The Consequence of Falling: New York Times Bestselling Author

by Contreras, Claire

  I found myself laughing along with them. “We need to hang out more often. I know we only hang out when Victor’s in town, but seriously.”

  “You can call us anytime,” Mia said. “But you know we’re homebodies. It’s either the house or the park or whatever else we can take the kids to.”

  “You can bring them to the brewery.” I shrugged. “We can set up a section for them to play while you guys hang out.”

  She gaped. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, why not? Kids come all the time.”

  “New favorite person.” She lifted her glass to clink it against mine. “Officially new favorite person.” She looked behind me as she sipped. “Hot dude at twelve o’clock and he’s headed this way. Act natural.”

  I laughed because I knew without turning that it had to be Nathaniel.

  “This is what you do when you brunch with friends?” Jensen asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “With my single friends? Obviously,” she said. “I need everyone to get their happily ever after.”

  Jensen wrapped an arm around her and whispered something in her ear. I wasn’t sure what it was but it made her blush hard and made me look away because I felt like an intruder. I finally pivoted around, wondering what was taking Nathaniel so long to get to me. When I saw him my breath caught in my throat. He hadn’t been wearing suits lately, but today he was. He was dressed in a navy-blue suit, no tie, his top button undone. His eyes stayed on mine as he walked over, my heart pounding with each step he took.

  “That one’s yours?” Mia asked behind me.

  I nodded, still looking at him. “He’s mine.”

  Nathaniel grinned. When he reached me, he lowered his head and kissed me deeply, not caring that we were in a restaurant full of people. “Missed you, baby.”

  “I saw you this morning.”

  “Missed you anyway.” He took the empty seat I’d been saving beside me and looked up, introducing himself to Jensen and Mia, and saying hi to Victor and Nicole.

  We spent the rest of the day amongst friends, laughing at stories from their childhoods and talking about our hopes for the future. I’d agreed to come to breakfast to discuss impending decisions about Dad’s apartment and mine, but I was happy to put all of that in the backburner at least for now. One thing I’d learned this past year was that life was too long to settle on things that made you unhappy and too short to let it pass you by.

  Forty-Two

  New Year’s Eve

  “I can’t believe you’d signed up for a dating app while you were dating me,” Nathaniel said. He was grouchier than usual tonight.

  “I didn’t sign up.” I rolled my eyes. “I can’t believe you continuously answer the phone for your ex-girlfriend.”

  “Does it really bother you?” He held his vibrating phone in his hand. Lisa had been calling him for who knows how long, surely thinking they were due to get back together, and it was definitely bothering me.

  “Obviously. She wants you back and I hate knowing that it’s a possibility.”

  “It’s not even remotely a possibility.” He frowned, looking at me. He answered the call. “Lisa, hey, I’m going to need to ask you to stop calling me. The love of my life doesn’t like it.” My mouth dropped. He was silent for a beat. “Thank you for understanding. I wish you the best as well.” He hung up and slid the phone into his pocket.

  “Let me see your phone.” I put my hand out. He took it out and handed it to me. I looked at the minutes on the call, then looked at the rest of the log. He really hadn’t spoken to her as often as I thought. Still. “Can I delete her number?”

  He chuckled. “Would you like me to get a new number while I’m at it?”

  “Actually, that’s not a terrible idea.”

  He laughed harder. “Delete her number if you want. I’ll get a new number. Whatever. I don’t care as long as you stop being paranoid about something so insignificant.”

  “It’s not insignificant to me.” I knew I was pouting, but I didn’t care. It really wasn’t insignificant to me. I wasn’t even trying to compare Nathaniel to Adam because they were entirely different people, but it didn’t change the fact that I’d been cheated on and I didn’t want to go through that again. So yeah, maybe I was paranoid.

  “What if she calls you and tells you she’s pregnant with your baby?” I asked.

  “That would require me to have fucked her during the last few months, and I haven’t even seen her since we broke up.”

  “What if she tells you she can’t live without you and tells you she doesn’t even want to move in with your or a key to your place and won’t even take over half of your closet?”

  “I would still say hell no.” He looked amused as he brought his hand to my face. “You’re the only one who will ever get a key to my apartment because I want to make it ours. You’re the only one I would ever let take over half of my closet, and you’re the only person I would ever want to put a baby inside of. What will it take for you to believe me?”

  I shrugged, taking a breath. “Time. I guess.”

  “Okay.” He kissed me gently. “Are you ready to go upstairs now?”

  “Not really, but Morgan would kill me if we didn’t show up.” I shrugged. “It’s like twenty minutes to midnight anyway.”

  When we got inside, we said hi to the people we knew and stood by one of the windows. The fireworks hadn’t started, but this was definitely a good place to see them from. Morgan came up beside us, looking like she had some big secret.

  “Spill it, Little,” I said after a moment.

  “You know how I came up with the dating at work app and the singles in my office have been using it?”

  “Uh, yeah.” I looked at Nathaniel. “It’s not the same app I’d signed up for. For feedback.”

  “Okay.” He raised an eyebrow, but looked back at Morgan with interest. Anything that had to do with a new invention, he was all over. “So what is the work app? It’s only for people in specific offices?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the gist of it, yes. Why go meet someone at a bar when in some situations, rules permitting, you can hookup with someone at work.” She was talking really fast, the way she does when she’s really nervous, and in turn was making me nervous.

  “What did you do? Did you hookup with someone you weren’t supposed to?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “That’s the thing. This is supposed to be an intellectual app. No physical hookups. It’s very . . . new.”

  “Not that new,” Nathaniel said under his breath. He shrugged when I shot him a look. “What? That’s essentially what Match is, or was before social media.”

  “Okay, what’s your point? Why are you freaking out?”

  “I think I’ve been talking to my boss,” she whisper-shouted, pulling out her phone. “And he wants to meet me. Tonight.”

  “So go,” Nathaniel said. “What’s the problem?” He looked around. “I mean, aside from bailing out on the party you made us all come to.”

  My mouth dropped, but I couldn’t help but laugh. “Why not wait until tomorrow?”

  “I’m going to tell him we need to break things off. Honestly, this app was a stupid idea. Doomed from the start. I’m trying to look for a new job.”

  “Because of this?” I gasped.

  “No.” She frowned. “No. I just really want to branch out and find something that leaves me with more me time so I can develop more apps on my own.”

  “You’re working there because you need steady income,” Nathaniel said, “But I thought the dating app was yours?”

  “It is, but it hasn’t made any money yet. I need to give it a year and until then I’m stuck working in this company and my freaking boss now knows about my app and is on it, and if he finds out I made it and that I’m the one he’s most likely been talking to he’ll fire me anyway.”

  “I thought your boss was Devon’s best friend?”

  “He is Devon’s best friend,” she said, wide-eyed. “Oh my God, Devon is goin
g to kill me.”

  “Devon, your brother? The one in the NFL?” Nathaniel asked, shaking his head. “Yeah, that’s not a situation I’d want to be in.”

  “Right,” she said, chewing on her fingernail. “I need to think about this and I need another drink.”

  We watched her walk away. Nathaniel chuckled. “Well, shit. I thought I was in a bad situation falling for my friend slash business partner’s daughter.”

  “You are in a bad situation.” I smiled up at him as he put his arms around me.

  “Do you find yourself going over the same scenarios over and over lately?” he asked.

  “Sometimes,” I whispered. “Like baseball with Dad.”

  “I keep thinking about that meeting, when he told us all his health was declining rapidly.” He exhaled. “He was watching me cautiously the entire time, as if asking for forgiveness for not telling me beforehand. I just can’t understand why he wouldn’t tell me beforehand.”

  I squeezed him in a tight hug. “I don’t think he wanted you to worry. You know how he was. He never wanted to talk about anything negative.”

  “Death is change,” he said, pulling back and holding my gaze. “We’re the ones who make it a negative thing because we’re selfish. Because we don’t want to say goodbye. We don’t want to let go.”

  “Yeah.” It was true, but really, how could you not make it negative when you know you’re not going to see the person you love at a moment’s notice? “Hey Nate,” I said after a beat.

  He chuckled. “What?”

  “You wanna have a threesome with me?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Sounds tempting.”

  “Only tempting?”

  “I don’t know how I feel about sharing you,” he said. “Actually, that’s a lie, I know I hate the idea of sharing you.” He pressed his forehead against mine. “I know I wanted to rip Adam apart for touching your damn elbow at the funeral. Imagine how I’d feel about sharing you completely?”

  I kissed him softly. “Hey Nate?”

  “Stop calling me that, sweetheart,” he grumbled against my lips.

  “Why? Everyone else does.”

  “You’re not everyone else.” He pulled back. “You’re the only one.”

  “What does that mean?” I whispered.

  “It means I’m in love with you. It means I have been since the moment I met you. It means I want to stop playing these games where you’re not spending every single night in my bed, and before you start with your hating on men bullshit, if it makes you feel better I’ll move in with you instead. Whatever it takes as long as we’re never apart.” He searched my eyes. “I know it’s too soon to ask you to marry me. I don’t even know if that’s something you want, but I never want to let you go, and it’s the only way I know I can keep you. Forever.”

  “What if you want me to give your key back?”

  “I never wanted my key back.” He cupped both sides of my face. “I would never in a million years want my key back. Come home with me and stay forever.”

  “Forever ever?”

  “Forever ever.”

  And that was how, at midnight, with fireworks going off outside we ended up with our arms wrapped around each other, kissing like tomorrow may never come, because you could never be too sure, and I was done wasting time. But, that was the consequence of falling in love. The best consequence.

  Epilogue

  I’d been depressed all week and had run out of things to blame it on – the weather, the second brew bar I was scheduled to open not passing the building inspection for the second time in a row, the fact that my dad’s birthday had been looming all week and now that it was here I was even more upset than I imagined I’d be. On a whim, I’d called my ticket contact and was amazed to find out that one of the seats she’d sold me before was available. I called it kismet and bought it right away. Now that I was sitting there though, I felt different. The seat beside me was empty, but according to her, the person who bought it purchased four only to end up reselling the one I got, which meant I got lucky and I’d soon have three neighbors beside me. I looked at my phone for the fourth time, expecting Nathaniel to call me back any minute. He’d been out of town the entire week, checking out a tech company in Seattle.

  Apparently they needed more start-up money, and since he and Ryan had it and they went gaga over anything tech, they stayed a few more days to work out a deal. His flight was supposed to land any minute and even though I’d sent him a text letting him know I was trying to get a ticket for the game, but he was in the air so I wasn’t expecting a response any time soon.

  I sat down after the pledge and started fighting a box of Cracker Jacks. You would think after years of opening them, I’d be a pro, but my fingers slipping on the box proved otherwise. Unlike the last time I’d been there, I checked my phone every five seconds. Dad wouldn’t have been pleased. He would’ve made fun of me and shook his head in between shouting at the umpire. The thought alone made me smile, but it soon faltered. I missed him more than I ever imagined I would. I missed badgering him about his smoking habits and I missed going over for breakfast in the morning. Victor and Nathaniel helped me put his apartment and mine on the market at the same time. I thought about staying in the building, but I couldn’t. Every time I rode the elevator or there was something as simple as a knock on my door, I just about lost it. Nathaniel asked me to move in with him before it was even listed. Of course, I’d made that difficult as well. I didn’t want to be the woman who once again let a man take care of her, but he made it feel different. He made it feel like he wanted to take care of me and he’d asked me to take care of him as well. The rest of the row started filling in and a sense of sadness hit me again. I put my phone away and focused on the game, determined not to let myself start crying. I’d cried enough in this seat.

  I rattled my box of candy popcorn and popped another one in my mouth. The kiss camera came on, then a dance camera, then birthdays. My chest squeezed as those scrolled on. Then, I saw, “In Celebration Winston Rose’s life”. I gasped, dropping the little box in my hand as I brought my hand to my mouth and looked around. Nathaniel was standing in the aisle, watching me. His hair was in disarray, he wore navy blue dress pants and a white button down that looked slightly wrinkled. I felt like I was frozen as I stared at him, like the scene was a picture and not a moment I was actually living. His mouth tugged slightly as he excused himself and took the seat beside me.

  “Surprised?”

  “But you . . . “ I blinked. “You . . . “ I shook my head. “How did . . . “

  He smiled. “You may want to wait until you find your words, princess. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you speechless before.”

  “You were supposed to be on an airplane right now,” I finally managed to get out, rushed and rather loudly. “When did you plan to get that on the screen? How did you even get in here?”

  “You think I don’t know you?” He raised an eyebrow. “I asked you a month ago if you wanted to come to this game – “

  “And I said no. It would be too painful.”

  “But you live for pain, so I knew you’d come anyway.”

  “I don’t live for pain.” I frowned. “This was a last minute decision. My girl didn’t even think she’d be able to get me a seat.”

  “Brittney is good at keeping secrets.” He chuckled at my obvious confusion. “I bought these seats a month ago.”

  “But . . . “

  “I’m a good liar. What can I say?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good trait to have or one you should boast about to your girlfriend.”

  His gaze flickered to the screen. Mine followed. Presley Rose, you are a royal pain in my butt. Will you marry me? was written on the screen now. My mouth dropped. It switched and the same thing was written again. And again. And again. And again. And then the announcer said, “For God’s sake, Presley Rose, say yes already”. I covered my face, hoping to hide my embarrassment, but I was sure it showed even through them.<
br />
  “Has she said yes already?” the other announcer asked.

  “Let’s pan in on them. Where are they sitting?” the other said.

  “Oh my God, Nathaniel Bradley. Of all the annoying, stupid, crazy things you’ve done, this one takes the cake,” I said through my hands, still hiding. “I’m going to kill you for this.”

  He laughed, bringing my hands down. I felt like my face was glowing red. I was sure it was. My body temperature would never reach normal numbers after this. I stared at him, hoping it looked more like a glare than a dumb stare.

  “Presley Rose, I want to bicker and argue with you, kiss and make up with you, take care of you even when you remind me you don’t need me, I want to grow old with you, have kids with you, and more importantly, I want to love you like you’ve never imagined being loved before. You’re my dream girl, my ultimate crush, the unattainable love of my life that I somehow managed to reel in. I think I’ve been in love with you forever. Let me keep you for just as long. Please?”

  I blinked, but this time the tears did trickle down my face and they weren’t sad. This time, I wasn’t thinking about how much this place reminded me of things I could no longer have, but how this man before me has made every effort to make me find happiness everywhere. I nodded, brushing the tears off my cheeks and when my brain caught up with my heart, I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him.

  “You couldn’t possibly have been in love with me forever,” I whispered against his mouth.

  “I was.”

  I shook my head, smiling.

  He smiled back. “I was just waiting for you to catch up.”

  “And that, ladies and gentleman, is what we call a happily ever after,” the announcer said as the camera actually zoomed in on us.

  The people around us cheered, and when Nathaniel took a ring and slipped it onto my finger, I felt like I could soar. When everyone settled, I turned to him.

  “How long have you been planning this?”

  “My entire life.” His eyes glinted with amusement when I shoved him playfully. “A while.”