25. TWENTY FIVE
TWENTY FIVE
Natalia
Miguel’s face is just as handsome as I remember. His square jaw and strong nose always made me feel like he was so safe and steady. So reliable.
Ha!
Now he looks smaller than I remember, though.
It’s funny how seeing him now doesn’t make my heart race the way it always did. In fact, as the video starts and he begins talking, I reflect on how little I do feel. I’m not even upset or angry like I expected to be.
I’m just nothing.
He looks harried. The reporter must have caught him on his way home from work. “Look, I don’t know anything about any new relationship. I haven’t spoken to Natalia.”
“Then you weren’t engaged? You weren’t living together? Are you telling me it wasn’t your wedding day on April twenty-ninth?”
The tic in his jaw is the only indication that the reporter’s question even bothers him at all. He sighs. “That’s complicated, and it’s also none of your business.”
The video cuts off, but the article goes on to comment on how bad it looks. As if Miguel and I are in some kind of plot together to scam Colton.
I look around at Colton, my heart sinking at the worried expression on his face. “I’m sorry. I never meant for my past to cause you problems.”
Colton’s big hand covers mine and he squeezes. “Your problems are my problems. I just don’t want you to get hurt here. It can be a lot being in the spotlight and you never signed up for that.”
I stare at his phone screen for another moment before I look up at him. “You know what? I’m fine. I can handle this. But I should probably call him and clear the air.”
“Of course.”
There’s a pause. Colton still seems tense.
After a while he speaks again. “There’s something else. Something I don’t want you to agree to unless you’re comfortable.”
“OK.”
“The team would like to do a photo shoot with you, me, and Jayden. To announce you as my mate.” He makes an apologetic face.
I swallow. “That’s very soon.”
“I know. I told them—”
“But I’m in.”
He blinks. “You are?”
I look into his eyes, remembering what I’ve seen of him the last few days.
The guy who never once let me down when I needed him.
The way he commits himself to everything he does, to being a dad, to his team, even when things are going badly.
“I’ve been thinking, I know the timing is crazy, but maybe that’s just how it is.
I’m not sure anymore why I’m letting that be the thing that holds me back when you keep proving yourself at every chance you’re given.
I think I’m worried that I’ll let you down or I won’t be what you want. ”
He shakes his head emphatically, reaching out to grasp my shoulders with large gentle hands, still fixing me with that rich brown gaze. “You are exactly what I want. You don’t have anything to worry about. I’m the luckiest bull in history that you’re even considering it.”
I laugh. “Don’t be stupid. I’m lucky. I’m lucky to have found you. I think Mosswood was where I was supposed to be all along.”
We finish dinner and take Jayden home to put him to bed. It feels nice to have the three of us together again. Which makes me wonder when I started to think about the three of us as a unit. I can’t put my finger on exactly when. Maybe it happened so fast I never noticed.
All I know is it feels right to stand beside Colton, looking down at Jayden spread out in his crib with his arms flung up beside his head and his face relaxed in sleep.
I debate with myself about how to handle the phone call to Miguel.
On the one hand, I feel nervous about how he’ll react.
We haven’t spoken, which feels so strange.
He was once such a huge part of my life, but it felt like having a cancer cut out—a sudden removal that was both traumatic and permanent but also let me live again.
Having him out of my life made me realize how much we had both already given up on our relationship long before the doomed wedding.
In the end, I stay in the room with Colton while he looks through old game videos. I know if he was on the phone with an ex I would be wondering, especially with everything between us still being so new. I want him to feel he can have faith in me.
After five rings, when Miguel still hasn’t answered, I wonder if perhaps he’ll ignore these calls the way he ignored all my other attempts at contact. But after another two, there’s a click and a pause.
“Hi, Natalia.”
I have to fight to keep my tone calm at the ice in his. It’s been a long time since he called me by my Christian name. “Hi, Miguel. Thanks for picking up. I wasn’t sure if you would.”
He sighs. “Yeah. Listen. Before you say anything else, I want to start by saying how sorry I am. Honestly. I never meant to leave it so late to tell you.”
“Why did you?” Colton looks up as my voice grows shrill, and I take a breath to regulate myself. “Why did you?”
“I don’t really have an excuse. I guess it was harder than I thought. I know how much the wedding meant to you.”
I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, but the back of my throat is hot and tight. “Wasn’t it important to you? Wasn’t I important?”
“Of course. I just—” He breaks off, and I can’t bear to make him say it.
“You want kids.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a long pause. I didn’t call intending to argue with him, but anger rises anyway. “You know we could have tried. We didn’t even try.”
“I don’t have the energy for all that. I work hard. I just want my home life to be easy. With you it wouldn’t have been easy.”
“Really, Miguel? Really?” I have to pull the phone away from my ear for a moment to curse under my breath. “I’m not worth some effort? Ay, if that’s what you think, then maybe we are better off forgetting about it. I mean, we are. I know we are, but really?”
Colton’s weight sinks onto the couch cushion beside me, and his arm around my shoulders feels like being wrapped in five fluffy blankets.
I sigh. “Listen, forget about that now. It doesn’t matter. That’s not what I called for.”
“Are you OK, Natalia? I’ve had reporters following me, asking strange questions.”
I bristle. “Well I’m sorry you had to put up with that. It must have been hard.” I spit the last word, and at least he has the grace not to react.
Colton squeezes me, and I force myself to stay calm. “Anyway, I called to tell you that I’m actually with someone new. It’s early days, but I wanted to tell you so you don’t wonder because I thought somehow that I owed you that.” I’m about to say more.
Miguel makes a noise of relief, though, and that stops me. “So it’s true? That’s great.”
“You’re happy?”
“Sure. I never wanted you to be hurt, Natalia. I’m actually with someone new myself.”
I blink. Bile rises in my throat. I don’t want to be upset by that. After all, why shouldn’t he be if I am? But somehow that feels like the last straw.
I burst from Colton’s arms and storm across the room, tugging the window open to take a gulp of fresh cool air. “Ugh! You disgust me. You’re really going to sit here and say you didn’t want to hurt me? You sure moved on fast enough.”
“Natalia, don’t you think that’s a bit of a double standard?”
I throw up my hands. “Yeah. You know what? Maybe there is a double standard here, because I’m not the one that left you standing there at the altar, Miguel. On our wedding day. Forget it. Forget you. I’m going to hang up now. Don’t bother calling me again.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Natalia. Have you called your mother? She’s worried about you?”
“Ugh! Don’t talk to my mother! How dare you sit here and say to call my mother like you have any right. Goodbye, Miguel. Have a nice life.” I hang up and toss the phone out of my hands like it’s covered in acid.
When I look, Colton is watching me from his position on the sofa. He hasn’t moved.
Now he opens his arms to me. “Come here.”
I don’t even argue. I go to him, the room a blur of tears.
He wraps me up and pets my hair and lets me cry into his chest.
“I’m so angry!”
He strokes my back. “I know. Keep being angry. You deserve to be angry.”
“But aren’t I doing the same thing?”
He chuckles. “Doesn’t matter. Like you said, it wasn’t you that left him like that. You would never.”
“I wouldn’t!”
He kisses the top of my head. “His loss.” He starts up that deep rumbly sound in his chest I remember from when I was in heat, and it instantly loosens my muscles and releases the tight feeling in my throat.
“What is that?”
“My purr? Something alphas can do to help an omega in distress.”
I let him hold me for a while until the bitterness has drained away. Then I sigh. “There’s so much I don’t know. So much I have to learn. What if I’m not really an omega?” The chill from the cool air coming through the open window makes me shiver.
He just laughs softly. “Oh, trust me. You are.”
“OK, but what if I’m not a shifter?”
He shrugs. “You are who you are. I love that woman.”
I blink. “Love? Just like that.”
“Just like that. It’s not complicated. That’s how I feel. It’s OK if it’s too soon for you to say it back. I understand. It wasn’t meant to be pressure.”
I want to say it back. The words feel like they are ready to explode from me, burning a trail up my throat in reverse until containing them feels like I’ve eaten too many bowls of Mami’s chilate de pollo.
If there could be any clearer sign of how different Colton is to Miguel, this is it.
He thinks it’s simple and easy to love me.
He’s not worried that life with me as his mate would be too hard for him.
Fear holds me back, though. Fear that I’m wrong about what I’m feeling, or wrong about him. I’ve known him for such a short time. It’s wild how strong my feelings are and how quickly they arrived. But the thing that scares me most is hurting him.
What if I say the words and then something changes? I won’t do to Colton what Miguel did to me.
No way!
So I keep silent though my heart yearns to tell him I love him back. I let him hold me and soothe me, and I try to put the phone call with Miguel out of my head.