by Lisa Swallow
The other people are friendly, and we’ve learned to respect each other’s privacy but the claustrophobia stifles me. I’ve run out of things to say to Val and Becca, and my panic over what work I’m missing means I spend futile time trying to get back on top of things. With each e-mail I answer or problem I solve, five more appear, and my hands are tied by my location. Then there’s the big event next month I really can’t screw up.
Each time I attempt to let go, thoughts of work intrude.
Nate remained in bed all morning, again, and I spent the time at my usual table by the open fire with my phone and laptop.
This is bloody ridiculous. Three days. We now have a “maybe” rather than a “no,” but the thaw that set in yesterday froze again overnight. I’m increasingly frustrated with only managing half of my work from clients, and I’ve missed meetings with potential new ones.
I miss Josh and my absence intensifies the “I’m a failure as a mother” feelings that follow me around in my life, but then I rationalise I didn’t choose the situation I’m in. But if I hadn’t travelled to Newcastle… If I hadn’t taken a lift with Nate… My life is one long string of ifs.
I’ll avoid Nate when he reappears because my emotional state destabilises more as each hour passes, and I’m struggling to hold myself together. Nothing is in my control — my environment, my work, and my feelings for Nate.
I’m alone in the kitchen eating a sandwich for lunch when a damp-haired Nate appears. The scent of my body wash passes with him and I sigh inwardly. He’s back in his usual jeans and T-shirt, which is not helpful because my eyes are drawn to his ass and long legs, the body I was draped over this morning. Heat stirs in my belly. Jesus, Riley.
“Are you feeling okay?” I ask him as he pulls a mug from the draining board.
“What do you mean?”
I gesture at the mug with the teabag string hanging over the side. “Tea? Not beer?”
Confusion tugs at his brow. “What? You want one?”
“Sure, not every day a rock star makes me a cup of tea.”
Nate shrugs and turns back to his tea making. A few silent minutes later, weak tea sloshes from a chipped mug he places in front of me.
“This is driving me fucking nuts,” he grumbles. “How do you stand staying inside all the time?”
“I have nowhere else to go.”
Nate gulps back the hot tea and I wince. How does he not scald himself? “Wanna go for a walk?”
“Uh. No. My shoes aren’t up to more arctic expeditions.”
“Val has some wellies. I’m sure you could borrow them.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.” I sip my tea.
“Riley, I’m trying here.” He slumps in his seat.
“Trying to do what exactly?”
“Have a conversation. Be nice. Can you do the same? It makes things easier.”
“I am being nice.”
The look of disbelief Nate gives me irritates me. I am. Jason and Becca’s voices laugh and shriek outside as we lapse into silence.
“I wasn’t teasing you before. Being with you again… takes me back and not just to the bad stuff,” Nate says finally.
I grip my mug handle. “What are you saying?”
“We were in the wrong time, wrong place, and screwed up by misunderstandings.”
“Misunderstandings? I misunderstood that you were an arrogant jerk?”
Nate stands and shoves his chair back, hard. “You know what, Riley? Fuck it. I thought I was the one with issues but you… you take the fucking biscuit.”
I stand too. “You made me look like an idiot in Paris. The desperate PR girl chasing the rock star who screwed her and walked away.”
“We never did, and I never told anybody we had!”
“But you let them think it. “
“You wanted to though, whatever you say now.”
My mouth falls open. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! There’s self-assured and there’s… you.”
He crosses his arms. “Look at this morning; you were all over me.”
“I was asleep!”
Nate closes in on me. “Admit it, come on. I’m fed up with this bullshit. Let’s get this over with.”
Last night in bed I was free to move away from him, now I’m backed against the fridge, space between our bodies more charged than when we lay closer, clothed, in bed together.
“Nate, no.”
“Look at us,” he whispers and touches my cheek. I jerk as if he’s shocked me. “Underneath all this bitching and fighting is frustration. You bloody know that’s true.”
“You don’t respect girls. You have no respect for me,” I say, then hold my breath against him.
“Hypocrite. You casually hook-up with guys. Do you respect them after? Why should fucking me be any different?”
The word slaps me. “I don’t fuck! You make it sound like I screw a guy the first time I meet him. It’s not like that, I don’t.” Time to swerve this conversation. “Besides, I don’t have to see them again.”
“When we’re back in London, we don’t need to see each other again.”
Nate’s arm slides beneath my thin top, his lips below my ear, and the involuntary tremors of my body’s usual reaction to him run through me.
“You know it’s true, Riley.” My breasts press against his chest, aching and heavy as his fingers on my skin flick the switch to wanting him. “Come on. I promise you’ll enjoy it.”
Nate kisses beneath my ear, placing his lips on my pulse point and I’m engulfed. Mustering as much of the ebbing dislike for the man I have left, I shove him away. “I am not going to fuck you!” I shout.
I catch sight of Val in the kitchen doorway. Nate turns as she walks in, shoving his hands in his pockets with a rueful smile.
A wide-eyed Val looks between us. This is bad. Awful. I need out of this kitchen and situation, stat. “I’m really sorry, Val. I—”
I swear Nate laughs under his breath. The bastard.
Gulping back the rising embarrassment, I excuse myself and walk into the open bar area. I’m more out of control than I thought, and can’t believe I shouted about — and looked like I was about to have — sex with Nate. And in earshot of other people.
I don’t give a crap that my thin shoes won’t stand up to the snow and ice; I need to get out of here now. Tears I’ve held onto for days spill, chilling my cheeks. The salty taste reaches my lips and hopelessness sneaks in.
The bright blue sky and sunshine are a world away from the evening Nate dragged me up the hill into the pub, and only now as I walk away do I realise how suffocated I’ve been.
I trudge through the snow; if I knew which direction I was heading, it wouldn’t matter because the white world is uniform. A few hundred metres from the pub, across what I think is the road, a low drystone wall emerges. I brush the snow from the top and sit, breathing in the cool air. My breath mists in front of me and I blow the air in and out, watching to calm myself. My head hurts as I control the emotion flowing. If I let go now, I’ll collapse into a mess of fear and regret. This isn’t the place or time to allow this.
I switch focus away from what’s happening inside to the freshness of the world around me. The panorama of the moors is stunning and unreal compared to my usual cityscapes, and I lose myself in a place outside my aching head.
I should spend time in the countryside more often. I go to the park with Josh near our house, but we never go further afield. The traffic noise and fumes are never far; here is isolated and if I weren’t stuck, I’d enjoy the peace.
Now could be time to attempt another holiday. When I’m home, I’ll arrange something; somewhere hot and sunny, removed from everything.
I’m too busy dreaming about sun-soaked beaches and watching my breath mist to notice Nate approach until I hear his footsteps crunch across the snow. I focus on the ground instead and wipe a thin sleeve across my face, thankful my cheeks are pink from the cold. As if Nate would notice or care if I cry. I straighten a
nd ready myself for the next onslaught; if he touches me again, I’ll bloody slap him.
“I thought your shoes were useless for walking in the snow?” he asks.
I wriggle my toes and they squelch. “They are but I had to leave. I’m mortified by what Val heard me say to you.”
Sitting next to me, Nate shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “You’re not coping with this situation are you?”
“I’m trying. Switching off helps, but I’m going stir crazy. I need to get home.” I wince as my voice cracks.
Nate looks at my reddened eyes and his mouth tightens. “I shouldn’t have behaved the way I did in the kitchen.”
“Why did you? Why do you treat me like that?”
Nate takes a deep breath, and sighs. “Habit. I like making you mad and how you react is funny.” He pauses. “And sometimes it turns me on.”
His admission pushes more frustrated tears into my eyes and I cover my face. “I don’t want to hear any more of this. Please leave me alone, Nate.”
Nate pulls my hands away and I stiffen in surprise as he rubs my fingers between his palms, the friction warming them.
“Usually you fight back; I didn’t realise I was upsetting you.”
“You’re clueless. How could you possibly think being such a pig won’t upset me?”
“Because… I don’t know.”
I stare down at his fingers encircling mine. “Nate, why are you holding my hands?”
“I don’t know that either.”
I don’t pull my hands away, and he doesn’t let go. The still surrounds us as we sit in our weird, white world, looking at each other. Nate’s eyes burn into mine, the way he does when trying to see behind my walls. How long before Nate looks long and hard enough, and sees right through me?
He tightens his grip. “Weird how stepping out of life changes the world. This is the first time I’ve been ordinary Nate for three years. I let go of the outside world for a few days because I don’t have any choice, you should too. Stop trying to keep hold of the PR career girl, she doesn’t belong here.”
“I know. But the last time I was ordinary Riley was five years ago, and I’m not sure where she is.”
“I met her more than once,” he says in a quiet voice and squeezes my fingers. “I’d like to spend time with the Riley I met in the bar, back when we weren’t connected to our real life.”
“But I’m not her.”
“You didn’t need to listen to me that night, or… well, that disaster, but you did. Why?”
“I don’t know. You looked lost and I must be a sucker for that.”
“Not because it’s me?” The way he says the words doesn’t hold the usual arrogant tone, but are said with a softness to match his expression.
“Maybe a little. But you never made me feel you wanted more from me. On tour you were still picking up groupies every night.”
Nate shifts closer. “We weren’t together. We didn’t want to be.”
“I know. You never made me any promises.”
“It’s who I needed to be.” He knocks his boots together and watches as the snow drops to the ground. I try to move my hands but he grips them tighter. “Who are we now?”
“What do you mean?”
“A guy and a girl in a weird situation, yeah? Look at Jason and Becca. He told me he’d tried for a year to get Becca to notice him. Everything else stripped away and she did.” I shiver and Nate touches my cheek. “Shit, you’re cold.”
“I’m okay.”
“No.” Nate peels off his leather jacket. “Put this on.” The muscles on his naked arms flex as he drapes the jacket across my shoulders.
“You’re only wearing a T-shirt, Nate. You’ll freeze.”
“Put it on, Riley.”
I push my arms through the sleeves, engulfed by the leather scent and his strange chivalry. “Thanks.”
Nate touches my face again. “Me and you. We’re the same, aren’t we?”
His cold fingers warm me each moment he keeps them on my cheek. I’d deny what he’s saying, but this is true. Two years disappear, as do the Riley and Nate we held onto.
“Too much the same,” I whisper as he moves his face closer to mine. “I think that’s always been the problem.”
Nate’s nose brushes my cheek, his breath tickling my neck as he presses his lips below my ear. I stroke his hair and with the heat spreading from my chest downwards comes doubt. What would it mean to do this with Nate again? Can I trust him? Myself?
“Don’t.”
“That’s not very convincing.” Nate’s scruff scrapes my face as he moves to place a soft kiss on my cool lips. “Riley.”
The movement of his mouth as he says my names ignites the spark, and the repressed need for Nate. I press mine back and I’m unprepared for the intensity that follows the softness. Nate kisses me, hungry and needy, and I part my lips as he holds my head to him. He crushes me against him, his strong arm around my waist. His taste, the way his tongue pushes hot into my mouth, the overwhelming need radiating from him, melts everything away.
Nate Campbell, the man I cried and lusted after in equal measures, is doing wicked things with his tongue and lips, drawing me into him as my body floods with a longing for him to want me again. His own need is reflected in the intense grip on my hair, the desperate kiss we refuse to break. I couldn’t move from him, even if I wanted to; his hands dig into my hair and hold me as tightly as the coiled desire inside.
I pull away, resting my lips on his, not wanting to break the new connection. The mist from my breath I watched before is now mingled with Nate’s, confirming our step across the invisible line we drew two years ago.
I don’t want this kiss to stop; maybe it’s the desperation for attention, or the intensity and ease with which Nate burns through my defences, but I want this man.
So bloody much.
But I don’t want him to reject me again.
“It’s cold, we should go,” I say.
I uncurl my hand from his neck but Nate doesn’t let go, gripping my hair still.
He breathes my name and his hard lips meet mine again, devouring, taking everything he can. I don’t care; I can let go, forget, and be in this moment as different people, the way Nate said.
I run my hands along his cool arms and grip the powerful shoulders beneath his T-shirt. The white world drops away, spinning us into a new place even further from the world. This last clash, different to all the others, shatters the walls between us, and we fall into a unity we’ve fought. Kissing Nate is natural, my body crying out for what I’ve denied. There’s no way around this anymore, and this time there’s no going back.
Finally, I break away, drawing in breath and rationality. The breath comes, the rationality doesn’t.
I hold his steady gaze for longer than I’ve looked into a man’s eyes for a long time; locked in a new place. How does this happen? How did this happen two years ago? Two people can look at each other for the first time, even the merest glance, and something unspoken passes. It could be a stranger passing in the street, somebody met briefly and never seen again.
Or he could be a man who came into my life, touched something I don’t understand deep in my soul, and stubbornly refused to ever leave.
What do we recognise? A pull of souls who knew each other before, or a raw attraction with no explanation? When I met Nate, both happened, and in the split second it took to register each other the first time, I knew. Something connected us; a something we’ve spent an eternity denying because of the danger to ourselves.
“Is this a staring match?” I say in a low voice. “We’ve had those a few times.”
Nate smiles, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Oh yeah, and I’ve wanted to kiss that sour look off your face a few times just to see your reaction.”
“You have your reaction.”
“I sure do.” He shivers and rubs his arms. “And you have my jacket. Come on.”
Nate pulls me to my feet by both hands and we walk ba
ck to the pub, re-tracing our footsteps. Nate buries his hands in his jeans pockets and I push mine into his jacket. Side by side, we don’t speak or touch, and my stomach lurches. Has another moment as frozen as the snow surrounding us passed; one we’ll never revisit? When we walk back inside, do we return to the old Nate and Riley?
15
NATE
I lie on the bed, legs outstretched, arms behind my head, and stare at the low ceiling. I’m fucking confused here. Riley taps a weak spot only she’s ever found, exposing the raw nerves I’ve spent years attempting to protect. How? Others have tried, but Riley hit the spot from the first day. Once-over, I thought she took pleasure in pulling out this part of me and enjoying the vulnerability she found. That she used this to get a reaction from me, nobody else manages. Since being here and talking, I now understand. I do the same to Riley, and it scares her as much as she does me.
What else is there to do but protect ourselves? But how do we manage that when our hearts and souls are locked in a battle we can’t walk away from anymore?
Three days here and the pull to her grew. Each time we spoke to one another without a bitchy undertone was a step back to the short period of time we behaved like normal people. Nobody else in this building is impressed I’m a rock star; normally I’m surrounded by sycophants. Hell, even Becca never showed any interest. Riley’s different too. She can’t boss these people around and is out of her comfort zone. The two of us had to drop our attitudes, and the side effect of this is we dropped them against each other.
Can we walk away from each other again after this?
I don’t know what the fuck to say to her. Kissing Riley makes me vulnerable, my heart torn open in a way she won’t understand. Maybe I need to push for sex now, and match her vulnerability with mine. Riley won’t want to share with the world she had sex with the man she claims to hate, and I can return to denying anything exists in my heart for her.
This has fucked with my head and I don’t want her screwing around with my heart as well.
I have to face Riley and tread carefully through the minefield I expect she’s created since the kiss earlier.