I shrugged; there was no use in denying it. “That was one of my reasons.”
“Did you think it would make me want you any less?” he demanded in a choked voice and I lifted angry eyes to meet his pained gaze, letting the look in my own tell him exactly what I’d thought. It had been the truth, though. He hadn’t even noticed me when I’d been standing so close to him. What else was I expected to think? “It didn’t work, Nat. I’m as hard for you right now as I always am.”
“Really? For some reason I don’t believe you.” Since he had my plate I picked up another one and started piling food on all over again.
My first plate landed on the bar top that was holding the food, making mashed potatoes and mac and cheese splatter across the surface. I turned to glare at him. “Will you stop acting so immature, Devlin?”
“I’m not the immature one, Natalie. You’re the one who won’t stop for five fucking minutes and have an adult conversation with me. We need to talk before the tour starts, we need to work this out. I can’t handle three months on the same bus with you with things unresolved between us. I’m already losing my fucking mind, baby.” He raked his fingers through his hair, messing it and making him even sexier in my eyes.
“There isn’t anything left to say. Our relationship was based on a lie and then we hooked up for a fun one-nighter that should never have happened.” I shrugged, like it was no big deal, when on the inside I died a little more. Everything we’d had together had definitely been a big deal to me. It still was and that was why I continued to hurt so badly.
“Stop talking about what we had like it was nothing, Nat. We had something special. It still is. We both care about each other—”
“You stop!” I hissed at him, trying to keep my voice low so that I didn’t attract the attention of my brothers or anyone else. I did not want to cause a scene. Hadn’t I been embarrassed enough already? “Stop acting like you really cared. It was all a damn game to you, Dev. I was nothing to you. I’m still nothing to you.”
“You have got to be blind if you don’t see how much I care about you. Every day I wake up without you in my arms is another day I suffer the fires of hell. All I want is you beside me, baby.” I rolled my eyes at him, not believing a word he was saying. “Damn it, do you think this is easy for me, Nat? To bare my soul to you like this? Do you? Well it fucking isn’t.”
My heart clenched when his voice actually cracked. My anger at him, at myself, faded for a moment and I saw a man in front of me who really was hurting. Hadn’t that been what I’d wanted all along, to make him hurt as much as I was hurting? But to see his pain only caused mine to increase tenfold. “Dev—”
The excited exclaims of Dallas and Axton suddenly had everyone around the room turning to find out what was going on and whatever I might have said, might have done, was interrupted. When my friends announced that they were having another baby and that it was going to be born in the same year as their newborn son, I felt bile rise into my throat and pushed past Devlin in search of the closest bathroom.
I hadn’t eaten since breakfast when I’d forced down some yogurt, so I spent more time dry heaving than actually vomiting. When the spasms in my stomach had calmed, I flushed the toilet and moved to wash my hands before rinsing my mouth out. A sound behind me made me freeze because for a moment I was sure that Devlin had followed me. When the man behind me shifted and I saw him clearly in the mirror, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“This has got to stop, Natalie,” Linc told me, his tone concerned. “You can’t keep going on like this.”
“Linc…” I grimaced and shook my head. “I’m okay. Honest.”
We both knew that I was lying my ass off. Linc was my best friend, and no one knew me better than he did except for my sister. My guilt was making me physically ill, and Linc wanted me to confide in him like I’d always done in the past. But I couldn’t. This was my burden to bear and no one else’s.
“Does he even know, Nat?” Linc demanded, knowing I wasn’t going to talk about the fact that I’d just been throwing my guts up. “Does he know that you—”
“That I bought the morning-after pill? Yeah, I told him I was going to do it.” I’d taunted him with it that night when he’d texted me to talk about it. Fuck, I really was as childish as he’d accused me of so many times. Disgust at myself only added to my self-hate and my stomach roiled again, but I knew that there was nothing left to throw up so I just stood there, holding onto the edge of the cold sink until it passed.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Linc stepped closer, his hand touching the small of my back and rubbing soothing circles over the skin. “Look, at least talk to Dallas about this, okay?”
I nodded, knowing that I was still lying. There was no reason to talk to Dallas. She was a nurse, not the shrink that I really needed.
Natalie
The mere thought of having to face my mother this morning was enough to make me pull the covers up over my head and shriek my frustration. I didn’t want to see her, didn’t want to hear her snide comments about my haircut, or my roommate—whom she didn’t like because he was so beautiful, but so very gay—or the fact that I was still single, or hear her recriminations for the millionth time about my idiotic decision to get involved with one of them. One of them meant a rocker, but every time I heard those three little words leave my mother’s mouth I knew what she was talking about and wanted to slap her face.
I hadn’t always disliked my mother. When I was a little girl, I’d always thought she was the smartest, kindest woman alive. But as I’d grown up, I’d slowly started seeing that my mother had two sides to her. One was the one she presented to the outside world, the one that was all smiles and the type of person who could do no wrong; the other was the real Stella Stevenson. The one that was a selfish bitch who had spent years attempting to poison my mind and then Jenna’s to the immoral lifestyle that was our brothers’ world. My eyes weren’t completely opened, however, until Lana had told me exactly what my mother had done.
How could I respect a woman who had made her husband turn his back on his sons when they had needed him the most? I couldn’t. My mother was the most selfish woman I’d ever met. She wasn’t greedy for money or material things, of course. No, it had been her obsession with my father, the jealousy that she’d felt at not being his first wife or to give birth to his first child, that had made her so selfish and bitter. My father was either a really ignorant man, or a man who loved his wife dearly to have put up with her and her me me me mentality for so long.