Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
SAVANNA
“I am uncomfortably full,” I say, sagging back in my seat, resting a hand over my belly. “Why was that so good? I couldn’t stop eating any of it.”
We’ve just finished eating at a hole in the wall taqueria Nate insisted I didn’t judge until I’d tried. I know from personal experience back home that some of the best things come out of these kinds of places, so I didn’t judge it at all.
The food was phenomenal. Even now, being as full as I am, I’m a little sad it’s all gone. Though, if they brought out more churros, I don’t think I’d be able to resist. They were melt in your mouth to die for.
“Best place in Santa Rosé for Mexican. Don’t bother with anything else because it’ll never be as good,” Nate says, nodding over his glass of water.
I believe it. This has been the perfect end to a perfect day.
Not that it’s over yet, but I can’t imagine he has anything else planned for us besides going home and crawling into bed. If it’s anything like last night, sleep will be elusive. Even if we could both use it.
“I’m going to run to the restroom,” I tell him, sliding out of the booth. He gives me a nod, and as I’m walking away, I can feel his eyes on my ass, which makes me giggle. If the restaurant wasn’t so crowded, I might have given it a little shake.
I feel giddy. I don’t know the last time I felt this way. Maybe never. I know for certain I didn’t feel like this with Preston, and I definitely didn’t feel this airy and happy with Vincent, even when we first started dating. I’m floating on air. Finally I understand what people mean when they say someone is on cloud nine.
Nate makes me feel free. I think that’s the best way to describe it. He doesn’t want to tie me down and keep me there, he wants me to fly on my own, and be there to support me. I know it’s only been one date, and only a week that I’ve known him, but something deep inside of me tells me this is who Nate is.
I’m washing my hands when a woman with fiery red hair twisted up in a bun comes in to use the facilities, but stops just behind me, catching my eye in the mirror. “Aren’t you that girl?”
“I’m sorry?” I reply, my eyebrows lifting high in surprise as unease pools in my stomach.
“The woman from the fire. The one that was in her underwear.”
“Oh.” The knot in my belly loosens its grip, but doesn’t vanish completely for reasons I can’t explain. Embarrassment for losing my cool in my underwear that night? Or maybe I’m just feeling sympathy towards this woman if she was also affected by the fire. “Do you live there too? Was your place okay?”
“No, no,” she says, waving a hand with a small laugh that quickly disappears when she realizes how apathetic she sounds. “Sorry. I don’t mean to sound rude. If what you said to that guy is true, you went through some horrible shit. I’m glad you lived.”
I flick my wet hands in the sink, blinking at her in confusion. Turning to grab some paper towel from the dispenser, I look over to find her watching me curiously. “Thanks. I’m glad too. Were you there?”
Her head jerks back in surprise. It’s her turn to look confused. “God no. I didn’t need to be.”
The same foreboding feeling I used to get when something was going to happen between Vincent and me is rearing its ugly head. I can never tell if it turns my blood to ice, or if it feels so hot that the rest of me feels cold, but I know it’s the worst feeling I’ve ever felt.
The instinct to run grows stronger by the second, and my pulse quickens as my heart gallops in my chest. “If I sound obtuse I apologize, but what exactly do you mean? How could you know what I said if you weren’t there?”
The woman looks dumbfounded as she stares at me. “Girl, you’re viral. Do you live under a rock? How do you not know this?”
“Vi-viral?”
I’m going to need to sit down. Dizziness makes my head swim, the room moving in circles. This woman must be mistaken. I cannot be viral. What happened at the fire scene cannot be viral. Grabbing onto the counter, I lean against it, trying to force the room to stop spinning.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“How viral?
“I’m not sure,” she says, now sounding a little worried. I wonder if she’s second guessing talking to me. “I saw it on the news first, but then it came across all my feeds, and I’ve seen it a few times, so…”
“Does that seem like a lot?” I cringe at the sound of my own voice. It sounds winded, hoarse. Unfamiliar to me.
I’ve completely ditched social media since leaving Colorado. My profiles still exist, but they’ve all been blocked on my phone. I’ve made sure to avoid it since I left. I didn’t want Vincent to have any way of tracking me. It might have been a little extreme, but I thought it was better to play it safe than be sorry.
“Well, I mean, yeah? But maybe it’s because it happened in Santa Rosé that it kept showing up for me. It might not be that viral,” she says, trying to placate me.
Nodding my head, I push off the counter. I need to get out of here. The walls are closing in and it’s getting harder to breathe. There’s a crushing pressure in my chest, like someone is sitting on it, refusing to allow oxygen into my lungs. I need the feeling gone, but I don’t know how to get rid of it. All I can think of is to get outside. Maybe fresh air will help.
There’s a small tunnel of light from the bathroom to the door of the restaurant. It’s a beacon of hope and I race for it, seeing nothing but the door. Pushing it open, I step into the warm evening, gasping for air as the sound of pumping blood thunders in my ears.
The outside air doesn’t help. In fact, I think it feels more suffocating than the air in the bathroom. It’s stifling and hot. So hot it may choke me. My throat closes with each breath I take.
When something grabs my wrist, I scream bloody murder. Spinning around, I go to hit whatever it is, but the world sways, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to hit the ground. Something stops me before I can.
It’s the weirdest sensation. A second ago, there was nothing, but now I hear cars on the road, and Nate’s voice trying to get me to respond to him. The tunnel of light has opened to Nate’s handsome face hovering over me, concern etched into every hard line in his skin and rooted deep into his brilliant blue eyes.
I hope if we ever have kids, they get his eyes. Where that thought comes from, I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’m completely coherent at the moment.
“Breathe, Sav. Deeper breaths, babe. In, one, two, three, four. Out, four, three, two, one,” he says, soft but urgent, and I swear there’s fear in his voice.
That’s not like him. He’s always calm, cool, and collected. Except when he’s asking me out, which is so adorable it makes me melt.
“That’s it,” he nods his approval. Then he repeats as slowly as the first time, “In, one, two, three, four. Out, four, three, two, one.”
Oh, he’s good. I didn’t even realize I was following his breaths, but the weight on my chest is easing, making breathing a lot easier.
Feeling better is a double edged sword, though. It’s making me realize the gravity of what I just learned, which I think my subconscious comprehended the second that woman told me I was viral. If she’s right and there’s a video of me screaming at my landlord in my underwear, and it’s gone viral, I’m a sitting duck for Vincent to find.
“Thanks,” Nate says to someone out of my viewing range, then looks back to me, bringing the back of his hand to my forehead, then my cheek. “You back with me?”
My face flushes with embarrassment, but I nod. He’s got me propped up from the sidewalk with an arm behind my neck, but it can’t be comfortable for him. I push to sit up, ignoring him when he tries to get me to lay back. As I come to a sitting position, I wish I hadn’t as I see the crowd of people gathered around us, my face heating with further mortification.
Nate must sense my discomfort. “Thanks for the concern everyone, but I think she’s okay.”
He waits a beat or two as people disperse, then I feel his fingers at my neck, and I glance at him, wondering what he’s doing. It takes a moment to realize he’s checking my pulse, his eyes glued to his watch, lips moving without making a sound.
“Am I gonna live?” I ask when he finishes.
His lips quirk, but I see the worry still written deep in his eyes. “It was touch and go for a second, but I think so.” There’s a hint of humor in his words, but it mostly falls flat. “Take a drink and then we’ll see if we can get you to the truck.”
He hands me a glass of water from the taqueria, and I sip at it before drinking it down like I’m totally parched. When I’m done, I hand the glass back to him.
Watching me like a hawk, he nods again in approval. “Good, but don’t you dare think I’ll let you back in that restroom if you have to pee now.”
I try to laugh at his second attempt at humor, but I don’t have it in me. “Do you have social media?”
Nate frowns, setting the glass down on the sidewalk beside us. “Sure, not that I use it. But I’m more concerned about you than social media right now. You want to tell me what happened while we’re sitting here, or you want to go to the truck and tell me?”
I ignore his question. “I need to see something. Is it on your phone?”
His frown deepens. His concerns aren’t the same as mine, but when he realizes I’m not going to budge on this, he reluctantly pulls his phone out of his pocket. After bringing up an account, he hands me the device. “You gonna tell me what this is all about?”
I ignore him again, scrolling through his feed. It takes me all of three seconds to find what I’m looking for, the color draining from my face. “Fuck.”
“What?” The worry in his voice ratchets up a couple notches.
Swallowing around the lump that’s forming in my throat, I turn the phone around so we can both watch the video.
There I am, screaming at my landlord, the camera zooming in on me in my underwear. The camera person lingers on me for a moment before zooming back out. That’s when Nate shows up in all his gear, wrapping his arms around me to pull me away before I commit murder. Saving me from myself.
“Okay,” he says carefully, but I can hear the relief in his voice. I wish I felt any of it, but my inside fear slinks into every nook and cranny, filling me with icy cold. “It could be worse. I get that it’s embarrassing you were in your underwear, and while I’m not overly keen on the fact people have seen you in it, it’s no worse than a bathing suit. It probably covers more than some bathing suits out there.”
I wish this was because I was in my underwear. I wish my underwear was the biggest worry.
Nate looks up from the phone to me, confusion in his expression. “You ran out of the bathroom like the place was on fire, Sav. Why?”
My voice shakes as I answer, “Look how many people have seen it, Nate.”
He glances down at his phone, doing a double take, his eyes bouncing between his phone and me a few times before he runs a hand through his hair. “Is that five hundred thousand? Like half a million? Jesus. That’s…”
“Really bad. And not because of the underwear.” Sighing, I give him his phone back and go to stand, but I’m feeling a little wobbly still. When I sway, Nate’s there to grab me around the waist.
“Easy. Go slow.”
Pulling me into his side, he supports a lot of my weight as we walk back to the truck. I think I could probably walk on my own, but I have a feeling he wouldn’t allow me to, so I don’t bother fighting him on it. Besides, it feels nice to be pressed against his body. When I’m here, with his warmth seeping into me, I don’t feel like I need to look over my shoulder every two seconds, which is exactly what I want to do given this new information. With Nate, I know I’m safe.
I let him help me into the truck and then take a moment to survey the parking lot. A shiver runs through me. Vincent could be out there right now, watching and waiting for me.
I know there’s a chance the video hasn’t ended up in Colorado. I’m not sure what the chances are, but with the video out there it’s probably only a matter of time before someone recognizes me, if they haven’t already. I could log into my own social media and see if I’ve been tagged, but I don’t want to open that door. That door scares the shit out of me.
Nate climbs in the truck and cranks the engine. The AC is on full blast a moment later and he directs some of the middle vents in my direction. It feels good on my clammy skin.
“What happened? Between leaving the table and rushing out of the bathroom like it was on fire—what happened?” he implores, angling towards me.
When he lifts a hand to my cheek and then my forehead, I bat it away. “Stop, I’m fine.”
I meet his gaze and my heart sinks. His eyes are intensely dark, brow furrowed, lips set in a hard line. Instant regret for my words sets in.
“You scared the shit out of me, Savanna. You wouldn’t respond when I called your name, you didn’t look like you knew where you were, and when I touched you?” His frown deepens. “You turned around to hit me.”
I cringe hard at that because I can’t deny it. I remember wanting to fight whoever had grabbed me. But Nate’s eyes don’t convey anger. Or blame. Only worry.
With gentle, slow fingers I don’t bat away, he cups my chin, eyes searching mine. “Tell me what happened. Help me understand.”
Starting from when the woman came into the bathroom, I tell him about the conversation we had, and what I went through when leaving. I can feel his eyes watching, assessing, taking all of me in, but I can’t look at him when I admit that I did want to hit whatever had a hold of me. That fear had gripped me so tightly, all I knew was that I needed to swing. That I needed to fight.
Something I’d never done before.
“And then suddenly you were there, and things weren’t so bad anymore.” I close my eyes and breathe out heavily before opening them. “I’m sorry I almost hit you. If I’d realized it was you, I never would have tried.”
“You were in fight or flight mode. I shouldn’t have grabbed you, but you wouldn’t stop. I wasn’t about to let you walk into traffic,” he says, stroking his thumb along my cheek. “Would have been worth the black eye if you’d nailed me.”
His attempt at humor does little more than make the corner of my mouth twitch. He looks as tired as I feel, and I wonder how much I took out of him with my incident.
“Savanna,” he adds, his tone serious. “I will not let him hurt you again. Even if he sees that video and tracks you down, he’s not getting through me to get to you. You understand?”
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” I whisper, my voice thick with emotion. Tears are pooling in my eyes even though I don’t want them to, and one spills over as I admit, “I’m scared. Scared that he’ll hurt you to get to me. Scared he’ll use you to control me. It’s why…”
I trail off, turning my head so Nate’s hand falls away, the words strangling my throat as I look down at my fingernails. I’m picking again. Shredding my cuticles to nothing as my thoughts drift to my brothers. My dad. Maddie. Vincent never made a threat against them, never held them over my head to make me behave or toe the line. But it was something that always crept into my mind. Usually when I was locked in the pitch black with only my thoughts to keep me company.
It was the only thing that scared me more than the basement. Vincent didn’t even need to utter the words. Perhaps he saw it written on my face.
“It’s why…” I try again, but the words catch once more.
Nate slides a hand over the center console, holding his palm open to me. Fresh tears fill my eyes at the gesture. He says nothing, but I can practically hear the words coming in that soothing voice of his, “It’s okay. You’re not alone. You can trust me.”
I stare at his outstretched hand for a long moment, my fingers stilling in my lap. A lifeline. To something real and tangible. Comfort and safety. Things that, until I’d met him, I hadn’t felt in so very long.
My hand slides into his as my gaze rises slowly. His eyes say the words I can hear in my mind. I take the strength he offers me and try once more.
“It’s why I left the way I did,” I say on a breath, barely audible against the whooshing of the AC. “It wasn’t just because I didn’t want Vincent coming after me, or my family to go after him. I was so scared that if he didn’t believe they knew absolutely nothing about where I’d gone, he’d go after them. I needed their reactions to be authentic.”
Nate’s thumb runs over the back of my hand in soothing strokes. “Sav…”
I shake my head, choking out the last of the words I’ve never said out loud, “It would kill me if he hurt anyone because of me.”
Nate’s upper body is over the console and on my side of the truck before I can blink, both hands cupping my face as his lips press to mine in a hard, emotion-filled kiss. The way his lips mold against mine, slow but urgent, I know he’s once again telling me it’s okay. I’m safe. Even though I’m scared, he’s there for me.
I take everything he’s giving to me, letting his strength seep into my bones. Finding comfort from every part of him that he gives me.
We’re both slow to end the kiss, going in for softer, sweeter kisses as we break away.
“Don’t worry,” he whispers when we finally part for good. “I got this.”
It makes me laugh. Full on belly laugh. The remaining tension melts away with the power of those few words. I love that he’s using my own words to ease the fears in my heart.
“Thank you,” I tell him, placing another kiss to his lips. “For so much, but especially for making me feel safe.”
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” he says, then amends with a grin, “Well, that’s not entirely true. I can think of something I like equally as much.” He doesn’t need to elaborate further. I grin back, feeling my cheeks tinge pink. “Mmm, love that blush. Gonna bring that out again later. For now, though, we have matters to attend to.”
“What matters?” I ask, frowning after he gives me one last kiss before sliding back into his own seat.
“Well, when we’re out on a call, we always want as much information as possible. It helps us figure out the best course of action. I think we need to treat this the same way.”
He puts the truck into gear and starts navigating out of the parking lot and onto the road. I’m not sure where he’s going with this, but he seems to have a plan, and for once, I don’t question him. I’m too spent after the panic attack to do much of anything but hold his hand and watch out the window as Santa Rosé goes by.
I never imagined he’d pull into the parking lot of another park. This time a city park with lots of grass; soccer fields at one end, baseball diamonds at the other. Large trees surround the park and are dotted around the sports fields, providing shade from the hot California sun.
The lot he pulled into is quiet, though there is a baseball game going on across the field. There’s another parking lot over there which explains why this one isn’t busy. It’s lovely, but I’m not sure what we’re doing here, or what information can be gained from it.
Nate gets out without a word, goes into the backseat for something, and then disappears from my view. I follow him to the back of the truck where he’s pulling the tailgate down and laying a blanket on it. He backed into this spot, and I glance across the field at the view from here, the ball diamonds straight across from where we are.
“I thought we were getting information?” I ask, perplexed.
“We are. Or you are. Come here.” He reaches for me, and I yelp in surprise when he lifts me up and sets me down on the tailgate of his truck. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he unlocks it, fiddles around for a minute, then hands it to me. “My number is blocked so no one will see it come up. Find out what everyone knows.”
Imploring blue eyes meet mine. “Call home, Sav.”