19. CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 19

“My mom’s there, she’s kinda obsessed with you, I think I might be, too”

Golf On TV – Lennon Stella

Deon

A clothing bomb went off in my once tidy bedroom. Nathalie launches an article of clothing over her shoulder as she digs through her suitcase, and I snatch it mid-air and neatly fold it with the rest of the clothing she’s tossed.

A small pile is forming on the edge of the bed.

Bottles clank together in a bag as she skips into the connecting bathroom and drops the bag onto the counter with a thud. I peek into the bathroom as she braids her hair away from her face.

She’s been quiet since we got home, and I hate it. Hate the way unspoken words linger in the air, growing heavier and more tense every minute neither of us speaks.

Nathalie slips on her muumuu and perches at the end of my bed, awkwardly surveying the space.

“Your room is well decorated,” she comments, her first words since we got home. I’m unsure why she’s quiet, and I’m quickly entering a state of unease. When Savannah was upset, she would ignore me for days.

I’m not a fan of the silent treatment.

“Are you mad at me?” I ask, unable to stomach the idea I did something to upset her. “Is this because I forgot to tell you my family was coming? It was an accident,” I ramble, desperate to convince her it was an honest mistake. “I didn’t mean to forget. The holiday snuck up—did they make you uncomfortable? Ask you weird questions?”

Nathalie jerks, brows high on her forehead. “What?”

“You…You haven’t said a single word to me since dinner.”

It’s not an exaggeration. I’ve been waiting for her to say something, but she’s been painfully silent, a trait I don’t associate with her normally, hence my concern.

Nathalie’s eyes widen, and she sighs, head falling onto my shoulder.

“I’m not mad at you. I’m nervous.”

“Why?” I whisper, savoring the small contact.

All I want to do is touch her. Every moment I’m with her. Run my fingers through her hair, hold her hand in mine, drag her against my chest so tightly I can feel her heartbeat on my skin, beating in time with mine.

I fucking hate rule two, and I wish I could burn that list.

She made addendums, but I still hate it .

Touching is allowed if the other is in pain.

Green light on platonic touch. If you would do it with Maren, then it’s fine.

Maren hates physical touch unless it’s her husband, so that rule is confined to occasional and quick hugs and slugging of shoulders, but I don’t want to touch her platonically. I want to touch her like she means something to me because she does.

She’s slowly becoming everything.

“I’ve never slept with someone.”

I raise a brow, my smile threatening to escape.

“Well, that’s not true,” I say, tugging on a strand of hair.

That’s considered a platonic touch, right?

Brown eyes dart to mine, bottom lip between her teeth. Her free hand whacks against my chest. “You know what I mean. I’ve never had a sleepover with a man.”

“Complete with a pillow fort and popcorn?”

Her beautiful smile cracks through, and I can see when she settles, the nerves dissipating.

“You’re a—”

“Booger?” I finish for her. I’ll never forget the moment she called me a booger. The panic in her eyes when she realized that was what she went with.

“I’m sleeping on the couch,” she declares, rising from the bed. She snags a pillow, and I launch, snatching it from her grip.

“You’ll stay right here,” I say as I shove her back onto the bed. That’s also definitely platonic. Her giggles fill the silence of the room, and my chest warms. I love her laugh. It’s rough and boisterous, and it sends a tingle down my spine every time I hear it. “We have a show to watch.”

We never watched the episode she recorded while I was in Nevada, so we have two episodes to catch up on. I’ve had to avoid the internet and a few players on the team who watch with their wives to avoid any spoilers.

“Snack bowl?” I ask.

“Obviously. Face masks and wine?”

“Of course.”

I follow Nathalie into the dark kitchen, and we tiptoe around the space to keep quiet. My heart skips a beat every time her skin grazes mine.

“I think there’s going to be lots of drama in this episode,” Nathalie whispers as she pours a bag of pretzels into the bowl.

“Where did you hide those?” I ask, snagging one. “I thought we were out.”

I had to text Maren and beg her to make another batch for me. She only just lifted the pretzel ban after I groveled, and I needed a bag for the away game. I would ask for the recipe, but I think they taste better when someone else makes them.

“I’m not going to tell you my secret hiding place,” she scoffs, spinning out of my grip. “If I did, you would eat them all.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” Nathalie rolls her eyes with a bemused but unbelieving smile. She pinches my ass as she passes, and I yelp. “Nathalie!” I hiss, stomping behind her as she grabs a bottle of white wine. “Stop pinching my ass.”

“Stop saying things that prompt me to pinch your ass,” she counters.

“How would you like it if I pinched your ass unexpectedly?”

My lips curl into a smug smile but quickly fall when Nathalie leans forward, displaying her ass. Her pajamas ride up, the bottom half of her ass peeking out of the horrifyingly attractive sleep dress.

I’m 90% confident this would not be considered platonic, but Hell will freeze over before I say anything about her stupid guide to casual sex. A better and more accurate name would be: Nathalie’s guide to driving Deon insane because he’s not allowed to touch her, but desperately wants to.

I’ll admit it's a bit wordy, but it gets the point across wonderfully.

My cock hardens as she peers over her shoulder, a coy smile gracing her lips. My hand reaches out when an aggressive cough cracks through the air.

Nathalie jolts. Her shoulders fly to her ears as we spin to find Nyla standing in the hallway, biting back a laugh.

“I needed a glass of water,” she says in explanation, and Nathalie’s hands fly to her face, covering the strawberry hue of her cheeks.

She pulls her dress down to cover herself and snatches the snack bowl.

“I am so sorry,” she croaks, creeping toward my room. “I’ll give you two a minute.”

With that, Nathalie flies from the room, leaving Nyla and me alone in the kitchen. She fills a glass with water and leans against the counter.

“I didn’t mean to walk in on…whatever that was.”

I cringe, but only affection fills my chest. That was not a moment Nyla was meant to see, but it made us look like a real couple.

It also felt like we were a real couple.

“She called me out,” Nyla says, sipping on her water, and my eyebrows nearly fly off my face. “At the game today.”

“What?”

“I deserved it.” Nyla waves me off. “She called you a nerd. It brought back memories, and I got a bit snippy. ”

I exhale deeply. Always the protective older sister. She never liked Savannah. Always told me someone who loves me would never belittle me.

I hate how right she was, but I’m grateful Nathalie showed Nyla exactly who she is.

“Nathalie is not Savannah,” I say defensively.

Nathalie is everything Savannah was not: playful, patient, thoughtful.

“I know,” Nyla says softly, quietly. “I never felt Savannah’s love for you. Today at the game, I could feel how much Nathalie loved you.”

The air whooshes from my lungs.

What kind of acting job did Nathalie pull off at the game?

“The way she spoke about you…” Nyla trails off, shaking her head.

I nearly grab Nyla by the shoulders and shake her until she tells me how she spoke about me. Instead, she squeezes my arm and rinses her cup in the sink.

“You two work well together,” she admits. “I understand why you fell in love with her. She’s good for you.”

“I didn’t realize this was going to be a sappy moment,” I grumble, pointedly ignoring the way my chest flares at her words.

Nyla laughs deeply.

“It’s not. I know how much you hate those,” she winks, “I wanted to tell you how much Mom and I enjoyed meeting Nathalie and hope we get to keep her around.”

Another quick squeeze to my bicep, and she’s gone, disappearing into the guest room. I grab the wine Nathalie left in her quick departure and slip into my bedroom.

Nathalie lounges in bed, feet kicked up, juggling both Gordie and the snack bowl in her lap.

“How crazy does she think I am?” are the first words she says.

The moment my legs slide beneath the covers, her feet slide beneath my calves, and I hiss from the sensation of her freezing toes against my skin.

“You need to start wearing socks,” I mutter as her icy feet burrow deeper between my leg and the bed.

“I don’t need socks; I have your calves.”

“You won’t have my calves to warm your legs forever.” The words are out of my mouth and into the universe before I can stop them, and she rips her feet away. “Nathalie, I didn’t—”

I scramble to clarify, but she cuts me off with an awkward smile.

“No, you’re right,” she says simply, crossing her legs beneath her and passing the snack bowl. “Are you ready to watch the show?”

She takes a long gulp of her wine and starts the show on the television. The air between us is thick and uncomfortable during the recap of the previous episode.

Those were the wrong words, but I don’t know how to make them right because there’s a truth to it.

This is not going to last forever.

Gordie curls into a ball in the space between Nathalie and me, preventing me from scooting closer, taking her hand, or tangling my fingers through her hair.

The lines have been blurred a bit too much, and now the line between real and fake is paper thin.

“Do you think they’re finally going to cast Dan as the villain?” I ask, a flimsy attempt to make conversation with her.

She shrugs. My chest tightens .

“Maybe. I think they’ll wait another week and put him on a two-on-one date to increase the drama.”

Nathalie never glances away from the show. I want to turn it off so she’ll look at me and I can attempt to decipher whatever she’s feeling from what swims behind her glasses.

Her eyes have always been expressive.

But she doesn’t look at me the rest of the night. We chat during the show, but it’s stilted and awkward.

It hasn’t felt this way with her, ever. Not even in the beginning when things were weird. She always lifted the energy, but now, as she places her glasses on the nightstand, the energy is off-center.

A wide gap divides Nathalie and me, and I want to crawl across it and apologize for my words.

This is not how I imagined the night going when I realized my family was coming and we would have to share a bed. I pictured holding her in my arms as we fell asleep. Or waking up in the morning with her head on my chest.

Not an expanse between us wider than the Grand Canyon.

“Are you all early risers?” Nathalie grumbles, shoving a pillow against her head as she attempts to burrow deeper into the bed sheets.

When I woke up this morning, she was tangled in the flat sheet, Gordie held tightly in her grip, the two of them slightly snoring .

I took a photo to remember the moment, to reminisce on how adorable they are together, even if Gordie is an asshole. He’s my asshole. And Nathalie…well, she’s mine, at least for the time being.

And I’ll continue to tell myself I’m okay with that.

“It’s almost nine,” I say, slipping on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. From the pile of clothing on top of her suitcases, I grab clothes for her and set them on the edge of the bed. “I bet there’s a buffet of breakfast foods in the kitchen…”

Her head pops up, and strands of hair stick out of her braid. I rub my chest, a foreign tightness settling beneath my diaphragm. Gordie meows softly, and she pulls him against her chest.

“Morning, Gordie,” she coos softly, “Did you sleep like a king?”

He meows again, this time two short sounds as if to say, of course.

“Are there pancakes?” Nathalie asks, placing Gordie on the floor. “I think I can manage to wake up early if there are pancakes.”

“You’re already awake,” I comment, my lip tipping up in a smile. “If my mother’s cooking, then there is everything under the sun.” I hand her the clothing and fight the urge to kiss her forehead. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

I leave her to get dressed and venture into the kitchen to find Nyla and my mom working side by side to get breakfast ready. Plates of eggs and bacon sit on the table beside a bowl of cut fruit. A serving tray of pastries calls my name, and I snag one while their backs are turned.

“Morning.”

I slide onto a barstool, and when my mom and sister stop cooking, they look past me, searching around.

“Where’s Nathalie?” Nyla asks, peering around me like I’m hiding her behind me. “Is she not eating with us?”

I would say the disappointment on my sister's face is a figment of my imagination, but nope, it’s right there, clear for everyone to see.

“Is my presence not enough?”

“No,” my mom and sister say in unison.

“You finally have a girlfriend who doesn’t suck,” Nyla confesses, not pulling any of her punches. “And we want to hang out with her. I’ve spent the last twenty-eight years with you, that’s plenty of time.”

My mom chuckles, and in any other scenario, I would be annoyed, but Nathalie’s the best, and I also want to hog all of her time and attention. You could say it’s a family trait.

When Nathalie appears from my bedroom, wearing my sweatshirt instead of the one I picked out, I nearly tumble from my barstool. Fuck. That’s not a sight I thought I would ever see, but now I want her to wear it forever and never take it off.

It screams mine .

Nyla quickly wraps Nathalie into a hug and then ushers her to the barstool beside mine.

“I didn’t know what you liked to eat,” Nyla says, “so we made it all.”

My mom spins around with a smile she never once directed toward Savannah and asks, “Did Deon tell you about the time he ate paint?”

Nathalie chokes with laughter and shakes her head.

“No.” She bites her lip with a soft look aimed in my direction. “He didn’t. Please, tell me everything . ”

No. No. No.

This is what I was afraid of. They’re growing close. It will only make the end of this more difficult.

“Do you really—” I start, but every woman in the room shushes me, and I slump into my seat.

It seems I’m too late. They’ve already banded together. I’ll have to make sure they don’t think poorly of her when this ends. I’ll tell them it was me. She wanted more, and I wasn’t ready.

That way, they’ll remember her fondly.

Between Nyla and my mom, they work through every embarrassing story of my childhood. The time I accidentally peed my pants because Nyla scared me senseless. I was seven, and she jumped out of the closet wearing a clown mask.

My response was justified.

My mom shares about her life, which shocks me. She never spoke about herself with Savannah, but with Nathalie, my mom shares her decision to have children on her own. To use a sperm donor and start a family because after spending years focusing on her career as a surgeon, she felt she missed out on the other aspects life could offer.

“I never found someone I wanted to share a life and family with,” my mom admits quietly, “but I knew I wanted children, and now I have two I’m incredibly proud of.”

“That’s incredibly brave,” Nathalie says before turning to me, her gaze full of understanding. Nyla shows Nathalie pictures of her artwork and the interior design studio she runs in Texas. “I knew Deon didn’t decorate this place on his own. I love—” she stops mid-sentence, “love the artwork,” she continues shakily, “but there’s no way he chose it.”

My mind halts on the pause in her sentence.

What did she mean to say?

Was she going to say she loved me?

“It’s my work,” Nyla says proudly, glancing around the room at her paintings hanging on my walls. It’s when I notice a box sitting on the coffee table.

‘“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the box.

“Oh, it was on the porch. It has Nathalie’s name on it.”

“They’re here!” she yells, leaping from the table for the box. Nathalie does a small little pitter-patter with her feet in excitement and returns to the table. “Two-day shipping is the best !”

“What is it?” Nyla asks, peering over me to get a look into the box.

Her excitement is so grand, her smile ginormous as she opens the box. I can only assume it’s Lord of the Rings related, but instead, she pulls out a tub and hands it to me. The tub is filled with random, colorful items, and I have no idea why I'm holding it.

Maybe there’s more, and she needs me to hold this while she unpacks the rest.

“It’s for you,” Nathalie says, and I move the box in my hand, trying to decipher what she bought me and why. Her voice lowers to something shy and uncertain. “They’re fidget toys,” she admits, “I didn’t know what kind you would like, but I thought they might help.”

Emotion clogs my throat.

I never knew she noticed my fidgeting. My fingers tremble as I open the tub, and my mom and Nyla are suspiciously quiet as I sort through the different fidget toys. Some pop or make clicking sounds. Others are squishy and have texture. There are dozens of options, and when I look at Nathalie, I know with certainty it will never be this way with anyone else.

S een . Understood . Acknowledged .

“I-I can return them,” she says quietly, “I was reading about fidgeting and anxiety, and I noticed sometimes you need to keep your hands busy. I thought…I thought they might help.” Her discomfort is evident in the way she pushes her food around her plate, avoiding my gaze. “Maybe I overstepped.”

“No.” I finally find words. “This is…”

Well, those words are gone, but graciously, my mom says what I cannot.

“That’s incredibly thoughtful.” A tentative smile blooms on Nathalie’s face, and it strikes my chest, warming me from the inside out. “He’s always fidgeted. You can't imagine the number of pillows that have been lost because Deon picked at the threads.”

I’ve never understood why I fidget or need to do something with my hands, but it’s soothing. I’ve always used whatever is around me. Coffee creamers. Pillows. The stitching of my clothing.

Breaking ridiculous rule number two, I lean down and kiss Nathalie softly, hesitantly, pouring deep, unwavering affection into the woman who has treated me with more kindness and understanding than I ever thought I deserved.

Savannah’s love always left me questioning my worth. Was I doing enough? Did I say the wrong thing or ask the wrong question?

I have never questioned myself with Nathalie. Not when I expressed my needs or shared my secrets. I’m unsure of what to do with the information. My heart knows, but my brain is fighting against it.

When I release Nathalie from the kiss, her eyes are bright, and her cheeks rosy.

“Thank you. This was…more than I deserve. ”

Her nose scrunches.

“You deserve everything. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Got it?” She says it all quietly enough that my mom and sister can’t hear her, but her conviction reverberates through my bones.

“Got it.”

Nathalie excuses herself to use the bathroom, and once the door clicks shut, my mom looks at me, her eyes shining with unshed tears, and says, with no room for argument, “Do not let her go, Deon. She loves you the way you deserve to be loved.”

I nod, but guilt slowly corrodes my insides.

She’s not mine to keep.

At least not forever.