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I wasn’t trying to hurt him. Quite the opposite actually. I wanted him to get it out, to release all those emotions he’d been holding back for who knew how long.
“Remember all those times you were told you weren’t good enough?”
Nathan turned his rage on a boxy, inkjet printer.
“That you were stupid?”
He dropped the tire iron to the ground with a clank, picked up the toaster again, and hurled it against the wall with every bit of strength he had.
“Useless? Unworthy?”
He shoved a four-shelf bookcase, toppling it to the floor where it splintered apart.
Once it became obvious he didn’t need me anymore, I hopped up on the metal table and leaned my back against the wall. Nathan didn’t spare me even a passing glance as he continued to rampage through the room, destroying everything in his path.
Little by little, I watched the muscles in his back and shoulders unknot. I watched all that anger, bitterness, and resentment bleed away. Oh, I knew one ultimate temper tantrum wouldn’t magically make everything okay, but I hoped it did give him some temporary relief.
With ten minutes left on the timer, he staggered over—drenched in sweat and panting for breath—and lifted himself up on the table to sit beside me. A strange little smile played across his lips, and his eyes had lost that haunted look.
I considered it a win.
“Feeling better?”
“Yes.” He slumped over and rested his head on my shoulder. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I’d torn him down. Now, it was time to build him back up. “Nate, you know none of those things I said are true, right?” When he didn’t answer, I leaned back and tucked a knuckle under his chin to tilt his head up. “Nate?”
“I know,” he muttered.
“Not good enough.”
“I know.”
A little better, but I wanted more. “Again.”
Sitting up, he puffed his chest out and said in a loud, carrying voice, “I. Know.”
I cuffed his ear lightly and chuckled. “Good job.”
“I’m not a drug addict,” he blurted.
“I never thought you were.” Well, not once I’d met him. Before that, I’d only been going off the reports I’d been given. “So, why did you go to rehab?”
“The senator thought it would help her win the election. It did.”
I noticed that he never called his mother anything other than “the senator.” In the beginning, I had assumed he was just being a dick. Now, I understood.
“The partying?”
“Photos taken out of context with a made-up story to accompany it.”
“All the men and women you’ve been photographed with?”
Nathan shook his head. “I didn’t even know those people. They just came up and started talking to me.”
I had been fortunate enough to know some pretty amazing people during my life. Some had stayed only briefly, while others had become something more akin to family. Naturally, the good didn’t exist without the bad, and I had encountered plenty of awful individuals as well.
Esther Fairfax was by far the vilest person I had ever met.
