Fuck.
28
AIDEN
It had been two days since I last saw him, and I could say without a shadow of a doubt, Nate was officially avoiding me. And that wasnota good sign.
I sighed as I threw the phone onto the counter and braced my hands against it, with my head hanging between them. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.
He had me lying to everyone. Victoria could tell something was wrong after we had left Star Bird, but I couldn’t tell her that the man who left the office with our witness was my boyfriend, myDaddy.
A choked sob escaped from my chest as I collapsed on the floor and curled into a ball.
What the fuck was he doing there? Did he know the witness?
I wanted to go back and ask the receptionist about him, but we had already been iced out. Not to mention, if I mentioned Nathan’s name, it would have set off all of Victoria’s alarms. Hell, it had set off all of my alarms.
No, there had to be a perfectly good explanation.
He was in real estate development. It was a real estate office.He was probably just there for a meeting about a property he was interested in purchasing and developing.
As I rocked back and forth on my kitchen floor, one thing became clear. I needed to pull myself together. The behavior I was exhibiting was not befitting a homicide detective. I knew how to uncover people’s secrets.
I just never thought I’d have to dig into Nate like that.
But I knew I had to do it. Because if I kept avoiding the truth, if I kept my head in the sand because I didn’t want to know what was really going on with him, then I would always wonder.
But fuck, I wanted to trust him.
With a shake of my head, I pulled myself up onto my unsteady legs and grabbed my phone and stormed into the small bedroom I’d converted into a home office. Firing up the computer, I sat down and instantly lost my nerve.
Shit.
No. I had to do this. I deserved to know the truth. And I knew, deep down, I should have done all this into Nate’s background when he admitted to stalking me. The fact that I hadn’t, had been stupid and reckless and was what had gotten me into the mess I found myself in. I knew better and I had to do better.
Every time I tried to look him up, I’d always find an excuse to turn away, to turn back. But I couldn’t anymore. There were too many inconsistencies and variables that weren’t adding up, too many things that didn’t make sense.
They say the truth would set you free. Now, it was time to hope it would set me free, rather than bury me.
I tried not to take it personally, that he was ghosting me. But all evidence pointed tosomethingshady. And I needed to know. If I had to take another day of Victoria and her looks while we were at work, I was going to lose my fucking mind.
The last thing I needed was to blow a gasket in a fucking police precinct with a bunch of other armed police officers. I’dbe fired on the spot. Charges pressed. And I’d be lucky if I didn’t end up in the psych ward.
Because I felt like I was going goddamn insane.
My heart raced as I pulled up a private, untraceable browser. I could do this. Even if my hands shook as I typed his name and hit enter.
While I scrolled through the results, weeding through what I already knew and what was irrelevant, I tried to tell myself that we hadn’t been together that long. That I could handle whatever I found.
If there was anything bad, if he had any skeletons he was hiding, then I would deal with them the right way. Or, if it turned out he was just an asshole, then I would break up with him.
But deep down, I knew that wasn’t true. He wasmine. There was some deep, dark, possessive part of me that had latched onto him and didn’t want to let go. I didn’t know where it had come from, and it scared the hell out of me. But it knew what it wanted, and that wasDaddy.
I came across an article about his parents’ deaths and looking at a picture of young Nate shook me to my core. My eyes closed, breathing ragged as I tried to reconcile the boy in the picture with the man I knew.
He looked so young, so lost. And socold. There was nothing there. Looking in his eyes, it was like no one was home. I’d gotten a glimpse or two ever since he told me the truth about his diagnosis and he felt comfortable enough not to put his walls up so high with me. But that little boy hadn’t learned to put up any yet and it was chilling to look at.
The most shocking thing to discover was his family history. Apparently, they came from money. It was obvious he was wealthy from the cars he drove and the clothes he wore, but I hadn’t realized it was something he had inherited, not that it made a difference to me.
