Return of the Jerk (Sweet Life in Seattle, Book 2) (47 page)

“I’m curious about something,” he says as they start to head upstairs. “Why did you and Tori hang out at our house so much?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you could hang out here instead? Why come to our house?”

Because you were there,
she almost says. Blair remembers how she always pushed to stay at Tori’s instead of here, anything to be under the same roof with him.

Blair turns to look at Nathan, his green eyes focused on her. Come to think of it, his laser focus has been turned on all day.

“We hung out here, too. We stayed in both places.”

He snorts. “Not the way I remember it.”

“Here it is,” she says when they arrive, opening the white paneled door. “My former teenage bedroom.”

They enter the place where she once spent hours lying on her bed, spinning her girlish dreams about him.

If he only knew.

Looking around the room, there’s a bit of sadness in her heart that she can’t share this with him, the way she once spent hours thinking about him. She suspects, if circumstances were different, he’d enjoy hearing about it.

She watches the way Nathan takes in the layout. The guest bedroom is nicely decorated in a nautical theme with various shades of blue and white. A big double bed is centered against the wall where her pink canopy once stood. Striped blue curtains hang over the alcove window.

Nathan walks over to the window to look outside. It faces the south side of the yard. The corner of her mom’s art studio is just visible, and behind that, it’s mostly wooded.

She goes to stand next to him, studies his profile as he studies the view. “Is that a tree house?” he asks, motioning at a structure near the edge of the woods.

“It is. My brothers and I built it with my dad.”

He nods.

Standing there, Nathan seems so remote, so separate and removed from all this. She thinks about how he grew up without a father, how awful that must have been. Blair always knew he didn’t have one, but this is the first time she really gets it. How it must have been terrible. He had his uncle, obviously, but that’s not the same as having your dad.

She reaches down and takes his hand, squeezes it, wishing she could fix everything. Every lousy thing that ever happened to him as a kid. She starts to pull him close, to kiss him, but doesn’t get the chance.

“Your mom said something really weird to me today.” He’s still studying the view out her window. “Probably nothing, but I got to ask you anyway.” He turns to look at her. “Do you have a family history of blood clots?”

“What?”

“Your mom told me you have a history of blood clots and aren’t supposed to go on the pill.”

Blair goes still. “That’s weird.”

“I know, but it’s what she told me.”

“Actually,” she tries to breathe, but is finding it difficult suddenly, “there’s a history of blood clots on my mom’s side.”

Nathan nods. “She told me you’re not supposed to take the pill. That true?”

Blair doesn’t respond right away. And that’s when it dawns on her.

This is it.

It’s happening right now.

All her unease, her foreboding so thick, ready to choke her, it wasn’t at all about how her parents might reject Nathan.

“Your mom said you’ve never been on the pill,” he continues. “Told her that wasn’t true, but she seemed so sure of herself.”

Blair looks into his eyes, remembering back to the very first time she ever looked into them. How everything changed for her that day. Everything.

She knows there are two paths. The one she’s on now, living in the shadows, living with lies and half-truths.
But with this path, I have Nathan. He’s mine. And that’s no small thing.

Or the path of honesty. The truth. The honest path will bring her into the light, but in all likelihood, she’ll lose Nathan forever.
No! I can’t let that happen. The truth will only hurt him.

“Why do you think she told me that?” he asks. She sees the trust on his face, hears it in his voice, still believing in her, assumes it’s her mother who’s wrong.

Blair gulps for air. Knows her decision. Her heart pounds so loud she can hear it, like the gallop of an approaching monster.

“My mom told you that because it’s true.”
I owe him this much
. Blair’s head swims at all she’s giving up. The love of her life. Her prince. The only one.

He looks at her with confusion, his trust still solid and whole. “Don’t understand what you’re saying, babe.”

“I’ve never been on the pill.” She gazes into his beautiful green eyes. “I lied to you.”

Nathan stares at her.

“I wanted to tell you the truth sooner, but I didn’t know how. And,” she lets out a shaky breath, “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

She sees his mind working, sorting through it all. “You lied about being on the pill that night?”

“Yes.”

His eyes roam her face. “Why would you do that?”

“It’s hard to explain.” Her mind searches desperately for some way out of this, to save things.

“Try,” he insists.

And she can see his trust isn’t solid and whole anymore. There’s a crack—a tiny one, but it’s spreading.

“Were you trying to get pregnant for some reason?” he asks. “But why? That makes no sense.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Then what?”

Blair understands now how the way she took advantage of him that night was indecent. For all her love, she wronged him in an ugly way, and she’s ashamed for it.

“I wanted you,” she finally admits. “I wanted
all
of you.”

Nathan goes to sit on the bed. “Help me out here, Blair. I’m trying to understand, but none of this makes sense.”

“I love you,” she says.

He nods, wary. “I know.”

“No, you
don’t
know.”

“Course I do.”

She takes a deep breath then lets it out, lets it spill. The floodgates open. “I’ve loved you since the moment I first saw you, Nathan. The very first time Tori brought me to your house and I saw you there in the yard playing Frisbee.” She smiles at him. “You blew my mind.”

“The first time you saw me? But that was years ago. We were still teenagers.”

“I know. And I’ve been in love with you every single day since then. Crazy in love with you.”

“What?” Nathan blinks. “You serious?”

“I am.” Blair is shaking all over, her breath erratic. There’s a strange exhilaration coursing through her.

“You’ve been in love with me all these years? How come you never said anything?”

“Because I was too afraid. I didn’t know how you’d react. And years ago, I never told you because I knew you didn’t have any feelings for me.”

“What about the dipshit, though? Obviously you loved him, too.”

“My God, Nathan.” She gives a humorless laugh. “It’s you I was talking about.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You’re the guy I loved who didn’t love me back.”

He’s quiet, taking this in. “All this time you let me think there’s some other guy, when it’s
me?
I’m
the fucking dipshit?”

He gets off the bed now, starts pacing the room. “Were you trying to trick me into marrying you? That why you lied about being on the pill?”

“No.” And in this, Blair knows she’s telling the truth. That was the last thing on her mind. Strange as it sounds, she was so obsessively focused in the moment, pregnancy never even occurred to her.

“Then what? Why the hell did you lie?”

Blair licks her lips. “Because I wanted you, okay? I wanted the intimacy. I’d been in love with you for so long. I thought that was my only chance to be with you in every way.”

Nathan stops pacing and stares at her, breathing hard. “Jesus Christ, is that really what you call love?” She realizes the crack in his trust is spreading fast. “I don’t even know who you are. Thought I did,” and she sees the hurt in his eyes, “thought I
knew
you, Blair. Thought I’d finally found someone real I could hold on to.”

“You still can.” She tries to go to him, but he moves away from her. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I made a mistake that night, a terrible mistake. I wish I could take it back.”

Nathan shakes his head. “I changed my whole life because of that mistake.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know shit!” He points to his chest. “Should I tell you what this Sanskrit means?”

He’s wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt, but Blair has traced the lines of that tattoo over his heart so many times, she has it memorized.

“Got it right after I went to India. After you lost the baby.”

She looks at his chest then flashes to his face. “I don’t . . . understand.”

“It says ‘angel.’”

Blair opens her mouth. Stunned. It’s like being struck—the blow nearly physical. She puts her hand against the wall to steady herself. “I didn’t think you cared I lost the baby.”

“I cared.” His voice vibrates through the room. “I married you. You think I would have done that if I didn’t care?”

“You never said anything to me.” She thinks back to how he looked right after he found out about the miscarriage. His face grim, but unreadable, finally realizing now she’s been misinterpreting his expression all these years. It turns out he was suffering.

“Didn’t know I had to spell it out for you. Not that kind of loss.”

Her throat grows so tight she can barely speak. “I suffered too.”

“Yeah,” he says, “I know you did.”

She looks over at him, and when their eyes meet, an understanding passes between them.

He’s still staring at her. “After the way I was raised, you think I don’t take that shit seriously? That I’d allow any child of mine to live in this world unprotected and fatherless?”

“I just never knew it mattered so much to you.” Her hand is still against the wall, trying to ground herself somehow.

“Then you don’t know me.”

Blair almost laughs at the irony of this. She studied him for years, obsessively cataloging every detail. But he’s right.
I didn’t know him.

I do now.

“Thought you were different than anyone I’d ever been with,” he says, his voice ragged. “That you changed my life, that I finally found someone I could really trust. But turns out you’re worse than all of them.”

Blair gazes out the window. The same window she looked through a thousand times, lovesick and dreaming of him. Pain slices through her. Almost from a distance she understands the real pain is still waiting for her. Wonders how she’ll survive it.
It will either cure me or kill me
.

“Guess I’m not such a good girl after all,” she whispers.

When she turns back to Nathan, she sees something in his eyes, something horrible. His trust is no longer cracked. It’s shattered.

It’s late, well after midnight, when her mom finds her curled up in the guest bedroom. Blair doesn’t move or say anything, just lies there hugging herself. Her mom sits down near the edge of the bed, both of them silent.

“I did something terrible,” Blair finally admits, her voice quiet. “Something I’m ashamed of.”

Her mom’s hand goes out to touch her hair, strokes it the way she used to when Blair was small. “I take it this involves Nathan.”

Blair nods.

“You love him, don’t you?”

“For a very long time.”

“I see.”

They’re both silent again. Blair thinks of how this all took place in her old bedroom. The walls of this room infused with her hopes and dreams. Now this is the room where all her hopes and dreams died.

“Sometimes,” her mom speaks, breaking the silence. “It’s good when the truth comes out, even if it’s painful.”

Blair doesn’t say anything.

“You don’t want to build your life on lies, honey.”

“I know.”

Her mom gets up and fixes the bed for her so she can sleep in it. Removes the pillow shams, then pulls the duvet back. Helps her climb under the covers as if she were a child again.

“Do you want to borrow some pajamas to sleep in?” her mom asks.

“No, this is okay. I’ll just sleep in my shirt and underwear.”

“Okay.”

After her mom leaves, Blair lies in the dark for a long time, listening to the familiar sounds of her old room. The occasional creak and groan of the walls and floorboards. Wonders where Nathan is right now and if he went back to the condo.

Maybe I should have gone after him.

But then realizes she doesn’t even have a car, since he would have left with Isadora.

Blair tries to close her eyes and let sleep come. It doesn’t work, though. Every time, all she sees is Nathan’s face, that terrible expression.
The way I hurt him
.

The next morning, her mom gives her a ride back and drops her off. Neither of them talk about Nathan or what happened and for that, she’s grateful. Blair hasn’t cried yet. Instead, she feels this peculiar numbness all over, as if her body’s been dipped in ice water.

Right away, Blair can tell he isn’t there. She walks through her condo room by room anyway. She notices Fiona’s suitcases are still there, stacked in the corner of her living room, though there’s no sign of Fiona, either. When she gets to the office, she discovers the air mattress was slept on. Blankets and pillows tossed around.

So he did come back here.