by Linde, K. A.
We walked the rest of the way across Central Park in the dewy morning light.
Natalie broke the silence as we approached her apartment. “I hate that I have to move.”
“I hate that he ever made you feel like you weren’t safe.”
She sighed. “Yeah. It was my refuge in this big city. I’d thought that this was my new start. My first solo apartment, my first book deal…everything seemed right,” she said wistfully. Her gaze was lifted to the line of windows on the apartment complex off of Amsterdam. “I just didn’t see the forces working against me in the background. The lies that ran off of lips as easy as breathing. The manipulations that had gotten me to this place. The machinations that wreaked havoc in the picturesque life I’d dreamed that I’d made for myself. How wrong I’d been.”
And I had no response to that. I’d been as much a part of that as Lewis. I wanted to say that I’d lied, so we could be together, but wasn’t that Lewis’s rationale, too? I shuddered to think I was like him at all.
“It’s about time,” Amy said, hopping from one foot to another to try to stay warm in the entrance to Natalie’s apartment building.
Natalie must have texted her when she left.
“Sorry. It took me longer to get here than I thought.” She nodded to me by way of greeting.
“Hey, Amy,” I said.
Amy suspiciously eyed me. “Let’s get inside where it’s warm. Enzo dropped me off, like, an hour ago.”
Natalie rolled her eyes. “So, like, five minutes ago.”
“Not even,” Amy said. “But damn, it’s cold.”
Natalie opened the door, and I took it out of her hand and held it open for them.
Amy shot me a wary look as she passed. “You and I need to have a talk.”
“Looking forward to that,” I said with a lazy smirk.
“It’s not going to be pleasant.”
“I expect nothing less.”
Natalie rolled her eyes at us and then took the stairs first. I noticed her checking the hallways, searching all the nooks and crannies. And then I realized what she was doing, and my anger resurfaced. She was searching for hidden cameras.
Fuck Lewis.
“I’d hide that look until we’re done with this,” Amy said.
“What look?”
“Like you’re going to fucking murder someone.” Amy’s eyes flickered up to Natalie. “She’s not okay right now.”
“I know,” I said, my blank mask falling into place with ease. “I’ve noticed that.”
“And look, I’ll only say this once, but if you hurt her, I will find you, chop off your balls, and feed them to you,” she said with such pointed vehemence that I had to laugh. “I am not joking.”
“I know,” I said delicately. “That’s why I laughed. You’re actually giving me the best-friend talk.”
“How would you know? Your best friends are all shitheads.”
My lips tipped into a frown. “Perhaps.”
“So don’t fuck this up. The fact that she’s even talking to you is a mystery to me. And I will end your life before I see her sink back into that place she was after you.”
Natalie had just reached the third-floor landing and opened the door to her apartment. She glanced back at us, whispering secretly in the hallway. Amy’s smile beamed out of her as if we hadn’t been talking about Natalie at all. Mine must have been convincing, too, because she continued inside.
“I won’t do that to her again,” I told Amy.
“Good. Because I won’t be here to watch over her, and she needs you.”
I nodded once, surprised by her vehemence. The fact that she was even asking me about this shit meant that she was that concerned about Natalie. Which was extra troubling, especially considering the conversation that Natalie and I had just had.
Amy crossed the threshold into Natalie’s apartment, but I froze in place before stepping inside.
The last time that I’d been here, ready to come into her apartment, she had turned me away. She said she wasn’t ready for a relationship. That she wasn’t ready for my first impression of her place to be her breaking down. Admittedly, I was fucking frustrated after that. After I left, I was certain I’d made a mistake by walking away. She’d asked for her space, but what if I gave it and then she never came back? What if I was an idiot and she’d just fucked with me? I’d fucking hated having those feelings, but after dealing with her with Lewis, it had been hard not to listen to my shattered trust and instead to the logical side of my brain.
But all of that aside, I couldn’t enter her place yet.
“What are you waiting for?” Amy asked.
Natalie whipped around and found me standing on the threshold.
“You said that you weren’t ready for me to come inside,” I reminded her. “I thought it appropriate to ask if it was okay for me to come in now.”
I watched her melt at my words. A small smile just for me and then a nod.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Please come in.”
“So dramatic,” Amy muttered and then strode directly to the heater to warm up.
I stepped into Natalie’s apartment for the first time. I understood immediately why she’d liked the place. It felt like her. Quaint and cozy with exposed brick and sparse belongings. A desk shoved up to the window, so she could stare out at the city streets below as she daydreamed and wrote out her magnificent stories.
I gritted my teeth to keep from commenting on how fucking awful Lewis was for making her lose this. “Where are you moving anyway?”
Natalie chewed on her bottom lip. “I don’t know if this place is…being recorded.” She nervously glanced around the room, paranoia setting in. And I hardly blamed her. “So, how about I just show you when we get there? It’s not far.”
“Fair enough. Where should I start?”
Natalie pointed me to the closet and passed me a few boxes. “Label it Closet, and I’ll figure it out from there. I don’t have much stuff. Should be quick with three of us.”
“I remember the two suitcases you carried your whole life in.”
“I’m kind of regretting having more than that right now. It’d be a lot easier to load those suitcases up and go.”
“I like that you’re putting down some roots though.”
“Something like that,” she muttered. Then she was about to walk away but stopped. “Hey, thanks for your help. I feel…a lot safer with you here.”
My hand came up to cup her cheek on reflex. “That’s all I want for you.”
Amy noisily cleared her throat. “Let’s get to work, people. Lots to do here.”
We broke apart sheepishly and returned to the large project in front of us. I got to work. I had no experience in packing, but how hard could it be?
After an hour of stuffing shit into boxes, I was wishing that I’d played a little bit more Tetris, growing up. Nothing fit how it was supposed to, but at least I was trying. Together, we were making it work.
I closed up one more box and then stood and stretched my arms overhead. My back ached a little from being hunched over the boxes. Who knew packing boxes could make a person feel so out of shape?
There was a knock on the door, and Amy groaned from the other room. “Finally! I never thought the pizza would get here.”
“I’ll get it,” I said, reaching for my wallet. I opened the door and simultaneously pulled out a twenty. “How much do I owe you?”
“A lot more than twenty, Kensington,” Lewis said crisply from the doorway.
Chapter 7
Natalie
That voice.
Oh god. I knew that voice.
I dashed out of the bedroom, dropping the shirt I’d been about to fold. Lewis was here. He was here. My mouth dried up, and my stomach clenched.
I was shocked to find that my anger didn’t surface at the first glimpse of his beautiful face. The perfect brown skin, high cheekbones, and molten dark eyes that I’d grown to adore over the time we were together. I’d alway
s admired his good looks, but it was his easy smile, his quickness to laugh and joke, the poise of his powerful body that knew himself so completely, and the way he could draw me out of my protective shell that had won me over.
There had been something so good about Lewis. But it was a mask. An Upper East Side mask that I’d let myself be glamoured by. If he had ever been that carefree boy who loved to read and play baseball, then I had never met him.
My heart ached, cracked as his eyes slid to my features. As the mask tilted, I saw the truth of his own pain from our breakup. Or maybe I was just seeing what he wanted me to see. It was so complicated. He had ruined my life out of spite. Pure spite. I didn’t want to be conflicted. We would never be together again. Never. And I wanted to destroy the sympathetic side of my personality that said he was hurting and I should care.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
Lewis’s gaze swept from mine back to Penn, who looked ready to punch him again. “Checking in.”
“You’re not wanted here,” Penn said.
Lewis just smirked. “Never stopped you.”
“Cut it out,” I snapped. “Both of you. I am not going to deal with this right now.” I stepped around Penn and glared at Lewis. “How did you even know I was home?”
“Checking your security footage again?” Penn taunted at my side.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lewis said smoothly. “And I guessed you’d be here because of this.”
He produced his phone and passed it to me. I warily took it in my hands and saw he had it open to Page Six. He scrolled about a quarter of the way down the page, and there, in a small photo amid other celebrities, was me. I read the caption in shock and excitement. This was…exactly what I’d wanted.
Sightings: Inside New York City Elite’s Decadent New Year’s Eve Celebrations
I read through the list of names that I recognized and many more that I didn’t. But there, at the bottom, near my picture, was my name.
Natalie Bishop wearing a stunning Cunningham Couture original at the Trinity club event.
My heart skipped a beat in wonder. I forgot for a second that Lewis was standing in front of me. That I was holding his phone.
I had come to be noticed at that event. I had known that my picture would be taken. That I might end up being circulated for the dress even if they never used my name. But this was more than I could have wanted. They had listed me as a part of the New York elite. Me…without a Warren or Kensington in sight.
My insides coiled in joy. I sure hoped Katherine saw this. It would be pretty fucking brilliant. Though only a start.
“Convenient,” Penn muttered under his breath. “Natalie, give him the phone back, so he can leave.”
I pushed it back into his hands, careful not to touch him. “You should go.”
“Listening to everything he says again I see,” Lewis said. He sighed. “I just wanted to talk.”
“That’s not happening,” I said at the same time Penn barked, “No.”
“I can handle this,” I told Penn. I wanted him at my side, not answering for me.
“Give me five minutes to explain,” Lewis said. “Please.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Explain. Explain? You want to explain why you blacklisted me? Why you made it so that I couldn’t get another book deal? Why you ruined my career? Sure, go ahead. But don’t think that I’m going to believe a word of your bullshit anymore. And I sure as hell am not going to be alone with you again.”
“That was a mistake,” he said with earnest. He glanced between me and Penn as if he really hadn’t known that he’d be there. As if he’d thought all along that he could corner me.
“A mistake,” I said in a huff of disbelief.
“Yes. I can fix it.”
I looked at him in disgust. Of course. Just fix it. A snap of his fingers, and he could be Mary Poppins and set everything to right, too. That was how it worked on the Upper East Side.
“Don’t insult her,” Penn growled.
“I’ve texted you about a hundred times since you left. Surely, you got at least one of them to read what I’d sent you. How sorry I was about how I’d reacted. That I wanted you back.” Lewis took a step forward into the apartment, and Penn straightened at my side. “Please, we can fix this.”
“You know, I didn’t get any texts actually,” I told him, standing my ground, even as my heartbeat pulsed wildly against my throat. “I blocked your number after what you put me through. We can’t fix this. And you can’t fix my career and think that we’re going to suddenly be okay again. Believe it or not, Lewis, there are consequences to your actions. You’ve never had one before, I know. This is one. Me. So, fucking get used to it.”
I grabbed the door and went to slam it in his face. But Lewis slapped his hand on it before it could even get close. His mask had completely fallen. All of a sudden, he looked like he might attack us at the provocation.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” he said.
“I think I finally do. I’m not a pawn anymore, Lewis,” I told him. “I’m the queen on the board.”
Lewis looked as if he were about to do something very, very stupid. And then, Amy appeared at my side, flanking me like Penn was.
“If you don’t get the fuck out of here, I am going to call the police. You’ll get off easy because you’re a Warren. They probably won’t even give you a slap on the wrist. But we have enough evidence of your stalking behavior, coupled with a call for your disturbance, then it’ll start to look like a case. Maybe you’ll get that slap…or worse, maybe it’ll all catch up to you.”
“I’ll put my weight behind it, too,” Penn spoke up.
We all knew how much the weight a Kensington carried, especially since his mother was the mayor.
Lewis glared at us, at the solidarity between the three of us standing against him. “I’m not doing anything wrong. I just wanted to talk to Natalie.”
“I don’t want to talk to you. So…go.”
“Fine,” he spat. “When you wake up and stop acting like I’m the bad guy, call me, so we can figure this out.”
My eyes rounded in shock at his words. He was beyond delusional. I might have doubts about Penn’s involvement in all of this, but I had none about Lewis. The fact that he’d responded by blacklisting me said everything I needed to know.
Lewis jutted his chin out one more time and then left the doorway. I shut the door the rest of the way. My hands were trembling. The indignation that I’d held together in the confrontation evaporated. It was just me again. The woman who had to deal with this all. Who had flown home to Charleston and cried on Amy’s couch while eating frosting all week.
My strength disappeared, and the weakness returned. I put my back to the door and slid down it, dropping my head into my knees.
“Oh my god,” I gasped out.
A sob shook my shoulders. I’d been trying to keep it all together since I got into the city. Since I decided that I was going to make everyone pay for what they’d done to me. But there was a difference between the vengeance that fueled my heart and the brittle reality of dealing with the man I’d been falling for. Seeing him for what he really was and knowing that even he didn’t see it as wrong. On some level, I was just that same obsession for him. The thing that he wanted. And now that he couldn’t have me, he was getting desperate. Acting out to hurt me and then trying to rectify things to make up for it. It was…delusional and insane and made me ache all over.
Penn sank to his feet in front of me. His hand slid over top of mine and squeezed. “Hey.”
I didn’t move. I hated feeling this way. Even more than I hated the deep, dark pit that I’d fallen headfirst into when I found out about Lewis’s file. The yawning darkness that had beckoned when Katherine revealed my pen name. The inky black that had suffused me and called me home after I lost my writing career.
This was vulnerability.
Much, much, much worse than rage.
“Natalie, look at me.”
I shook my head.
His fingers brushed back through the loose strands of my silver hair before lifting my chin. This was nothing like his commanding touch as he’d assessed me last night before he fucked me. This was almost painfully gentle, achingly tender. A different man than the sex god he was in the bedroom.
“He doesn’t deserve your tears,” he said. Then he swiped the traitorous, wet streaks from under my eyes.
“They’re not for him,” I finally muttered. “Not really.”
He angled his head, those liquid blue eyes asking the question he never voiced.
“I hate dealing with him. I hate that he manipulated me into feeling something for him, and then it all turned out to be a lie. That it wasn’t the first time,” I said pointedly. “And yet, I fell for it again anyway. I thought defiantly, naively, stupidly that I could have one foot in both worlds. That I could be the bohemian, wild, daydreamer Natalie while stumbling aimlessly into this Upper East Side world with big doe eyes. I thought I’d seen the worst of this world. I thought I knew all it could do to me. And that, somehow, I could be both people. But you were right. I can’t.”
Penn frowned. “I don’t enjoy being right in this.”
“Yes, well, but you were. Those two things don’t go together. They might as well exist in separate universes. And once I truly realized it, once all the walls came tumbling down, I saw the truth. I couldn’t play by my rules. There are only the rules of the Upper East Side.”
His gaze was steady on mine as the tears ran black rivers down my cheeks. As I mourned that loss right before his eyes.
“So, you see, the tears aren’t for Lewis. They’re for the person I was before all of this. They’re mourning the loss of a part of me so that I could gain the strength I needed to stand up to him. To live in this world.”
“Why would you want to live in it?” he asked in earnest. Not the same question he had asked me earlier. The other one had been disbelief. That I was insane for wanting it. Now, it was curiosity. Like he was seeing the truth in my eyes for the first time. And not just my anger.
