Natalie
By
Leanne Davis
The Daughters Series, Book Two
www.leannedavis.net
Table of Contents
Copyright
Other Titles by Leanne Davis
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Natalie
COPYRIGHT © 2016 by Leanne Davis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: [email protected]
Publishing History First Edition, 2016 Digital
Daughters Series, Book Two
Digital ISBN: 978–1–941522–26–4
Edited by Teri at The Editing Fairy ([email protected] )
Cover Design by Steven Novak ([email protected])
Proofreading: ([email protected])
Dedication:
To Gracie
For making me smile all the time… even on days when I don’t want to!
Other Titles by Leanne Davis
Diversions
River’s End Series
River’s End
River’s Escape
River’s Return
The Sister Series
The Other Sister
The Years Between
The Good Sister
The Best Friend
The Wrong Sister
The Years After
Daughters Series
Christina
Natalie
The Zenith Trilogy
Zenith Falling
Zenith Rising
Zenith Fulfilled
The Seaclusion Series
Poison
Notorious
Secrets
Seclusion
Prologue
No.
That is all that comes to my brain. That is all that I think to start shouting. Or whispering. Or crying. But I don’t do any of that. I don’t even utter the word out loud. I just stare and stare. I just stand there, frozen. I stand there destroyed. I stand there bleeding.
No.
Blood falls through my fingers where I clutch at my stomach. Blood. So much of it goes drip–drop, drip–drop down onto the ground under me. I glance down and my hand is gone. It’s as if it’s covered in a crimson cloth. So much blood.
Still, I stand there.
Is this me? Is this my blood? It’s warm. The faint thought trickles from a weird spot in my brain. It’s so warm. That surprises me.
I feel nothing. I don’t feel it. I see it. I see it all. But I don’t feel it. Is this what you feel like when you’re dying? Am I watching myself die and my spirit is now floating out of my body and off away. To heaven? To hell? Surely not to hell. I was, or at least I tried in earnest, to be a good person. But now? Where will I go?
I see who shot me. She’s right in front me. Not a bus length away from me. She stares at me as shocked as I am at her. She wronged me. She destroyed my life. How could she have shot me?
I don’t know.
The world starts to shift. I fall to my knees. Shit. I feel that. Through it all I feel the thump of my knees to the concrete. The colors swirl and swirl, browns and greens and grays and blue, so much blue. Trees, leaves, concrete, buildings and sky. Sky everywhere now over me. Faces are all gone. She is gone. I am gone.
Sam.
Sam’s face fills my mind’s eye. Oh Sam. What would you do now? What would you do without me? What will you do with this? Oh Sam…
No. No, Sam is gone. He’s gone. He’s not here.
I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I was wrong. I’m so sorry for myself most of all because it’s too late for sorry. It’s too late for forgiveness. It’s too late for life.
I finally understand anything could have been fixed when I was alive. Anything. But this? Death? It’s really the end. It’s really forever. It’s only now, this last moment of my life as the colors and the sky start to turn gray and are fading into black, do I fully understand all that I have wasted in my life. As the black pinpricks take over and my eyes start to close I understand that this is actually the end.
Like always, my need to be right cost me every chance to be happy.
Chapter One
Sam
NO! GOD… JUST… NO. This can’t be happening.
I close my eyes and then force them open and meet the gaze of my wife, who stands before me. She stands there frozen. Silent. In agony. I know this. I know in a second flat, what I’ve done to her. What this will do to her. I’ve emotionally done the equivalent of shooting or stabbing her in the heart. I know that I’ve ruined her life. I’ve ruined my life. I’ve ruined us. I just didn’t understand it, not fully, until this exact second.
Physically everything stops. My body parts wither as my brain shies away from truth of what I’ve done. This isn’t what was supposed to happen. This isn’t supposed to be me. Sam Ford is not supposed to be the guy caught screwing some meaningless woman in my office.
I am not supposed to be the guy who cheats on my wife.
But I am. I am that guy. And I’ve just been caught. Literally. By my own wife. In this moment. This one endless moment. I am this terrible guy.
Natalie stands in the now open doorway, completely mute. A statue of shock. Her eyes are huge and wide. Her mouth just slightly parted. The only movement is the streaming of tears down her cheeks. There’s no sound. She doesn’t even seem to be aware they fall.
It makes them all that much more tragic.
We stare at each other. Directly into each other’s eyes. Everything else is gone. The woman. The twenty feet of office that separate us. The furniture. Our future. Our past. All of it disappears as we stare in a hard, tragic eye lock with each other.
I only end it when I shut my eyes.
On my desk is a woman. A woman who is not my wife. A woman I don’t even like. The only thing to keep this from being even worse for Natalie is that the woman’s flouncy skirt is pushed up around her waist, sparing her the view of our genitals now connected.
With my eyes closed I clearly picture what Natalie has walked in on. It shreds my heart. I’m a lying, cheating sack of shit. I don’t deserve to even spew excuses or beg my wife for forgiveness. I don’t deserve anyone’s forgiveness. Especially Natalie’s.
But I wasn’t always this guy.
I was once a loving, wonderful, adoring husband. I was upstanding. I worked hard. I was always honest and I never lied. Once I was the guy who despised guys who did this kind of thing. I used to quote that no real man cheated.
But I did.
Her name is Chantal Bailey. She is a secretary here at the firm I work for. Yeah, typical, right? I
nearly groan at the clichés and ordinariness of what I am and what I’ve done. Chantal catches on that something is wrong and that I’ve stopped moving in her and my penis is shriveling up to a flaccid nothing. I need to cover up. I need to turn back time. But I can’t seem to do either. I am too shocked and appalled to seem to gather my wits, and I can’t change the laws of nature to make this not happen.
Chantal whips around and finally notices my wife. She sits on my desk, legs splayed and heels meeting around my waist. She has her weight held up by her arms.
Natalie still doesn’t move.
It scares me more than if she came after me with a mail opener or even pulled her gun on me. That is what Natalie would normally do. That is who she is. She’s a fighter. She takes shit from no one. Ever. She has a mouth on her that could stop a trucker in their tracks. Where is that now? Where is all her anger? Her rage? Her horror? She is not like this. Not the unmoving woman weeping in the doorway. Her heart is in her dark eyes. I have broken her heart. I have broken who we are. I have shattered every illusion and feeling she has for me.
Though all I can really do is withdraw from Chantal. The condom drops to the carpeted floor below my desk and I quickly cover my stupid, awful, shrunken dick. That’s what I think of it now. It’s contaminated. The shame burning in my heart heats up my chest and rises clean up into my cheeks. I am blushing in shame and violent regret. Oh God, I’ve never regretted anything in my life as I do this.
Still, Natalie isn’t reacting. I wait for her to find her tongue. I imagine the slew of words she’ll fling and hurl like weapons at me. I need her to do that. I deserve that. I’m ready and willing to take her verbal assault. It’s just the beginning of what I’ll deserve, but I need her to start.
Not stand there as if I’ve ruined her, ruined us, ruined everything, forever.
Then without a word or whimper or insult or even a sob she spins and disappears from the doorway.
I wilt. I literally fall over my desk, pressing my hands onto the surface to hold me up, not five inches away from where Chantal still perches, now trying to close her legs. She too is strangely silent. My chest hurts when I breathe. My heart is racing. My hands are clenched as is my jaw. I feel like my extremities are going numb. Shit. I’m going to die right here and now from a heart attack. I’d deserve it. My legs are shaking. It would be perfect divine justice.
There is no real noise. There is outside traffic that’s kind of a muted constant, like a clock ticking in the background.
“That was your wife?” Chantal finally asks. Her tone is hesitant. I glance up at her. She’s biting her lip. There seems only a bit of chagrin in her expression. Like oops. Like the face one might make when being caught cheating on your driving test or lying about how much you make for a living. It isn’t the face of someone who just ruined another’s life and family and marriage.
Oh wait, that’s not Chantal’s fault, is it? It’s all mine. I did that. I did that to the only woman I have ever loved. Because despite how this looks… I love Natalie. I love her so much that what I’ve done makes bile climb up in my throat.
“Yes,” I whisper. I stare down at my cluttered desk top. It’s all blurry. Shit. Why? I realize then tears are coursing down my face. I haven’t cried this hard since I was eighteen and my grandfather passed away. But I am crying now as I lean over my desk, unable to move. Unable to face what I’ve done. Unable to face the woman next to me. But most of all unable to face my wife.
“I see,” Chantal says as she hops off my desk and smoothes her skirt down. She bends over to grab her panties, which I’d ripped off her. She tucks them in her skirt pocket. “She doesn’t seem like your type.”
Not my type? How the hell does this blonde, girlie, ditz figure that? Natalie was in her uniform. Her hair slicked back in a tight knot at the nape of her neck, like how she always wears it for work. It’s severe. She doesn’t wear make–up to work either.
When she’s at home, she lets the wild, softly curling hair of hers fly free and with just a little make–up she’s so soft and sexy, the contrast drives me nuts. Or it used to. Until recently. Until…
Well, shit, already I start with the excuses. Why I was somehow justified to do this. When I know there is no good reason.
Still, how can this strange woman think my wife isn’t my type?
She is all there is for me. But then if that were true, when Chantal came in here and started to come on to me, I would have thrown her out, any way it took now, wouldn’t I? If I loved my wife like I proclaimed, that’s what I would have done.
But the thing is, I do love her that much.
“Th-this should have never happened.” I am whispering like a little scared girl caught cheating on a test by a teacher.
Chantal’s mouth tightens. She knew I was married. There was no shock to her here. She had come after me for months. Explicitly made clear she was willing to do just this. Even though I had talked up my wife often and in excess just so she would stop.
“But it did happen, Mr. Ford. Not coming doesn’t change the fact that you were having sex with me. She won’t see the distinction either.”
Mr. Ford. I want to sink to the carpet in shame and humiliation. She still uses my last name. She’s nine years younger than I am. She’s only twenty–two years old. She was also right. I don’t see her suffering from too much of a guilty conscious over this. Was it her age? Or did she just not care? Or did she think I was leaving Natalie now for her?
“I love her. This was a huge mistake. Chantal, I didn’t mean…”
She has shoulder-length blonde hair and big cornflower blue eyes. She bats them at me. “You didn’t mean to rip my panties off? That just happens to you?”
“No. I’m just… I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry I did this. I can’t—” I can’t even believe I have sacrificed the best part of my life for this woman who means nothing to me. I don’t mean that Chantal isn’t a perfectly nice girl, making her way in the world. I honestly don’t know. I don’t know her at all. Not really anyways. I just know what she revealed while we were mildly flirting the past few months. That she’s always smiling when she sees me. Her voice is a little breathless when she says hello and she’s a decent secretary with good attendance. Until today. Until this evening that is about all I knew about her. I don’t mean to imply she’s a slut or anything. I get, clearly, this is all on me. I just can’t believe I did this. It doesn’t matter who I did this with.
I run my hands through my hair and start shaking my head. “I have to go. I have to—”
Fuck this. Why am I wasting time rationalizing this to Chantal? I don’t care how she freaking feels about this. I care about how Natalie will be torn into pieces.
I’m crossing the office. My shirt is untucked. I am a mess. Everything about me. My appearance. My office. My marriage. My entire life. It’s all a mess and I can’t even picture how to start changing that.
“She won’t forgive you.” Chantal’s voice echoes behind me. I stop in the doorway. The same one that Natalie had come to innocent enough. She was probably coming to see me and why I was again working late. Perhaps to surprise me. Or talk to me.
I turn and cock my eyebrow at Chantal. How the hell does she know what my wife will or won’t do? “Pardon me?”
“She will start finding it all. And when she does she will never forgive you.”
There is nothing to find. Natalie witnessed everything there was between Chantal and I. I stare at the woman I’d just been inside of. A chill runs down my spine. Her smile is soft and dewy and like one that might cross your face after realizing you’re in love. Not having just got caught by a wife, fucking a married guy on his desk.
I don’t know what she’s about but I don’t have time for this. I have to find Natalie. I have to…what? I don’t know what I have to do. I just have to find her.
Natalie
I said nothing. Never in my life have I been speechless. I’m usually the opposite. I am the girl who usually says what
needs to be said to whoever it needs to be said to. I yell at bullies. I talk firmly to rule breakers. I cuss out criminals. I’m a good cop because I never take shit from anyone. I’m always ready and willing to say what I think of someone or a situation. I have a sharp tongue and sharp retorts. I have a filter, but I know how to rip it off and unfilter myself if the need arises. In other words? I perform well under duress and stress.
As it should right now. Yet the most critical situation of my life and I just stand there. Stupid. Silent. Crying in silent shock. I act like such a fucking girl.
I think I’m in physical shock. My stomach is jittery. My hands are shaking. I run through the empty hallway, past closed office doors and I hit at the elevator button a half dozen times while tears course down my cheeks and fall off my face. I rub at them and more come. I am now sobbing. I lean against the wall waiting, wanting to scream for the elevator to just come. I glance back, panicked that he’ll come after me. I can’t even look at him. I may never, ever be able to look at Sam’s face again.
Sam…
The thought of him makes me lean over and clench my stomach with my hands. Oh God, it hurts so bad. So damn bad my stomach keeps cramping. My hands are fisting and unfisting. I am trembling everywhere.
Finally! The elevator door dings and opens. I jump inside and push at the close button in compulsive crazy swipes. I know it won’t make it go faster, but I need it to close NOW! I cannot face Sam. I can’t see Sam. Never again can I see Sam.
Even as his face swims and floats through my brain. Our entire marriage, hell, our entire life history floats through my brain and the pain the images cause make me have to stifle the moan of misery that escapes my lips.
I got off duty early. We have been having a hard time of late. I wanted to see Sam. I wanted… I don’t even remember now. I think I wanted to talk. To work some things out. I think I was coming here to make some kind of peace. Find some neutral territory. My head feels so foggy. My reasons for being here feel like they belong to another person, maybe even to another life. In one second, the amount of time it takes to shove a door open and peek in a room is how long it took for my entire life to be changed. There will forever more be the moment before I opened the door and the moment after. The moment I was married, the moment I was not. That for me is what this has been.
Leanne Davis - Natalie (Daughters Series #2) Page 1