Changing Tides (Kill Devil Hills Book 2) (13 page)

“No. I’m not,” she lied, her shaky voice giving the truth away. “Maybe I am.”

“You don’t have to go.”

A forced laugh left her throat. “Yes. I do. I can’t stay. Thanksgiving is in like three days, and I have this Ben drama to deal with. You and I just met. I can’t.”

“You can’t or you won’t?” I demanded and the room fell silent.

Here I was…throwing my heart onto the table like always. Maybe this was why relationships never worked out for me? I cared too much when the other person never cared enough. But if that were true…then why was Ellie crying?

“Look,” I said, and I took a step in her direction. “If you need time to figure things out, that’s fine. I have your phone number—I’ll text you mine. Call me whenever you’re ready to pick this back up again. I can’t make any promises, but I don’t want this to be the end either. What do you think?”

She shrugged
.
Had I said something wrong
?
I wanted to keep this thing open between us, leave it with a dot-dot-dot. What other choice did I have? Fully ending it was not an option.

Knock. Knock.

Fucking fantastic. Noah—at the door.

“I gotta go,” she said, “that would be Noah.” She walked for the door. I followed her because it was the polite thing to do. And I thought this was the end. She sure wasn’t giving me any indication otherwise. But as soon as her hand touched the handle, she whipped around and flung her arms around my shoulders. My heart squeezed. She seized the back of my neck and pulled my face down to her lips. I lifted her in my arms, kissing her deep and slow. The emotion radiating off her didn’t lie. Her heart was on the table too. Maybe this wasn’t it for us. Maybe there was hope.

Only time would tell.

PART

TWO

CHAPTER 14:

ELLIE

S
weet baby Jesus, it was good to be home.

Freezing cold air hit my face as I pulled my suitcase from the trunk of the car. Rhett grabbed it from my hand, even though I was perfectly capable, and he lugged both his bag and mine up the stairs to our house. We lived together in a rental on good ol’ Clam Shell Drive. It was a three bedroom home, one level, and on stilts. It had seen better days. But it was clean and it was cozy. The yard, though, was pretty scary. Ever since Noah moved out, I’d completely neglected it. It was an ugly wasteland of sand, overgrown crabgrass, and even a wild cactus that had appeared out of nowhere. Prickles—that was what we’d named the cactus.

Noah used to be our third roommate. But since he went off to college this year with Georgina, it was only Rhett and myself. And I had no intentions of replacing Noah. Rent was cheap enough that we didn’t need to and I didn’t want to deal with someone new. Getting along with Rhett was hard enough most days.

In the hours since I’d left Nathanial’s house and the west coast, I’d been abnormally quiet. The first words out of my mouth, as I hopped into a SUV full of questioning eyes, had been, “I don’t want to talk about it.” And so far, I hadn’t.

No one had pressured me, even though I knew they all were wondering what the hell was going on. But, whether the recipient was male or female, I wasn’t a kiss and tell kind of girl. Rule Number One. What happens in the bedroom should always stay in the bedroom. I had no intention of breaking that rule. And besides, talking about him would only make the pain in my heart more real.

So I kept my mouth shut. Instead we talked about Ben. Rhett seemed to think it was only a matter of time before he caved and came home. He even tried to get the rest of us to take bets on the date that this would happen. We all ignored him, of course, but his optimism on the subject did make me hopeful. Maybe he was right. Or maybe it was foolish to hope. Either way, I was going to have to tell my parents that my brother was alive. They deserved to know even if that meant breaking my brother’s trust.

The holidays were already packed-full of drama at my house, so I thought it might be better to get through Thanksgiving and Christmas before I dropped the ‘Ben bomb’ on my parents. My grandparents, possibly both sets, would be in town. I didn’t want to give anyone a heart attack. So I figured I had a little more time to come up with how to tell my parents. And that would also give Georgina time to deal with it in her own way first. Seemed like a good enough plan.

I wheeled my bag down the hallway to my room. I dropped it on the floor and then fell backward with a heavy thump onto my bed. My heart and my head both hurt. I shouldn’t have become so attached to Nathanial in such a short time, but that was the thing…whether I’d planned on it or not, I’d become attached. Now I didn’t know what to do.

Grumbling and sitting up, I dug my phone out of my satchel bag. I’d turned it off at the airport and had left it off all day. I wanted to see if Nathanial had sent me his number like he’d said he would. Or maybe he’d forgotten my name the second I’d walked out his front door. I clicked on the screen and there was his text, waiting for me.

Nathanial: This is my number

That was it. Nothing else. I saved his number into my phone and decided to text him back. Nothing too life changing, but I figured it would be courteous to let him know my plane hadn’t crashed into a mountain or something equally tragic.

Me: Made it home alive

His response came a minute later.

Nathanial: I’m happy you’re alive. Thanks for letting me know. Miss you

I stared at the last two words for several seconds
.
Seriously? Could he seriously miss me already
?
Whatever. I texted him one more thing.

Me: Miss you too

* * *

Thanksgiving came and went, and the next week slipped away painfully slow. After the commotion of the holiday had passed, and Noah and Georgie went back to school for the rest of the semester, my nightly ritual with Rhett had transformed from tolerating each other into watching movies and eating frozen dinners together. Why and when had we suddenly become besties?

“Oh God,” I’d shouted at him when I realized we were spending another night hanging out, engrossed in the TV like an old married couple, “What the fuck is wrong with us?”

He didn’t seem all that alarmed. Then he confessed everything to me, like he’d been waiting for a whole week to get his secret off his chest. He told me he’d slept with Sydney on our vacation. And for the second time, she’d left him after, wanting nothing to do with him. “I don’t understand,” he said. “One moment I think she likes me, maybe even loves me, and then the next moment she’s back to avoiding me. Aren’t you broken up about your celebrity friend? I thought that’s why you and I were getting along. I thought we were bonding over common ground.”

He was right. I was broken up over Nathanial and it was starting to show. My mom had even noticed something was off. At Thanksgiving, obviously taking pity on me, she didn’t even force me into helping her cook. And that sort of thin
g
neve
r
happens.

It didn’t help that I felt like an invisible hand was trying to force me into picking a team. Like I needed to check either box A or box B. But what if I liked both boxes? I didn’t know if I was gay or straight. When I left the house, whenever I saw a pretty woman, I still felt the same sort of attraction I’d always felt. On the other hand, men were doing nothing for me. Less than nothing. Actually, most men were kind of repulsive when I took the time to actually study them.

But one man in particular was still haunting my thoughts.

Especially late at night. Especially when I couldn’t fall asleep. I’d think of him, and his thick, gravelly voice would pop into my thoughts. The worst part was, I had a magic little box called a cellphone that would have let me talk to him whenever I wanted, assuming he’d stil
l
wan
t
to talk to me, but I wasn’t using it. I was too confused. But at the end of each day, when I was probably at my most vulnerable, I’d give in and send him one text. Goodnight, usually. Sometimes I would mix it up and say, sweet dreams.

He was always quick to answer that one little text. Which made me want to hope that he’d been waiting all day for it. His response always repeated whatever I’d said, just a simpl
e
goodnigh
t
o
r
sweet dreams
in reply.

“So you send him one text per day?” Rhett asked.

“Yes.”

I waited for some lame joke to follow up my confession but it didn’t come. Rhett was being surprisingly decent right this moment. “I guess one text per day is much better than Sydney’s radio silence and her blood-hound brother. John Michaels terrifies me. He’s skinnier than a pole, but I guess it’s the skinny ones you need to worry about. I’m pretty sure he’d kill me if he could legally get away with it. If I even try to go near Sydney when she’s home from school, he’s always there—always ready to kill.”

I smiled. John Michaels had done most of my tattoos—he was very talented, owned his own shop, and the only person I trusted to touch my skin with a gun these days. I hadn’t realized John was Sydney’s brother. I’d never known her last name until right now. “John Michaels is harmless. He’s a nice guy.”

“Not when you’re in love with his sister,” he mumbled.

Rhett grew quiet after he’d uttered the l-word, grabbing the remote and turning the volume on the TV up. I wanted to say something to cheer him up—but I’d never been good at being sympathetic or empathetic or whatever personality trait a person needed for that sort of thing. Then suddenly Rhett flipped off the TV and stood up. Excitement filled his face. “I’ve got the solution. We should date.”

My dropped open. “Yeah…hell would have to freeze over first.”

“No,” he moaned. “Not each other. Like separately, go out with new people.”

“Um,” I said. “Don’t you ‘date’ all the time?” I made air quotes as I said the word date. Rhett got more ass than a toilet seat. His idea was a notch below stupid.

“Actually, no. I stopped ‘dating’ after Sydney. And that’s my entire point. I’ve neve
r
for-rea
l
dated…like gone on actual, get-to-know-a-person, dates. The kind that don’t lead to sex. Maybe it would be good for me to get to know someone outside of the bedroom. And for you—”

I huffed out a breath. “Oh, God. Here it comes.”

“Just listen, Ellie,” he groaned. “Maybe you should go on a few dates with a few different men. Maybe even go on a few with women too. Because I don’t think Nate West is entirely the whole reason you’re hanging out with me, depressed as hell. And after all of it is done, maybe you’ll have a clearer perspective on your feelings for Nate.”

Yikes, he was intuitive. Not that I thought dating a bunch of people was the solution to either of our problems, but Rhett had really hit the nail on the head with his assessment. My feelings for Nathanial weren’t what was bringing me down. I wanted to let myself like him—but I was just too afraid to. “I don’t know, Rhett.”

“We could help each other make singlereadytomingle.com profiles.”

Holy shit.
He wasn’t even joking as he said it either.

“I’m going to bed,” I told him, cutting off the conversation before it would get any weirder, and practically ran from the living room toward my bedroom.

“Think about it,” Rhett yelled after me.

I changed into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and then crawled into bed—trying desperatel
y
no
t
to think about making a profile on a dating website. I grabbed my phone and instead of texting Nathanial like usual, I googled him.

Looking him up on the internet was something I’d avoided so far. I knew most of the stuff I would find would be complete bullshit. But I was terrified just the same. What if I found something irredeemable out there? And, if my memory served me correctly, season two of his show almost didn’t happen because he got into a fist fight with the assistant director on set. I think Rose had mentioned that tidbit to me and it suddenly sprang into my memory. What if I found more negative stuff like that?

As I typed his name into the search engine, that was the first thing that popped up
.
Nate West to Start Filming this Sunday with Black Eye, Assistant Director Fired Because of It.
That actually made it sound like it was the other guy’s fault, but as I read on I found out that Nathanial had been the first to strike and had threatened to walk unless they fired the other guy. That didn’t sound at all like the person I knew. That sounded like a demand an asshole would make. But I had to trust that Nathanial had to have had a really good reason for doing something like that.

Then came the photos of him and Kelly Patterson together. There were entire Instagram pages and YouTube videos devoted to the two of them together. People were obsessed. ‘Nelly’ was their cute celebrity couple nickname. It seemed the world didn’t know that they were no longer a couple. And site after site had photos of him spotted with different women—all suggesting that he was unfaithful to Kelly.

But the worst thing of all, out of everything, were the endless, perfect images of his face. He was entirely too handsome, completely out of my league, and these pictures were rubbing salt in my wound.

But nothing I read was irredeemable.

Nothing stopped me from wanting to send my one text message of the day.

Me: Goodnight

Nathanial: Goodnight, Ellie