Page 76 of A Lot Like Forever
“I’m going to head off now,” Faith told Sam, leaning in close to him.
“You’re not going to stay for a drink? Pay your respects?” Sam asked, frowning.
“It’s complicated,” she said, squeezing his hand. “I just don’t feel like I should be here right now.”
“Because of Nate?” Sam asked, looking irritated.
“Yes,” she told him, not wanting to lie. “But it’s not what you think.”
“I was still thinking that he’d damn well broken your heart,” Sam muttered. “Just like I warned you would happen. But now I’m not so sure.”
She tried to act like discussing her love life with Sam was the most natural thing in the world. “He didn’t break my heart. We just . . .”
“He’s in love with you, isn’t he? That speech about his future wife . . .”
“Just leave it, Sam. I need to go.”
He didn’t try to stop her and she didn’t waste time. Thank god she’d brought her own car. Faith moved silently through the crowd, smiling and nodding as she passed people she knew, until a hand closed over her wrist and stopped her from moving another step.
“You’re leaving already?”
She tried to snatch her hand back, but it didn’t work. Instead Nate slowly released his grip, so slowly that she had to remain almost immobile the entire time.
“Nate, I need to go.”
“Is there anything I can do to change your mind?” he asked, moving closer, his body making hers ache for all kinds of things that it couldn’t have.
She stared at his lips, at the gentle curve of his mouth as he smiled. His eyes were still damp, unshed tears ready to be blinked away if they weren’t going to fall.
“You shouldn’t hold them back,” she said, because it was the only thing she could think of to say. “Your tears,” Faith clarified when he looked puzzled.
“I’m not afraid to cry,” Nate told her, reaching out and touching her hair, his thumb and forefinger gently caressing a strand before he let go.
But I’m afraid of you.They were the words she wanted to say,neededto say, but they wouldn’t come out. Instead she just walked a step closer to him, stood on tiptoe, and pressed a kiss to his cheek, her lips betraying her and staying against his skin a little too long.
“Good-bye, Nate.”
His smile was a confusing combination of sad and warm. “I’ll be by at nine am to collect you on Friday.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t even know where I live.”
“Yes, I do,” he said, winking and sending a wave of desire through every inch of her body. “You can run from me, darlin’, but you sure as hell can’t hide.”
It should have sounded like a threat, but it didn’t. Because if she put her foot down and told him to back the hell off, he would. Only she wasn’t ready to say good-bye to him forever, not without seeing what he had planned first. She could have all the willpower and good intentions in the world, but walking away from him completely was never going to be easy. Not in a million years.
* * *
“I think we have a problem.”
Nate knocked back the last of his whiskey and set down his glass. Sam was still nursing his, eyes trained on Nate as they stood in Clay’s former library. Nate had taken the place over once his granddad had officially asked him to start running their businesses, but nothing about the décor or even the books themselves had changed. The dark timber panels and textured Ralph Lauren wallpaper made it feel like it could have been the early 1900s still, like something straight from the days ofBoardwalk Empire,Clay’s favorite TV show. And it was just the way Nate liked it. Different from the rest of the house, an escape where he could focus on work and drink some whiskey, read a book if he wanted to with no distractions, lamps lit instead of overhead lights. He’d come in here with Chase and Ryder to privately toast their granddad now he’d been lowered into the ground in the private King cemetery on the land, and Sam had wandered in to talk to Nate, away from the large crowd gathered throughout the rest of the ground floor of the house.
“Nate?”
“Yeah, I heard you,” he said, reaching for the decanter and pouring more whiskey into his glass. “And I take it we’re talking about your sister?”
Sam dropped into the worn brown leather sofa, taking another sip of his drink. “I don’t want to be an asshole bringing this up today, Nate. You know I love you, I’d do anything for you, but this stuff with Faith is messing with my head.”
Nate sighed and sat in the sofa opposite, kicking one of his legs up to rest on the other, boot to his knee. “I screwed up,” he admitted. “I made you a promise that I’d stay away from her, which I damn well did for years, and then when she arrived on my doorstep that day it didn’t take long before I--”
