Undeveloped (Life Unfiltered Book 1)

by K Leigh

  When I take both of Natalie’s hands in mine, an electric spark jolts through me. These are the hands that held my face as she laughed in that hotel bed. These fingers tangled in my hair as she squirmed beneath me on the brink of ecstasy. I lead her to the living room and to the couch. She stretches—just like had on the patio—and rests her head in her hands.

  “You okay?” I whisper, the clinking of the glass shards in the dustpan roaring in my ears.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Her voice is muffled through her hands. A relieved sigh falls from my lips. She uncovers her face and continues. “I have several nerve issues. My hand must have given out while I was holding the glass.” She stares into her hands as if they’ve betrayed her.

  A small part of me wonders if my name triggered something. They said she might never regain memories from that summer. It could purely be a coincidence. Still, hope blooms in a place where it shouldn’t grow.

  “I’m going to head out to visit my mom.” Leo touches Natalie’s shoulder with a light hesitation. I suddenly realize I had grabbed her hands without thought. I wonder if he thinks me rude. “If you need anything at all, let me know.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Natalie pats his hand. “Lia is here, and Teddy and Vi will be home soon. Thank you for cleaning up my mess, like always.”

  He nods farewell to me, and when the door clicks shut behind him, Natalie’s smile disappears, replaced by furrowed eyebrows and a dangerous glint in her eye.

  “Matt. Earlier you introduced yourself as Prescott.” She crosses her arms over her chest and the display is so amusing. So Natalie. I can’t help but throw my head back and laugh.

  “If your name were Prescott, wouldn’t you go by another name if you could? Especially when an intimidating humongous dude comes up to you?” I jerk my head toward the door, shuddering at the memory of Leo clapping me on the shoulder.

  “Leo’s a big teddy bear.” Natalie waves my concerns aside. She says his name with a tender tone, but no hint of wanting. Not how she muttered my name in frustration when I jumped in the shower next to her. “I still feel like I know you from somewhere.”

  “You could’ve seen me anywhere,” I answer truthfully. Between work and my family, someone is always in the news or the tabloids. Thankfully, I’ve stayed out of the latter lately.

  Canceling my wedding could put a damper on it, though.

  “How about that tour?” Natalie pushes off the couch, grabbing her keys from the coffee table.

  “Are you sure you feel up to a tour now?” I jump to my feet, catching her elbow with my palm.

  “I’m fine. Let’s go.” She moves out of my grasp, leading the way to the door.

  “Natalie Rose Winegar.” Lia’s voice startles me from where she sits in the chair I had vacated minutes ago.

  Natalie jerks her head toward her niece, a teasing smirk replacing her surprised expression quickly. “What did I do now?”

  Lia skips across the wood to her aunt, hugging her with one arm. “You invited Leo to dinner?”

  Lia avoids my gaze, and I have a sneaking suspicion it’s intentional. If she’s anything like Natalie, she has no poker face.

  “I did.” Natalie’s tone softens. “We’re still friends. He has plans today, though. You’re welcome to stay as well, Matt.”

  I wonder if she goes around inviting everyone into her home and to stay for dinner. It seems like Natalie takes care of anyone she comes upon. The Natalie I knew was extremely protective, keeping her circle small. Trusting few with her heart.

  “Matt?” Lia cocks her head to the side, staring at what feels like my right earlobe. “Nice to meet you, Matt. I’m Lia.”

  “Pleasure.” I tip my head, taking extra care to control my expression. It feels wrong, like we’re keeping a secret from Natalie. In reality, she knows who I am, she’s just forgotten

  “I was about to give our visitor the grand tour. Care to join us?” Natalie offers Lia the keys with a mocking bow.

  “No, I’ll help Mom with dinner.” Lia gives us a little wave before heading inside.

  The grass tickles my ankles as we begin the trek around Natalie’s farm. Not accustomed to life outside the city anymore, I’m wishing I’d worn pants.

  “Lia seems sweet,” I remark, keeping my tone casual.

  “Oh, she is.” Natalie tucks her phone into her back pocket, her keys jingling on her hip. “She’s my little best friend. Not so little anymore, though. She’ll be off to college before I know it.”

  Without thinking I reach out to touch her cheek, to comfort her.

  She stiffens at my close proximity, and I drop my hand immediately.

  She surveys the chain. “Huh, I must not have locked it earlier.” The door creaks open and she leads the way in, maintaining her distance.

  The sight that awaits us blows my mind.

  We push through the LED curtain lights that cover the doorframe. Twinkling strands of lights entwined with sunflowers are wrapped around the rafters. Centerpieces of daisies and sunflowers adorn each table, and there’s a stage at the other end of the barn with a pulpit and pre-lit arch. Looking up, I notice the loft is aglow with lights, and hay bales are arranged strategically for seating.

  Natalie follows my gaze, her face illuminated by the twinkling lights. “Oh, you like the loft? We just added it. I dreamed about it, and the next day, I had to have it built.” She grabs the ladder, moving up it at record speed.

  The wood seems sturdy, but I’m afraid to try it. My hands are shaking, and I realize my breaths are getting closer and closer together. Natalie looks down at me from the loft with a grin. “C’mon. What are you, scared?”

  Yes. I’m terrified. It feels like I’m drowning. Tunnel vision takes over and I brace myself on the ladder, forcing myself to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth.

  Natalie poised on the loft, looking down at me with a smile, sends chills throughout my body.

  It reminds me of the cliff. Our cliff.

  The cliff that changed our lives forever.

  28

  Matt

  Past

  It must have been my curse to screw everything up.

  I slept through Natalie’s departure from our hotel room. No note, no text, no goodbye of any kind. Any other night of my life, I barely sleep. What cruel punishment is this? I should have talked to her the previous night, but I had been too caught up in my own feelings to realize that everything I was going through wasn’t lost on her.

  And then she left me.

  I could have given up. I could’ve packed all my shit and went back home. My family would have welcomed my decision with open arms. They’d been harassing me about it since Parents’ Day.

  My dad complained that I was giving it all up for a piece of ass, but Natalie was never just a piece of ass. At first, a distraction, yes. But it wasn’t just physical between us. You can get sex from anyone, but an intellectual connection was something I’d been searching for my whole life.

  Natalie softened my rough edges. I’d never say we were in love, but we recognized things in each other that no one else saw. A kindred spirit of rebellion.

  My parents automatically vetoed Natalie. They just couldn’t accept the reality of anything different than their perceived notions of life making me happy. Even when her background check—which I only ordered in an attempt to win them over, for them to accept something that made me happy—came back squeaky clean, they refused to relent.

  Pulling into the camp parking lot is much different than the first day I arrived here.

  The first day, I was filled with dread at having to spend my summer here, excited to escape my family, and saddened to be pushed away by them—a mess of emotions.

  Chasing Natalie back to camp has a melancholy feel. She doesn’t seem to be the type to give a guy a second chance. But something about Natalie speaks to me, and I can’t let her walk away from me without a fight.

  Glancing at the dash, I see that the counselors will be cliff jumping a
nytime now. The thought of spiraling into the water untethered scares me to death, but Natalie will be there and I need to talk to her. Regardless of her decision, I owe her an explanation. About Antoinette, my family, everything.

  And then, if she wants nothing else to do with me, I won’t stop her from walking away.

  Seth’s cleaning up from the previous night’s bonfire when I come upon him. He greets me with a half-hearted smile. We aren’t close friends, we’re bound only by camp and the fact that the girls we spent our summers with are best friends. I know that, should my tie with Natalie be severed, so would be our friendship.

  “Hey.” He ties the bag of trash with more force than necessary. “What’s up?”

  “Hey.” I toe the dirt with my shoe, unsure of how to continue.

  Seth groans as he lowers himself onto a bench. “So, you’re pretty much in a shitstorm.”

  Settling onto the seat next to him, I nod in agreement. “Sure am. I don’t know what the hell to do.”

  “Natalie’s a runner,” Seth says. “Ran from Connor. Runs from her family. Ran from you. Rather than deal with confrontation, she ignores the issue and pretends it no longer exists.”

  “I can’t judge. That’s what I’ve been doing for a while now.” The memory of Tara’s lifeless body in my passenger seat flashes before my eyes.

  “The question is, do you want to chase her? Because I can promise you, she won’t come after you.” Seth reaches behind us to grab the roll of trash bags from the ground.

  The idea of going after her scares me, but it’s my only option. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering, what if?

  “Where’s she at?”

  Seth glances at his watch. “Probably helping Kate pack. It’s almost time to head out to the cliff.”

  “Thank you.” My footsteps pound in my ears as I run up the hill to the Ladybugs’ cabin.

  She stands there with Kate, as if she’s been waiting for me, just like she had every other morning of summer.

  “Natalie.” Her name spills from my lips before I can stop myself, and she turns to face me with an angry glint in her eyes.

  I reach her side in record time, resisting the urge to pull her into my arms. To trail my fingers down her long, slender neck. But something looks different about her. The aura between us feels off.

  “Matt, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I had to see you again. I need to explain.”

  “You had people run a background check on me.” She curls her lip in anger, crossing her arms over her chest in her signature pose. “Like I’m some gold digger or something? I couldn’t care less about your money, Prescott.”

  I hate the way she says my name, like I’m something nasty stuck to the bottom of her shoe. “I only ordered the background check for my parents, to prove you weren’t trouble. I thought maybe they might rethink things and allow me to make my own decisions.”

  “Why did that matter if you were going to give it all up?”

  “Well, then we could have it all.” I admit. “I could give you the world.”

  “So you giving it all up was a lie? A trick? I can’t believe I gave up the end of my last summer here for you.” The anger rolls off her in waves. Kate tiptoes backward at this, escaping into the cabin with a loud bang.

  “I never claimed to be perfect. That’s why we fit so well together. We’re kindred spirits,” I remind her. “You know I’m a mess.”

  “You’re a shithead,” Natalie spits.

  If I were to laugh in this moment, she would never forgive me. Pinching my lips together, I remain silent in hopes that my amusement will pass.

  “Are you laughing at me?” She steps closer to me, arms dropping to her sides in fists.

  “No,” I mumble, sucking my cheeks in.

  “You are laughing at me.” She pokes me in the chest. “What the hell is so funny?”

  I dissolve into laughter. Her fiery red hair, her angry eyes, her calling me a shithead in the middle of the damn woods. And I’m more aroused than I’ve ever been in my life.

  I’ve never been dominating with Natalie. I’ve always resisted the urge to be rough, convinced her soft heart and tender skin are too precious for me to defile. I can’t resist now, though.

  Wrapping my hand around the nape of her neck, I pull her toward me and our mouths crash together. Tongues and teeth battle in a gnashing fight. She bites my lip so hard I taste blood, but she doesn’t pull away. She pushes her body into mine, and I fit perfectly against her.

  Moving my hand from the nape of her neck to her throat, I dig my thumb into her softness. A low hum vibrates through my hand and I break the kiss. “Is this okay?” I ask her, breathless.

  She nods against my head, her lips plump and wet from my devouring.

  Our mouths find each other again, my hand tightening around her throat as she tangles her hands in my hair. She pulls me closer, sharp pain shoots from my roots that only heightens my arousal.

  In the heat of the moment, we were distracted, but if this is to go any further, we need to relocate.

  “Let’s move over there,” I mumble into her mouth, unwillingly releasing her throat to point to the thicket of bushes and trees behind the cabin. She nods once and takes off.

  “Catch me if you can,” she teases over her shoulder, disappearing into the leaves.

  I catch up to her in no time, pinning her abdomen against the backside of the cabin. The sight of her willingly splayed before me takes my breath away.

  She pushes her shorts to her ankles, bending over in front of me with her ass perked up and hands bracing herself on the wall. Her simple cotton panties drive me wilder than any piece of lingerie I’ve ever seen and I hurry to pull them to the side, pleased to find her already soaked for me.

  My pants hit the ground in two seconds, and by the third, I’ve entered her in one swift motion.

  “God, I missed this. I missed you,” I whisper into her neck.

  “Shut up and fuck me.”

  “Just five minutes.” I nuzzle Natalie’s neck from behind as she pulls her shorts up and shirt down. “We can rinse off in no time.”

  “Matt, we can just rinse off in the lake.” She brushes her hair out of her eyes, pushing against my pelvis with her butt.

  “Lake water is not a shower,” I argue. “But I know you can’t wait. There is one thing you have to do first.” I take her hand in mine.

  “We already did that.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me.

  Through my laughter, I reply, “No, dirty girl. I have a gift for you.” We round the corner of the cabin and my briefcase is where I left it, next to the rail.

  Clicking it open, I pull out the disposable camera she gave me at the beginning of the summer.

  She turns it over and over in her hands, raising an eyebrow at me.

  “I’ve been taking pictures of our summer together with it,” I explain. “I won’t lie, you might be creeped out. You’re asleep in some of them.”

  “That’s the weirdest and sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.” Natalie’s lips melt into my cheek. I want to turn my head, to cover her mouth with mine, but then things would progress again and we’d never make it to the party.

  “There’s more.” Shuffling the papers around, I find the small envelope I’d carefully packaged and labeled earlier. She slides her finger easily across, pulling out the contents.

  “Oh, how beautiful.” She oohs and ahs over the photos I’d printed out from my film for her, stopping at the one of the two of us in the bed at our hotel. “This one’s my favorite.”

  “I love that one. This one’s mine, though.” I point to the one I’d taken the first morning we went out together. She had just turned from me as the sun rose in the background. “Perfection. I knew it’d be beautiful.”

  Natalie traces our faces in the photo of us, her lip tucked between her teeth.

  “What are we?” She slips the pictures back into the envelope, taking care not to wrinkle the edges
. “I don’t want to play games anymore, Matt. I know we don’t have a realistic future. I’m going to go to college, you’re going to marry Antoinette. We have to follow our paths, so in the grand scheme of things, we’re nothing, We’re a summer fling. I don’t love you. Hell, sometimes I don’t even like you.” She laughs. “But in a fantasy world, what are we?”

  “We are something here, in the real world. Natalie, you’re right, we’re not in love. Not in the traditional sense. I’ve been in love, and it hurts. This hurts too, but in a good way. A teaching way.”

  “A twin flame,” Natalie whispers, a tear slipping over her cheek.

  “A what?”

  “A twin flame.” She clears her throat, wiping her cheek with her hand. “A person that will change your life forever. A partner who is your perfect match based on shared pain.”

  “You already had an answer when I asked you, didn’t you?” I pull her to me, kissing the top of her head.

  “Yes. I just wanted to see what you would say.” She moves out of my embrace, a small smile on her face. “Let me put this away and we’ll head up.”

  She returns from the cabin quickly, slipping her hand into mine, and we make our way up a now familiar path, the sunset meeting us with open arms.

  “There she is,” Kate greets us, casting a quizzical glance at Natalie when she notices our entwined hands. “And she’s not alone.”

  “Hey, Kate,” I reply.

  Natalie kisses her best friend’s cheek, sharing a smile with Seth as she takes the insect repellant he offers her. “I heard I have you to thank for being chased down.”

  “All in a day’s work.” Seth winks at Natalie. “Don’t forget this.”

  “Oh, I won’t.” She sprays herself down generously before looking up at me.

  “Shit, I forgot our drinks.” She hands me the can. “I’ll be right back.”

  Kate bursts out laughing as I kneel down to sit by Seth. “Matt, you’re a bad influence on Natalie.”