Page 78 of Fight Or Flight

“Natalie?”

No answer.

He walked back to the kitchen, called her name again, but she was nowhere to be seen, so he jogged up the stairs and pushed open the door to Natalie’s bedroom.

And that’s when he saw her, hunched over the dresser, taking fistfuls of clothing and hastily shoving them into her suitcase around her mother’s jewellery box and photo albums.

His heart ceased. “Are you . . . packing?”

He hadn’t even realized she’d unpacked.

Natalie glanced at him for a fraction of a second. She looked back down and squeezed her eyes shut. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I’m leaving.”

A sick feeling slithered up his spine. He had a million questions, but it was hard to wade through them all while being tortured, watching her fill her suitcase.

“Why now, suddenly?”

She stopped with her bras midair between the drawer and the suitcase, just for a second, then smashed them down haphazardly on top of her swimsuit. “Suddenly?” she asked, still not meeting his eyes. “I’ve been trying to leave ever since I got here.”

She pushed past him into the hall, and he stood there, dumbfounded, watching her leave the room. He had the idea of going to her suitcase and emptying it back into the drawers, but he stopped himself. He didn’t want to fight with her. He wanted to go to the couch and hold her, as they’d planned. He was at a complete loss.

Think.

He needed to tell her how he felt, convince her to stay before she finished packing up and disappeared from his life.

She stormed back into the room, arms full of a toiletry bag and little shampoo and soap bottles. She opened her arms overtop of the suitcase, let it all fall in, then zipped it up. His heart stopped beating.

“Natalie, I don’t want you to leave. I should have told you before, but I—”

“Stop, Ethan. Don’t,” she said, her breathing coming short and fast. She clutched the neck of her T shirt and pulled it from her throat, sucking in panicked breaths.

“It’s going to be okay. We can talk about this and figure it out,” he said.

He stepped toward her with his arms open, but she shot a hand out to stop him, then shook her head. She bent down, picked up her suitcase, and pulled up the handle.

“I can’t talk. I have to go. This is why I wanted to leave before you got back.”

Ethan stood stock-still, staring at her, letting her words percolate through the pain. “Wait a minute. Were you going to leave without even telling me?”

“No.” She reached over to the dresser, grabbed a torn scrap of paper that had once been an envelope, and handed it to him. “I wrote you a note.”

Ethan stared down at the paper in her hand that she’d haphazardly scribbled a few words on as an afterthought. His blood started boiling. “You wrote me a note?”

She casually nodded, as if it were no big deal. “For you and Chelsea. To explain—”

“You wrote a fucking note?!” he screamed. Rage exploded inside him. He was angry with her, no doubt. He never would have said goodbye to her with just a note. But he was far more angry with himself.

For the first time since he’d met her, he didn’t want to be close to her. He wanted to be as far away as possible.

Natalie flinched. “Ethan—”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not another word.”

He knew she would leave, and he was stupid enough to let himself fall completely in love with her anyway. Here he was, trying to tell her he loved her, to beg her to stay with him, and she didn’t even care enough about him to tell him she was leaving in person. She was going to disappear from his life while he was at the pond. Maybe that’s why she didn’t want to go out there. She was looking for an opportunity to ghost him.

---