Page 18 of Fall to Me
She should.
“I know words aren’t enough, but I’m sorry. I’ve always wanted you, but not like this. Not from a stupid drunken night. You have to know that I’d never take advantage of you like that.”
Her eyes dart to my arm again, but she sits quietly.
“I swear, if I pushed this on you, if I manipulated you?—”
She stands up—my t-shirt hitting her mid-thigh—and walks to the window to look out over the city. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she looks over her shoulder toward the king-sized bed in my suite, gnawing on her bottom lip. She’s so beautiful like this. In my shirt with streams of light from the morning sun casting a glow onto her golden hair. Too bad I can’t enjoy the view for the weight of the guilt.
She swallows thickly and throws a thumb over her shoulder. “Did we um?” Her voice falters. “I-I woke up naked.”
I shake my head, forcing my eyes to stay on hers. “No. I would never take advantage of you like that. Drunk or not.”
She sighs, turning back toward the window and groaning into her hands. “God. This is so bad.”
No. What’s bad is that, deep down, I don’t regret marrying her. I’m usually one to carefully think things through, and oddly, I feel . . . okay with being married to her. What I do regret is the fact that she’s being forced into something she doesn’t want to be a part of.
That’s on me.
I can kiss any chance of us ever being together goodbye because I failed to protect her from me, and because of that, my feelings for her will always remain one-sided.
What I did last night will ensure that she’ll never come around. Because she’s always gonna have it in the back of her mind that I’m a selfish prick who got her drunk, then manipulated her into a marriage she never wanted. She’ll never trust me, especially when she finds out about Nate.
Fuck!
What the hell did I do?
A vice clutches around my throat and my chest tightens. I swallow back the bile in my throat. She can’t hear this from someone else.
“I need to tell you something . . .”
“Carter, right now, I can’t even wrap my head around this, let alone anything else. We’ve wasted too much time, and I need to shower before we go to the venue.”
I give a short nod. I could wait and tell her later, but later may be too late, and if she hears him talking about it, that will definitely dig a deeper hole for me to crawl out of.
“You can use my shower to cut down on time. You need to hear this from me. Then you can do whatever it is you need to do,” I say softly.
Hesitating, she crosses her arms over her chest. I can tell she wants to walk away, but she doesn’t.
“Nate and I . . .” I sigh, trying to force the words out. Fuck, this is hard. “We orchestrated last night so you and I would end up alone together. I know it was stupid, but I swear, I didn’t . . . it wasn’t . . . my intention wasn’t for this to happen. I thought maybe it’d feel like a date and?—”
“Wait! Did I hear you right? Did you just say you tricked me into a date?”
Swallowing the knot in my throat, I nod and whisper, “Yes.”
Turning her back on me, both hands fly up to her face and she massages her temples. She spins around and drops her hands at her side, cutting me a glare.
“I don’t know Nate well enough to have any expectations from him, but you? I’m so disappointed. I expected more out of you. And here I was, beginning to think you were honorable.”
There’s nothing I can say to make it better. This entire fiasco wouldn’t have happened if Nate had stayed with us last night.
“I have to shower,” she says, sounding exasperated, then softly pads to the bathroom.
When the bathroom door softly clicks shut; it’s louder than if she had slammed it. I could have dealt with her being pissed off at me, but her being disappointed in me? That hits a little bit harder. Sitting on the side of the bed, my shoulders hunch as I stare at the spot she just left. The weight of what I’ve done is suffocating.
River
I want to hate him right now. He broke my trust, yet here I stand, staring in this fogged up mirror, not hating him at all. Deep down I know him. I don’t think he had any malicious intent when he made those plans with Nate. And from the stricken look on his face, I know what I said cut him deep. There’s a feeling in my gut telling me to cut him a break. We both made this bed, now we have to lay in it.
