“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 those 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?”
“What about him?” I said, relenting when she pushed the joint in my direction. I grabbed it and studied it, anger racing through me. “He’s angry that he walked out on me twice and then I decided to oh, get engaged to my longtime boyfriend. He’s not innocent. He barged in eight months ago, making demands, and then walked right back out, as if he hadn’t just set my world on fire. Seriously, I’m supposed to be the one to run to him? I’m not going to up and leave my life for him.”
“Seems like your life just up and left you, Stella, because you love Reid. You’re the one that’s delusional. Your connection with him just ended your relationship.”
I inhaled the weed and began choking, on the truth.
“Nate has every right to be angry that I didn’t tell him about Reid. I should have told him the night of the wedding.”
“And made him suspect you at every turn? It wasn’t your fault Reid came on so strong. Right now, Nate, he’s just protecting himself. He got a rude wake-up call about the competition he didn’t know he had, that’s probably what freaked him out the most,” she said calmly. I felt the sensation hit me and my nerves began to ease, my limbs settling into a dull ache. My heart forever fucked by dual goodbyes.
“I lost them both,” I said, curling into a ball and grabbing Nate’s pillow. His scent hit me: ocean and woods. I burst into tears. “I can’t handle this,” I said as I looked at her helplessly. “Nate was perfect.”
“No, he’s not. And you know that, and you’ve known it. I watched you situate yourself around him and that damned paper and that was fine as long as you were happy. But, Stella, as much as you loved him, as many of your own dreams as you were planning to sacrifice to be with him, you would have hated that decision eventually, and Nate realized that tonight.”
“No.”
“Yes. And then there’s Reid who you are clearly still in love with.”