Nat was in the corner eating toast, her cheeks were still puffy from all those tears, and Alyssa was baking.
One thing I learned about Alyssa. When she was stressed she made food. Which was bad for me if I wanted to keep any sort of six-pack. At any rate, I told her to stop making muffins because they were making me fat.
With a deep sigh I walked over to where Nat was sitting and pulled up a chair. “So… toast.”
Wow. Shoot me now.
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “That’s it? After everything that happened yesterday, and the first word out of your mouth is toast?”
“I’m a guy.”
“I think you were better on drugs.” This from Jaymeson.
“Not helping,” Alyssa sang from the kitchen, sweat poured from her face. The thing was going to have a stroke from making too many pancakes.
I cleared my throat and tried again. “I…” Wow, that’s as good as it got. Pathetic. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
Nat set down her toast and reached across the table grabbing my hand in hers. “You can’t, Demetri.”
“But—” I clenched her hand until my fingers went numb. “I have to. Someone has to. I just… I’m stuck, Nat. I don’t know what the hell is going on. I don’t know how to fix him, and I sure as hell don’t know how to finish the damn fairytale.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Nat’s eyes shone with tears. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit down and cry.” She wiped under her eyes and sighed. “If he needs this… I’m going to wait.”
“But—”
Alyssa smacked me on the back of the head before I could finish my thought. Jaymeson chuckled in the corner. His face looked like someone had just run him over with a truck.
“Shut it.” I glared in his direction. “Shouldn’t you get your face fixed?”
“Shouldn’t your brother stop screwing older women?”
The room fell silent.
I looked to Nat, but she was staring down at her plate. Jaymeson needed to rein it in before I killed him.
I glanced at my phone. Five minutes until the filming would start. They always gave us a few minutes to get our shit together before the cameras started rolling. “Take a walk with me?” I nodded to Nat.
She pushed back her chair and followed me outside.
“I need to know what you know.” I put my arm around her and led her toward the boardwalk.
With a shudder she tucked her head into my chest and sighed. “He’s on antidepressants and he said he hasn’t dealt with everything from his past. That’s basically all I know. I mean… honestly, what could be so bad that he feels like he can’t even talk to us?”
I just shook my head and gave a bitter laugh. “Could it really be worse than him getting my girlfriend pregnant to get back at me and then her and his son dying in a car accident?”
It wasn’t funny but Nat smirked, because we both knew the reality of it was our lives were full of drama, and it was all self inflicted and almost too unbelievable for words.
“I guess it must be, otherwise he would tell us.”
We kept walking, and all of a sudden I was hit with the extreme gut-wrenching, leg-stumbling, mind-altering feeling of déjà vu. “Nat?”
She stopped. “What?”
I looked down at the ground as I felt my heart constrict in my chest. “I wish it was me.”
“What do you mean?”
I cupped her face with my hands, gently wiping her tears away as I did so. “I wish so damn bad it would have been me. I wish you would have given me your heart so that in the end it was me breaking it — not him. I wish I could give you a do-over. I wish so much that you would have chosen me, because in the end, I could have saved you from this. Maybe then I could have been the one to ruin you — maybe then you would be in his arms instead of mine.”
Nat’s eyes closed.
“Nat, it kills me. This freaking kills me.” I choked down a sob. “Because I can’t do anything to make it better. I can’t fix Alec. I don’t even know what his big secret is. I just… I don’t know, sometimes I wish I could turn back time.”
“But then you wouldn’t have Alyssa,” she pointed out.
“I would have found her.”
“And then what?”
“At least I could have saved you.” I looked away so she wouldn’t see me cry. But it wasn’t for me. They weren’t selfish tears. They were tears for her, tears for my brother, and tears for the life that I knew was going to be affected more than anyone else in our group.
Hers.
Nat’s lower lip trembled, but other than that there was no visible sign of emotion. I wasn’t sure what freaked me out more, her indifference or the fact that her eyes were so full of fear that I knew I couldn’t abandon her if my life depended on it. Did that make me better than Alec? Or was he truly doing what was best for her by allowing himself to deal with his baggage before it consumed them both?
“You excited?” I changed the subject and touched her stomach.
Her face broke out into a beautiful smile. “I’m terrified.”
I moved my hand and pulled her into a hug, kissing her forehead. “Nah, no reason to be terrified, that little baby’s going to have everything.”
Everything but a father. The unspoken phrase made me close my eyes so tears wouldn’t drip onto Nat’s pretty head.