by Noelle Adams
There’s no doubt about it. Nate is Rochester.
I’m paralyzed with shock and pain and bewilderment, and I can’t move from where I’m standing in the kitchen with the tablet in my hand.
Even when I hear Nate coming out of his bedroom, his footsteps in the hallway, I can’t move—not even to keep him from knowing I’ve been invading his privacy.
My invasion isn’t half as bad as his invasion of me.
“What are you doing?” he demands, sounding surprised, slightly outraged, as anyone would be if they saw someone snooping on their tablet without permission.
I’m finally able to look up from the screen, but I can’t really see Nate’s face. My eyes are blurred over. “He’s…he’s you?”
As inarticulate as my question is, Nate obviously understands it. He takes a step forward, reaching out a hand, “Jane—”
For some reason, his saying my name like that breaks through my stupor. I drop the tablet onto the counter like it’s burning my hand. “He’s you,” I hiss, backing away as Nate approaches me. “You did this to me? What is it? Some sort of spiteful…trick?”
“No!” He’s trapped me against the opposite counter, and he reaches out toward me, his face twisting with strong emotion. “That’s not what it is. I would never do anything to hurt you.”
“But you did!” My voice is shrill, out of control, and I hate the sound it. But there’s nothing I can do to stop it. It feels like my whole world—everything I’ve built my hope and faith and affection on—is crumbling down around me. “You tricked me. You lied to me. You…you took advantage of me! All this time, I thought I was…we were…I was opening up my heart, and you were just laughing behind my back!”
It hurts so much that I can’t stand it anymore. I jerk out of his grip and stumble out of the kitchen, trying to reach my bedroom.
Nate is right at my heels. He grabs my arm before I can reach my room and swings me around to face him. I’ve never seen him like this before—urgent, demanding, incredibly intense. This is not my sweet, laidback Nate. I don’t even know who this man is.
“I was not laughing at you,” he says roughly. His startlingly blue eyes are deep and full of emotion I’ve never seen there before. “How can you think I would do that?”
“How can I think—” I’m almost choking as the hallway spins dizzily around me. “You’ve had this whole underhanded scheme going! I have no idea what you would do. I took this seriously. I was completely vulnerable. And you—”
“I was vulnerable too,” he interrupts, moving one of his hands from my arm to my shoulder. “Listen to me. I was vulnerable too. Everything I wrote to you was real—”
I can’t hear any more of this because what he’s saying right now feels true to me, feels authentic. I desperately want to believe it. But that simply doesn’t match with what I’ve just learned about him. I jerk away again and make a dash for my bedroom door. “It was not real! You pretended to be someone else!”
He’s coming after me again when I slam the door in his face. I fumble with the lock until I get it closed, just as he’s turning the handle.
“Jane!” he bellows.
“I can’t talk to you right now.” I try to sound firm, but I’m starting to cry, so the words are garbled and broken.
“Jane,” he says again, softer now, his voice cracking.
“I can’t talk to you,” I say again, feeling irrationally guilty, even though I’m the wounded party in this scenario. It doesn’t feel fair to run out on an argument with Nate, but I’m about to fall apart, so I really don’t have any other choice. “You know how much I…I love you—”
“I love you too, Jane. You know I do.”
I have to pause a minute to control the sob that’s strangling in my throat. “You know how much I trusted you.”
“You can still trust me. I promise you can.”
“I can’t. I…can’t. I can’t believe you did this to me. You had to know what you were doing. You had to know how bad it was. I just don’t understand why…” I have to stop talking now. I’m leaning against the door, covering my face with my hands as my whole body shakes with tears.
It sounds like Nate is slumped against the other side of the door now. His voice is thick, resigned. “Because I wanted to say things to you I was never able to say in any other way. Because I wanted you to see me…to think about me…like I could be the hero of your story.”
It’s simply too much to take in. There’s no way I can possibly process it. I try to stop crying but can’t do it.
“Oh, God, Jane,” he rasps, “please let me in. I can’t stand for you to cry like that.”
He wants to comfort me—the way he always has. I can hear it in his voice. And I desperately need that comfort.
But it’s impossible now. He’s not the boy I’ve always known, and I don’t know if he can ever be again.
“I can’t right now,” I manage to say. “We can talk in the morning.”
“Okay,” he says, sounding sad, battered. I’ve never heard him like that before. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
I listen at the door and hear him walking away. Then I go to my bed and cry some more.
***
About an hour later, I’m lying on my bed, feeling sick and paralyzed by emotions. I stopped crying a while ago, and now I’m in that heavy, aching haze that follows it.
I should just try to go to sleep, but my mouth is parched and I left my water bottle in the kitchen.
When I finally summon the energy to get up, I go the bathroom and then wash my face. I look horrible, pale and pitiful with messy hair. There’s nothing to do about that now, however. I go to my bedroom door, unlock it, and peek out at the hall. It’s quiet, so I lean out enough to see that Nate’s bedroom door is closed.
The cottage is absolutely silent, so I decide it’s safe to go out.
I pad quietly into the kitchen and grab my water.
As I return to my room, I stand for a minute and stare at Nate’s door.
I still can’t believe he’s Rochester. I still can’t believe he had it in him all this time to talk about life and the world and feelings as deeply and genuinely as he did in our messages. I still can’t believe he said he wanted to be my…hero.
When we were Juniors in high school, my date dumped me right before the prom. Nate hadn’t been planning to go. He’d been all excited about a golf weekend with his father down in South Carolina. But, on seeing me so crushed, he told his dad he had to stay in town, and he took me to the prom himself.
We had such a good time that evening. I wasn’t even that sad about being dumped by the first and only high school football player who ever asked me out.
Nate has always been my hero.
I turn off the lights and crawl into bed, and I cry a little more in the dark.
I have no idea how much time passes before the bedroom door opens. The lights are out, but I can see Nate silhouetted against the light from the hallway
“Sorry,” he murmurs when I stir. “I was just checking on you. Were you asleep?”
“Are you all right?” I have no idea why I ask that—just that he sounds as broken as I feel.
“Yeah. I couldn’t wait until morning. Can I come in?”
“Yes.”
He walks into the room, and I can see in the faint light from outside of the room that he’s wearing pajama pants and nothing else. He stands beside the bed. “How are you?”
It’s the most ridiculous question I’ve ever heard. I stretch out my arms toward him, suddenly realizing that he’s still my best friend in the world and that’s never, ever going to change. “Nate.”
With an odd throaty noise, he lowers himself into bed, gets under the covers, and gathers me into his arms. I cling to him, try to burrow into his warm body.
“God, baby, have you been crying all this time?”
“No. Just sometimes.” The skin of his bare chest sticks to my cheek. He smells like Nate, like strength.
“I�
��m so sorry, Jane. I didn’t set out to hurt you, but I know I did. And I’m so sorry about it.” His arms tighten, and I can feel his breath against my hair. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes.” My heart is racing and my breathing is growing shallow, and I really don’t know why. Just that something big is about to happen.
“I love you more than anything, Jane,” he murmurs thickly, stroking my hair and my back.
“I love you too.” I have to say it because it’s true, and no matter what else has happened, I can’t leave his declaration hanging in the air unanswered.
“I love you in every way a man can love a woman.”
“You do?” I shift against him, trying to get even closer to him. The room is very dark and utterly silent. I’m starting to put pieces together, so many little signs and clues that are suddenly all making sense.
“I do. And I want you to love me like that too.”
I don’t know what to say in response to that. The world is spinning around me again, but not as dizzyingly as before. It’s still terrifying, but now it’s more than that.
Now it’s thrilling too.
In the dark of the room, it feels like Nate and I are alone in the world—where doing certain things might finally be safe.
My lips are right next to the skin of his chest, so I kiss him there. No particular reason or conscious thought. I just want to feel him as much as I can.
He makes a soft, husky noise, and I like the sound of it. So I press my lips against his skin again. He feels so good. So warm and hard and strong. I need him.
I need him so much.
Nate has lowered his face some, and I can feel his breath against the side of my throat. He’s breathing just as quickly as I am, and I can feel his heart racing just like mine.
I tighten my arms around him. I can’t seem to get close enough. I tilt my face up toward his, and his lips find mine in the dark. The kiss is soft, tender, but hungry. So hungry. We’ve never kissed this way before, and it feels good.
So right.
“Jane,” Nate murmurs against my mouth. He pulls away from me slightly, his body tenser than ever.
I make a choked sound and draw him back against me. “Please don’t leave me, Nate.”
“I’m not going to leave you.” His voice is too low, too thick. “But…”
As I shift against him, I feel something unexpected against my middle.
My breath hitches.
I’m not sure why I’m surprised, after what he’s just told me, but I am. I’ve never thought to feel Nate like this before. I used to occasionally wonder what he’s like in bed, but I always cut the imaginings short, since it felt wrong to think about him that way.
It doesn’t feel wrong now.
I shift again, and my surprise vanishes. The whole world is dark and quiet and deep and urgent. If Nate is hard, it seems a natural part of this strange and needy night. I rub myself against him, feeling a corresponding tension tighten between my legs.
I want him too.
“Jane, don’t,” Nate gasps, although he pushes his hips into mine. “Not unless . . . unless . . .”
I know what he’s saying. I don’t stop. The pressure at my center is almost painful now, a deep arousal developing out of nowhere, spurring me on. I kiss his shoulder, moaning at the feel of his erection against my belly.
“God, Jane. Are you sure?” His hands are all over me now, touching me in ways he never has before, caressing my back, my bottom, my thighs, the curve at the side of my breast.
“I need you, Nate. Don’t leave.” I kiss my way up his neck and lingered to mouth his jawline, where I always kiss him, my special spot.
“I’m never going to leave you.” He grunts as I wrap one of my legs around his hip, aligning his erection with my arousal. “Jane, baby, are you sure? Are you sure this is what you want?”
“Yes, this is what I want.” I couldn’t have stopped, even if I wanted to. But I don’t want to. Some sort of desperate hunger has taken over my body, and Nate is all that matters in the world.
I pull down his pants to free his hard length and take it in my hands until he makes hoarse sounds of pleasure that just deepen my own need. Then I let him slide off my pajamas and position himself between my legs.
“Jane?” His mouth is brushing lightly against mine, and he’s holding himself with so much restraint that he shakes from it. His skin is damp with perspiration. So is mine.
I pull him down on top of me, needing to feel him. All of him. “Nate, please. Now.”
“Do we need—” He breaks off abruptly, as if he’s feeling too much, too good.
I’m on birth control, and we’re both healthy. I know it for sure. There’s no way I can stop at his point anyway. “Nate, now.”
The pressure as he enters me is intense. And it’s deep. And it fills me in every way. I gasp out, arching beneath him. And I gasp again when he takes his first thrust.
We don’t speak as we rock together, the covers pushed down past Nate’s hips. I dig my fingernails into his back and his ass, marking him in my desperation to get him even closer, feel him as deeply as I can.
His rhythmic huffs intensify as my motion becomes frantic and rushed beneath him. I can hear myself making odd little sobbing sounds, but I can’t help it. All the need, all the pressure, all the pleasure is coalescing into a tension that is about to break.
I wrap my legs around him, squeezing him with my arms and my thighs.
Nate lowers his face to give me a clumsy, hungry kiss.
I climax against his mouth, my cry of release muffled and my body shaking helplessly.
Nate’s head jerks to the side and he chokes out, “God, Jane. Yes.” He fall completely out of rhythm as he comes as hard as I do.
He buries his face in the hollow between my shoulder and throat, and I cling to him with my arms and my legs. We’re both gasping loudly, hot and exhausted and replete.
My body feels good. The weight of Nate on top of me feels good, and natural, and safe. My body is still clinging to him internally, occasionally spasming around the feel of him softening inside me.
The world is this room—a dark, deep, silent, primal place. But even in this room, something at the back of my mind is wondering if this is even right, if this is how we are supposed to be.
Nate is my best friend, my family, my security. He has never been this.
I smother the thought as soon as it materializes. We need each other tonight. We’ve loved each other all our lives. And nothing—not pain or lies or betrayal or the motion of our bodies—will never be able to tear us apart.
I’ll worry about the rest of it tomorrow.
Five
Tomorrow comes sooner than I want it to.
I wake up tangled up in Nate’s limbs—lying on one of his arms, trapped beneath one of his legs. He’s still asleep as I try to process where I am and what happened last night. Then I gently try to slide away from him without waking him.
I pull on my pajama pants, which have been pushed under the covers, and then I sit on the side of the bed and try to breathe.
It feels like the world is different than it was just yesterday.
I hear the covers rustle and feel the mattress shift, and I know that Nate has woken up. He doesn’t say anything. He just scoots over to my side of the bed, pulling on his pajama pants as he straightens up to sit beside me.
I watch him as he does so. He was sleeping naked, and I can clearly see the hair on his legs, the flat skin of his abdomen, his penis and balls before he pulls the waistband up to cover them. Last night, it was too dark for me to see his body, and I can’t help but look now—in the light.
I’ve always loved how he looks and that hasn’t changed, now that I can see him naked.
He sits beside me, as silent as I am.
After a minute, he reaches over and picks up my hand, which is resting on the bed between us. He holds it in both of his.
I don’t pull my hand away—partly because it w
ould hurt him and I don’t want to do that, and partly because I like how it feels.
Eventually, I decide someone should say something, but I have no idea what to say. I have no idea what to think. I don’t know if things are hopelessly wrong between us now…or finally, finally right.
The lingering, urgent question in my mind upsets me so much I take a loud, shaky breath.
Apparently, that’s what breaks through Nate’s reserve. He speaks in a voice that’s intentionally gentle, intentionally composed. “I joined that dating site because you were raving about it so much. I was curious, and I wanted to do it and then tell you afterwards, just to tease you or whatever.”
I take another deep breath, this one a little less shaky. His words make sense and sound true.
“I named myself Rochester…well, it was just to be funny and ironic. You’re Jane and I’m Rochester. I thought you would get a kick out of it.”
For the first time since he got dressed, I look over at him. His vivid blue eyes are focused unwaveringly on my face.
“I didn’t go looking for you. I promise I didn’t. But I guess there were enough similarities in our profiles that they matched us up. I knew it was you. I knew it from the beginning. I was going to…going to write you one note and then spill the beans. I thought it would be funny.” He clears his throat. “But then you wrote back to me, and you were so…so you. And you told Rochester things you’d never told me before—about how you always felt like you were searching for something deep, something that would change you. I had to respond to it. I had to make sure you were heard. And then I couldn’t seem to stop.”
He’s still holding my hand, stroking the back of it with both of his thumbs, and my heart is jumping around wildly as I breathlessly wait for him to finish.
“It’s like I said last night. I suddenly had the opportunity for you to see me in a different way, hear what I think about things, take me seriously in a way you never have.”
I make a strangled noise. “I always take you seriously. You’re the one who always tries to lighten up deep conversations.”