She scoffs. “Didn’t you build the house?”
“I did, but with his money,” I admit, shame reddening my cheeks as I continue. “I was a shoeshine for the cobbler’s shop on Main Street. Came from nothing. My family was dirt poor. I would’ve died that way, too, but I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
Natalie’s eyes look like pools of melted chocolate as the midday sun shines down on her face. It makes her rapt attention feel like a gift. “What do you mean?”
Susanna’s father grew tired of her lack of ambition. Often called her a lazy sack of hormones in front of me. Such a vile excuse for a man. “He wanted Susanna to get married and start having children. Really, he wanted an heir to the Caraway fortune, so he threatened to cut her off financially if she didn’t get married and have a child by the end of that year,” I tellher. “The next day, I was having a drink at the pub next to the cobbler’s shop when she walked in.” I shrug, still shocked by my dumb luck, and bitter from the knowledge that it was more of a curse. “She picked me out of the crowd, and we were married a week later.”
“Wow. Fast courtship.”
It’s hard for me to look at Natalie now, knowing what I’m about to say next. So I don’t. I focus on the blurry reflection of my face in the water instead. “I was dumb enough to think it was love at first sight, and lonely enough to ignore all the signs that told me I was merely a sperm donor.”
“Yikes,” she says, then scrunches her nose into a knowing expression. “You mocked her taste in music too, didn’t you?”
The comment shocks me, and she must see it in my gaze as she splashes me with water, chuckling loudly.
“I’m kidding,” she insists, coming closer as I wipe the lake water from my eyes. I notice her playful smirk and easy posture, and it makes me crave more of this side of her.
“That sucks, Winston. I’m sorry you were treated like that.”
The way she says my name, with that gentle throatiness of hers, makes me wonder what she would sound like screaming it.
“It’s in the past,” I tell her, becoming increasingly aware of how much of my personal life I’ve revealed to her with very little prompting. How did she do that? How did she pull that information out of me? I didn’t even speak of Susanna with Penelope. “Now, you go.”
Her dark brows pull together in confusion.
I want to feel less alone in this. “You must know heartbreak. Not just familial loss, but romantic as well? Tell me your tales of woe. Make me feel like less of an ass.”
“Oh yeah. Me and heartbreak are like this,” she replies, crossing her middle finger over her pointer. “There’s no way you’re a bigger fool than I am, okay? You were a married mantrying to make your wife happy. I, on the other hand,” she continues, clearing her throat, “sacrificed everything for a guy who didn’t want me, and even when he was breaking up with me, telling me all the reasons he didn’t love me anymore, I begged,actually begged,for him to stay.”
Natalie huffs a breath as she shakes her head in disgust. “I don’t carry many regrets from the past, but that one sticks––the begging. Feeling him totally shut down, outright rejecting me, and trying to hold on to him anyway. We weren’t even married.”
I wish I could say it’s hard to believe that Natalie could love someone more than they love her, but I do believe it. I see how her face lights up when I do something mildly generous. When I made her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the way she looked at me… it was as if I had emerged from a burning building with her kitten in my arms.
It’s obvious how little she thinks she deserves. How little she’s used to getting. When she invited that diaper load of a human to the house for casual sex, it was as clear as day. She may have been lonely, but if she could see herself through my eyes, she never would’ve given that man a second glance, let alone allowed him to touch her.
Even thinking about that night fills me with simmering rage. The assumption that the person she’s speaking of now is someone different isn’t helping, either. I picture a man of similar stature to the one with the dirty fingernails, with the same lack of manners and unearned confidence. I wish I knew who he was, or could see a photo of him, so when I fantasize about the loud crack his spine would make when I snapped his neck, it would be a more accurate depiction. “What’s his name? The jackass who didn’t love you the way you deserved. Tell me.”
Natalie must sense my fury, because she places her hand in the middle of my chest and offers me a teasing grin. “You goingto kick his ass for me, Ghost Man? How, when you can’t even step past the property line?”
It’s enough to pierce through my anger and pull a matching grin from me. “A lot of psychological damage can be done from afar, sweetheart. Isn’t that the primary achievement of the internet?”
She nods, chuckling. “I suppose that’s true, but you don’t have to worry about that. Kyle can’t hurt me anymore.”
“What happened?” It’s none of my business, and the deeper we go into this subject, the quicker my anger will return, but I opened up to her about Susanna, and I’m eager to know more about her life before she showed up at my door. “You don’t have to talk about it if it’s too painful.”
Natalie heaves a sigh as she floats on her back. This angle provides me a perfect view of her dark pink nipples as they poke out of the water. The hardened tips look like they’re begging for my mouth. I swallow hard and look away, but not before I notice her hand cup her lower belly in a way that tells me there’s much more to this story.
“Yeah, let’s not,” she finally says. “I’m having a good time, which hasn’t been the norm for me lately.”
I understand, and the last thing I want to do is push her back into sadness when she’s finally able to smile. In fact, I think I have a way to make that smile grow even bigger. “Come here.”
Her gaze narrows, sizing me up. “Why?”
She doesn’t trust me. Why would she?
“I want to show you something.”
Natalie takes a hesitant step in my direction.
