My fingers circled the ‘A’ on his chest.
‘Nate?’
‘Mmm?’
‘When you’re having a hard time about it, you know you can talk to me, right?’
He gave a slight shake of his head. ‘I’m okay, Liv.’
‘Really? Because when Cole mentioned your tat, you seemed a little off for a few days afterwards.’
Nate slanted a look at me and gave a long, shaky sigh. ‘I don’t know if I can admit it out loud.’
‘Hey, as if I’m going to judge you about anything,’ I teased, trying to relax him again and remind him he was safe with me.
I wanted to follow the little sad smirk curving his lips with the tips of my fingers, but I refrained.
And I waited.
Until he said, ‘I got the tattoo so I’d remember Alana every single day.’
‘Yeah, you told me,’ I reminded him softly.
‘I sometimes wish I hadn’t gotten it.’ Shame entered his gaze as he looked at me, and I hated that he felt it. ‘Sometimes I think it would be easier to forget her most days.’
‘That’s understandable, honey.’
Nate shook his head in denial. ‘I promised her.’
‘Promised her what?’
His voice was hoarse now as he confessed, ‘I promised I’d never leave her.’ He cleared his throat, trying to bury the emotion, but he couldn’t. My friend was still carrying around so much history and I knew that for a fact as he continued. ‘When we were kids I protected her from everything. Crappy stepdad, kids who’d tease her because she didn’t have a lot of money, nightmares, even sad stories. But I couldn’t protect her from the cancer. I couldn’t protect her, so the least I could do was never leave her.’
A new ache wrapped its bruising hands around my ribs, and I leaned over to press a comforting kiss to his chest. ‘Nate, moving on with your life doesn’t mean forgetting her, or leaving her.’
Eyes narrowed, he wasn’t impressed with my comment. ‘How can you say that? You of all people know it doesn’t work like that. I should want to see that tattoo in the mirror every day, Olivia. I shouldn’t resent it.’
The hands around my ribs squeezed as the voice inside me told me to speak up, confess my own deep buried secret, the real reason behind all of this. I should. For my friend, I should. I pressed my cheek to his chest and struggled to find control of my breathing, tears pricking my eyes as I forced myself to be brave for him.
‘Do you want to know the real reason I asked for your help?’ I choked on the last words, the tears falling from my eyes. Nate tensed when he felt the splash of salt water on his skin.
He moved beneath me, but only to release his arm from behind his head so he could wrap it around me. ‘Liv?’
Looking up at him now through my tears, I whispered my own confession. ‘I was scared of resenting my mom. I was scared that somewhere deep inside of me I blamed her for the fact that I’d never had what everyone else had – first love and sex, and time to explore it when every one else was. I thought’ – I brushed away my tears – ‘I thought if I could just do something about it, it would take the chance of that resentment building away. Because resenting her for that would just make me the worst person ever, and I don’t know if I could have handled that dark part of myself that blamed a woman who was kind and gracious until the very end.’ I wiped at my tears and braced myself over him, running my fingers tenderly through his thick hair. ‘You’re not alone, Nate.’
I pressed a comforting, tearstained kiss to his lips.
And promptly found myself flat on my back, my hands pinned above my head as he braced himself over me, his eyes burning. ‘Nate?’ I gasped at the sudden movement.
His answer was to kiss me deeply, roughly, almost desperately as he nudged my legs apart. He let go of one of my wrists only to grab a condom off the bedside cabinet, and once he was ready, he held me down again.
I tried to move my arms, but they wouldn’t budge, and I was wickedly surprised to feel swift arousal move through me at the feeling of being completely under his control.
His to do with as he pleased.
With a growl of need he slammed into me and all I could do was take it as he pounded me into the mattress, my cries growing louder and louder until an eyes-rolling-to-the-back-of-my-head orgasm shattered my insides and I screamed his name upon beautiful release.
After Nate came just as hard, out of breath, out of control, he pulled out of me, but this time he didn’t get up to go to the bathroom. Instead he took off the condom and threw it in the trash can by my bed and then wrapped his arms around me, resting his head in the crook of my neck, leaving our legs tangled together.
We lay like that for some time, not saying a word, until finally sleep began to lull me. Feeling the pull of sleep Nate turned us on our sides, my back to his chest, his arm around my waist, his legs entwined with mine, and together we fell into a temporary state of absolute peace.
14
There was a lot to be learned from what was happening between me and Nate, but unfortunately I was determined to learn the least important things. Waking up with him that next morning, feeling his arms around me, feeling this wonderful mixture of being thrillingly alive but so comfortingly safe, I didn’t allow myself to take the time to read the signs.
Instead, we woke up, Nate in a hurry upon realizing he’d slept in and had a photo shoot early that morning for one of the local high schools. I discovered that laid-back, charming Nate did not like to be late. He relied on the use of grunting to reply to me as he rushed around trying to get ready. It was kind of cute.