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No more noise.
I looked down at my hands, rubbing them together like with some magic would spark to life and the right words would appear on my palms. I'd take each one, string them together, and somehow, she'd hear it. She'd hear the truth and know it wasn't more lies. More of the bullshit that I’d brought into her life.
When I dredged my gaze from my balled fists back to the woman who made me want to be better, to be more, I saw a different kind of surprise. A tentative thing. Like she'd had her own ideas of how this reunion would go, and I was switching it up on her.
Like maybe, she wanted to listen.
The impatient and impulsive part of me wanted to go to her; to kiss her, to get past all the difficult and painful obstacles to some imagined ‘happily ever after’. A place where we could put my sins and the tabloids behind us. Where I could show her I was more than a tech billionaire with a penchant for expensive toys, expensive booze, and fast women.
I had everything...and nothing. That's what sitting in my loft, alone, showed me. All the money in the world didn't mean a damn thing if there was no one to share it with. No one who busted your balls and called you on your shit. No one to connect with and share days that seemed like they would never end; jump up and down with you when you had good news. No one to make you wish the night would never end because you wanted to stay tangled up in the covers. Tangled up in each other.
I took a step away from the wall and paused, committing every beautiful angle of her face to mind, just in case I said my piece and it changed nothing. Just in case I truly had lost her.
Those eyes of hers speared me right through the chest. They sparkled like the first time our eyes met at the bar, bits of gold and brown dancing in the green. They were defiant, daring me to cross her. To underestimate her. But I knew better. I'd been foolish enough to let her slip through my fingers once. I knew hers were the only eyes I wanted to gaze into.
I swept over the button curve of her nose, the nostrils still flaring with emotion, but there was more than anger. Something else. Something I wanted to believe was the very thing that brought me to her in the first place.
And her mouth. The sweetheart mouth that no longer held a snarl, but lips were parted, little huffs of breath that made her shoulders rise and fall. Matching my own, my heart racing in my chest like something wild and terrified.
I'd said 'I love you' before, but standing here with her, so close and yet so far, I knew this was different. This was special. Something worth fighting for.
"There's only a handful of people who know who Cassidy Winters is to me." I inhaled, trying to see past the scowl at the mention of the woman, to the fact that Natalee hadn't stormed back into her apartment and slammed the door. "Trust me, it's not a name that I like to say myself. A lot of...history."
"Oh, I bet," Natalee snorted, locking her arms and telling me I was off to a bang up start. "I've learned all about your childhood sweetheart. The future Mrs. Jason Cox models for Vogue when she's not globetrotting for her athletic wear clothing line. If I could afford to drop $100 for a pair of leggings, she'd be right up my alley."
I arched an eyebrow, almost telling her she knew more about Cassidy than I did. After she told me about the baby, her family secreted her away. I heard rumors about her spending time in Europe after graduation and I was ashamed to admit that was good enough for me. Since my parents both left their marriage in the rearview before the ink was even dry on my diploma, it was a secret that died. A road we'd ventured on, then hit the brakes and accelerated backward until we were back on track, pretending it never happened at all.
I'd lived my life with my head in the sand. It was the Cox way. Avoiding entanglements. Trouble ahead? Throw money at it. Buy things; shiny, meaningless things. Go exciting places. Anything to numb the fact that when it came down to it, you were riding through life on auto pilot.
Alone.
Until now.
Natalee was still hyperventilating, holding tight to her anger. But the rest of her...her eyes burned like she did want an explanation, needed one. Her lips were parted, but no longer hissing all the reasons she should get the hell out of dodge. Her legs were locked, feet planted firmly. Not leaving. Listening.
So I got on with it.
Because she had every right to leave.
To close the door of us.
And every second she stood there, growling at me, was a gift I didn't deserve. But I'd start earning the second chance she was giving me right now.
“Cassidy Winters lived two houses down,” I began. “She was from the right zip code, had the right last name—and unlike every other girl in my universe at the time, didn’t seem to care about any of it.” Nostalgia rippled over me, like a numb limb slowly waking up. A tingling memory that made me sad because I knew this story didn’t have a happy ending.
Natalee didn’t share my nostalgia, the locked arms against her chest traveling up to her face and morphing the gentle curves into steel. I decided any further details, like how I knew Cassidy was special, that she was different when she shared that their maid, Freida, was more of a mother than the woman whose name was on her birth certificate. The girl who stood up for the kids at the bottom of the social totem pole. The first girl who made me wonder, is this what love feels like?
“We dated for a year and we-” I took a tiny, not-so-smooth step backward, covering it by casually leaning against the wall that my back was already acquainted with. “Hooked up in that span of time.”
I said it gingerly, like a parent who was having ‘the talk’. There was no talk in the Cox household. My dad just gifted me a box of condoms on my fourteenth birthday and let Google and my friends take care of the rest. And we were safe, but I learned the hard way that nothing except not doing it at all was 100%.
“So you guys had sex.” Natalee shrugged like it meant nothing, but I knew she cared. Just like the thought of any other man touching her, even before she became mine, made me want to puff out my chest and-
Wait.
Mine?
May be a bit premature there, buddy. Especially since Natalee looked like she was chewing glass and wanted to spit out a piece to slice my jugular with.
