CHAPTER FORTY “Poison & Wine”
CHAPTER FORTY
“Poison & Wine”
The Civil Wars
I walked through our condo door, both relieved and terrified to see Nate’s Tahoe in the drive. He left me at the club, and I had no idea what he saw, but I knew I was headed into a second living hell. I noted the eerie quiet of the house. And then I heard his voice. Reid’s voice.
Pulse racing, I walked into the living room to see the interview I’d done with the Sergeants months ago playing on Nate’s laptop on the coffee table. He was hunched over in front of it and turned the volume up when I directed some questions to Reid.
“For the most part, you’ve stayed tight-lipped about your personal life. Is there anything you want your fans to know?”
Reid looked directly at me. “I like to keep my private life, private.”
I could see my fake smile on the screen from the edge of the living room.
“You do realize that makes you more of a mystery, and some women find that appealing.”
“I don’t think about it, or the attention,” he said, blowing out smoke, his eyes intent on mine. He was so obvious.
“Any addictions, skeletons, Reid Crowne?”
“I kicked all my bad habits a few years ago. I still dance with my skeletons and tuck them in bed at night. They don’t talk much,” he said with a straight face.
I remembered sitting in that room, tension swirling in the air between us. As an afterthought, Reid pulled on his cigarette. “Addictions are dangerous,” he said pointedly, his eyes covering me in want. “I know what’s good for me.”
Nate paused the interview and sat back, his head in his hands, rubbing furiously.
“I always wondered why you didn’t air that podcast. I’m such a fucking idiot. I pushed you right into him, didn’t I?
“No,” I choked out.
“I was so intent on the story, I didn’t read between the lines. You were scared that day. You didn’t want to do it, and I pushed you. I fed you to him.”
“Nate.”
His eyes met mine. They were bloodshot. He’d been drinking. “You let go of my hand. The minute he started to sing, you let go of my hand.” I felt the rip in his heart. The betrayal.
“I’m sorry. Nate, please believe I didn’t realize I would react like that. I love you.”
“Give it up, Stella! He knows you love him. Fuck, I feel sick,” he said as he paled. “He’s a goddamn rock star and you didn’t think to tell me anything?”
“He wasn’t when I met him.”
“God, it just dawned on me. He’s the waiter. Isn’t he? The one with the broken arm. You were with Reid fucking Crowne before me. It was him.” His voice was filled with dread.
I nodded slowly.
He stood and walked over to me. “So, did you go with him tonight? Is it my turn now?” His eyes glittered with anger and disgust. “No thanks.” He pushed past me to our bedroom.
“Nate, please don’t do this.”
He whirled on me in the hallway. “I saw it. I saw you! You love him! You fucking love him!”
I felt my heart sink. “I love you.”
“I know,” he snapped as he turned toward the bedroom. “I know, Stella.”
He grabbed a suitcase from the closet and flashed a look my way. “Did you fuck him?”
“No. I kissed him. I got swept up in the moment, and there’s no excuse, so I won’t give you one. I can’t explain it.” Desperation leaked out of me as I watched him pack. “Don’t leave.”
The anger in his eyes told me I didn’t have a chance in hell of winning this fight. I crumbled then, and he caught me. “Stella, stop it. You can’t get upset like that.”
“Fuck it,” I said with conviction. “If you leave, I’ll be ruined anyway,” I said, my heart bared. “I said yes because I wanted to marry you, Nate. You are acting like I slept with him, like I had some sort of affair.”
“It’s the same damn thing if you’re in love with him!”
I knew he was right. I knew he was, but it didn’t stop me from fighting.
“Nate, we barely started, Reid and I, and we ended so long ago.”
“Lies. You’re not a liar, Stella! I deserve you! Where has this greedy fuck been? Where is he now? Waiting for you on a jet? Damn you both.” He jerked some clothes from our closet and began packing.
I had no right to argue, but the half of me that belonged to Nate Butler was not going down without a fight. “Never in all our time together did you not feel me with you, Nate Butler. You can accuse me of a lot right now, but not of being absent! You were the one who was absent!”
He stopped packing his bag and shook his head slowly. “You don’t fucking get to throw that in now when it’s convenient.”
“It never was convenient, was it?”
“Oh, that’s some fucked logic, Stella!”
I shrugged. “It didn’t matter. And do you know why? I wanted us. I would never have taken this ring if I didn’t think I would be happy as your wife and could make you happy.”
“Stella,” he said, his voice cracking as his eyes swam. “I saw it. I will never be able to erase that image from my head. Ever.”
He picked up a picture of us—a shot of us the night we got engaged, the night he got down on both knees and asked me for forever—and smashed it into the wall behind me.
“Nate.” I cringed at his outburst. He was seething.
He paced in front of me, his eyes blue fire.
“Tell me everything. Right now, Stella.”
“He was my first love. It just stunned me. That’s all.”
“You aren’t going to lie your way out of this. I want the truth. Right now. I deserve it.”
“I don’t even know him anymore,” I said, but even that felt wrong. I was defenseless after an ambush. I never felt like I wouldn’t be happy where I was. Nate was enough, that’s what my heart told me, and I believed it.
Reid was the goddamn grenade.
“Well, he knows you. That whole set was for you! Admit it,” he said, taking a dangerous step toward me. “Stella,” he snapped, as my eyes begged him to let it go. He lifted his chin, ready for the blow, and I delivered.
“I love you both,” I cried as he towered over me. “And he was never supposed to come back for me.”
“But he did,” he said as angry tears fell down his cheeks.
I would never forgive myself for hurting him.
“After the interview, he showed up to Paige’s wedding and told me he wanted me back. I told him I was with you, that I was happy.”
“And you came home and fucked me,” he scoffed.
“And the day after that and the day after. I’ve made myself clear to you both!” I pulled his suitcase off the bed and threw it on the floor. “It’s your ring that I’m wearing, your name that I’m taking.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“No?” I said, walking toward him as my world stopped for the second time that night.
“Maybe you choose me now, at this moment, but regret that decision later, resent me. You already told me months ago you wanted more. And I’m not going to walk around like a fucking zombie waiting for my wife to leave me!”
He pulled my arms away from him, and I sank onto our bed as the gravity of losing him hit repeatedly.
“Nate, you mean so much to me. You’re my best friend. I love you,” I croaked. “Please don’t go.”
Nate stood with his heart cracking, his eyes full of emotion. I’d never seen him so distraught, so ruined.
“I deserved to know the truth,” he said, pulling me to stand.
It was there, between us, all the adoration, the years of knowing each other so intimately, and so much unfinished love to be made.
I gripped him tight and pressed my mouth to his, fighting, begging for him to kiss me back.
His lips bruised me as he fought back, his tongue dueling with mine.
I whimpered in his hold until he shook me away.
“No, Stella. Last night, it was honest between you and me. Tonight, it would be a lie. Don’t touch me. I’m crazy jealous right now in a way that scares me.” His eyes flicked to mine. “I want to hurt you both.”
I gasped as he pushed past me, leaving his clothes, our life, me. Emotions ruled me that moment as I begged him to forgive me, begged him to stay with me, begged for him without right, because I did let go of his hand, and he wasn’t the only man I loved.
I wouldn’t forgive me, either.
“Take your time, but take everything,” he said coldly. “I love you,” he whispered as more tears fell before he walked out on me.
He shut the door on us, and I slapped it with my palms and then hit the floor.
“Wow,” Lexi said with wide eyes as she surveyed the broken glass in my bedroom. “Who would have thought Nate had it in him.” Lexi had shown up minutes after Nate left. He’d called her because he was worried I would have another episode.
Nate.
There was no going back. He’d never looked at me like that. Everything about what happened between us looped in my head and out of my mouth as I told Lexi the story.
“This is some serious soap opera shit right here.” She pulled a joint from her purse pocket and lit it.
“This is what you say to me?” I glared at her.
She had grown her hair long and was working harder than ever.
In her sweater dress, she was practically glowing in her success.
It was hard to get Lexi down these days.
Such a different woman than the one who lived in the dark a year ago.
I envied her. She walked around the glass in her knee-high boots and bounced over it, holding the weed out to me.
“I’m sorry, Stella,” she said, blowing smoke out and gesturing to me with the joint.
I shook my head. “You know I don’t smoke.”
“No, you stroke,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“If you’re just going to laugh at me, you can get the hell out,” I ordered. She slowly sat down next to me against the headboard and pulled my head to rest in her arm.
“Take it, Stella. You know Nate will be back. He loves you more than anything.”
“No, Lexi, he won’t. This isn’t some argument over petty shit. You didn’t see him. He’s done. I felt it,” I said, pushing the endless tears away from my eyes. “God, I fucked up.”
She looked at me with solemn eyes. “What about Reid?”