“As soon as I saw you standing out there looking lost, I knew I couldn’t let you go anywhere. Not without trying to convince you that we should quit messing around and stop finding excuses to be apart. Everything fell into place, and I don’t know about you, but I’m desperate to start our forever today. Right this very fucking second. You and me, Nat. Together.”
I sucked in another sharp breath. My mind was racing, flicking through all the plans I’d made to travel and find out who I was, but my heart was beating so fast and I suddenly couldn’t imagine wanting to discover anything new without Alex by my side. Even with him sitting only inches away from me, he felt as though he was too far away.
“You’ve got to stop making me forget how to breathe,” I whispered, pressing a hand against my chest to steady myself. “And if I say no? If I ask you to wait?”
“Then I’ll leave you as soon as you get off the bus in London if that’s what you need me to do. I’ll let you go on your journey of self-discovery. I will wait however long you ask me to wait, because I just want you to be happy. No, I need you to be happy. But I feel like there’s been so much I’ve wanted to say since I came back into your life, and I’ve always ended up so tongue-tied and scared of losing you, pushing you further away, I’ve not been able to tell you how ridiculously perfect you already are to me.”
“You think I’m perfect?”
“You know I always have. But I get it. I understand and I know what it’s like to question yourself all the time. You need to know, though, there’s always something wrong with someone. All of us are messed up. Nobody is perfect or monster free, even if that’s the way they look to the rest of the world. It usually starts with our parents or our siblings. They’re the ones who fuck us up first. Too strict or not strict enough. Too emotional or too cold. Too competitive or too lazy. Too soft, too violent. Too hard to keep up with, too quick to abuse our trust. There’s always something, even if that something is that, actually, there’s nothing wrong with them at all, and you have no one to blame for your faults but yourself.”
My eyes searched his as I waited for him to go on.
“I’m more fucked up and dependant on people that you can imagine, Nat. Especially you. Pushing you away was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it was also the best. I needed to be without you, to feel that pain and loss so that I could come back and appreciate you the way you deserve to be adored. I didn’t want to break you back then.”
“And what’s changed?”
“Everything. Nothing. I’ll probably still break you.”
“I see.” I smirked back at him, my chest heaving at the thought of all the fun ways he could break me.
“But I promise,” he started, moving both his hands to cup my cheeks as he pulled me closer to him, “that I will always be the one to pick you up and put you back together. I’ll be the man to try and catch you, even when it’s my hands that have let you fall. I don’t want to waste another second of this life without you in it. I want to be with you. I want to wake up and see your smile every single morning, and know that no one can take you away from me again. I can’t promise I won’t fuck up or make stupid mistakes along the way, but I can promise to love you like no man has ever loved a woman, and I can promise to do that forever.”
“Forever,” I whispered as I drowned in his perfection.
“Forever.”
“No matter what?” A tear of happiness slipped down my cheek while my hand reached up to his face just to feel what it had been desperate to feel for so long.
“No matter what.”
“You promise me, Alex?”
“All the way, baby.” He grinned.
“Natexus,” I mouthed as my gaze fell to his lips.
“Natexus.”
Then we kissed – two halves of one being coming back together after such a long time apart.
I may not have made it far in my journey of self-discovery, but the moment his breaths became mine and I tasted him again, I knew I’d found everything I was ever going to need.
It had always been Alex. It would always be him, too, and it was better to have a fragile heart filled with too much happiness, no matter how temporary, than to have a heart made of stone, aching with emptiness and permanent longing.
It was better to be real than to pretend.
As he pressed himself against me on that coach that was about to take us to a brand new beginning, I knew I would always be real for him.
For that fifteen-year-old girl that fell in love with the boy on the bus.
For us.
For Natexus.
Always.
THE END
Of one thing
The beginning of another.
Forever starts today.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AND A SMALL NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
I think if some of Natexus’ readers have the same reaction to this story as my beta readers did, there will be a few of you out there now who have absolutely zero desire to hear from me or what it is I want to waffle on about. I apologise about that. I am sincerely sorry. I’m sorry if I confused you, pulled your heart in a million different directions, made you question your own morals, and I apologise for making some of you cry.
Hahahahahahahaha!
Not really.
Suck it up, buttercups. I had to write the thing. How do you think I felt?
Natalie started speaking to me sometime around last April. I was halfway through my edits for Without Mercy with L.J. Stock, and the last thing I needed was a heartbreaking love story playing out in my head that just would not shut up. So after much grunting and mumbling to myself about “stupid characters that won’t shut their pieholes”, I decided to write the first chapter, not really knowing what would happen or where it would all take me. I thought that once a single chapter was done, I could finish Without Mercy then come back to Natexus if and when I chose to. Let me tell you right now – I did not choose to. I never had a choice with this story. Never. It felt like I was writing this because of someone else’s instruction the entire way through. One chapter soon turned into ten, and by chapter thirteen (that chapter) I was terrified about what the hell was happening. What was I putting down on paper and why would anyone want to read such angst? With a little help from my guardian angel friend, LJ, I realised that if I wanted to carry on writing it, then maybe, just maybe, people would look beyond the structure of most love stories and realise that Nat and Alex are in a world/glass case of emotion all of their own.
A few months later and it was finished.
I’m pretty certain some of you will hate it, haha. I’m also sure that some of you will sit staring at a wall for quite some time thinking ‘what the hell did I just read?’ But I hope… I really do hope… that some of you out there take Nat, Alex and even my lovely little Marcus to their hearts. They will forever be lodged in mine.
In fact, they own it.
I’ve already touched upon my thanks for L.J. Stock. Wilma. Weezy. That friend of mine that doesn’t let me lay down, roll over and quit. That person that, even when I’m trying not to let the rest of the world see I’m struggling, somehow seems to know and swoops right in with a Rocky quote to pick me back up. She does every single graphic for every single book I’ve ever done, and I trust her with my life. I could gush (quite embarrassingly so) about this woman until the world ended. But I won’t. It makes her feel uncomfortable. I’ll just whisper ‘I love you, Wilma,’ to her here and leave it at that. ;)
Claire Allmendinger, Heather Ross (Bobatron/Robbo) and Katleen Bumpernoodle (told ya I’d get it in there)
There’re people who talk the talk and then there are people who walk the walk. You guys deliver for me every single time. EVERY TIME! I’m not nearly rich enough yet to shower all three of you with the gifts you deserve for all the editing work you do for me, but I’m working on it. Tell all your friends about Natexus and maybe we can make some dollar, hey? thumbs up But seriously, the way you give me your time without question,
well… it’s just mind blowing. I don’t know why you do it. I don’t know what possesses you to look after me the way you do with that extra sprinkling of care, but I promise you that not a day goes by where I’m not grateful for it, and more importantly, you. Thank you for being the world’s best editors. makes heart shape on chest
Wendy Shatwell.
I’m not mad at you for threatening to kill me, but I will say this: The horse’s head in the bed was a step too far, lady! LOL. I can’t thank you and your Bare Naked Words baby enough for all that you do for me, WuWu. You were my first call when I released Izzy, and you’ll be my first call no matter how many years I’m doing this indie gig for.
Beta Readers
Sue, Amy, Charlie, LJ, Bob, WuWu, Claire, ELJ and Katleen. Thank you for all you do and for offering up to spend your free time reading my torture. Thank you for those WA messages that told me you believed in me. Thank you for making me believe in myself, for making me smile, and for generally being quite bloody fabulous. What more can I say? I love you.
Family and Friends
It’s really hard for me to keep listing you all in these acknowledgements of mine, but let me just say that if you’ve ever offered me even a single word of encouragement, no matter who you are, what way you offered it, or how often we speak, trust me when I say you are worth your weight in gold. I didn’t truly know what I was getting myself into with this writing malarkey. I never knew how lonely it could be, how crippling the self-doubt was, or how one tiny bad comment can bring months of hard work to a halt. Those moments where you’ve picked me up with an encouraging smile, a tap on the shoulder or even a ‘you got this, Vic’ – they pick me up more than I can explain. So thank you. My life would be shitty without you. I guess Christmas would be cheaper. You tip the scales in your favour, though.
Readers and Bloggers
I am nothing without you. ‘It’s that simple.’
CPCCH Unit
I really am nothing without you. One day, imma take y’all to DisneyLand. *nods*
Thanks for putting up with me. My love for you isn’t something I can put into words, so this blank space is for you.
( )
Mum, Dad
Thanks for doing the things I’m so rubbish at doing for me. My car loves you, as does my laundry basket. And thanks for being epic grandparents to my babies.
I love you guys.
Thanks so much for reading, everyone. It means the world to me. Your forever starts today. Make it count.
Victoria L. James
Literary Sadist.
PLAYLIST
A huge portion of this novel was written to the score track from Water for Elephants. If you would like to listen to something that transports you to the world of Natexus while reading, I encourage you to choose Did I Miss It by James Newton Howard.
The rest of the playlist is here:
Waiting – Aquilo
Moving On – Kodaline
Someday – Rhodes
Impression – Matt Woods
In The Dark – Matt Woods
Wishes – Rhodes
Blank Space – Rhodes
Put A Spell On You – Rhodes
Fall In Love – Barcelona
On and On – Kate Walsh
Hope For Now – City And Colour
Hold What You Can – Amy Stroup
Bitter Pill – Gavin James
Day Old Habits – City And Colour
Sorrowful Man – City And Colour
Perfect Ruin – Kwab
Fingertips – Leo Kalyan
Angel – Weeknd
Ocean – Seafret
Two Coins – City and Colour
Cruel Intentions – Chloe Black
Natexus Page 42
