Landon #2
I wonder if the times in which he gets to make a sassy comeback to his boyfriend are limited, and when the moment arrives, it pleases him. It sure looks like it.
Atticus stays calm and collected as he turns his attention to Cameron and says, “I’d watch yourself, sweetheart. Unless you want to dress yourself tomorrow.”
I’m sorry, but what? He dresses Cameron? Or does Atticus pick out what he wears? God, I will never understand these two.
Cameron blushes, dropping his gaze back to the cards before him. “I’m good.”
“Say, Landon, why don’t you help Julian bring up the snacks?” Atlas suddenly suggests, and my attention snaps to him.
“What? You want me to go down there? Alone?” I sound startled, if not a bit afraid.
And listen, I’m not afraid of the dark or anything. But I’m in a sling; how am I meant to help carry things? Plus, if I’m honest, wandering around this giant castle in the dark does sound difficult.
“You remember where the kitchen is, right?” Cameron asks me.
I’m about to respond with yes, of course I do, when I realize he’s totally outing me right now! As far as everyone but him and Nate knows, I was not at Atlas’s party.
“He showed it to you when you came over last time, right?” Atlas adds.
Oh. Right. I was given a tour—not the last time I was here—but they don’t know that. Well, Cameron does, but nobody else.
I release a relieved breath, nodding in acknowledgement. “Yes, I remember. I’ll… I’ll go help.”
It’s time to escape these prying eyes. Atlas is looking at me like an excitable child, and Cameron is watching me with weary, concerned eyes.
Atticus? Well, he’s not looking at me at all.
I can’t help but get the impression that I’m out of the loop. That there is a joke at play here, and I’m not in on it. But I’m self-conscious and finicky now, so it could very well be my own imagination.
The journey downstairs to the main foyer takes a bit longer than it should, but aside from the yellow lights flickering on the walls of the hallways, it’s so dark in here I swear I see shadows move.
I wonder where the Chastain parents are. Probably sleeping, right? It is night, after all.
My shoulder aches, a mild pain that’s enough to annoy me in quiet moments like these. The day this sling comes off is the day I can truly relax.
Pushing into the kitchen, I call out, “Julian? Need help carrying the snacks?”
But Julian isn’t here. In fact, there is only one person in the kitchen with me, and as his eyes lift from the cheese platter he’s arranging, I freeze.
Every ounce of my blood runs cold. My entire body begins to tremble at the sight of Nate, at the rush of memories that overcome me as soon as my eyes connect with the honey in his.
And you would think the memories would be those of torture, of that dumb council, or the face he made as coercion was ripped from my chest. But no. None of those things stay relevant as he stands up straighter, running his gaze over the length of my body.
Suddenly, I’m in a hotel room in California. I’m in a little cottage just up the road. His hands are everywhere, his mouth is tracing patterns over my throat as he says such awful, sweet things to me.
For one blissful, agonizing moment, I am in Nate’s arms again.
But then I do remember all of the bad moments, the ones in which I wanted death more than I wanted revenge. I’m tied to a metal chair as men I can’t truly see draw my blood from beneath my skin.
“Nate.” It leaves me as a punched-out whisper, a fearful acknowledgement.
I’m unsure why I’m calling out for him when I should be running. I should be racing right back up those stairs to demand answers from Julian. So, why am I still standing here?
And I guess the realization of what I should be doing is written all over my face, because Nate lifts his hands in surrender.
“Don’t run,” he says, and it’s not a request. It’s stern and authoritative, as if he still has the right to demand things from me.
“Why?” I sneer. “Afraid I’ll coerce you into making my tea again? Oh, wait, I can’t.”
Nate grimaces, as if the fact hurts him nearly as much as it hurts me. Which is ridiculous; that was his plan all along, wasn’t it?
“No, I just want to talk to you,” he says.
Talk to me? If he wanted to talk to me, he should have called anytime in the past week and a half. But no, instead, he hid out here in this lavish castle. Nate is so fucking good at pretending—pretending to care about me, pretending everything is fine.
“About what?” I demand. “Should we talk about the beatings I took or how happy you were to lie to my face? Oh! Maybe we should discuss how fucking amazing your cock felt, knowing that I was allowing you to plunge it into my body while you betrayed me.”
“Landon,” Nate hisses, and there’s so much anger and regret in his expression that I’m brought to the brink of being mute. “I know I fucked up. I know. But let me explain, let me make sense of this so that we can stop—”
“Hating each other?” I interrupt. “That’s not in the cards for us. The entirety of our time together was spent hating each other.”
“That’s not true,” he whispers, stepping around the island and into the open kitchen space. “You know that’s not true.”
“Because I let you in? Because I gave you my secrets?” As Nate stares at me, unresponsive, I continue. “When you said you didn’t hate me, when you said you wanted to help me, was that a lie, too?”
“No! That wasn’t… that was true.”
“Funny. I think every bruise I have is a testament against that.” I wave wearily to the sling I’m sporting.
And Nate looks, his eyes falling to the fabric cradling me. He looks sad. The sight seems to hurt him, and it makes me want to wear it forever.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he assures me.
“That’s a fucking lie.”
He eyes me for a moment, considering it, before he sighs. “Alright, fine. I did want to hurt you. But not in the end. At the end of everything, I wanted to protect you.”
“What, after you figured out I’m not a horrible person?”
“Yes,” he replies sternly. “Once I sorted out that you weren’t evil, I wanted to keep you from the council.”
“I’m so glad you finally decided I’m not a piece of shit, Nathaniel. I—”
“Don’t call me that!” he shouts, taking another step toward me. “You call me Nate. I’m Nate to you, Lanny.”
He sounds desperate now. Nate is looking at me so pleadingly that I almost don’t recognize him.
And I can say nothing, not in the face of his pain, and not in response to what he’s said. I’m spiraling now, balancing clumsily between loathing him and wanting him.
But how can I forgive what has happened? How do I get over that warehouse when I still wake up shaking from the memories?
“Explain it to me then,” I command, and it sounds so broken and just as desperate as he is.
Nate takes another step toward me, close enough to reach out and touch, as he says, “I’m not a nice guy.
You and I both know that I’m not kind or considerate.
I thought I could never trust again, that after what happened to me, I would never…
care again. But you, you proved me wrong.
And I may be mean and unsympathetic, but I’m not a monster. I’m not evil.”
“That’s great and all,” I mutter, “but this isn’t really an explanation.”
“Can you be patient for two seconds?” Nate snaps, and I’d grin if things were any less tense between us.
“What I’m trying to say is that I’m hardwired to see the worst in people.
I’m sorry that it took me so long to see the good in you, and that I couldn’t see how fucked up EP was before they got their hands on you. ”
“Why?”
“Why, what?” he asks, tilting his head in confusion.
“Why are you hardwired to see the worst in people? What actually happened to you?” I clarify.
If I can understand that, maybe I can understand this.
But Nate’s walls immediately lock themselves back into place, blocking me out. He gives me a hard, uncertain frown as his mouth snaps shut and he stands rigid.
“Alright,” I sigh. “Bye.”
“Can you just, fuck, can you just stop? For one second? God, you’re so annoying.” His hand comes down hard on the door, eliminating the small opening I had just made, as I feel the length of his body rub against my back.
I stare at the hardwood, my hand still wrapped around the doorknob as I take in unsteady, quick breaths. He’s so close, so near, that I want to scream.
My entire body is on high alert, anticipating his touch. Where his hand is planted, it forces his bicep to touch my cheek softly, almost as if he’s giving me a gentle caress.
After a long, agonizing moment of silence, Nate finally offers me an explanation.
“My family… they were bad people. Horrible people, even. And if you want to know all the gory, useless information, then I’ll tell you sometime.
I promise. But you have to understand that I thought I was doing what was best. I thought I was continuing my vow to stop people just like them. ”
“You thought I was horrible? Bad?” I already know the answer, so I don’t know why I’m torturing myself with the answer.
“Did you not assume the same of me?” he whispers.
Valid point. I believed a bunch of nasty things about Nate—some that I still stand behind without hesitation. I even conjured a plan to hurt him, just as he was planning to hurt me. The only difference is that my plan wasn’t meant to take a piece of him and destroy it.
Well, no piece other than his heart.
Nate must be reading my mind as I stand here in silence, because a moment later, his chin falls to rest on my shoulder and he says quietly into my ear, “I’m so sorry you lost it. I’m sorry they took it from you. I know it… I know it must hurt.”
The keyword in his apology is they. Because it wasn’t him, not really. By the time the council got to me, according to him, he no longer wanted to hurt me and take my gift away.
But he did lead the charge, at least in the beginning, and I find that it’ll take me a long, long time to forgive that.