Blindsided (27 page)

Nate wasn’t sure how Brandon intended to finish his sentence, because his fist flew out of its own accord, hitting Brandon squarely in the jaw. He wasn’t even sure of what he was doing, his body working on the orders of his lower, primitive mind. It had been a long time since Nate had fought this way, and his aggression and testosterone thrilled at the chance to unbridle his considerable anger.

Somewhere in the haze of the outside world, he felt a hand on his shoulder, a voice working its way through the noise of the pounding blood in his ears.

“Nate, that’s enough.”

The voice was sharp, but tinged with fear. Chelsea. Instantly, his senses came back to him and he realized he was straddling Brandon, his fist raised to hit him again. The other man’s face was a motley pattern of blood and bruises, his arms striking at the back of Nate’s legs ineffectually.

Still panting from his exertion, Nate rose to his feet. His nose hurt and when he touched it blood came away on his hand. Apparently, Brandon had managed to land a few punches before Nate had pinned him on the ground. What the hell had he just done? Nate felt sick. He had let Brandon push him out of control. He’d so carefully to distanced himself from the young man with impulse control problems that he had been, and now this.

After spending months proving to the woman he loved that he had changed, evolved, this man had managed to prove that he really hadn’t. He’d come here to be a calm, supportive partner, and he’d lost his frigging mind when it looked like things weren’t going right. He couldn’t imagine how this looked to her.

No, he could, and that was worse. It made it look like she’d been right from the beginning. No matter what he did, he’d always be the bad boy who fucked up, who broke her heart. Just as self destructive and impulsive as always, he was sure that this moment of testosterone fueled stupidity cost him the woman he had come to need.

This was supposed to have been the beginning of their life together, a way to put the past behind them. His whole intent was to let Chelsea confront her past so she could stop running from what was in her head, stop running from him. Instead, it was his past coming back to haunt them. Jesus, he’d been brawling like a teenager, had even enjoyed the mindlessness of letting his violent instincts take over. Had he really believed himself when he’d told her he’d grown up, grown out of his bad boy behavior? If he had, he was an idiot.

Nate couldn’t even look at Chelsea, couldn’t bear to see the disappointment, the heartbreak he knew he would find there. Caught up in his own self flagellation, he barely realized that some security guards had arrived, no doubt called by Brandon’s secretary. They were leading both him and Brandon away. Without looking at her, Nate handed Chelsea the keys to the rental car so at least she could get the hell away from him.

###

Nate hated holding cells. They smelled atrocious, the company was terrible and worst of all, they were too small for him to effectively pace. This was the first time he’d felt he belonged here though. In his youth, he’d been filled with righteous indignation when he’d been hauled in for brawling, but not this time. He didn’t regret damaging the fucker, but he did regret hurting Chelsea. Hell, he’d scared her. At least being in a cage would keep him away from her and keep him from doing any more damage to their relationship.

Nate turned again in his frustrated attempts to pace and headed three steps in the other direction before spinning around again. His mind ran furiously through all his pain and anger, trying to come up with the shittiest thing about this mess. The current frontrunner was the image he had of her telling some other guy about their relationship, playing it up as one of the reasons that she just couldn’t date bad boys anymore, couldn’t trust them anymore.

That would be just great, Nate thought. He would become a reason for her future uncertainty and mistrust. That was worse than picturing her with some other guy in the first place, and that image was so painful Nate wanted to howl like a broken animal.

Luckily, Brandon had been put in another cell, the police not wanting to have a second fight break out. The other occupants of the cell, a wigged out junkie and a sleeping giant, didn’t seem to notice Nate’s existence. Hell, at least one thing was going his way. This wouldn’t have been the first time fellow detainees had pestered him for autographs and thought that it was the coolest thing in the world to be held with Nate Stone. He was glad he didn’t have to deal with that added hassle now. It left him fully free to beat the shit out of himself over his stupid, asinine behavior.

By far the worst thing about this particular holding cell was that he was having a fucking epiphany in it. Cells were not the place for this sort of earth shattering shit, he thought bitterly. The irony wasn’t lost on him either, and that pissed him off. Irony in general and this one in particular. While trying to save Chelsea from her own self destructive behavior so they could have a fighting chance, he’d run right into his own and killed their chances. Oh yeah, irony was great.

Because, the real bitch of this whole fucked up situation was that he knew why he’d reacted like that when the guy had started fighting Chelsea. He’d been scared. Scared shitless that this wouldn’t work, that when they were all done, Chelsea would still need to run.

Yeah, he’d been pissed as hell at the guy, especially when he said that crap about a guy like him. But he’d been learning control his anger before now. That certainly wasn’t the first time he’d been pissed at a guy and wanted to hit him. But he hadn’t done it, at least not in a few years.

What he had no control over was his fear. And his fear, he had learned in his little jailhouse awakening, made him act like an utter idiot. He’d never been so afraid in his life. He’d been in horrible situations. Fights, busts, near death experiences, but he’d never been as scared as he had been this afternoon. Not for himself. But for her. He was terrified that she was going to stay panicked and skittish and run around the world until it killed her. And that would kill him.

“Hey, pretty boy,” a cop yelled from the door to the cell, interrupting Nate’s pity/self discovery party.

What the fuck, Nate thought, did the cops start including his nickname on his rap sheet? Every jail, prison and holding cell he’d ever been in, the cops thought it was witty to call him pretty boy.

Nate followed him, confused. He’d been so torn up about losing Chelsea that he hadn’t even begun to think about how he was going to get out of here. Had Chelsea called Sean before she left town? It was more than he deserved or expected of her after what he’d done.

The cop led him down the hallway and out into the lobby of the station, opening the door with a grunt. Standing in the middle of the green tile, he saw something he barely believed. Chelsea, looking nervous, but not angry. When she caught sight of him, her eyes lit up and she started towards him.

“Oh, honey, your eye,” she said as she reached up to touch the cut above his eye.

He turned his head away from her and grabbed her hand. He was angry at himself, but he could feel himself turning his anger towards her. Which would just be more of the same behavior that got him in this mess. No, he’d lost her, but he was damn sure not going to just let himself slide into self destructive oblivion. Not without a fight. He reined his temper in.

“What are you doing here, Chelsea?” he asked.

He stared into her eyes, and even through all his pain and confusion, he still wanted her. He wanted to hold her tight and beg her not to leave him.

“I’m here to get you,” she said.

Her face showed her confusion and hurt at having been rebuffed by him.

“Chelsea, come on. You deserve someone better than me. I’ve proved that. Get out of here. I fucked up. You should just walk away. You should have walked away that first day. I should never have convinced you to stay. You were right, okay? Bad boys really never do grow up.”

As he said it, Nate felt sick to his stomach. He loved her so much, he wanted her to have someone better than him, even if it hurt like hell to let her go.

Chelsea looked at him for a long moment and Nate couldn’t identify the thoughts that were going by so fast. Then she shook her head and gave him a cockeyed smile.

“Nate, fuck you,” she said, but so lightly and with such affection that it managed to not sound insulting, “You didn’t fuck up. So you got in a fight. Not exactly good for your bid for sainthood, but come on, he was asking for it!” she said. She had grabbed his upper arms and was shaking him. “Don’t give me this crap. You already convinced me that you’ve outgrown your bad boy persona. I can’t even imagine you as that guy I thought you were anymore. When are you going to be convinced of it, Nate? When are you going to look at yourself and see what I see?”

When you show me I’m good enough for you, Nate thought miserably. He was too wrung out to speak. She paused, but when it became clear he wasn’t going to answer, she changed direction.

“You don’t get to decide who’s good enough for me. I do. And, and I love you. I love that you punched Brandon and I love that you probably could have killed him but you didn’t.”

Everything around them stopped. The phones stopped ringing, the drunk on the bench stopped moaning and the damn fluorescent lights stopped buzzing. Had she really just said what he thought she’d said?

He studied her face, his guide, for some sign that she was lying. There was none. All he saw was perfect honestly, tinged with confusion at his odd behavior. Then her face broke into a huge grin.

“I love you. That part?” she asked with a teasing grin.

Nate wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. In that moment, he couldn’t even believe she was real, never mind that those words had just come out of her mouth. He had just royally fucked up and she was professing her love for him. He felt like hoisting her above his head like a trophy, but he settled for squeezing her and nuzzling in her neck.

“Oh, god, Chelsea. I love you so much. I think I have since you sauntered up my walk and tossed my life up into the air,” he said.

Nate looked down at Chelsea’s upturned face and felt something inside him give way, walls of self loathing crumbling, dissolving. He suddenly felt understood and accepted, a feeling he had searched for in many different places in his life, and he’d never found it anywhere. It was there in Chelsea’s green eyes. Reflected back at him was the man he’d been trying to prove he was. She was right. If she saw it, so could he. No wonder he’d been drawn to her since the beginning.

Nate just had to laugh then. They were having a highly charged, emotional conversation in a police station. The worry about being self destructive, about his own stupid neuroses, just melted away. If only he could say the same for his fears for her.

“Come on, let’s go,” he said.

He felt like he was floating. If she said he was good enough for her, he was going to try like hell to believe her and prove her right. They collected his belongings, Nate pocketing the ring box before Chelsea could see it and headed out to the car.

was You realize that we’re going to have to tell our children that we first told each other I love you in a police station, don’t you?” Chelsea asked with a grin.

She had avoided telling him how she had gotten him released the day before for as long as she could. She’d been lucky he hadn’t asked until they were somewhere over Iowa. Lying about it had crossed her mind, but he had a freaky way of reading her expressions and it wasn’t worth trying to get away with it.

As she had predicted, he hadn’t been happy that she’d made a deal with Brandon. He didn’t have to write an apology letter if he dropped the charges against Nate. It was an easy deal to make. It figured that Brandon would be such a coward that his biggest problem with her demands had been a simple apology letter.

“Are you going to be able to get on with your life without knowing he’s sorry, Chelsea?” Nate asked.

“He’s not going to be sorry, Nate. He would have written the letter, but it wouldn’t have made him feel any remorse. I can’t make him feel that.”

It was true. When she’d thought about what she wanted from Brandon, the apology had been the most important. Faced with the choice of the insincere words of an insensitive prick and the man she loved, though, Chelsea hadn’t had to think for a minute. All she wanted was Nate. If confronting Brandon didn’t get the panic, the nightmares to stop, then a piece of paper wouldn’t either. As she had watched Brandon walk away from her in the police station, she had felt a weight lifted from her. She didn’t have to think about him, or the past, anymore.