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The words feel heavy on my tongue, almost as if they were bold-faced lies sprouting out just for me to get out of trouble.
“Fine. Help your little friend. I don’t give a fuck.”
Great.
Now he’s pouting.
“If that is all you called to say, then I really need to get back to work,” I tell him, needing to get off this phone call before either of us says something we can’t take back.
“Yeah, I know. Because work always comes first. Right, Charlotte?”
And with that, he hangs up, ensuring I feel guilty with his parting words.
I know he’s acting like a petulant child, but I could have given him the heads-up like he said.
I could have explained to him what I was doing with Nate.
Especially since I knew there would be paparazzi at the event.
But I just didn’t think to warn him.
And that right there is very telling.
I’m not sure Cooper and I are a couple anymore. Not really. It feels like he’s more like a pen pal than anything else—one that I’ve been accustomed to sending a quick text when I wake up in the morning and another before going to bed to wish goodnight.
But lately, those texts have been replaced by Nate’s, too.
I tell myself that it’s only my morbid curiosity that has me typingBoston Gazetteon the search engine, no longer caring about going back to my spreadsheets and data analysis. I’m suddenly more tempted to scroll through their website to see the photograph that got Cooper so upset that he needed to call me this early on a Monday morning.
It takes just a few seconds to find it, and I quickly understand why it pissed Cooper off.
Nate looks like a god amongst men.
I can’t help but stare at the photograph for way too long.
How he looks so ruggedly handsome, like one of those classic movie stars.
The in-your-face bravado of Marlon Brando and the softness and approachability of James Dean.
As I stand there, smiling at the cameras, playing the dutiful role of being his date, Nate looks down at me with such reverence in his hazel gaze that it takes my very breath away.
I hate not remembering half of what happened that night. Foolishly, I drank my weight in champagne after that godforsaken auction ended.
But I do know that he brought me home and tucked me into bed. My doorman, Wallace, told me every detail of it when I went for a stroll the next morning.
“A perfect gentleman,” Wallace said after telling me that Nate brought me up to my apartment in his arms with his help. “Don’t care what the press says about Mr. Wilder. They have it wrong. He could not be more of a perfect gentleman in my book.”
I agree with him wholeheartedly.
If the media took the time to really get to know Nate like I do, then they would see what I see—an honorable, kind-hearted man.
Yes, it’s true that sometimes his anxiety gets the best of him and that he can be a little hotheaded and quick to anger if provoked, but it’s not who he truly is. That’s just his protective knee-jerk reaction coming into play.
A man shouldn’t be defined by his worst moment, especially if said moment was in aid of someone far more vulnerable than him.
I have no doubt the video of him fighting that is going around social media was due to Nate wanting to protect someone he deemed defenseless. He’s never come out and said that was the case, but I know his heart. Nate doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. He just doesn’t. If he hit someone, it was because that person deserved it.
Though I do wish Nate hadn’t resorted to violence to get his point across, something tells me he’s never been shown any other way, either.
