Chapter 9 #2
Natalie grabbed a basket from the side of the couch that housed a bunch of yarn and needles or hooks—whatever you called them. Then she plucked out what appeared to be a half-finished stuffed animal, orange and fluffy-looking, putting it in her lap.
“Is that…your cat?”
A grin split across Natalie’s face. “Yes, and you don’t know how happy it makes me that you can actually tell what it is.” She laughed, lightening the mood. “It’s for Chloe. I like keeping my hands busy. I hope that’s okay while we talk.”
“It’s definitely okay,” I assured her. “It shouldn’t surprise me that a surgeon is good at knitting, but that’s impressively good, Natalie.”
I thought back to the brief glimpse of Chloe’s bedroom I got when I brought Natalie upstairs last night, remembering the pile of stuffed animals on her bed. Had Natalie made all of those? Where the hell did she find the time?
“Crocheting,” she corrected. Her eyes flicked from the bundle of yarn to my face. “And yeah, I’m…pretty okay with my hands.”
Fuck me. I had no doubt she was, but that was the last thing I needed to be thinking about right now.
“So.” I cleared my throat. “We went over a lot of the basics the other day in the office. But what we need to dive into is your schedule and how it impacts Chloe’s schedule. Because that’s a big part of what Korey is using to come at you.”
Natalie took a deep breath, absorbing that as I sat on the opposite end of the couch, putting as much distance between us as possible. If we were going to use her living room to do business, then I was going to pretend it was my office, and I wouldn’t dare get close to her in my office.
It was really hard to imagine this was my office, though.
Being in Natalie’s home felt like she was wrapping herself all around me.
She was in the warmth of the fireplace, where I imagined flames would crackle on a cold night.
There were piles of medical manuals stacked on the mantle above it, sitting alongside a burning candle that smelled like…
her: notes of vanilla and something even sweeter.
She was so sweet.
And so off-limits.
Behind her, streetlamps streamed in through big bay windows, illuminating her graceful silhouette.
“My schedule isn’t very consistent,” she said, sounding regretful.
I nodded. This wasn’t news to me.
“Korey’s lawyer is going to ask you who is taking care of Chloe while you are at work and how often it happens. And he’ll probably probe into the specifics.”
Natalie wrapped her cardigan around her tighter, and it physically pained me not to be able to reach out and touch her, even in just a friendly, reassuring way.
This was an office. We were in an office.
“It’s really just Blake and Noah.”
“You’ll want to have a specific number of days that she’s spent with them, oh, in the last month or few months. He’ll probably also ask what their careers are,” I added, “and then point out that they also work in high-demand settings.”
Natalie bristled a little, and honestly, I preferred that to her feeling like she was losing hope. I liked seeing the fight in her.
“Noah has months every year where his job is low demand. It’s called an off-season for a reason.” She flicked her eyes up in irritation before returning her attention to her hands, and I smiled to myself.
“I thought Noah has historically spent his off-season partying, spending time with women, and ending up in the tabloids?” I countered.
Natalie narrowed her eyes at me.
“I’m only doing what they might,” I said under my breath.
She pushed her shoulders back.
“Noah has never been as much of a partier as the media likes to make him seem. He’s also in a committed relationship now and has a daughter of his own.”
“If he has a daughter of his own, doesn’t that limit the time that he can spend taking care of your daughter when you’re at work?”
A muscle in Natalie’s jaw jumped.
“That’s why Blake has been helping me. And while he might be a doctor, too, his position is very different from mine.
He mostly works normal business hours, and his schedule is much more predictable.
If Korey were to co-parent with me—” She made a face of disgust. “—then he’d be far less available than my brothers.
Unless he’s made changes to his work schedule that I don’t know about. ”
“Korey’s shortcomings are for me to worry about, Natalie. I’ll be sure to find out his work schedule when I go to depose him so it’s very apparent to the judge.”
She looked at me with interest. “You’re going to interview him?”
“We arranged a time next week for his deposition. A few days after yours.”
“You’re not going to go easy on him, are you?”
I shook my head with a low chuckle and then met her gaze, needing her to know how fucking seriously I took this.
“Sunny, I know I seem like a nice guy. But when it comes to my job, I am not the man people want to see walk in the room. I’m probably the last opposing counsel they want to run into.”
Natalie’s eyes blazed, just a tad, at my confidence. I thought for a second I might be seeing things, but then she breathed, “I almost wish I could see that.” She shook her head, interrupting our heated eye contact. “But I also want to be as far away from Korey as possible, at literally all times.”
“Natalie…” I started, hating how anxious I was to ask this question. “Did he ever do anything to harm you or Chloe?”
She pressed her lips together, and the fact that she didn’t have an automatic answer made my stomach drop. It was going to take everything in me not to fucking kill this guy the minute I walked into the same room as him.
“Physically?” She dropped her eyes to her cardigan, picking at a fuzz on it before turning her attention back to her crocheting. “No, he didn’t. But he…”
I could barely breathe, waiting for her to go on. But at the same time, I knew I couldn’t push her.
“We don’t have to talk about it, not if you don’t want to.”
“No. I’m just…I’m trying to get better at naming it for what it was.
It still feels…I don’t know. Even when I was leaving him, I didn’t see it entirely for what it was.
Like I said before, the cheating had been the catalyst for me, and it wasn’t until after, until the fog was lifted and I finally began to process everything, that I began to fully realize…
” She straightened her shoulders, lifted her head.
“I was emotionally abused by Korey Abrams for almost a decade. And Chloe was undoubtedly impacted by that.”
God, I admired her strength.
But I hated that she needed to carry it day in and day out…because of him.
I hated him.
My jaw clenched, but somehow, I kept my voice gentle. “Do you mind explaining how?”
Natalie returned to inspecting the yarn in her hands.
“Early in our relationship, he started cutting me off from my family. Because of medical school, I didn’t have a lot of free time, so if I wanted to use it to travel back home, he would make me feel guilty. At the time, I thought it was valid. Of course I should prioritize spending time with him.”
I nodded along, wanting to be supportive.
Natalie’s hands moved while she spoke, looping yarn, twisting it, pulling it, arranging it in perfect rows.
I stared in awe at her dexterity, at how little she seemed to be thinking about what she was doing, all her focus on her words.
Which was where my focus should be, too.
“My parents tried to come visit me instead, but he’d come up with excuses about why they shouldn’t, why it wasn’t a good time.
And then it wasn’t just trips or travel but any sort of plans.
He always needed to know what I was doing, and if I didn’t tell him, he’d make me feel awful, like I was purposefully excluding him, like I was being deceitful.
He started tracking my location, obsessing over it.
I couldn’t even run an errand after work without being questioned.
So at a certain point, I just stopped…making plans.
I didn’t see other people. I didn’t talk to other people.
I didn’t do anything. And, of course, it was then, when I felt entirely alone, that he started cheating on me.
He’d come home from work later and later.
Sometimes never at all. That was usually better because when he did come home, he was…
” She drifted off, her voice growing small. “Awful.”
“Natalie,” I rasped when it seemed like she was done talking. And then all I could think of to say was, “I’m so sorry.”
She just shrugged, like she’d gotten over it. But I was sure that wasn’t the case. Surviving years of that kind of emotional whiplash wasn’t something that disappeared from your reality so quickly.
“Thank you for telling me,” I said softly. “I know it’s probably not easy to recount some of these things.”
“Yeah,” Natalie breathed, acknowledging the truth of my words. “It’s not, but it’s gotten better. My therapist has encouraged me to speak about it. And to not downplay what he did, even though that’s still my instinct to do. All the things I used to say weren’t a big deal…were. They are.”
“They are,” I agreed. “I know recognizing that must be hard, but none of what you described is okay, Natalie. I know you don’t need me to tell you that, but I have to say it anyway.
The way he treated you is despicable. And I’m so glad therapy has helped you process it.
” I hesitated but then decided to admit, “It’s not the same, but therapy has helped me, too. After my dad’s death.”
Natalie swallowed hard, looking up. “Do you still go?”
“It’s been a while,” I acknowledged. “But I try to do check-ins when I need it.”
She nodded, dropping her gaze to the yarn again.
“It’s been good for me. I don’t know if I would have made it through the divorce and the first custody battle without it.
Leaving was easy compared to the months that followed, when it seemed like Korey wasn’t going to let me go.
Let us go. For a while, I was…scared.” She pursed her lips together.
“And lonely. My family rallied, of course, but no one really understood. My parents divorced not too long ago, but it was amicable. They still love each other, in their own way. Their experience was nothing like mine. But it’s gotten a lot better.
It keeps getting easier. Though, sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be rid of Korey completely. ”
God, I fucking hoped so. The good news was that Korey was moving; yes, he was using that as a part of his custody claim, but I was using it as hope that he’d move out of their lives for good. We just had to win this thing.
“How did the two of you meet?” I asked, wondering how she’d ended up with such a manipulative ass to begin with. “You and Korey?”
“It was…” She heaved a sigh and then looked at me out of the corner of her eye. That look meant something, but I didn’t understand what. Not until she kept talking. “It was a one-night stand. That, well, obviously became more than one night.”
Her words seeped into my brain, slotting into place.
“That was what you meant yesterday. When you said it happened too fast.”
Natalie nodded. “Our relationship started in a whirlwind that I’d thought was romantic and hot and fun.
But it was really just Korey sinking hooks into me and dragging me down as fast as he could, making it impossible to climb my way back to the surface again for a long time.
” She glanced at me again, a little uncertain, a little shy.
“When things started to feel…good the night I met you, it scared me. The last time something felt that good that fast, it had all been a lie. It snowballed into something out of control. And right now, I just want things to be in control.”
I tried hard not to focus on the part of her admission where she talked about how good things felt between us and more on the part where she said it wasn’t the time for it. Especially because I understood why she felt that way, given what she’d just told me.
“I get it, Natalie.”
She dropped her head against the couch cushion with a groan and then muttered, “It’s too bad, though.”
She said it so softly, I wondered if I wasn’t supposed to hear. But I couldn’t help but ask. I needed to know.
“What is?”
Natalie didn’t move her head, but her eyes flicked up to mine.
She examined me from beneath her lashes, her gaze roaming my face, a lazy appreciation, a want that was barely concealed.
Her breathing seemed to quicken, or maybe I was suddenly just that much more attuned to it, and then her lips parted.
I tried not to look at them, but it was too hard.
So I watched her mouth form the words “Nothing, Cameron.”
Fuck, did I like her saying my name. I liked it so much that I wanted to get her to keep saying my name. And I wanted the word nothing to not have a single thing to do with it.
She knew it wasn’t nothing. And I knew it wasn’t nothing.
It was something, definitely something.
But we were both going to pretend it didn’t exist.
“How long did you say this whole process would take?” Natalie asked after a long beat of silence.
She didn’t need to clarify what she meant.
“I didn’t.”
Didn’t really want to think about it, if I were honest.
“How long, Cameron?”
“It depends. Months, likely. Sometimes custody battles can stretch for a year, but I don’t think that’ll be the case here.”
“Months,” she mouthed, repeating it to herself.
Months, I reminded myself.
I had months yet to survive.
And it wasn’t going to be easy.