Page 45 of Fierce Love
There’s nothing I can say to that. He’s not wrong.
“Dinner is served.” A woman in a black-and-white uniform appears out of nowhere, and I wonder where dinner is being served. The table overlooking the ocean doesn’t seem to be it, and the open-plan kitchen to our right is dim and empty.
“There’s a formal entertainment area,” Nate says, his lips suddenly close to my ear. “Follow me.”
A formal entertainment area. Makes sense. What else do you do with one hundred thousand square feet of space?
We cross the kitchen, living room, and family-sized table into an adjacent room that’s been set with formal place settings. The table is angled so that everyone can have an ocean view, and the sun is just starting to set. It’s breathtaking.
“Oh wow,” I whisper.
“Best time of day,” Nate agrees, letting me take in the view for a beat while everyone else finds their seats. The table is huge, but it looks like only one section of it, the one with the best views, has been set.
He draws me over to two chairs looking outside, and I slide into the one beside him. There’s a clatter from the other room, and two dark-haired younger children practically fall into theroom. They aren’t in pajamas, but Gage’s dress shirt and Ava’s dress look as though they’ve been through a war, wrinkled and disheveled. A young woman follows behind them, out of breath, and Celia glances at her, disdain clear in her expression.
“We’ll need to work on that before we host another dinner.” Her tone is directed solely at the nanny, which seems unfair to me.
For the rest of dinner, Jonathan and Celia mostly ignore me, talking to each other, admonishing Ava or Gage over something, or commenting on an event one of the other children are involved in. The meal, a lamb roast with vegetables I can’t name, is the best food I’ve ever tasted, and I wish, more than anything, that I had a big-enough appetite to eat more than one helping or that it was possible to ask for the leftovers. Do they even eat it or throw out the excess?
After dinner, Maren and Sawyer take phone calls and disappear from the table, Calista practically drags the children back toward the staircase, and Jonathan tells Nate he needs his opinion on something in his office for a minute.
“Are you going to be okay?” Nate asks. The table is empty. His mother has disappeared somewhere as well.
“I’ll go out on the balcony. Take in the view. I’ll be fine.”
He squeezes my hand and then rises to follow his dad. I wander out the huge sliding doors that are thrown wide to the ocean breeze. There isn’t a lot of backyard before the cliff face, and I wonder whether anyone ever worried about the kids going over. There isn’t a fence.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Celia says from behind me, and I jump, startled. “A summer fling isn’t the type of girl someone like Nathaniel is meant to marry.”
Much like when my mother comes after me, my voice leaves me. Instead of defending myself or defendingus, I say nothing.
“You don’t think you’re the first girl Nathaniel’s brought home that he wanted to save, do you? My son does love wounded things, and you can’t get much more wounded on this island than a Davis girl, now, can you?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, and I genuinely don’t. I’m sure, based on my neighborhood, there are people who have it rougher than me. I’ve got Aunt Verna, and some people don’t even have that.
“He has such a big, open heart. Falls in and out of love so easily.”
Unlike my closed heart that’s never let any relative or boy or friend in too far—my Aunt Verna is it, and even the love I feel for her is conflicted by her close connection to my mother, whom I hate.
“I just wouldn’t want you to think this is something it’s not. His father and I are tolerating this dalliance because girls like you never last, and with him going to California for school, and you to New York on a scholarship… not exactly destined to last, is it?”
She must not know that Nate already floated the idea of changing schools after his first year. California is a family tradition, but Nate said he’d break it for me. Assuming his mother isn’t lying and Nate hasn’t said something similar to every other girl he’s dated. I close my eyes at the notion, unable to believe it’s true, even as a grain of uncertainty sneaks in.
“He’ll go off to college, and he’ll meet a girl who shares his values, who’ll suit this lifestyle, who’ll understand him in ways you never can.” She spreads her arms wide. “I bet you can’t even fathom this life.”
Ican’t. But this life doesn’t quite feel like Nate either, at least, not the Nate I know.
And maybe that’s the point. How well do I know him after a few weeks? How long can you occupy a corner of someone’slife and feel like you know the whole person? We’ve avoided confronting his wealth, which makes me wonder if he knows, deep down, that we can’t work, won’t work.
“Clinging on to a dream that’ll never happen isn’t good for anyone,” Celia says.
“I think Nate feels like it will happen,” I say, gathering the tiniest bit of courage.
“Oh, he might,” she says with a little laugh. “Heisa dreamer. But you and I? We’re more practical. We live inthisworld, and part of that is realizing that everyone can be bought, has something they deeply desire.” She smirks as though my agreement is a given. “The Davis family havealwayshad a price. When you’ve got yours, you know where to find me.”
“Everything okay out here?” Nate asks from behind us, his tone cautious, and I can tell he must not have heard enough to be sure.
“Fine,” I say, giving him a half smile. “I was just saying goodbye to your mother.”
