad of the excuse to move into Bass' room. One of his old friends was visiting, and he needed the guest room. Personally, Charlie would be a little pissed if one of her friends just called her up and demanded a place to stay (you know, if she had friends other than Connor and Nora), but apparently he and Miles had known each other since they were kids.

She ignored it when his name brought up the same tugging suspicion in the back of her mind that she'd felt when she saw Bass' tattoo. It didn't mean anything - Miles was a common enough name.

Sunday morning, Bass left to go pick Miles up from the airport, Charlie and Connor staying behind for some Christmas eve best friend time. Well, in theory anyway. In reality, when Charlie woke up Connor was lying on the ground with his feet up on the couch, texting someone. Two hours later, he was still texting back and forth, although he had moved to sprawl across the armchair.

"Well, somebody's smitten," Charlie teased.

He gave an oh you hypocrite look. "Yeah, you."

That got her shut up pretty quickly. She wasn't smitten. She was just having a winter fling with an older guy. It's not like it was actually going anywhere. Even if she wouldn't have minded if it did, she was too... damaged. Bass would want someone who could settle down, make him happy, not a fucked up flight risk half his age.

No, Charlie decided, definitely not smitten. Soon school will start again and it'll be over. She ignored the pang of sadness she felt at that thought. It's just because I've been having fun here.

That's all.

oOo

Miles Matheson was paranoid, there was no doubt about that. However, his paranoia was either a very bad thing or a very good thing, and that all rather depended on who you asked.

Ask him, and it was a good thing. So, naturally, he was suspicious of this Christina (it was easier to think of her by that than Charlie) character who had invaded his best friends life. It was only natural - she was twenty four! For all intents and purposes, a child! And although you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at him, co-owning a successful chain of bars had made Bass fairly well off.

Okay, so she didn't exactly fit the stereotype of a gold digger - Connor's roommate, Nora's friend, genius computer geek - but Bass had mentioned she was on scholarship.

So Miles planned on meeting this girl, putting the fear of God in her, and if that scared her off... Well, then she didn't really deserve his brother, now did she?

oOo

Bass was... concerned, to put it mildly, about Miles' reaction to Charlie. Not because he didn't think he'd like her, oh no. There was no chance of that happening. A beautiful girl who could drink him under the table and still be coherent enough to make good company? Yeah, there was no doubt they'd get along famously.

It was just, well, Charlie really could be little Charlotte if she were a few years younger. Obviously, she wasn't, because Connor had definitely told him they'd met when he was eighteen, right after she'd graduated. And that was almost five years ago, so she was at least twenty three. But her blue eyes were almost the same color as Rachel's, and her waves were the dark gold you could get if you combined Miles' brown and Rachel's pale blonde. Not to mention the similarities between Charlotte Matheson and Christina Mathews, plus the shared nickname...

The truth was, though Miles was technically owned the Republic chain just as much as Bass, for the past five years he'd spent most of his time traveling the world, looking all over for his daughter, chasing down insubstantial lead after nonexistent lead. He had a habit of latching onto the barest piece of evidence and obsessing over it until it was finally - unenviablely - disproved, and he was left heartbroken. Again

And he would be heartbroken, because Charlie wasn't Charlotte.

There was just no way.

oOo

Charlie hadn't meant to find the necklace. Really, she hadn't. She was just looking for a book Bass mentioned he had. It was the next in a series she was reading, and Connor was busy texting his mystery boy, so she thought she'd look around for it.

Then she'd opened the bedside table drawer.

It was just there, a little green box with a white bow, and her name was on the tag. And she panicked, because she hadn't gotten him anything, and were they even at a gift giving stage, and oh God, it looked like a jewelry box and you only gave jewelry to someone you were in an actual, proper, real relationship with. A fling did not qualify as an actual, proper, real relationship.

So you see, she just had to look to make sure it wasn't jewelry, because that would mean he cared about her, which wouldn't be fair because he was this sweet, funny, smart, genuinely good guy who deserved better than her.

So Charlie undid the ribbon and pulled off the lid before she changed her mind. Then she promptly stopped caring that yes, it was in fact jewelry. A necklace, actually. On the end of a simple chain was a silver pendent shaped just like his tattoo. And all the old, blurry, half-forgotten memories came rushing back in perfect clarity.

"Does the M stand for Matheson, Daddy?" five year old Charlie asked, admiring the pretty silver necklace her father had placed around her neck in the mirror.

"And Monroe," he replied with a smile. Charlie frowned in confusion.

"Like Marilyn Monroe?"

Miles laughed. "How do you even know who that is? And no, not like Marilyn Monroe. Like my best friend, Sebastian Monroe. I'll have to introduce you to him sometime - I think you'll like each other a lot."

"Uncle Ben said she was an actress. Can we get pizza for dinner?"

Miles grinned down at her. "Anything for the birthday girl."

An overwhelming sense of horror filled Charlie as she stared down at the necklace almost identical to the one hidden away back at her apartment, at the back of her closet, inside a metal lunchbox that she hadn't opened in five years.

Well, fuck.

AN: Cliffhanger! I guess. As you can probably tell, the whole happy family Christmas won't be happening for a while. What will Charlie do now? Will Bass figure out her true identity? Will Miles recognize her? Who's Connor's secret crush? Coming soon!