“What? I heard you!” I snapped.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” he rushed out, his hands going up in surrender. “It just seems like you keep zoning out on me.”
I wondered if the girls he was fucking during his so-called “overtime” could smell me on him. Or if they did, would they care? Girls loved the bad-boy, and they don’t get any badder than Nate fucking DeLuca.
“Bailey…”
“What?!”
“Nothing.” He shook his head, his gaze dropping. “I just love you, is all.”
Nate
I knew part of it was my fault. I’d been working a lot lately. Too much. Benny had a rat at the local precinct and, apparently, the cops had been on our tail since the rich kid OD’d. Benny told me all this, followed by an order/warning that it was on me to find a more discrete way to get supplies and do the exchange. So I ignored Polizi’s pleas, and I’d been working overtime, trying to find new ways to meet with suppliers, which, unfortunately, still included the Francos. Tiny and I spent most nights driving from one location to another, using the darkness of the night to hide our intentions, but I’d always made sure to come home, every single night, to Bailey.
It doesn’t matter that she didn’t notice, or that she no longer cared.
And the truth is, it was a selfish choice. I needed to be with her. I ached to be with her.
I spent my days trying to work out who I was, trying to find my reason, but at night… in the four walls of that basement with Bailey in my arms, her slumbered breaths on my skin and her heart beating with mine, I found peace.
I found solace.
I found purpose.
But I also found myself drowning, sinking, unable to breathe from the weight of my so-called peace, and I questioned everything I felt and tried to match it with how she felt and I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the truth between the web of lies we’d created, and worse… I couldn’t find Bailey. I guess that’s when I came to the realization. I could no longer find her, because she no longer existed.
*
Bailey was sitting at the top of the basement stairs when I got home. She stood as soon as she heard me, her hands grasping the hem of the too-big shirt she was wearing. She wiped her eyes as if she’d been crying, and lifted her chin, her shoulders square. For a moment, I thought it was anger I saw in her eyes—frustrated, built up anger that I was no doubt responsible for, but then she smiled, her breath shaky when she exhaled.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She shrugged, her voice almost a whisper when she said, “Waiting for you.”
“Oh yeah?” I stepped forward, and her hand claimed mine as soon as I was close enough.
She inhaled deeply, and looked up, her tear-coated eyes meeting mine. “I’ve been waiting for you to come home because I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about… just… about everything, Nate, and I—” She broke off on a sob, one that pierced my already breaking heart.
I released her hands and cupped her face, tilting her head back. “Bailey, it’s fine.”
She shook her head, her hands grasping my wrists. “It’s not fine, Nate. You don’t deserve the way I’ve been treating you, or the way I’ve been acting and I’m so sorry because you’ve done nothing but take care of me since the moment you found me. I’m just lost at the moment, so lost, and I have been for a while, but every night you come home to me, and you’re here… you’re here with me, and you don’t have to be and I don’t know why I’ve been acting like that isn’t enough.”
Because it’s not, I wanted to tell her. And she was wrong. She had no idea how much I had to be with her.
“Do you remember our first fight?” she asked, wiping her cheeks with her forearm. “The one where I was insecure about what you did out there and jealous of all the—”
“Yeah,” I cut in. “I remember.”
“You remember what you said? About how we end all our fights?”