John shook me off as I brushed past him and put his lips to his glass of liquor like it was a security blanket. Dinner might have been ruined—hell, it might be the last dinner I’d ever have in the Russo house—but it would be worth it. A thought crossed my mind, and I turned back around to the stunned silent room. “God help you if my wife is fucking crying."
Too determined to get to Natalia, all my emotional apprehension took a back seat. I had a one-track mind as I stormed out of the dining room and left everyone else to pick up the pieces. There was only one person I was worried about.
At the end of the wide hallway, one of the doors leading outside was swung open and I jogged toward it into the backyard. Wind whistled past my ears and raindrops spattered my face as I approached the dimly lit pool house and stood at the edge of the glowing water. My dress shirt clung to my biceps as rain ran down my neck and cooled against my back.
"Tally," I called out. "It's pouring." Her head peered out from beneath the water, dark hair floating behind her. I rubbed a hand down my face. "Get out of the pool."
She shook her head.
It was only about seventy degrees but the pool was heated. Steam lifted from the top of the water, making her look like a siren. She slipped back beneath the cloudy water and I lost her in the texture of the rain dotting it, nothing but a faint dark blob wading as she beat her arms to keep herself treading at the bottom.
I knew what she was doing, though. I'd been there before, wishing I could turn off the world around me, or at least turn the dial so that the volume wasn’t so loud. It happened in our kitchen. Natalia and I felt in the same extreme ways. We were shit at controlling those emotions, but we had each other to lean on. That was why when she was losing her mind, I had to keep mine together.
We balanced. We were scales.
Which was also why I knew that there was only one way to get through to her, and that was meeting her halfway. Not waiting for her to eventually return from the place she’d gone, but helping her find the way back home.
“Damn it,” I muttered to myself. I threw my phone on a patio chair, took a deep breath, then jumped into the water with her.
That startled her, because when I reached the bottom Natalia was already wide-eyed and waiting for me. It took nothing to gather her in my arms and kick off the hard stone floor, sending us both back to the surface.
"What are you doing?" she sputtered. I flipped my hair out of my eyes and dragged us to the ledge, underneath a circulating waterfall and a rock embankment built into the far side of the pool. We were shielded from the rain and hidden away. For once, all of John Russo’s money was good for something.
Natalia’s mascara was running beneath her eyes, but instead of red-rimmed they were soft and a bit dazed and she hugged her legs around my waist to stay upright. "My mother used to ask me all the time if my friends jumped off a bridge, would I jump off too?" I said. “I would tell her, ‘No, Ma, I know what's good for me. I know right from wrong. I would never.’"
She smiled a sad, crooked little smile.
"I would jump off a bridge if you did, Tally."
"That doesn't make it the right thing to do."
"It doesn't matter." I squeezed her hips. The drenched material of her dress was glued to her body. "Even if it's wrong, I still want it. Because it’s you."
Her jaw relaxed and her lips parted like she might fight that, too, and if she did I'd keep battling. I couldn't tell if there were tears in her eyes or if her lashes were wet from the pool. My hands slipped to her lower back and tugged her closer.
"There's something wrong with me," she choked out like it was stuck in her throat.
"No there’s not, baby."
"I can't stand myself most of the time. I have all this hate inside me, Matty. All this rage. I'm so fucking angry and I don't know where to put that anger, because you are so perfect and when I met you I didn't have to be angry anymore. I got to belight. I didn't have to be on the defense all the damn time."
She exhausted those last few words as if she'd just run a marathon and they were too tiring to say.
"But that doesn't mean it's not still here, Matty. You don't find peace and automatically get rid of the anger. It needs somewhere to go and it just fucking waits until a night like tonight happens. I want to be so angry. I want to scream, but I can't so I end uphere. In this pool, looking like a fucking maniac. Because that's what Natalia does," she said matter-of-factly. "Natalia makes everything about her. Natalia is a wreck. Natalia is lost. Natalia is lashing out again."
She tried to writhe away from me but I wouldn't allow it. I’d crawl inside her before letting her crawl out of her own skin. "Natalia is human," I said softly. "Natalia is thoughtful, and brilliant, and resilient, and fucking real. You are allowed to be angry.I’mfucking angry. You want to know why?"
She didn’t look up. "Why?"
"Because it took me so long to get to you." I lifted her chin with my fingers. The rain around us had stopped, so I ushered our floating bodies from beneath the waterfall and back into a dark, cloudless night. It was quiet and warm and I hardly felt our clothes weighing us down. "I'm angry someone hurt you for so long and made you think that was okay. That it was love, and that's just how love works. That it hurts, and it's brutal." I shook my head. "It's not."
"I don't want to hate them." She sighed. "I don't. I'm just so resentful. Ashamed that this is what I have to offer you. Forever with in-laws that you can't stand, broken relationships, things I can't fix."
"They weren't part of the deal," I said lightly. "I was never worried about that. I don't care. My parents are no walk in the park either, Tal.”
"That stupid fucking prenup." She tried to escape me again, but I held her steady in my arms. "I didn't ask Isabella to draw that up, I swear. She blindsided me that day we went for coffee, and I gave her some bullshit answer about looking it over but I ditched it as soon as I got home. I never planned on actually asking you to sign one of those."
Well, there it was. My tension around it eased. It was a misunderstanding that I was glad I hadn't let send me over the edge before I had the chance to hear it from Tally herself.
