“Were we in a relationship?”
I blinked and turned to where Nathan walked; hands shoved into his pockets in a way that made his biceps bulge distractingly. “Huh?”
Nathan’s brows were furrowed in concentration. “A relationship. I’m not always very good at figuring those things out, but I thought that’s what it was by the end. We lived together. We talked a lot. Had sex. Agreed things were no longer pretending. Wasn’t it a relationship?”
I blinked. Usually, it was the girl who had to wheedle these things out of the guy.
“I—yes,” I said. “Yes, it was. At least I thought so.”
“So, that meant you were my girlfriend, right? My real one.”
Past tense, I noticed bitterly. “You would think.”
Nathan stopped. “Then shouldn’t my girlfriend have told me where she was going instead of just disappearing?”
I scowled. “Shouldn’t my boyfriend have stayed in the room when I was clearly in pain?”
“Shouldn’t my girlfriend be honest with me about something that was endangering her in the first place?”
“Endangering me? I think you mean endangeringyou?—”
“The video of you having sex with another man was never going to do anything tomeor anyone in my family,” Nathan said impatiently. “Despite what my brother and parents might say about it. But the fact that your ex…I don’t know what to call Shawn…had a recording of you like that. You couldn’t have thought that would end in anything good.”
“Ithoughthe would forget about it,” I said. “And then, when I realized he hadn’t, I had hoped not to burden you with it.”
“That’s a lie. You weren’t trying to protect me. You were protecting yourself. You were ashamed and afraid, so you blocked out the possibility instead of dealing with it.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but found that I couldn’t. He was right, infuriatingly so.
“But if you’re in a relationship with someone, you share those burdens, don’t you?” Nathan went on.
“Like you shared all your burdens about Isla?”
“Not immediately, no,” Nathan admitted. “When I realized what we were…I did share them.”
“It was still different,” I retorted. “Your burdens make you a hero. Mine just make me an idiot. A sad, stupid…”
He closed the space between us almost instantaneously and grabbed my waist. “Stop talking about yourself like that.”
“Why? It’s true.” I couldn’t help the bitterness leaching into my voice. It tasted like poison. I probably deserved it.
We blinked at each other through the afternoon light, seething at each other a bit like cats.
“Whatever,” I said in the end. “It’s not like I really know the rules. I was the worst person you could have picked to teach you how to be in a relationship, considering I’ve never really had one before. Not like that.”
Nathan stared at me for a long time, some muscle in his jaw ticking before he gave a curt nod and relaxed his shoulders. “Me neither.”
I nodded back, not knowing what to say. Why was he even telling me this? Working through his shit so he could be ready for the next person? That Charlotte woman, maybe. Someone on his level. Someone who wasn’t such a mess.
Gradually, the cracks in my heart turned to fissures. And when Nathan stepped away, the hand at my waist leaving a print as surely as if it had been dipped in ink, those fissures split completely.
“I didn’t like doing it,” I blurted out as we continued walking along the water’s edge. “The video.”
Nathan cast me a wry look. “That seemed obvious. Based on what I know about you…that way.”
I could feel myself color at the memories. Yes, he would know what it looked like when I enjoyed myself in bed.
“And I don’t like serving drinks topless either. Stripping, whatever you want to call it. And I’ve been in plenty of risqué shows, even done a burlesque class. Nudity doesn’t bother me. Never has.”
