by Maisey Yates
Natalie froze, her blue eyes going wide. “I...” She turned, as though she were about to leave.
“Wait,” Lydia said. Oh, why did she ask her to wait?
Natalie turned, arching a pale brow. “Oh, are you speaking to me?”
“Okay, that’s weird. I was never not speaking to you. You’re the one who’s mad at me.” Lydia could have bitten off her tongue. “Also, you were never not speaking to me, even though you were mad at me.”
“Well, I’m just surprised that you would talk to me, seeing as you married my fiancé.”
“You kind of left your fiancé at the altar first.”
Neither of them were talking all that loudly, but Lydia could feel every eye in the room on them. They said all the world was a stage, and Lydia had never been very convinced of that. But a small town was most definitely a stage when drama was going on.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lydia saw someone lean over and whisper to another person across the table. Probably giving backstory. Lydia had done it a time or two herself. And she knew, had she been in the audience for this particular moment, she would have been glued to the action, too. It didn’t mean it wasn’t strange and irritating to find yourself being watched by a roomful of people.
“I still wanted to talk to him,” Natalie said. “I wanted to explain. And I didn’t want things to be over between us. But they definitely are now.” Her voice was vibrating with anger, and Lydia felt a pinprick of guilt needle her back. She had never intended to hurt anyone. Honestly, she had never intended anything. And of course, she and Colton weren’t even real.
Sure, they were attracted to each other, and yes they had—physically. But they weren’t staying married. And Natalie was hurt. She could be difficult, but she wasn’t evil.
Lydia bit back a hundred replies that verged into cutting territory. There was no point in having a fight about it. There was no point in trying to one-up her.
It was weird, though, being in a position where she clearly had something someone else wanted. That just wasn’t... That wasn’t her life.
“You still can,” Lydia found herself saying instead.
“Oh, and can I still marry him?”
“Legally, obviously not,” Lydia said, feeling a little more irritated now. “But I can’t answer for him. I can tell you that I think he was probably having similar doubts as you, or he might not have...done what he did.”
“Well, thank you for your assessment on that,” Natalie bit out. “How long were you waiting in the wings to grab hold of him? It wasn’t enough you want to take my father’s position in the community, you had to take my fiancé?”
“Unattended fiancés may be married by other people, Natalie,” Lydia said, immediately regretting the sharpness of the statement. She was supposed to be benevolent. Everybody in the coffee shop was watching her. And all of this was going to get back to...well, eventually everyone.
“It’s not like leaving your car in the wrong parking space. I did not want my fiancé to be towed away.”
“Nothing was happening between us before the wedding—that I do want you to know. It was a sudden thing. Impulsive. But we are trying to make it work.” That was close to honest.
Natalie’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”
Lydia was caught between the desire to hug her and slap her. Because she did feel bad, because she didn’t want to hurt anyone. But Colton had been hurt. Colton had been left in the lurch. And Natalie was clearly under the impression that she should have been able to have her own private freak-out and then waltz back into his life as though she hadn’t just ruined a wedding that had been a year in the making. As though she hadn’t just left him standing there, humiliated in front of the whole town.
“I know,” Lydia said. Oh, did she know. “But Colton isn’t a thing, Natalie. He’s a person. He’s a man. And he was never going to respond to being left at the altar in a positive way. Even if... Look, even if he and I hadn’t... I don’t know that he would have wanted to put himself through that again. I know you’re used to getting your way. And I know you’re used to being able to move people around like dolls. Even knowing that you were furious at me I agreed to still be in your wedding. Even when you’re kind of terrible, you are the kind of person that people can’t help but want to be around. But people have their limits. And I think Colton hit his.”
Natalie looked like she’d been slapped. “I made a mistake,” she said, her voice low. “With someone else. I didn’t feel like I could show up at the wedding after that. But he’s not someone that I can... He’s not the kind of person I can marry.”
Lydia frowned. “You cheated on Colton?”
Natalie’s cheeks turned bright red. “It isn’t that simple. I mean, it is. It’s why I couldn’t just marry him without talking to him. But you know Colton. Obviously. He’s not passionate. And neither am I. We cared for each other—I care for him. But we made a lot more sense than we made sparks.” She looked away. “It was strange to meet someone I felt differently about. Someone who made me feel different. I didn’t know how to fight against it.”
Lydia could strangely relate to what Natalie was saying. Because Lydia felt much the same about Colton. The moment she had met him there had been sparks of one variety or another. And it was always like that. If they weren’t fighting they were kissing.
She also felt a lot less guilty, hearing what her friend was saying. Natalie didn’t love Colton. It was that obvious. Because anyone who thought Colton wasn’t passionate...
Well, obviously that person didn’t have very strong feelings for him.
Lydia didn’t even like him and she thought he was the most passionate man she had ever known.
She blinked, dragging herself back into the present conversation. “I don’t really know what to say to you,” Lydia said. “You’re angry at him, you’re angry at me, but you’re the one who didn’t show up at the wedding. You’re the one who cheated on him. And yes, he and I jumped into marriage, but he was never unfaithful to you. I had no idea he was even attracted to me until we got married in Las Vegas.”
Natalie snorted. “I knew.”
“What?”
Natalie plopped down in the chair across from her, clearly somewhat defeated by the exchange. Her righteous anger had dimmed to a very dull vibration. But then, that was Natalie. She could be hideously mean one moment and kind of delightful wrapped inside of it, then act like all was forgiven, and should be forgiven in return in the next.
“The moment I introduced the two of you. He was mean to you. He was a jerk. He’s never a jerk. And you bristled like a cat backed into a corner. Which I had never seen you do with anyone. You’re unfailingly diplomatic. You’ve been diplomatic with me through this entire conversation. You were not diplomatic with him.”
“You think he was...attracted to me?”
“You thought he married you the moment he was free of me for fun?”
Actually, Lydia had thought he did it all for the alcohol, but she wasn’t going to say that. “I don’t know.”
“You two had a weird magnetism the moment you met. And I was jealous. I mean, I was upset when you chose to run against my father, don’t get me wrong. But I was more upset that he looked at you like that.”
“That he looked at me like he wanted to push me into the ocean?”
“Kind of. I never got that strong of an emotion out of him either way.”
Lydia turned that over. She supposed it stood to reason that anger and attraction were two sides of the same coin. Passion. The emotion they had just been discussing.
“I think maybe all of this is for the best,” Lydia said, beginning to pack up her things. Because this had just gone past the point of uncomfortable, and while she was sort of glad they’d had this conversation, she really needed to go p
ut her thoughts in order. “I’m not sure that you should be with him.” She stuffed her laptop into her bag. “Well, I know you shouldn’t be with him. Since we’re married. And he’s my husband. You know, ’til death do us part.”
She felt like she was kind of waiting for a bolt of lightning to hit her for that one.
“Right,” Natalie said.
“But, if you need to talk to him, then talk to him.”
“You aren’t going to chase me off the property with a pitchfork? Because, I’ll be honest, I maybe would have done that to you.”
“Yeah, no. I don’t like to run. So, you can rest assured that you will not be chased.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll at least call him. Which is maybe better than texting. Which is all I did when I didn’t show up at the wedding.” She winced. “I really don’t like having to admit that I’m at fault for things. I find it very uncomfortable.”
Lydia laughed. “We all do.”
“But you do it so much more than I do. I assumed it was easier.”
“No, everyone hates it.”
As she finished saying goodbye to Natalie and walking out of the coffee shop, Lydia did have to wonder if it was slightly easier for her because she was so used to it. She sighed heavily, continuing down the street to her car. She drove over to the copy shop where her pamphlets were already done. Another plus to a small town.
She was going to need to fold them, but a little bit of menial labor was actually welcome. Of course, to do the whole task, she would have to enlist her team, but she could get a start on it.
And since she was already in town it was tempting to just stop by her house. Just for a little bit. Maybe she would fold her pamphlets there.
She pulled into her driveway, a feeling of relief washing over her. She hadn’t been back here in a few weeks. Mostly because she was afraid that when she walked into the door, she would burrow down deep and never come back out. And, when she walked inside, she couldn’t deny that she definitely had that desire.
She set her box of pamphlets down, then took a stack out of them, taking a seat on the floor and spreading them around her. She stood up, putting her phone in her speaker dock, something she had left here by accident that she would absolutely be bringing back with her, and she turned on some country music.
With Dierks Bentley to guide her through pamphlet folding, some of the weirdness of her previous encounter began to slide away.
She worked steadily with songs in the background, until her back began to ache and she leaned backward, trying to ease the tension in her spine. And then she began to fixate on the song lyrics that were filtering through her living room. And they were kind of sexy, and about moonlight and kissing and things that she didn’t really want to think about.
She looked up, and realized that it was dark outside. She had been sitting on the floor for hours—no wonder she was in pain.
She looked around the room. The familiar room with everything in its place. She was comfortable here. She really wanted to hide and pretend that this whole thing with Colton wasn’t happening.
There was a knock on her door and she startled. “Just a second,” she said, pushing herself into a standing position. It was probably one of her neighbors. Because the house had been empty for a few weeks, and everyone knew she wasn’t staying there, it was probably strange to see a light on inside.
She opened the door, and her heart stalled out. “Colton. What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I mean, you could. But I live here, so it isn’t really that big of a mystery that I should be here.”
“Except, that you don’t live here, not right now. And you left the house early this morning, and you didn’t say anything about when you’d be back. I called your phone. I couldn’t get a hold of you.”
She cringed. She probably had the app set so it wouldn’t interrupt the music. “Sorry. But, I don’t think we’re really in a position where we keep tabs on each other, are we?”
“Whatever our relationship is, I don’t want you dead in a ditch.”
“Well,” she said, waving a hand. “Here I am. Undead and not in a ditch.”
“Are you not dead, or are you undead? Because those are two different things. If you’re undead then you’re a zombie, and at some point you were dead. Probably in a ditch.”
“If I were a zombie I would have eaten your brains by now. So your rescue mission would be a huge failure. It would be too late to save me, and too late to save yourself.”
He pushed past her, into the living room.
“I didn’t invite you in. Even zombies need their personal space.”
“If you were a zombie, technically this would be meal delivery.”
“Great. If I give you a tip will you take your body away and leave your brain behind?”
He arched a brow, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “No. I’m not going to do that.”
“So, you just came to collect your wayward wife?”
“I came to make sure you were okay. I figured that if you were anywhere it would be here. Your office was my next choice.”
Well, both guesses were logical, and showed that he had a basic understanding of her. Which made her feel strangely warm in her chest. As opposed to feeling warm in her stomach, and lower, which was a little bit more typical of her Colton feelings.
“I’m glad you don’t want me dead. That’s... Well, it’s not really the highest praise, but I’ll take it.”
“Is everything okay? I mean, are you hiding from me?”
“Why would I be hiding from you?” She kind of was.
“I don’t know, but I haven’t seen you since last night.”
“It was a big deal, and it takes me a little while to wind down from things like that. It’s kind of intense.” That much was true. An event like that where you were the sole focus was more than a little enervating.
“Fair enough. I wouldn’t know. I go to a lot of events, but I’m not usually the star of the show.”
“And I just want to do a good job.” She shut the front door and moved back to her pile of pamphlets, standing where she’d been sitting before. “I want to win this election. It’s really important to me. I want to do the best job. I want to be the best person for the job.”
“Most people only care about the winning.”
“I know. But I really do care about this town.”
“I know. You probably care about it more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
She drew in a breath. “Because I... Do you know what it’s like to feel like you’re walking on eggshells in your own house? Like every corner of it belongs to someone else, and you’re just kind of there.”
He frowned. “No.”
“I wasn’t allowed to have friends over. And I was just weird. I cared about things, but not the things that other kids cared about. And I never had anyone to talk to about how alone I felt. I couldn’t do anything to fix it. To top it all off, at home I just felt like I didn’t belong. And when I moved here everything changed. It was like I found this place where what I was good at mattered. Where who I was mattered. I bought this house. And everything in it is mine. And I can be as loud as I want, or as quiet as I want. Let’s face it, it’s not like I go through the place turning cartwheels. But, either way, it’s mine.
“To finally feel like you have a place is the best thing. The most amazing thing. So yes, I do love Copper Ridge. And maybe it’s even kind of a selfish love. But I would still do anything for this town.”
She had never said any of that out loud to anyone before. She didn’t like talking about her past. She didn’t like talking about her family. And everything she had just told him was vague enough.
It had hardly been a tell-all. Really, who didn’t have a little bit of
dysfunction in their past. It was her experience that everybody was a little bit messed up, no matter how idyllic a childhood they might have had. So, confessing that was not exactly groundbreaking.
“I never really thought of it that way. Of the town being a support system.” He shifted his stance. “I’ve kind of always seen it like living under a microscope.”
“I guess it can be that way.” She hesitated, knowing that the subject of Natalie really should come up. “Speaking of small towns...I talked to Natalie today.”
“Really? What rock did you find her under?”
“No rock. Just a coffee shop. For what it’s worth, she seems kind of broken up about everything that happened.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Good.”
“You’re happy that she’s unhappy?”
“Yes. To a degree.”
She sort of envied that pure, petty emotion. Because even when she’d been faced with Natalie’s cheating confession, Lydia had been so reluctant to feel or be too negative.
You’re always afraid of losing people.
She swallowed hard. “She said...well, she said that the two of you didn’t really have a...conventional relationship.”
He looked thoughtful, but not surprised. “I guess not. I mean, I wasn’t wildly in love with her. She wasn’t wildly in love with me. But we both knew exactly where the other stood. At least, I thought we did.”
“What’s the point of getting married if you aren’t in love?”
“Marriage is stability. It’s everything that I wanted. When I look into my future, that’s the kind of man I see. Married, children.”
“But the only thing that makes that good is love. Otherwise, you’re stuck in a house with people that you have to endure.”
“I liked Natalie. And I know that a lot of people don’t. But I do. She didn’t hesitate to speak her opinion, but ultimately, she always supported what I wanted to do.”
