Chapter 37
Nathan
I park haphazardly in the roundabout driveway, leaving the keys in the car.
My phone is going off like fireworks. From the notification previews it looks like Byron scolding me for taking the car without telling him.
Hodge letting me know fresh surveillance will be ready soon.
Dawn asking if I’m okay, wondering where I went.
At the moment, I don’t care about a damn message unless it’s more from Spencer.
I bust through the house, making a beeline to the patio. I’m almost down the concrete steps and heading toward the guesthouse when I notice the blanket-covered lump on a pool chair a few paces to my right. Spencer? Why is she sleeping out here?
“Hey,” I whisper, not wanting to startle her.
She’s sitting so close to the edge of the water, even a minor freakout would send her flying into the pool.
I sit down on the pool chair closest, but my movement doesn’t startle her.
She’s sleeping so deeply that if my entire body weren’t coursing with adrenaline, I’d let my girl sleep.
I’m too impatient to wait through her slumber.
Purposely, I drag the chair closer to her, grinding the metal bars against the concrete to wake her.
I wait until her eyes fly open, round and startled. She blinks at me like she’s seen a ghost.
“Good. You’re awake.”
The blanket falls to her waist as she sits upright. I survey her silky black pajama camisole wondering what in the hell possessed her to have a lonely sleepover with my pool.
“You startled me,” she says.
“Now we’re even.” I grab my phone and show her the picture that nearly caused me a coronary. You can’t shock a man like this with no warning.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to?—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I can’t sit here and listen to her apologize for nothing.
She’s misunderstanding why I’m here and what’s going through my mind.
I’m going to tell her everything. Tonight, I’m taking what’s mine.
But first, I need to know what she’s thinking. No more secrets. No more surprises.
“Tell you what?”
“About Casey. I nearly ripped his head off tonight when I found out the real story.” I thank my lucky stars we were in public. He should do the same. Had we been alone, my anger would’ve bested me. Casey might be taking a long nap in a shallow grave for his behavior.
“What do you mean—” She pauses. A quizzical look crosses her face. “Wait. How are you here? You were in L.A.”
“I drove…fast.”
“What time is it?” She peers at me, skeptically.
Ignoring the piled-up message notifications on my still-broken screen, I check the time. “Quarter past one.”
I’m not sure if she’s stalling with small talk, but she seems fixated on something I have absolutely no interest in.
What I’m most concerned about is why she sent that picture.
What she’s trying to tell me. Where her heart is.
Where her head’s at. And the loudest question in my mind: Why are our clothes still on?
“You weren’t on a date?” she asks out of left field.
Date? What the hell would I be doing on a date? “Of course not.”
“You had a private block on your calendar,” she explains, continuing with the third degree like she’s trying to catch me in a lie.
I quickly explain that I had to switch the bachelor party venue.
She thought the party was last night, when it was actually tonight, and vague on my calendar to surprise Dad.
I’m distracted by my racing thoughts, ricocheting off the walls of my mind, so it takes me a moment longer to realize why she’s asking so many questions. “Why? Were you jealous?”
A big part of me hopes she was. One, so I know she feels exactly the same as I do. Two, so I can easily put her mind at ease. She’s the only woman that exists in my world. The only one who’s been able to get through to me. It’s Spencer, or no one. Plain and simple.
She confirms my suspicion with a sad little bob of her head. I try to find her gaze but she’s staring at her lap. Oh, sweetheart. Don’t even go there.
“If you think for one second I’d get over you that quickly, you must not know how I feel about you,” I assure her.
She finally looks at me. Her light chocolate-brown eyes are glistening under the patio lights. “I thought I blew it and maybe you were trying to forget everything that happened between us.”
“I couldn’t forget if I tried. And I don’t want to.
” I inch closer, craving her warmth. But I know once I get too close, there’s no stopping me.
I’ve waited too long. I’m going to take her right here on this pool chair, for starters.
Round two in the bedroom. Round three in the shower.
I’m going to love this woman until my body collapses.
There’s just one thing. “Where’s Charlie? ”
“A sleepover party she got invited to at the last minute.”
Oh, thank fuck. “Good. I’m glad she’s making more friends.”
“Me too.”
“Are you mad I pulled her on stage and asked her to perform at the charity event last week?” I ask.
Spencer assures me she’s not. That’s…new.
“You sure? Because this is a topic you get pretty huffy about… We share the same worries, Spencer. I promise. I would never put her in harm’s way. Do you trust me?”
“I do,” she answers so confidently, it’s all the reassurance I need. My fingers itch to rip the blanket off her and pull her into my lap where I can hold her the way I desperately want, but she continues. “I mean with everything. I want to tell you the truth.”
There’s been so many secrets between us, I’m not sure which truth she’s talking about. “What does that mean?”
“There’s something else that happened with Casey but it was hard to talk about… Wait, you said you knew the real story.”
Shit. Sorry, Dawn . I’ve no choice but to blow your cover. “Dawn slipped.”
“So you know about the real reason I left school?”
I swallow the fiery lump in my throat as I’m reminded of it.
It’s not just the circumstance. It’s picturing Spencer crying, alone, having her beautiful, healthy body shamed for reasons that only drunk, idiot college kids could justify.
She was a woman before they could understand what that means.
A real man sees curves and a plentiful body as sinfully seductive, something he can bury into and get lost in.
The poor girl was beyond her years, lost in a pen of blind, shallow pigs.
Dawn said those posters read “cow.” The dumbasses were so uneducated, they didn’t know how to spell “queen.”
“And now that it’s all on the table, how do you feel about me?” Spencer asks. She takes in a deep breath and shows me a piercing stare. “Tell me the truth.”
“You first… Why did you lie?” What she told me about Casey was a lie by omission, but still a lie. She had me thinking he was the better man, and I’d lost her to him somehow.
“Because I didn’t want you to see my scars. I wanted you to see the good version of me.”
“Spencer.” My mind is jumbled, so many thoughts competing to be the first words out of my mouth.
I don’t know where to start. It’s scary how quickly I got here again.
Elise said something similar years ago. She didn’t want me to see her scars.
She felt weak and pathetic for staying with Peter for so long.
I had to remind her over and over again she wasn’t weak for staying, she was strong for leaving.
Her scars were marks of her determination, survival, her will to live, and her everlasting love for her daughter.
Her scars were admirable. Just as Spencer’s are.
Now I’ve come full circle, once again falling for a woman who doesn’t know her own power. She carries the world on her shoulder, and still apologizes when she barely stumbles.
“Why did you leave me on read? That hurt,” Spencer says before I can collect a coherent thought.
Oh. She thought I was ignoring her? How could she possibly think I could ignore a gesture like that?
“Casey was there. I just found out what he did and stormed out of the party when you texted me. I damn near had a heart attack. I couldn’t think straight.
I got in the car and started driving. I needed to tell you in person. ”
“Tell me what?” Her voice cracks as her eyes light up. She wants my confession as badly as I want to make it.
“That I know what this picture means. I know what it must’ve taken for you to send it after everything you’ve been through. I’ll protect it. And you. You’re safe with me.”
She nods, mumbling in agreement, looking like she might cry if she tries to say more. But I don’t want her to be sad. We’ve both been sad for so long. Right now, I just want her to feel good.
“It was a very nice picture.” I try to layer a hint of seduction in my voice. It’s been a while since I’ve done this.
“Are you going to keep it?”
I slide her a grin. “It’s already my wallpaper.”
We laugh together, but the lighthearted moment is quickly taken over by my need to touch her, now.
I slide my hand up her warm skin, underneath the short sleeve of her top.
I loop my finger underneath her bra strap, and her breathing immediately shallows.
She grows tense and rigid against my touch.
“This okay?” I ask as I peel the strap down slowly, giving her ample time to protest.
Instead, she nods shyly. It’s not a matter of what she wants.
She might be more anxious about how we’ll get there.
Nerves are apparent from her tense expression and ragged inhales.
I trade her bra strap for her hand. After guiding it to my lips, I peck each of her fingers with sweet kisses.
As much as I want to fuck her raw, hard , and unleash the months of frustration, I want to show her intimacy too.
A little of what I need. A little of what she needs.
We can meet in the middle. “Are you ready now?” I ask.
“For what?” Her eyes are transfixed where my lips meet her fingertips.