Chapter Twelve
I was packing my stuff slowly, just like I had back home, because once again I didn’t want to leave but knew that I didn’t really have that much of a choice. I needed to get out of here, to leave Nate behind again while I was ahead – even if it pained me to think about being so far from him once more, I knew there was no choice. It was the best thing for both of us. Even if he didn’t know it yet. Even if I wasn’t sure that I would ever truly believe what I kept telling myself.
Because even now, sitting here amongst the rubble of my room, it was hard to actually believe that getting out of this place was the best thing for me. I knew Nate would be in town for a few days longer, and that the two of us could easily sneak in a meet-up if that’s what we wanted. We had swapped numbers – something we’d failed to do while we were just fooling around at the office – and we’d been texting practically non-stop. Jokes, flirtations, maybe even a little more than that. But I knew it had to stay at arm’s length. I knew I was asking for trouble even going that far. And yet, there was some small, sure part of me that didn’t want any of it to stop.
Why would I? I didn’t much believe in fate or destiny or any of that kind of crap, but there was something undeniable about the fact that he had rocked up back in my life just like that after so much time apart. As though the two of us had willed it into being. As though the world had seen the two of us, so far apart, and seen the energy we were both pouring into being back together once more and decided to let us catch a break. Even now, thinking about him, sitting in the middle of my childhood bedroom floor, I found myself smiling broadly despite myself. Even though I knew I had to get out of here and had to leave him and have to pretend that none of this had ever happened.
I found myself going through it all again in my head, checking to see if there was a loophole that I had somehow missed. But I knew there wasn’t. I had been over and over and over and over every detail of this in my head so many times I felt as though my brain my shatter and break under the stress of all of it, and I hadn’t found one little thing that meant that this could somehow work. He was my father’s business partner. And that meant that, no matter how strongly I found myself drawn to him or how much I wanted to believe that the two of us could make something work, that whatever it was between us was doomed to fail and I needed to accept that for the two of us.
I clutched my stomach – I still felt like shit, the nausea that had consumed me the last few days hitting me in waves that felt as though they were going to straight knock me off my feet. They seemed to have gotten worse since I’d seen Nate at the gala, and I assumed that he had something to do with them, that this was my body trying to warn me that he was close and that I should keep my guard up. Well, it hadn’t worked. I had still been drawn to him, pathetically attached to him, as soon as I’d laid eyes on him again.
Or maybe it was my period finally coming. I paused for a moment as I folded one of my shirts, and tried to count out the days since my period had last come – was I a week late or two weeks? It was hard to remember with any kind of clarity, as things had been such a mess that I hadn’t exactly been doing a great job of keeping an eye on my cycle. I checked the date on my phone, closed my eyes, and counted backwards. Yeah, okay, I was two weeks late. So, that wasn’t great news on top of everything else.
I continued to fold the shirt, trying to ignore the twist of sickness in my stomach once more. Maybe I just needed something to eat, but nothing that I knew we would have in the kitchen sounded anything close to good to me. I carefully put the shirt in my bag and stared down at it for a second, the purple fabric blurring in the corners of my vision. No appetite, sickness, late period. I was adding the pieces together in my head, and I knew damn well what the tallied up to.
I should just take a test. Just to be on the safe side. It didn’t have to be some big, crazy deal – no, it could just be a little thing, something that I did to make sure I could walk out of this place without looking back. A confirmation that nothing was attaching me to Nate beyond the new deal he’d struck with my father. As soon as I was done with this then I could focus on going home and setting up my life once more, a life that didn’t involve Nate or Matt or any of them.
I had a pregnancy test in the bathroom – don’t ask me why, I was a seriously neurotic teenager and as soon as I had started hooking up with dudes I had begun keeping pregnancy tests around the house just to make sure that I wasn’t going to find myself caught out. I had taken at least three that I could remember over the course of my sexual career, and all of them had come up negative, thank God, especially considering the guys I had been seeing at the time. I was sure I was safe this time around, but now that the thought was in my head I knew I wouldn’t be able to shake it unless I checked once and for all.
I made my way into the bathroom that was attached to my bedroom and rustled through the cupboard for a moment – it was like going through my high school make-up bag, a handful of old shiny lip glosses falling from the shelf they’d been gathering dust on and some bright purple eyeshadow that I had been convinced I had looked the shit in catching my eye. But eventually I came across what I was looking for – an opened pack of a half-dozen tests, with one left. Damn, I had taken more of these than I thought. I pulled out the last one and checked that it was still in-date and wasn’t going to give me some crazy-erroneous reading. Nope, we were good. My heart was hammering in my chest as I went to use it, slowly peeling it out of the packaging as though that would keep me from having to look at the results a little longer. I knew I’d be fine. We had always used condoms, and what were the chances of getting pregnant when you were using condoms? Like, one percent? Maybe two? I would have to be ridiculously unlucky to turn up a positive result here. Ridiculously so.
I tapped my feet on the floor in a random rhythm and tried to ignore the fact that my scalp was prickling with discomfort as I sat on the toilet and waited for the results to come in. I still felt sick, but this time I knew what it was about – every time I took a test like this one I found myself in a state of panic, no matter how unlikely it was that I was actually pregnant. I mean, the chances of it happening would have been crazy-small. But then, I reminded myself, what were the chances of Nate turning out to be the guy that my father had formed a business deal with? The odds on that had to be pretty slim, and yet it had still happened, the two of us finding our way back to each other even when we both wanted nothing more than a break from one another.
I stared at the ceiling, counting down the seconds in my head, and then slowly, finally, I looked down at the stick once more. And I blinked.
No. No.
It couldn’t be right. It had to be some kind of mistake. That was the only explanation for something like this, that there had been some malfunctions in the stick and I would have to call the manufacturers and get my money back and find some way for this not to be happening. Oh God. My pulse had picked up so quickly that I felt as though my heart was going to bust right out of the front of my chest. I couldn’t handle this. I couldn’t take it.
I knew, as well, that all of this added up to the truth. I might not have wanted it to be the case but there was no denying the fact that everything pointed towards me being pregnant – the way I’d been feeling, the lack of period, and now the test. And it had to be Nate’s. There was no question of that in my mind, no matter how badly I wanted it to be someone else’s. He was the only guy that I’d had sex with since my last period, and he was the only feasible father to this little baby that was growing inside of me.
That thought was enough to get me to finally throw up – I whirled around and made it just in time, heaving up what felt like the entirety of my guts into the pan in front of me. I gripped the sides of the toilet and gasped for air, and wondered if this was what my rock-bottom felt like. Trying to deal with the fact that I was pregnant by a man who everyone knew shouldn’t have been laying a finger on a girl like me, trying to pretend that it wasn’t happening. What was I going to tell him?
Then the dark thought flitted over my brain space. I could just not tell him. He didn’t need to know, really. I could easily take care of this myself, deal with what was to come without him by my side. Whether I decided to keep it or not, I could deal with that without him. Couldn’t I? If I wanted to. I imagined me, back at that apartment, rocking a baby in my arms in the middle of the night. I could do it, if I really wanted to. I just didn’t really want to.
No. I had to tell him. I was sick of us constantly lying to each other, constantly finding ways to squirm out of responsibility when it came to one another, whether it was him hiding from me after we’d shared that kiss in the street or me about to flee back across the country away from him to deal with facing up to my feelings. This had to be different. This had to be more than just the two of us and our stupid back-and-forth. I put my hand on my stomach, gingerly, as though I half-expected to feel something their already even though I knew that would be ridiculous. There was another life in this now, another creature, someone else to whom our bullshit back-and-forth mattered. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to centre myself. None of this made sense to me. None of it clicked in my head. And yet, I was going to have to find a way to make it click, because I needed to be together enough to get in touch with Nate and tell him what the hell had just happened here.
I got to my feet slowly and looked in the mirror, and for a moment I struggled to recognize myself. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. This kind of thing, it had never been who I was – sure, I had been careful when I was with Nate, but this was still the kind of shit that happened to someone other than me. Someone careless and reckless, someone who threw caution to the wind all the time and hooked up with whoever they wanted whenever they wanted to. I couldn’t connect the person looking back at me in the mirror with the knowledge of what was happening to me in that moment, even though I knew that was ridiculous.
Because what kind of person had I become since I had met Nate? I had become the kind of woman who hooked up with her hot boss because it seemed like it would be fun, the kind of woman who got pregnant from a guy that she barely knew and had only just reconnected with. I wasn’t the kind of woman I had been a few months ago, the one who lived that boring life with an asshole boyfriend and looked over all the rough edges in the hopes of making them disappear. No, here I was, stuck in the rough edges, stuck in the bad parts. And I was just going to have to find some way to make it work.
I reached for my toothbrush and scrubbed the taste of where I’d just thrown up out of my mouth. That was a start. I was going to get myself feeling more like a human being, and then I was going to pack the rest of my stuff – and fuck, then I was going to make sure that I got rid of this pregnancy test so my mother didn’t stumble across it at the worst possible time and find out that I was pregnant before I wanted her to. If I ever wanted her to. No, I would cross that bridge when I came to it, no point getting hung up on hypotheticals for the time being. I would get myself together, and then I would find Nate and I would tell him that the two of us had something to talk about. And hopefully, hopefully, he would be able to help me through the nightmare that was exploding in my head. I had never dealt with anything like this before, and all I wanted was to crawl back into my bed and pretend none of it was happening.
I splashed some water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror again. There. That would do it. I could see myself once more, the resolve flashing in my eyes. I took a deep breath and shot one more look at the test, like it might have changed it’s mind since I last looked, but no, there it was, still showing me the truth I didn’t want to accept. But I was going to have to if I wanted to move forward.
Chapter Thirteen
I drummed my feet on the floor of the taxi and felt a twist of sickness in my stomach once more, but I knew it wasn’t about the pregnancy this time. It was about seeing Nate again, after all this time apart. About having him to myself once more. And I had to admit that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him.
Not that there was going to be anything of that nature going on, some prim part of me reminded me for the dozenth time that morning. I was there for a reason, and it wasn’t to get laid. Much as it was tempting to give in to that.
Nate had passed on the address of the hotel he was staying at when I had contacted him, and I imagined that he likely thought I was coming down there to finally give in to how much I wanted him. And, honestly, I would be lying if I said that had never crossed my mind. I did want him, badly – it was just that the wanting him was all tied up in the stuff that he didn’t know yet, in the stuff that I had kept from him so far, the stuff that I knew he needed to hear from me.
“We’re here,” the driver remarked from the front of the cab, and I blinked and brought myself back to reality and realized we were sitting outside a fancy-ass hotel on the outskirts of the town. I wondered how long we’d been sitting there, how long the driver had let me sit with my racing, rambling thoughts before he got tired of watching the meter count up and decided to boot me out. I handed him some money, not bothering to check how much, and scrambled out of the car, standing in front of the building for a moment before heading in to the lobby. I could do this. I had to do this. I wasn’t sure whether it was fear or excitement or some combination of the two, but I could hardly put one foot in front of the other as I approached the front desk.
“Hi, I’m here to see Nate Richards?” I asked, my voice sounding decidedly higher-pitched than it normally did. The receptionist eyed me for a moment and then picked up the phone, called him, and checked that he was expecting me.
“Go ahead,” she waved her hand towards the elevator. “He’s expecting you. Room four-oh-two.”
“Thanks,” I nodded to her as politely as I could, considering the fact that she was still hitting me with a dirty look for no reason. Maybe she thought I was a prostitute? But then, she’d seen Nate – she knew that guys that hot didn’t need to pay for what they could get for free.
I stood in the elevator and it whisked me up to his room and I shifted my weight from one foot to the other as I tried to muster up the resolve that I had put in place in the car. I wasn’t going to hook up with him. Well, maybe I was, but I at least had to tell him the real reason for my visit first. Or maybe –
The doors slid open and I hurried down the corridor, stilling my overthinking thoughts. They weren’t going to do anything helpful. I would just let what was going to happen, happen, and that would be that. I hesitated for a moment when I came to his door, lifted my knuckles, and then knocked.
He pulled the door open a second later and I forgot about everything that I had worked so hard to hold together. I knew I couldn’t resist him. Why in the hell had I ever thought I could? Look at him – the mess in his hair, the stubble on his jaw, the easy, casual t-shirt that clung to his arms and his-
“Get in here,” he growled, and pulled me towards him in one swift motion. I kicked the door shut behind me and fell into his arms and felt this wave of relief in realizing that he still wanted me as badly as he did before, as badly as I wanted him. He leaned down and kissed me, hand slipping down my waist to my ass, and pulled me against him. He was already hard. How long had he been picturing this moment, had he been ready for it? I knew that I had gone over this encounter a million times in my head, the way I would touch him, the way he would smell and taste and fell, but none of my fantasies came anywhere near close to how good this felt right now.
“I don’t see why you’d bother with all of this,” Nate murmured against my mouth as he went to undo the zips and buttons on the pants that I had worn; I had thrown them on in the thin hope that they would be enough to keep me from giving in to my baser instincts quite as quickly as I might have done otherwise, but his deft fingers were already making light work of them and I knew I’d been a fool to think that I could stop myself. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him again, kicking off my shoes and letting the pants fall around my feet. I kicked them off and stepped towards him, and he hitched me up and carried me to the bed, laying me down carefully on the covers, running his hands up and down my bare legs. There was an edge to the look in his eyes, something rough and hungry, something that made my heart beat a little faster and my breath come a little more ragged.
“I missed this,” He murmured, pushing my legs apart and kissing the inside of my thigh. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” I panted, watching as he brushed his lips playfully over the black cotton of my panties. I could feel the warmth of his breath and it was making me needy for more. I reached down and ran my fingers through his hair and he glanced up at me, a smile spreading across his face, like he knew what I needed so badly and had no intention of giving it to me. I bit my lip. He was always like this, so ready to push and pull and tease and taunt me until I couldn’t take any more. But all I needed right then was him to take my mind off everything that was happening, everything that had been flowing around and around my head the last twenty-four hours.
“Make me come,” I pleaded. I knew I sounded pathetic and a little desperate, but it was the only way I could think of to put what I needed into words. I could play his twisted-up little games a thousand times over in the future, but right now all I needed was for him to put those deft skills to good use and make me come.
“With pleasure,” he raised his eyebrows, apparently impressed by my demands. Maybe I should try being a little more forward in future, see if that got me closer to where I wanted to be with him.
He ripped down my panties, moving so I could kick them off the ends of my feet, and looked down at my pussy and let out this soft groan, like this was what he’d been waiting for all this time. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at him. Somehow that was too much, over sensitizing my entirely too-tender body. I felt his fingers spread me apart, his breath still warm on me and I curled my toes and balled the covers up in my fists.
He pushed a finger into me, slowly moving it inside of me, as though testing how wet I was, how ready I was for me. I let out a gasp – I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but it wasn’t that. He drew his finger against the upper wall of my vagina, finding that sensitive spot that everyone else I’d been with had only ever hit on purpose and for a split-second. I bit my lip. It felt so good it was almost painful, the intensity of it bridging that gap between pleasure and agony. He stroked his finger back and forth a few times and the sensation mellowed to good, my body melting into the covers below me as he did his work. I breathed deep, gulping in air as though it was the only thing keeping me pinned to the ground right now, as though I might pick up and fly away if I wasn’t careful. I opened my eyes for a moment, glancing down at him, and found him watching me with this hungry intensity that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. How was it that he could do this to me with just a look?
I closed my eyes again and moments later I felt his tongue on my clit – I would have recognized him anywhere, the sweet, soft touch as he stroked back and forth over my most sensitive spot. That, combined with his soft caressing of my G-spot, was getting me overheated. My body was racing double-time to make sense of everything that was happening, the mess of sensations and distractions mounting and growing and-
“Oh, fuck,” I gasped again, and suddenly the orgasm took me over. That was the only way to describe it, taking me over – it seemed to control me, to dominate me, to shift everything else out of my head and replace it with this raw, rampant pleasure. It grew and burst, the waves of pleasure hitting me hard and fast, making my legs shake and my jaw tremble. I couldn’t focus on anything, not even Nate, as I came, my body given over to it, lost to it.
Finally, it began to subside, and I opened my eyes to find myself in that hotel room once more. And that I was already hungry for more. I looked down at him again and he was watching me carefully, as though trying to figure out how best to torment me to orgasm again; I had asked him to make me come and he had certainly obliged, so I couldn’t complain about false advertising. But now I needed something more intimate. I needed to feel the weight of him on top of me. I reached down and pulled him up, kissing him again, tasting myself on him and remembering just how much I loved it when I could taste the two of us mingling on his mouth.
“Fuck me”, I begged. Being blunt with him seemed to have worked before so I figured it was worth a shot again this time around. He grinned and kissed me again, his tongue in my mouth.
“With pleasure,” he murmured, and he reached into the bedside table and pulled out a condom; as fast as he could manage, he removed what he was wearing on his lower half and sheathed himself, pushing my legs apart and positioning himself at the entrance to my pussy. I was so ready for this. I ran my hands through his hair, across his neck, over his back. He watched me as he moved into me for the first time, not once pulling his gaze from my own as he entered me for the first time in what felt like a lifetime.
“Ah…” I groaned, trying my best to meet his gaze but finding it too intense for the time being. All I could focus on was the feel of him, his cock spreading me open as he went hard and deep into me. He wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my neck, inhaling deeply, as though reminding himself of all the little details of me that he’d missed since the last time we had done this. I held on for dear life, my brain running through the dozens of times we’d done this before, how good they felt, how raw, how real. It felt like I was waking up after a long sleep, like my body had been numb until this moment.
We fucked like that for a while, in perfect harmony, our bodies rocking against one another’s like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. And maybe it was, because I knew that after this I would have to face up to the truth, to the knowledge that I bore that he knew nothing about yet. But for now – for those sacred, special moments – I could pretend it was just me and him again, just the two of us, as it had always been before.
I found myself cresting again, surprised that I was already ready to come once more after the intensity of the first time. This one was different, gentler and softer, one that grew as it went on; he kissed me as I came and there was something so painfully tender and intimate about that moment that I felt something I’d never felt before, like I was missing him even though he was right there with me. He thrust deep, going a little faster, and moments later he reached his own climax inside of me too. He held himself there for a long while, his breath coming faster and harder than it had before, and then slowly pulled out of me, as though he would have been happy waiting until he was hard again and going at it from the top.
He rolled off of me and disposed of the condom, and a bitter thought that we didn’t really need to use it crossed my mind – and I remembered, with a jolt, exactly why I had come here in the first place. I closed my eyes. Okay, so this wasn’t going to be one little bit of fun, but I had to do it.
He lay down next to me, still dressed from the waist up, and grinned.
“I really missed doing that with you,” He confessed, brushing a loose strand of hair back from my face. I smiled at him, almost forgetting for a moment what I had come here for in the first place. I knew I shouldn’t let it slip my mind, but it was so easy, especially the way he was looking at me, the sweet tenderness in his eyes making it all too simple to just forget. I didn’t want to ruin this. I wanted to revel in this moment and enjoy the way it felt, to commit to memory the way he was looking at me right now. I had craved this so badly for so long, the look on his face, the fact that he admitted that he missed me and that he wanted me and…all of it. And I had to be the one who put a stop to it all.
He pushed himself out of bed and went to grab his clothes, getting dressed once more; I realized that it had gotten dark outside, the evening closing in around us, like the world was preparing me to let him know the truth. I pulled the covers around me like a protective shield and propped myself up on the bed – the sick feeling was back, but this time I knew for damn sure that it was nerves at the thought of telling him everything I’d done such a damn good job hiding from him this whole time.
“You alright?” He asked, going for the minifridge and grabbing himself a drink. “You want one?”
“No, I shouldn’t,” I shook my head, looking down at my hands. And how exactly was I meant to tell him? What, did I just yell it at the top of my lungs and then run out of this place? He eyed me for a moment.
“You don’t look alright,” he remarked bluntly, and I rolled my eyes at him playfully.
“You really know how to make a girl feel special, Nate, you know that?” I teased weakly. He held his hands up as he cracked one of the tiny bottles of whisky and poured it into one of the glasses that came with the room.
“Point taken,” he conceded, taking a sip. “Why aren’t you drinking? You pregnant or something?”
It was a trip, watching his face after he said those words. As he seemed to notice the fact that I wasn’t contradicting him. As he seemed to register that yeah, maybe I actually was pregnant. He took a deep sip of his drink, as though giving me time to jump in and tell him that I was kidding, but I stayed quiet. I was glad I didn’t have to come out with the words myself. I wasn’t sure I could have managed it. But this – this was a way of doing it, sure. And at least it would be done after this. Even if my heart was pounding so fast in my chest I could hear it thrumming in my ears. I knew in that moment that everything had changed between us, changed in an irreparable way, and I didn’t know what the hell to expect going forward.
“Are you?” He asked again softly, and I nodded slowly. He closed his eyes, and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Is that why you came around here today?” He gestured to the hotel room, and I nodded again.
“So what just happened…” He furrowed his brow.
“It wasn’t what I came here for,” I admitted. “I mean, I loved – I had a great time. But I knew I had to tell you.”
“And you’re sure it’s mine?” He went on, his voice sounding curiously hollow, like it was bouncing off the walls of his chest as he spoke.
“Certain,” I nodded. “It couldn’t be anyone else’s.”
“Oh, fuck,” He snapped, but the hostility seemed to be mostly aimed at himself and not me. Nonetheless, it made me jump and bristle, and I quickly rolled out of bed and went to gather my stuff so I could actually be wearing clothes when we had this hell of a conversation.
He turned away from me, putting space between us, and I felt my stomach lurch as I realized that he didn’t want anything to do with me right now. I wanted to reach out and touch him, remind him of what we’d just shared, but I had a feeling that was only going to make things worse. I bit my lip.
“Nate?” I murmured softly, so quietly that I could just pretend that he hadn’t heard me somehow. He didn’t move a muscle.
“I think you should go,” He shook his head. My stomach lurched.
“What are you talking about?” I stood there, just a few feet away from him, this man who I was – well, this man who had gotten me pregnant. And he wouldn’t even look me in the eye, like acknowledging that this was really happening would bring the reality crashing home.
“I need some time to think,” he glanced up at me at last, and then took another long drink of his scotch. It wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined revealing the news of a pregnancy to a partner. I had hoped, at least, that there would be some celebration amongst the anger, amongst the nervousness. But looking at him now, the way his jaw tightened and his fist clenched at his sides, I wondered if there was any part of him that was happy about this. If there was, he was doing a damn good job of hiding it.
“About what?” I blurted out before I could stop myself, even though the answer to that question was pretty obvious. He looked away again.
“I’m not abandoning you,” he promised. “You’ll hear from me again, soon. Just, right now, I need some time to get my head together…”
He trailed off again, turning to look out beyond the window. His mouth was downturned at the edges, almost comically, like a sad clown. I would have giggled at him if he hadn’t been booting me out of his hotel room after I’d just told him that I was carrying his child.
“I’ll see you later,” he muttered, heading towards the door. “I’ll make sure there’s a cab waiting for your downstairs. Just…go. For now. I’m sorry.”
I let my head droop down and made my way out of his room at last. There was no point sitting around here if he wasn’t going to talk to me about what had just happened. I felt stupid, used – had I really thought that he was going to throw himself into my arms with a smile on his face and tell me that he wanted to drop everything to raise this baby with me? I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but something more than what I’d gotten – something more than just “get out of this hotel room and give me some damn time to think”. What was he thinking about? And was he telling the truth about seeing him again? If he was so happy to boot me to the curb now then what was there to keep him from just ignoring my calls and pretending none of this was happening at all?
I headed downstairs, back to reception, and tried to still my racing thoughts, but it did little to help. I was just so confused. I wanted an answer, I wanted him to tell me that he could make this all right. I didn’t know whether I wanted to be with him or without him, but I knew I needed him to guide me through this, to help me through the mess that was the inside of my head right now. I knew I shouldn’t have let his shock get to me but I couldn’t help going over and over the look on his face, the surprise – something close to horror, too.
“Your cab is waiting outside,” The woman at reception managed a smile in my direction, less standoffish this time. I returned her smile in a daze. I’d been in and out of there so quickly she probably thought that I’d just come to this hotel room to hook up with him. I wished I could tell her the truth, wished I could blurt out the messy contents of my head to someone else and get them to help me put the pieces of all of this together. But I couldn’t. I knew that the two of us would have to figure it out together, and that meant holding off on discussing it with anyone else at all, no matter how badly I wanted to.
I slid into the taxi that was waiting outside and gave the driver my address, my voice sounding hollow and empty the way his had back in that hotel room. As we pulled away from the building, I stared back up at the dozens of windows that lined it, wondering which one Nate was standing behind – and wondering if I would ever see him again after this meeting.