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“I might as well be that poor bastard you’re going to drill tomorrow at your office,” he said after another sip.
I nodded. “Only if you don’t give me some answers to this madness I’m blindly navigating.”
“I get you’re frustrated.”
I grinned. “You have no idea how frustrated I am. Not with you, but with some ghost that has made an invisible wall between your sister and me.”
“And the reason you don’t ask her?”
I exhaled, “As much as she plays a good role of acting like I don’t exist and that she despises my presence, I see through her easily. I know her well enough that if she wanted nothing to do with me, she would’ve left already.” It was a truth I was clinging to desperately. It was the only reason we both hadn’t already said goodbye. “She wants to tell me she’s afraid I’ll leave her, so she’s preemptively pushing me away. Sadly, I also know she’s frightened because she’s hiding behind this façade, and if I approach her, she’ll either run or freeze, like a cornered animal, waiting to get hurt. So, I prefer to take an easier route—with you—so as not to cause her added stress.”
“You’re correct. She won’t open up to you. And I’m afraid if I talk, you might leave her, and if it’s because of me opening my mouth, she’ll never forgive me.”
“Understandable,” I said, “however, I’m not playing games. If I were, I would have asked you both to leave my home the minute I was made to feel like some kind of fucking guest in it. Being one who grew up with abhorrent family dynamics, I can assure you that anything you tell me will not make me run away from Nat. In fact, it might work in your favor since I have a better understanding of how these things work, and I will know how to be there for her.”
“You’re right.”
I grinned over the rim of my glass. “I know,” I said before I took a sip.
“Well, I don’t know where to start.”
“Just start,” I urged.
“Well, our dad was legendary for breaking promises.”
I licked the bourbon off my lips. “Like how?”
He sighed. “It started with our mom dying. He was always cold and distant before she died, but after, he changed completely.” He swallowed more of his drink. “It didn’t take long for some really bad things to start happening after that.”
We kept talking, and as the night wore on, my stomach sank further and further into the floor as I got a better feel for what Nat had been holding back from me.
My respect for her secrets grew at the same time as my disgust for her father did, and now, I understood I needed to take a softer approach with her and what she chose to reveal.
Chapter Twenty-Six
NAT
My cell phone alarm went off earlier than usual the following morning, and I groaned slightly as I turned over in bed, looking over at the drapes that allowed a hint of gray dawn into the room.
When I started setting my alarm so early, I told Spencer it was because I had breakfast meetings around the city with clients. That was the only way I knew to get out of our usual morning routine—a slow, lazy rising, allowing him to hold me and wake me up in all the ways I loved the most—because we’d arrived at an impasse. I was having trouble reconciling my desire for him and my wish for him to stay with me with my inability to tell him the truth he wanted to know.
Because of that, for the last three days, I found myself jumping out of bed and getting myself completely ready for work before most places even opened for their breakfast rushes. As a result, I’d had to be resourceful in finding a decent place to wait out the early part of the morning.
There was no place to go, really. So, I just grabbed coffee and thanked God it wasn’t bitterly cold or raining since. I took that time to walk around and breathe in my surroundings.
I couldn’t talk about what was going on with me or why I’d snapped into this twilight zone version of myself. Hell, this was the first time I was thinking about how I’d just mentally shut off the world these days.
I had taken a brutal hit after seeing my brother in his battered and bruised state, knowing our father had been the one to hurt him so badly, and not for the first, tenth, or even thirtieth time. The physical abuse we’d endured at my father’s hand was something I’d long since locked away, but for some reason, the mention of my mother—and the memory of her perfume on that sweater—cracked open that vault of pain, and it was enough to shatter me.
I’d never been good at dealing with difficult emotions, and adding my brand new, so-called relationship with Spencer into the mix made it nearly impossible. How was I supposed to communicate my feelings to him when I couldn’t even bear to conjure them in my mind only for myself? I couldn’t even think about them, let alone speak them to someone else.
It was too far out of my comfort zone, and everything became a perfect recipe for me to have an emotional breakdown if I were the type to let it happen. On the contrary, I didn’t break down; I built up. I put walls around myself so high that even I couldn’t see over them.
I wasn’t the type to display weakness; my father showed me the consequences of showing weakness long ago, and I hadn’t made that mistake since. It was the only way I knew to keep the dam from bursting, and now, I was fucking numb.
I was on autopilot, going through the motions. Whatever came naturally, that’s what I was doing. I focused on effortless things, like dressing myself to look like the powerhouse real estate agent I was and getting out there to secure the best possible deals for my clients. Because of my extra hustle, I’d managed to close the massive commission deal, and I landed two others without even trying.
Just as I had done for the past three days, I grabbed my coffee, found my bench facing a beautiful large stone fountain, and allowed my mind to turn off before heading to my office and burying myself in work.
