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The reason is the person. The intruder. Debra Weaver. I know her, I’ve seen her countless times at the events I attended with Dad. Not to mention on TV. She’s the second half of the Weaver power couple, Senator Brian Weaver’s wife and a kickass woman.
At least, that’s what I used to think.
Before I felt how Nate surrounded himself with a rigid exterior in her presence. As if she’s the army closing in on his forts.
She doesn’t look like an army. If anything, she appears classy and elegant in her tailored beige dress and her black high heels. Her golden hair is gathered in a neat twist and her light eyes have a serene look. She also looks way younger than she’s said to be. I mean, Nate’s older brother who died a long time ago was way older than him, ten years or more—if I remember correctly. So that makes Debra approximately in her late sixties, but she looks to be in her early fifties.
Anyway, she doesn’t seem amused right now as she flicks her gaze between us like she’s a merciless teacher and we’re the two insolent kids in her class.
“I’m sorry,” Martha tells Nate, but she peeks at me. “I couldn’t stop her.”
Why is Martha looking at me as if she pities me? I’m fine. I no longer feel like going to visit Dad and crying beside his bed because those feelings of abandonment are hitting me out of nowhere.
I don’t hear the clinking emptiness in my half-full brain or feel the need to jot a million other words on my list.
Idon’t.
“Stop me?” Debra clicks her tongue. “This is my son’s house and I get to come whenever I want.”
“It’s okay, Martha,” Nate tells her in his usual calm tone, and she scurries away, bowing her head.
“It’s not your son’s house, it’s my dad’s,” I correct her. Because it is, and I won’t allow anyone to take anything of Dad’s. Even with words.
Debra narrows her eyes on me, and holy shit, since when did they become so judgmental? They look so calming on TV and at events. “What did you just say to me, little girl?”
“I’m not a little girl. I’m twenty. And I said this is Dad’s place.”
“Go to the firm, Gwyneth,” Nate coldly lashes out his order, and I internally flinch at the apathy in his tone. Is that how he’s going to treat me now? As if I’m someone he can order around?
In that case, he has another thing coming.
“No, we have a visitor, so I’d like to stay.” I flop onto a chair by the counter, where my cupcakes, my vanilla milkshake, and my boiled eggs are laid out because Nate remembers these things. He knows what I like to eat and drink and even look at. He just doesn’t know how to be a fucking human being and has no trouble cutting me open. “You can join us for breakfast if you want.”
I don’t mean that as I stuff my face with a cupcake, but Debra approaches us, or more likely she’s heading toward Nate, who’s still standing where I left him, behind me.
“I can’t believe this. This must be a distasteful joke.” Debra sounds horrified.
“What are you doing here, Mom?” Nate is still in his usual unaffected mode, but there’s tension at the end of his words.
“You weren’t answering or returning my calls, so I had to come and see for myself.”
Nate doesn’t pick up his mom’s calls? Now that I think about it, he rarely appears in public with his parents anymore, even though he’s their only child now.
“When Susan told me you got married, I thought it was to that other one. What was her name again? Right, Aspen. Even though she has no origins, she at least has made a name for herself and I could work on her. I could make an image for her. But you married this…this…little girl? Kingsley’s daughter? What were you thinking?”
I nearly swallow down all my milkshake and I don’t bother with a straw either, but it doesn’t quench the fire spreading in my throat. All her words make me burn. The fact that she was fine with him marrying Aspen. That Aspen is the right choice for him. That I’m a little girl.
God, I hate that and my age, and I think I hate Debra, too.
And—oh, Susan. I fucking despise her. Of course, she’d go tattle to Debra because she didn’t get what she wanted.
“It’s to protect the firm and King’s assets,” Nate says in that disturbed calm, the one that seems to be at the edge.
“It’s still registered, Nathaniel. People will find out and I’ll have to take care of the rumors and speculations. Do you know what they’ll say about you? They’ll say you wanted a kid, that you were attracted to her when she was underage and growing up before your eyes. They’ll call you a deviant, a pedophile, and a damn predator!”
I flinch with each of her words. I flinch so violently that I spill some of my milkshake onto the counter and I’m clinking my nails. Hard. Fast.
Oh my God. She’s right. That’s what the press will say. They’ll tear either me or Nate apart. They’ll say I seduced him or he preyed on me.
