Текст книги "Tempting"
Автор книги: Alex Lucian
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
Chapter Thirty-Three
To: Alice Carroll
Date: Sunday, November 22, 2015 04:32 PM
From: Nathaniel Easton
Subject: Please
I hope to see you in class tomorrow. I called you again, and didn’t receive a reply to my email on Friday. I don’t blame you for being upset, I was callous and patronizing. My shock at seeing you with the ring on isn’t what did it, and someday I hope to tell you why you changing your major affected me so much. But not here. Not like this. Right now, I’m hoping you’ll at least read an email from me.
And when I say this, it’s not because I’m angry about it anymore, but I believe you still had the ring on when you left my house. Above anything else it may have been, it was a gift from my grandmother on my mom’s side, and she was one the few family members I had a truly close relationship with. I’d appreciate it if you could bring it to class with you tomorrow.
My brain hasn’t stopped moving, Adele, not since you slammed the door and left. I don’t think it’s slowed in the last 72 hours. I know it certainly hasn’t allowed me to sleep. Please, just let me know you’ve at least seen these.
Sincerely,
Nathan
(I’m hoping that my formality will appeal to you. I’m not trying to be a pretentious prick.)
• • •
To: Alice Carroll
Date: Monday, November 23, 2015 02:16 PM
From: Nathaniel Easton
Subject: (no subject)
While the return of the ring is something that I’m appreciative of, it was sorely tempered by your empty chair mocking me during class today. I can feel you still punishing me for what I did, in the way that you didn’t even write my name on the envelope, how the only item sandwiched in between the plain white paper was the ring itself. No note, nothing. Maybe you didn’t intend for it to hurt as much as it did, but let me assure you if that was your goal, I felt it like you’d hammered a single, rusty nail into my heart. In fact, I was late to class for the first time all semester, because it took me ten fucking minutes before I could even take the ring out of the envelope. Maybe that seems strange to you, but to me, it felt like I was accepting your goodbye in doing so. By the time I arrived, only half the class was there, and the remaining students who filled the seats barely paid attention, their heads already on break, already back home.
But you and I? We don’t count down to moments like that, do we? I don’t know what your house looks like, or how many siblings you have. I don’t know if there are friends that you will connect with while you’re in town, but God, Adele, I want to know those things. There’s a possibility in relationships such as ours, to know someone on a bone-deep level, to recognize the soul of the other person, but not have a single notion of what the ins and outs of their life is. Let me know both sides of you. Please?
Nathan
• • •
To: Alice Carroll
Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 09:59 PM
From: Nathaniel Easton
Subject: (no subject)
Every day, I wake up and I think, maybe she wrote me back today. Can you believe that I actually thought that I could give you space? Not email you, let you breathe without me begging for scraps.
Every morning that I’ve ended up sending you some woefully inadequate words, I’ve started the day with resolve. Women need space sometimes. And that’s okay. If I were you, I’d have a hard time forgiving me too. But I’m weaker than that, Adele. I can’t make it through the waking hours with an ache like that, the one sitting like an anvil in my stomach that I carry around with me all day long. And it doesn’t abate until I try, just one more time.
Most cordially,
Nathaniel Robert Easton
(I wish I knew your middle name, will you please tell me? That’s all you need to put in an email. Just your middle name in the subject line, and I might be able to breathe again.)
(Also, I’m trying very hard not to drink every day that I don’t hear from you. It doesn’t always work, so if that happens, I’ll most likely try to call you again. Could you please pick up this time?)
• • •
To: Alice Carroll
Date: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 10:15 PM
From: Nathaniel Easton
Subject: (no subject)
I forgot to include this in my email yesterday: What did you switch your major to? I can’t even fathom that I forgot to ask that. And as much as I’ll try not to sound like a boring professor by saying this, I’m sure it will come out that way. You’re so talented, Adele. I hope you don’t give up writing, because that would be a tragedy.
And as much as I thought I’d be able to abstain tonight, this topic of discussion and the thought of spending the day with my family tomorrow has me pouring myself some whiskey. I’ll try not to call you too many times, but I can’t make any promises. When my defenses are down, you’re always the first thing I want. Unapologetically.
N
• • •
To: Alice Carroll
Date: Thursday, November 26, 2015 01:16 AM
From: Nathaniel Easton
Subject: (no subject)
YOu never answer my phone callsd. and I cann’t even be mad. Because I was suuuuuuch a fucking dick. Can you beleive that I’ve never been SUCH A DICK to anyone before?
I don’t know why. Maybe I do. Maaybe it’s because you’re you. You are so far under my fucking skin, adele, and I’m glad. I like you there. Please don’t try to remove yourslef.
BUT I had to try a couple tiems, just to be sure you weren’t going away. Dont go away, please.
please
please
please
and Ive never asked someone so nicely to taslk to me again. You’ve turned me intlo a pussy. I miss you. A fucking lot. So it’s okay.
• • •
To: Alice Carroll
Date: Thursday, November 26, 2015 10:16 AM
From: Nathaniel Easton
Subject: The mortification of a hangover. And another apology.
I woke this morning, wanting to die in my bed, yet still wishing I could roll over and see your face. Apparently even the mother of all hangovers doesn’t erase that particular desire.
It seems as though I need to apologize to you for yet another set of embarrassing actions. Only instead of anger and inexcusable vitriol, I must beg your forgiveness for my behavior last night. Upon looking at my phone, I see that I attempted to call you just about a dozen times and wrote you an email that includes misspellings, grammar and punctuation errors that make me want to stab myself in the eye (they really should revoke my status as a professor of the English language after that).
I just can’t move on from this, it appears. I’m starting to hate myself for how much I must have hurt you. But you know what else I’ve learned about you from this extended, awful silence? I’ve learned just precisely how strong of a woman you are. I knew it before, but knowing something in theory, and then experiencing that steel, being held at bay with it, is another thing entirely.
Any woman worth her salt should make a man beg and grovel and work harder than he’s ever worked before in his life to gain her forgiveness, especially if he’s spoken to her the way that I did to you.
So I will. I’m about to leave for my parents' house. The only one I’m looking forward to seeing is their giant Schnauzer, Randall. And that’s because he’s probably the only one who will greet me with happiness.
• • •
To: Alice Carroll
Date: Thursday, November 26, 2015 05:42 PM
From: Nathaniel Easton
Subject: The ghost of Thanksgiving Past
Maybe Charles Dickens wrote that story for the wrong holiday, because there’s no fucking way I could’ve waited until Christmas to learn this lesson.
I know that I’m not Ebenezer Scrooge in the literal sense, but he and I share many similarities. In fact, it truly didn’t hit me until I was driving home from my parents' cold and empty mansion. My car was so quiet, since I tend to not want to listen to music when I’m driving in the snow, and hand over my heart, I heard someone speak to me.
I’ve never believed in angels, and my view of God or a higher power is the slimmest version of being a theist, but it was almost like I knew what they were saying to me before the moment the voice hit my ears.
You need to give more, Nathaniel.
That’s what I heard. I don’t know if it was a memory, something Diana told me once upon a time, but it sounds like something she might have said. I’ve never wanted to tell anyone this story, Adele. Not in four years. Only my father, Diana’s brother (who hates my guts, incidentally), and now you, know this. And me not wanting to tell it is pretty irrelevant. Because the moment you slammed that door at my house, I knew exactly how much I’d fucked up. I had ripped the still-beating heart out of the one person who had made me find my own again. So that’s why I’m telling you this. Because I trust you enough to show you what’s inside of me, what’s been gnawing at my guts and my heart for over four years. You may not even want it anymore, but I’m giving it to you nonetheless.
Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but I don’t think you need a background on my relationship with Diana. It was a good one, a solid one that made me happy, made her happy, too. We’d been married for three years, four months, and twenty one days on the day that she died. It hadn’t been anything but a normal day, other than the way it ended. I had some friends, at that time, and we often got together to play poker and drink some beer. Nothing crazy, just blowing off steam. It had been a few weeks since I’d seen them, and Maurice sent me a text before Diana got home from work, asking if I could come out to his place. He lived about forty five minutes from us, from the house you know, and it had been raining all day.
Diana was disappointed I was going to be gone all evening, but she didn’t forbid it, because that wasn’t her way. She just gave me a kiss and told me to be safe. Once I was with the guys, I had more to drink than I should have. Honestly, I didn’t even realize it until I went to grab another beer and it was the last in the six pack. I knew myself well enough to know I shouldn’t have been driving, but nobody else lived remotely close to where we did, so I called her, asked if she’d come and get me.
It was about eleven when I’d called, so I knew she was probably in bed. She was pretty quiet after I asked, quite apologetically, may I add. But she agreed, because she didn’t want me to attempt the drive on the slick, wet roads in my condition. I was saying “I love you,” when she hung up, and the guys ribbed me about having to sleep on the couch when I got home. They all left, leaving just me and Maurice. I told him to go to bed, I’d wait on the porch for Diana, since it was warm, despite the rain. In my buzzed state, I remember sitting on his porch swing and thinking it was the greatest night ever.
An hour passed, and she still wasn’t there. I wasn’t terribly worried, given that I’d probably woken her when I called. But when I stared at the phone until the numbers clicked to the next hour, I pounded on the door until Maurice woke up. I’d called Diana’s cell about twenty times by the time I got back home, the house completely dark upon my arrival. It was six hours later that a police officer knocked on the door.
Maurice told me that I spoke with the cop, but I don’t remember anything from the conversation. In truth, I don’t remember much until I had to identify her body in the morgue and they told me what had happened. A drunk driver had T-boned her car, and the force of the impact made her small car skid so far off the road that the front of the car slammed into a tree just off the curb. The drunk died on impact as well, but that wasn’t much of a comfort to me. All I knew was that my wife, the woman I loved more than my own life, who always told me to be safe when I left the house, bled out in her driver’s seat, her face cut so badly from the glass that they needed me to identify her. And the only reason she was there was because of me. I killed her, just as much as that man had. And when I grabbed her lacerated face in my hands, my tears coating her cold skin, I wished I had died right along with her. I've always thought that I kind of died with her.
That’s what I’ve carried with me, every day since she died. The knowledge of my complicity. It was nothing that could ever be punishable by law, and the papers never even picked up that she was only out because I’d called her. But every day, I had to remind myself to breathe, remind myself that it was no one’s fault but mine that I was alone, and would probably die that way. Until you, my beautiful, vibrant Adele. I felt like I was touching fire when I held you that first night. And every night since. And I’ll never stop trying, not until you look me in the eyes and ask me to. So this? This is as much as I can give you. You have it all, and I hope you want to keep it.
Yours,
Nathan
• • •
I hit send and sank back into my chair, stretching my fingers out. Nope. No tingling.
“Holy shit, I can’t believe I just did that,” I said into the quiet room. None of this, none of this felt like enough. Every fucking word I’d sent her in the last week hadn’t been enough. Maybe this last one wasn’t either. She was probably going to get home after a shitty day at her parents’ and groan when she saw the email there from me. But if this didn’t do it?
Then she was done with me. I’d all but gouged my heart out and served it to her, still bloody and pumping. I slammed my laptop shut and stood, suddenly wanting to break something. Break a lot of somethings.
What if it didn’t work? The thought snaked through my brain, planting a horrible seed that grew and grew and grew. What if all this time, she didn’t want to be left alone. Maybe she wanted to be chased. That no matter what I could say to her, how much of myself I could spill out into those emails, it wasn’t going to be enough. She needed to see. See what a miserable fucking wreck I’d become in the last week.
I yanked my coat out of the closet outside of my office, shoving my black knit cap into the pockets, and sprinted down the hallway to the garage.
The snowy roads forced me to drive slowly.
“Fuck!” I yelled, banging my hand on the steering wheel when I had to slam on my brakes to avoid rear-ending another fishtailing car. I couldn’t even feel the cold. Not when I whipped into a parking spot across from her building, not when I jogged across the slushy street, not when I hit the buzzer for her apartment.
Nothing. No answer. Hell, I would have been happy with a “Fuck you” in response through that tinny speaker. I braced my hands on the metal grates that covered the door, absolutely loathing that she needed to live in such a shit hole. I pushed back and went back out onto the sidewalk, peering up at the window that was hers. What an idiot. It was dark in there, which I would have been able to notice before ringing the bell eighty four times if I’d just looked up when I’d crossed the street.
With a huff, I jammed the cap over my head and fisted my hands in the meager warmth that my coat pockets provided. A woman walked by and clutched her purse tighter around her shoulder.
With the beard growth on my face, given I hadn’t shaved in ten days, and the fact that I was wearing all black, I probably looked like a mugger. When I attempted to give her a polite smile, she glared at me.
“Okay then,” I said into the frigid air. “You have a happy Thanksgiving, too.”
I’m not sure how long I leaned up against the brick wall behind me. But it was long enough that my feet were now chunks of ice in my tennis shoes, my nose had probably frozen off about forty five minutes ago, and I’d probably never convince my balls to drop again, for fear that they’d fall off.
I looked at my watch. 7:18.
“You’re such a fucking idiot,” I said out loud. “She probably isn’t even coming home tonight.”
I pushed off from the wall, shocked that my legs even still held enough warmth to keep me standing when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and looked over to see her, looking perfect. And confused.
“Nathan? What are you doing here?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
I didn’t answer her right away. I couldn’t. I was too busy just looking. While I looked like a crazy bearded mugger, she looked flawless. More polished than I’d ever seen her, actually. Thinner, though, if that were possible after only a week. Like her cheekbones were sharper than they’d been before.
I opened my mouth to say something and she raised her eyebrows expectantly. That’s when it hit me. She hadn’t cussed me out, hadn’t stormed past me, hadn’t run in the opposite direction. She was listening.
We were only a handful of feet away, and all the words that I thought about saying to her just dissipated, frozen in my head before they could get out. Falling forward, I sank to my knees in front of her, ignoring the wet slush that seeped into my jeans and wrapped my arms around her legs. My forehead rested on the black wool of her coat, the coat that I’d bought for her, and I just breathed her in.
“I’m so damn sorry, Adele. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am.” My words were muffled, but I didn’t want to let go of her, content to stay at her feet until she forgave me, or I froze to death, which was an actual possibility. She wasn’t touching me, and I didn’t dare look up. Because if I saw pity or steely resolve in her face, saw anything but forgiveness and want and desire, I’d lose it. “Please,” I whispered, “please tell me you forgive me.”
“How about you stand up and we’ll discuss it.”
I scrambled back, wiping chunks of snow off my knees while I stood. Adele folded her arms across her chest, and the red scarf she wore around her neck made her eyes look so goddamned green, I almost lost my breath. I couldn’t read anything in her face. Not a fucking thing.
We stood there in silence, snow falling quietly around us, covering the slushy mess with a fresh coat of white. The black of her coat, the red of her scarf, and the sleek gold of her hair stood against it so starkly, like someone had painted her like that, a picture of inscrutability.
Thank fuck she spoke first, I was liable to fall to my knees again. “You were pretty forthcoming this week.”
“You read them?”
She nodded with a slight narrowing of her eyes that made me fidget where I stood.
“Good. I’m glad. I meant … I meant every word. I hope you know that.”
“To do that, I’d have to trust you again, wouldn’t I?”
The words were so evenly spoken, her face so unwavering, that I felt my heart pinch. She was done with me. She was so fucking done with me. I pulled the cap off my head and rubbed a hand over my hair, just for something to do.
“Somehow,” I started, watched her tilt her head in quiet regard, “somehow I thought that my age meant I was better, smarter, on more solid footing than you were. But I was so fucking wrong. And my biggest regret is that you might have ever believed it. I’m sorry for that too.”
Somewhere in the middle, she took a step closer, the heels on her boots making her mouth only a few inches beneath mine.
“Nathan?” My eyes fell shut, hearing her say my name like that. Finally, there was warmth wrapped around those letters, like she’d savored it in her mouth before releasing it to me. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t get my eyes to open. “Can we go upstairs now?”
They popped open just as she lifted a freezing cold hand to cup my face. “What?”
“I’d really like to kiss you, but I don’t think we should do it out on the street.”
My eyes searched hers, finally seeing the melting that had happened since she said my name. Then her lips curved up, and my whole body lit up with a blinding, visceral blast. I wrapped her up in my arms and lowered my face to hers.
“I don’t give a fuck who sees this.” She gave me a brilliant smile, arms tightening around my neck. I paused right before our lips touched. “Wait, I need you to say it.”
“One of those men, huh? That need the words to do the dirty?” Because she grinned when she said it, I growled and moved forward, fitting her bottom lip between both of mine in a perfectly soft kiss. When I pulled back, her face was serious again. “Of course, I forgive you, Nathaniel. I’ve been miserable this week. It’s like my heart wasn’t beating the same way.”
Finally, finally I kissed her, relishing in the feel and taste of her icy cold lips between my own. We wound around each other, deepening the kiss with tongues and roaming hands. Adele grabbed my hand and started walking to the door to her place. I stopped her just after she unlocked it to let us in.
“Hey,” I said, not letting her go in just yet. She turned to me with a smile, drawing me closer with the hand I was gripping. “Thank you.”
“For what?” she asked, placing a soft kiss on my lips.
I took her face in both of my hands, rubbed the length of my nose against hers. “I’ll never do that again, I promise. Because I never expected to find something like this. To feel like this.” Adele drew her head back, clearly surprised by my declaration. I didn’t think she was any closer than I was to being ready to say those other words, but I’d give her everything I could. “I mean it. You’ve got me, Adele. And I’ll protect your heart, always give you a safe place.”
“That’s good,” she said with a shaky voice, resting her hands on top of mine where they still cupped her cheeks. “Because if anyone could catch me when I fall, it should be the one I’m falling for.”
I wrapped her in my arms, and we stood in that dark, cold stairwell, me holding her, her holding me, until the snow stopped.
