Chapter 24 #2
I headed for the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and rooted around for Band-Aids.
I tried to shield my eyes from the big box of condoms. True, he’d used them with me.
But were they for others too? After me? A weed took root in my belly, twisting insidiously around my organs.
I forced myself to focus on the task at hand.
I found peroxide in the vanity, grabbed a washcloth, wetted it, snagged some Band-Aids, and returned to him on the couch.
He was sunk down in the plush gray cushion, his eyes closed.
“Give me your hand,” I said softly, and he held out his bruised fingers. But he didn’t open his eyes. As I cleaned up the cuts, him wincing a few times, I asked what had happened.
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.
That statement lodged like a brick in my chest. How were we ever going to be together if he couldn’t talk about the simplest things?
I’d never been one to shy away from tough topics.
Hell, I’d pushed my big, broody brother to open up, and it had worked.
I could certainly do the same with Nate.
“Hmm. Let me play a guessing game. I’m guessing it happened when you went to Joanna’s gallery? ”
He tapped his finger to his nose in answer. At least we were getting somewhere with that small admission.
“And I take it that it didn’t go well?”
“It went fine. I gave the sculpture to her husband,” Nate bit out in a snarl, his eyes snapping open.
“Ugh. That must have sucked to see him,” I said, squeezing his wrist gently.
But even as I sympathized with him, the weed twisted tighter in my gut with the reminder—the reminder that came in the tortured look on his face, and the acid in his tone—that he was still so easily affected by the past. How could he move forward with me when he hadn’t yet moved on?
“Sucked is putting it mildly. That guy made a chump out of me for a year. A whole fucking year. Hell, it’s not like there weren’t clues, in retrospect.
Every time I remember—it’s humiliating how easy it was for me to believe the lies.
Because I loved her. And yet, both Joanna and Claude act like they did nothing but inconvenience me slightly.
Like their actions had no consequences. And for them?
It didn’t! But I sure as shit don’t need to listen to her new husband condescend to me about my small part in her greatness. ”
“And that pissed you off so much that you hit the streetlamp?” I asked as I pressed the Band-Aid softly over his knuckles.
He nodded, a heaviness to his voice. “Yep. That’s the whole story. I should have taken you up on your offer to smash the sculpture. I swear, I should have.”
I brought his hand to my lips and brushed a soft kiss to his skin. “No, you did the right thing. It may not feel that way now, but it’s part of the healing. Besides, you don’t want to give them the satisfaction.”
He scoffed. “You sound like a therapist now.”
“Maybe Michelle is rubbing off on me.”
“Maybe. I still think I would have gotten satisfaction if I dropped it from ten flights,” he said with a sigh, then ran his fingers through my hair.
His touch felt good; it probably always would.
But the gesture didn’t reach all the way inside my soul.
The emptiness in him was evident even in how he touched me—it wasn’t the way he’d touched me all our other nights together.
It was hollow. He was not my Nate right now.
He was the Nate defeated once again by his ex-wife.
My heart cried, leaking crimson tears inside my chest as the evidence mounted, so clearly pointing to one conclusion: he wasn’t over that betrayal, the gutting of his trust in himself.
He wasn’t ready. And I had no idea if he was ever going to be ready.
“Enough about my fine night. Tell me all about Mr. Abbot,” Nate said, that bitter edge still present in his voice.
I chose to ignore it, focusing on answering as I would have one month ago, one year ago.
He was my friend, and I craved his comfort as a friend now.
“Turns out Grant never thought of me romantically. I went to the meeting ready to tell him I was happy to be business partners, but there was nothing happening between the two of us. But he served first, making it pretty damn clear that he had no attraction for me whatsoever,” I said, holding out my hands wide.
“That’s a damn good thing,” Nate said with a smirk.
“Maybe it’s technically a good thing, but it kind of made me feel shitty about myself.”
“Did you want him to be interested in you?”
“No. But I felt completely stupid. Don’t you get that?
I went there to tell him that I had feelings for somebody else, but before I could even say that he told me he never even saw me romantically and that he was sorry for leading me on.
My god, I was so sure he was interested in me, Nate.
I asked you to teach me how to be seductive for him because I was damn certain he was attracted to me.
And it turns out I was completely off the mark with that,” I said, shaking my head in frustration.
I’d felt like such an ass at Speakeasy with Grant.
“Do you wish you’d never asked me?” he asked in a measured voice.
“No,” I said, my voice rising. “Of course I’m glad I asked you because everything that happened was amazing, but don’t you see how his comments would make me feel?”
He shook his head, looking thoroughly perplexed. “No. Enlighten me.”
“It just made me feel that Scott was right—I’m good at business and bad at relationships. And all I wanted afterwards was to see you and tell you and commiserate with you as a friend. But can we even do that anymore?”
“You tell me,” he said softly. “Can we?”
A lump formed in my throat. “That’s the question, isn’t it?
Can I be your lover and your friend? Because the one thing I wanted when it was over was to see you, and then have you tell me he’s a douche, and that I deserve better, and that he and all the other guys in the world can go fuck off,” I said, dropping my voice an octave or two to imitate him.
“He’s an ass, and you deserve better, and all the other guys in the world can go fuck off,” he said, flashing me a brief smile. Then the corner of his lips dropped, and he furrowed his brow. “Wait. Can we back it up a bit? Did you actually say you had feelings for someone else?”
I straightened my spine and lifted my chin. Just do it. “You, obviously, Nate. You,” I said and his eyes seemed to light up for a moment. To sparkle. “But what is this? What are we doing? Are we friends? Are we lovers? Can we even be both?”
He ran his fingers through my hair. The gesture threatened to melt my heart once more for him, because now it felt like how he’d touched me that night in London.
It felt like the start of something. I tamped down my desire to climb up on him, straddle him and smother him in kisses that led us back into another reckless night.
I had to stop reading so much into the way he touched me. Words mattered more.
“Yes. We can be both,” he said, his voice trailing off. I watched him, waiting as he swallowed. He seemed to struggle with words. “But I don’t want to hurt you,” he added in the softest, most tender voice, as if he was terribly frightened by the possibility.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to hold back the sting.
A lump rose in my throat. He clearly didn’t want me in the same way.
Telling him I had feelings for him was as close as I could come to taking a chance with him, and once again my radar had failed me.
We weren’t on the same page. He didn’t want more.
He wasn’t ready for all I wanted with him.
If he felt the same, if he felt anything for me, he wouldn’t say he was afraid of hurting me.
You’re only afraid of hurting people when there’s an uneven distribution of love.
“I understand,” I said, trying to stay strong.
“I care about you too much to hurt you,” he said, each word falling from his lips awkwardly, as if he were trying to explain.
But he didn’t have to. His explanation was evident in his eyes—they were so sad.
The broken look in them reinforced that I needed to protect my heart.
If I were to reveal more about all I felt it would only push him away.
If I gave voice to the true depth of my feelings, I might risk losing him as a friend.
I had to retreat before I fell any further.
“I don’t want either of us to get hurt,” he said, quickly backpedaling as he sighed heavily. “And I don’t want to lose you as a friend. Our friendship means too much.”
“It means everything,” I said, my voice breaking now, and he reached for me, wrapped me in an embrace and held me as silent sobs fell down his shirt.
His arms around me were so comforting, and I would miss terribly the feel of what would have come next—slow, sensual kisses that spread into hot, passionate ones, that turned into moans and sighs and deep desire that ran wild through the night.
I longed for that physical connection so deeply, but I would miss even more having him in my life.
And if we kept venturing down this rocky, dangerous road, I’d fall further for him, and that would make it impossible to be friends.
I steeled myself for what I knew I had to say. “We can’t lose this,” I began. I had to be the strong one. To make the cut so we could preserve what we’d had.
Nate
I agreed. I completely agreed. I was terrified of losing her from my life, but I wasn’t ready to let her go.
I didn’t intend to let Joanna win, wounded hand be damned.
Hell, this hand was the evidence that it was time.
That the true freedom from the past was moving on—moving into the future.
I had to tell Casey how I felt. That she was the one for me.
That as much as the past had steered all my choices for the last four years, I wanted to move forward into the great unknown with her.
I wanted to explore all that we could be.
I’d been misfiring with words so far tonight; I had to right this ship.
I shoved the past hurts, the past anger, and all that nagging fear under the carpet, took a deep breath, and prepared to tell her I was falling for her.
“We can’t lose this,” I said, agreeing with her simply to start this most challenging of conversations. “But we also can’t—”
She pressed her finger to my lips, shushing me. “I know what you’re going to say. We can’t risk losing our friendship. And that’s why I think we should take a break from the sex. Focus on the friendship so we don’t lose sight of what matters.”
The air was ripped from my lungs. I parted my lips to speak, but no words came.
The protests were lodged in my throat, and I tried to push them past my lips, but they wouldn’t budge.
Shock took root yet again. I hadn’t expected her to say that.
But the message had made landfall, and she clearly meant it, so I had to respect it. I nodded and said, “Yes, you’re right.”
She closed her eyes, a pained look on her features. But when she opened them again, she seemed to be forcing a smile to her face. “Friends,” she said, holding out a hand to shake.
“Always.”
As she rose, smoothing a hand over her skirt, it was like watching the scene unfold in slow motion. I was here, but somehow floating above it all, watching it happen to someone else as she slung her purse on her shoulder, gave me a hug, and walked to the door, waving goodbye.
The sound of the door shutting stabbed me in the heart. I wasn’t moving past the pain, after all. Because this was the real hurt. This was the big wound. I headed for the kitchen and rooted around for a bottle of whiskey. I found one and took a long swallow, letting it burn.
Then another that scorched a path down my throat.
The night hadn’t gotten better at all. It had turned far worse.
Casey
Keep it together.
I repeated that mantra over and over as the elevator chugged to the ground level, then as I stepped out onto the marble floor of his lobby.
With my chin up, I marched purposefully to the door, clenching my teeth so the doorman wouldn’t see me cry.
I didn’t want to be that woman. The woman who leaves a man’s apartment in tears.
That night in New Orleans when I’d asked Nate to be my temporary lover, I’d never expected it would come to this. That a few weeks later, I’d leave his home heartbroken.
“Do you need a taxi, ma’am?”
The first tear slid down my cheek. Because this random stranger knew what I needed more than my best friend did.
“Yes, please,” I said, and he scurried to the curb, thrust his hand in the air, brought a silver whistle to his lips and ten seconds later, was holding open the yellow door for me. He handed me a tissue, and gave me a sympathetic smile.
As the cab shot me downtown, the neon lights of Manhattan blaring by, I let all those bottled-up tears fall. I’d have to get them out of my system now, since we had a wedding to go to in four days.