Chapter Eleven
“Nia?”
I turned slowly, knowing who was there waiting for me and not quite ready to face him yet. But when I had swiveled all the way round, so I was facing the building once more, there was no denying that it was him.
“Nate,” I breathed. Somehow, he looked even less real close-up. I wasn’t sure how that could possibly work, but he seemed even more distant, even less accessible. I wanted to touch him, to reach out and run my hands across his body just to check that he was real, but I knew I needed to keep my hands to myself and my distance from him in general. If anyone came out and found us with any kind of indication that there was something going on here, there would be hell to pay.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He demanded, frowning at me. I blinked at him. Oh, shit. He didn’t know who I was – or what I was to him. I pressed my lips together. I almost didn’t want to have to tell him the truth but I knew there would be no way around it – he would find out eventually, one way or the other, for better or for worse.
“That guy in there, the one who runs this business?” I explained. “I’m his daughter.”
I swear to God that I had never seen anyone go white before in their life, but at that moment, Nate turned a color that was so near-chalky that I almost laughed out loud. Well, I would have, had it not been for the fact that this entire hideous nightmare was unfolding in front of me in real time and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“You have to be fucking kidding me,” Nate growled, and I rolled my eyes at him.
“You think I wanted this?” I pointed out. “You think I planned this?”
“How could you not have known about this?” He gestured between us. “Why did you never mention what your father did?”
“You never asked,” I shot back. “You were more interested in something else entirely, you remember now?”
“Yeah, I remember,” he grimaced slightly, as though he knew that he was responsible for this but just didn’t want to have to face up to it. I knew how he felt. I knew the sensations that were coursing through his body, the panic and fear and nightmarish worry that he had just fucked up beyond all belief. I wondered if the desire I felt was reflected in him too or if it was hidden away, scrambled up somewhere that he refused to look into. Even now, in this moment, I still felt myself almost irresistibly drawn to him; it was impossible to ignore, even as I did my best to pretend that the attraction had vanished, that I felt nothing for him.
“So what the fuck do we do?” I demanded. My voice was higher-pitched than normal and I sounded like a whining kid; I hated it when I sounded that way, especially since I was now the daughter of Nate’s business partner. I was a kid to him now, more than I had ever been. Jesus, this was all such a fucking mess.
“I don’t know,” he shook his head and glanced around to make sure that there was no-one listening in to the two of us. “I think we just…I guess we just try and put it behind us.”
My stomach dropped. I didn’t want to do that. I wasn’t sure that I could. Now that he was in front of me again, just standing there, I was reminded of the insane pull between the two of us. I wanted him again, here and now if I had to.
“I mean, we can’t let your father know what happened between us,” he shook his head. I thought back to the dirty looks my father had shot the guys who had given me the eye earlier and nodded.
“Yeah, I think he’d kill you,” I laughed mirthlessly, and Nate pressed his lips together and looked to the ground.
“How long have you been staying here?” He asked, returning his gaze to me suddenly; the look on his face caught me off-guard, gentler and sweeter than I had been ready for. I blinked at him for a moment, trying to regain my composure, before I replied.
“A few days,” I finally managed. “I came down here…there just wasn’t a lot left for me, back in the city. That was all.”
He fell silent. He must have known that I was talking about him. Well, he asked, and I wasn’t going to lie to him to spare his feelings. He hadn’t offered me the same decency and I didn’t see what he’d done to earn it from me in the meantime. I felt raw and rubbed-through, like my bones were on display, everything laid out for everything around me to poke and prod at. It wasn’t the best feeling in the world, to say the least.
“Was that…after what happened with us?” He didn’t pull his gaze from mine. I nodded.
“Yeah, it was,” I replied steadily. I could remember it so vividly now, every detail of that night that I had tried so hard to put behind me. The way he had touched me, fucked me, held me – the way he had looked at me and spoken to me. It came flooding back, the emotions so strong that I struggled to contain them. Part of me just wanted to vomit out my feelings on to his feet, to hand over everything that I had been carrying all this time and force him to shoulder some of the burden. But, judging by the look on his face, he already had been. I bit my lip. Was I just reading in to things that weren’t there, same as I had before? I couldn’t tell and I couldn’t trust myself any further. I had made so many mistakes in the last few months, missed so many signs, that I wasn’t sure if I could ever trust myself again.
“I’m sorry,” he shook his head and lowered his gaze to the ground once more. I sucked in a sharp breath. I hadn’t expected that, for some reason. A defence, maybe, a reminder of what we had agreed on, the rules of that game that he had never broken. But an apology? That was almost too much to handle.
“Are you?” I asked, and it wasn’t a challenge as much as an encouragement. I needed to hear this from him. It might be the only chance I had to move on. He nodded, took a deep breath, and continued. It was still just the two of us out there but I knew it wouldn’t be long till people came looking for him – he was, after all, the guest of honour at this thing.
“I shouldn’t have…led you on that way,” he continued, carefully, as though he was making sure that every word that came out of his mouth was the right one. “And I should have seen you, before you left. It wasn’t alright, what I did to you, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since you finished up work at Helios.”
“Because you were guilty?” I pressed, and he shook his head once more.
“No,” he admitted. “Because I missed you.”
I closed my eyes and let the words sink into my brain. They sounded exactly the same as they had when I’d imagined him telling me them a dozen times over in a dozen fantasies that I’d constructed in my head. I had just never imagined that a single one of them would come true. But now, here he was, standing in front of me and telling me that I wasn’t crazy and that all this time he had felt something for me, the same thing that I had felt for him.
“I missed you too,” I murmured, voice so low that I was surprised he could hear me. But his face cleared – that was the only way I could describe it, like a set of storm clouds parting for the first time since we had laid eyes on each other once more. He was so fucking handsome, in that suit, lit by the soft light of the party behind us. My heart was beating fast in my chest and my body was trembling in the cool evening air as I moved towards him, almost on instinct – I didn’t know what I was doing but I knew that I didn’t have it in me stop. He gripped my arms, his fingers digging in to the bare skin like he was reminding himself just how much he wanted me. And then, at last, he leaned down and kissed me.
It wasn’t like the kiss in the taxi, which had felt more like a mistake than anything else – that had been a lapse in judgement, a second where we’d both misplaced the parameters of the relationship we’d started together. This wasn’t that. This was so much more. We were…fuck, this was the start of something entirely new, something that existed completely and utterly independent of everything we had shared till that moment. This was a fresh start, a do-over, his mouth on mine as I slid my arms around his neck and drew him in close. He tasted so good, of an expensive white wine and himself, and he slipped his tongue softly into my mouth and let his hands travel down my body, over my waist, up my shoulders, his fingertips trailing up my back. I hung on to him desperately, as though if I broke my grip even for a moment all of this might slip away for good and I might never get him back this time. The universe had dumped him back into my life this evening for reasons even I didn’t fully understand and the only thing in the damn world that I wanted was to make sure that he didn’t slip through my fingers once more.
He pulled back and slid his hands to each side of my face, looking intently into my eyes.
“Nia,” he murmured again, brushing his nose against my face. “Nia, I missed you so fucking badly…”
“I missed you too,” I repeated it again. “I- I thought you didn’t want to see me again. I thought I’d overstepped the mark, with that kiss after we went out together-”
“You totally did overstep the mark,” he confirmed with a grin. “But that’s what – that’s what made me realize that I wanted you to. I took you out on a damn date, for God’s sake. I needed you to push me.”
“Why didn’t you see me again after that?” I pressed, barely caring but needing to hear it. I had forgotten about the party beyond the doors, forgotten about everything in the known universe but the feel of his hands on my skin. I wanted to take him home. I wanted to get out of this place and hire a car and drive all the way down to his apartment and be done with all of this. I was ready. I would have gone with him that moment, hitched up my skirt and walked out of that party and left it all behind.
“I was so unsettled by it,” he explained hurriedly. “I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle you. And I’m not going to make the same mistake again.”
“You better not,” I smiled, a giddy grin bursting across my face. My heart was thumping in staccato rhythm and in that second I wouldn’t have cared if the door to that party had opened and everyone in the world had seen me in the arms of this man, this man who I had dreamed about every night since I left, this man who I-
“Nia?”
Another voice spoke my name, and this one I recognized too – but instead of relief it sent panic through my system, and I jumped away from Nate so fast it was like someone had sent a shock from his body to mine. Mom was standing there, frowning at us, the chatter and laughter from the party beyond leaking through the door. She was outlined in the dim golden light so I couldn’t see the expression on her face, but I got the feeling it wasn’t exactly approving.
“What are you doing out here?” She demanded, striding towards me. I knew that I had gone bright red. That was my curse, not being able to hide my emotions when I needed to – I glanced over at Nate who had already slotted comfortably back into the cool, calm, casual mood that he seemed to adept at. He stepped forward to mitigate the situation, taking control in that way of his that made my heart flip-flop.
“Nia was just feeling a little faint,” Nate explained, placing a hand on my shoulder – it could have been construed for platonic if you didn’t know any better, but it sent this sharp shudder through my system and I almost forgot that my mother was standing there at all.
“She came outside to get some air and I noticed that she wasn’t looking so hot so I came out to check that she was okay,” he finished up smoothly, as though it had been on the tip of his tongue since the moment he’d walked out here with me. My mother raised her eyebrows, obviously impressed.
“Well, that’s very gentlemanly of you,” she nodded, looking pleased. “Good to know that my husband picked such a winning partner for his business.”
“I try my best,” he bowed his head playfully and she let out a small laugh.
“And modest too, I see,” she smiled. Nate’s hand was still resting on my shoulder and I stepped away, knowing how easy it would have been to just let it sit there even longer. But I had noticed my mother’s eyes heading in that direction and knew we wouldn’t get away with it much longer.
“Are you feeling alright, Nia?” She asked, and I nodded, even though it was a lie. If anything, I was even more confused than I had been only a few minutes before, when I had been so sure that I would never see Nate again in my life. But now he was here and he wanted me but we had another reason that we couldn’t so much as lay a hand on each other, and it just didn’t feel entirely fair.
“Come on, let’s get back to the party,” Mom suggested, grabbing my hand. “I’m sure there’s lots of people my husband would like to introduce you to, Nathaniel.”
“Sounds great,” Nate nodded, and the two of us exchanged a look as we headed back inside the party. Was this really happening? And if it was, what the hell were the two of us meant to do about it?