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Opening my mouth to speak, I don’t get the chance as he talks first. “It’s the same as before, exactly the same. I’m beginning to wonder if this would have happened last time, even if I had been first. You won’t choose me. I was right when I said it. Guys like me don’t win. Why would they?”
Nathan doesn’t ramble either, but he is. “Slow down. I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“He’s fun, right?” He stops, stares at me and runs his fingers through his hair. “He’s everything you want and everything you need, all wrapped up in one male bundle with stupid dimples and the body of an athlete.”
Well… what the hell do I say to that?
“It doesn’t matter that I saw you first.” He laughs incredulously and I have to repeat his words a few times in my mind to understand them. I still don’t understand them, so I ask. “Saw me first?”
“I didn’t show up in town a year ago to take you in out of obligation to my brother.” He says the word brother with such venom it scares me a little.
“Why did you then?”
He runs his tongue over his lip, his eyes scanning me up and down. I see the flash of pain in them before the shutters come down. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“It matters to me.” I say softly, placing my hand on his arm. He pulls away from my touch, turning alarmingly pale in the face. “Sorry.” All of that progress, completely gone. “Tell me.”
“If I tell you, you might never forgive Caleb.” He says, going to sit on my bed, but after looking at my attire once more, he thinks better of it and stands at the window instead.
“Tell me.” I insist, standing beside him with my hands on the windowsill.
“I was going to, but I don’t need to anymore.” He motions to my current attire. “It’s already too late.”
Oh, right, he thinks I’ve done the deed with Eric. I can’t blame him for thinking that. “I haven’t slept with Eric, Nathan. I was tired. He took me to his, I had a shower and I slept. My clothes were covered in flour, sugar and jam to the point where they were more like cake than they were fabric.”
“You’ve kissed him.”
“You saw me.” I clear my throat and look away.
“Just kissing? Is that it?”
“Only twice, once at his, once in front of you.” Why am I explaining this?
He smiles slightly, his brows still furrowed. “Choose me.”
Whoa… what? A one eighty flip just happened.
“I’m serious.” He says, backing me up into the door. “Choose me.”
Is this happening? “What?”
“Choose me.” He dips his head and looks directly in my eyes. “You don’t want him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He places his hand on my cheek and traces his thumb over my lower lip. “I know that when he kissed you, your thoughts were on me, worrying how I felt, worrying about how I’d react.” Well… “Stop being stubborn and choose me. It’s simple. Just say yes.”
“But…”
“Don’t think about Caleb.” He implores, his other hand gripping my bicep. “Please, he doesn’t deserve your loyalty.”
Blink. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” It’s not like Caleb is here to defend himself, so I don’t appreciate his cryptic sentences about him.
“You don’t know him like I do. You think you do, but you don’t. He wasn’t always a good person, Gwen.”
Eye roll. “He changed. He was very good to me.”
“Yes, so it would seem.” He mutters conspiratorially.
Shaking my head, I frown at the scowling man before me. “Like what? Tell me damn it!”
“I saw you first!” He shouts, his fingers biting into the skin of my arm. “He would have never have met you if I hadn’t sent him down to that beach to get you!”
My breath leaves me in a whoosh. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. “What?”
“I saw you, every single day, from the window of my hotel room. You would walk down the beach. I’d watch you every day, wishing I wasn’t the way I was, just so I could talk to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
He growls and gives me a small shake. “I hate sand. Hate it. But you enchanted me. I had to meet you.” This is insane, completely insane. “I even took pictures of you and wrote about you in my damn journal. I had to meet you. I once waited at the end of the beach near that kids play area on the pavement. You’d always walk up to there and back, looking over your shoulder every so often whilst smiling at nothing. Sometimes you’d walk backwards with your arms out to the sides. You were mesmerising.”
“W… what does that have to do with Caleb?”
“I asked him to fetch you. Begged him in fact.” His eyes darkened. “I paid him ten grand to do it for me.” Ten thousand? That’s insane. “I didn’t realise how sore he was that our Grandfather left me the majority of his money and properties in his will.”
