Page 129 of Unexpected Forever
Except this time. I can’t let him do it anymore. He’s leaving. I know it in my gut.
“Charley, I—”
I lift my chin, meeting his stare. His eyes are shadowed with sadness and guilt. “Nope. We need to talk, Nate, but I’m not doing it now. Okay?”
He shoves his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and looks down at the ground. “Okay.”
I brush past him, ignoring the flicks of electricity I feel whenever we touch, and head into the dining room.
Somehow, I manage to make it through the rest of dinner and dessert without losing my shit.
I focus on my guests, learning Derek has a twelve-year-old daughter who’s with her mother for Thanksgiving. And Theo’s sister is a physical therapist in New York City.
I let the conversations flow around me and keep my eyes averted from Nate’s.
At least he does what I ask and leaves me alone the rest of the evening.
But when everyone leaves, the silence is deafening.
There’s a gulf between us now, one growing larger with every moment that passes.
One I don’t think we’ll ever bridge.
TWENTY-SIX
charley
Once we makeour way up to the bedroom, a weighted silence hangs in the air.
When he heads for the closet, taking off his shirt as he goes, I can’t stand it any longer.
I cross my arms over the top of my belly. “Why did you lie to me?”
He stops, his shirt balled up in his hands. With a toss of it into the dirty clothes hamper, he turns back to me.
Bastard. It’s hard to stay angry and hurt when he’s standing in front of me shirtless.
He jams his hands on his hips and looks at the floor before looking back at me. “I didn’t want to talk about it in front of everyone.”
“Talk about what?”
He looks up and meets my stare. “The fact the press got wind of my news before we could talk.”
Chills run over me and my stomach roils. “What news?”
“I signed my contract with the Bull Sharks yesterday.”
Even knowing it’s coming and wanting him to sign so he can be happy, the slice of pain ripping through me cuts deeper than expected.
“Were you planning to tell me about it at any point?”
“I wanted to talk about it yesterday, but it never seemed to be a good time.”
I move closer to him, anger coursing through me. “A good time? You think there’s a good time to tell me you’re leaving? I’ve had a suspicion since we came home from Florida that you’d decided. I mean, I know I’m nothing more than your baby mama, but you could have said something.”
His eyes are miserable as he looks at me. “You’re more than just my baby mama, Charlotte. You always have been.”
Tears fill my eyes and I turn away, blinking. When he calls me Charlotte, it touches something deep in me, an intimacy I can’t explain. No one else calls me that, only him.
