Illicit Affairs by Holly Dixon
Thirty-Nine
Earlier that night…
Nate wasglad to have finished up the gruelling process of handing over his workload to Tom Archer. The experience was up there with getting teeth pulled at the dentist. His business partner was keen to ship him back to the States as soon as possible and was in an ass of a mood all afternoon—not that Nate could blame him. Not after what he did to the guy’s daughter on his office sofa…coffee table…desk.
Yeah, okay—dick move.
“Nathaniel, you’re not in love with her,” Tom had said as Nate was leaving the office. “You have not known her long enough to profess such feelings and I won’t have you make a homewrecker out of my little girl.”
“Perhaps I’ve not.” Nate smiled at the floor before looking up at Tom. “But I know that what I feel for Ava is that deep-in-your-gut feeling that is both familiar as it is uncharted. She is the first woman to know every piece of me and accept everything that I am, everything that I have done, and everything I will one day do. What I feel for her is unapologetically chaotic and if that ain’t love then…I don’t want to know what the damn thing is.” He chuffed through his nose before heading out of the office knowing that he would never have that man’s blessing until the day he made things right by his daughter and filed for a messy divorce.
However, none of that seemed to matter now that he was bounding down the sidewalk with pep in his stride. The molten-silver sky grumbled with the promise of rain, but Nate couldn’t care less as he swung his briefcase by his side. It was funny how with everything blown to shrapnel he saw order within the disarray and that the problems he had feared from the start were actually the solution to everything.
He was going to make this right.
They were going to find a way to make this work, and for the first time, his happiness wouldn’t be the front cover of the brand that the people in his life created for him.
Nate skipped his way up the stairs leading to Ava’s apartment block, his finger pressing down on the silver call button. After a few moments without answer, his brows knitted together as he tried again before finally trying her on her cell phone.
Straight to voicemail.
“She wouldn’t have forgotten…would she?” he uttered to himself before retreating down the steps and staring up at the building to see that her lights were the only ones out. With a heavy sigh, he found himself sat down on the bottom step seeing no other option than to wait on her return.
And wait he did.
After an hour of sitting in the evening chill, in nothing but his suit, he finally heard the door open behind him and snapped upright like a dog waiting on their owner’s return before slumping as an elderly woman trotted towards him.
“You alright, love?” she asked with a frail Welsh accent, frowning down at Nate. “Locked yourself out?”
“No, I’m actually waiting on a lady—tall, blonde, incredibly beautiful…her name’s Ava?”
“Oh, Ms. Archer!” The woman beamed fondly of his girl and he couldn’t help but beam a hopeful smile at her. “She left a little over an hour ago with a gentleman.”
“A gentleman?” Nate’s smile fell flat as he slowly rose to his feet.
“Yes, the redheaded gent—he’s often round at the weekends. Terrible racket they make,” she chuckled, pulling her rain bonnet up over her head.
Nate had only been punched a few times in his life, but none of those times compared to the sucker punch given by this old lady. Ava knew they had only tonight to sort things out and that he was leaving for New York in the morning. Why would she leave with Peter?
The sinking feeling in his chest answered that question; she wanted to give him a message and what better way to tell him there was no room for him in her life than this?
“Thank you,” Nate said with a bittersweet smile as he looked down at the scuff marks on his polished Italian shoes.
“Are you alright, m’love?”
He looked up at the woman’s pale teal eyes and with a feigned smile said, “Nope. Not even a little bit.”
The lady opened her mouth to speak but before she could, Nate had already turned away from her, briefcase in hand as he began walking down the crescent-shaped street that was shaded by crimson trees.
With slouched shoulders, his body felt heavy, legs like lead pins, and with each step, he felt the warmth evaporate from him. Every memory with her was a burning Polaroid being held up to his face. The time spent with her lit up his life. She set his soul on fire with words that breathed oxygen into him and with a touch that brought heat to the gasoline in his veins. But now his soul felt like a dying ember.
The reality sunk deep inside him until the heartache left him feeling frozen as though concrete were drying in his chest.
I’m not enough for her.
His feet came to a stop as he turned around and stared down the street he had just walked. Nate hardly ever thought with his heart, but as his mind made up a million reasons why Ava would have left with Peter and not him, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was his brain or his heart trying to find excuses for her actions.
As he lifted his foot to retreat to her apartment, a flash of light shredded the sky before an almighty clap boomed from one side of London to the next. He peered up at the dark clouds as pellets of water stung his face and made his stormy eyes blink.
Nate wasn’t a superstitious man by any means, but as the rain saturated his hair and suit, he knew this was the universe trying to give him a sign. It was the one thing that Ava had been trying to tell him all along. Not all romances are love stories.
“Another.”Nate raised his empty glass to some barmaid inside some crappy bar that sold crappy booze with crappy clientele—himself included in that remit.
“You sure about that, mate?” she replied, frowning down at the several empty glasses in front of him, grimacing at the way his brows lowered and his nostrils flared. “Another coming right up!” Her palms rose defensively as she cleared the empty glasses and poured him a fresh scotch.
Nate huffed his thanks to her, running a hand through his wet hair before rubbing at red bleary eyes. His suit jacket hung in a drenched heap over the back of his barstool, his pants clung uncomfortably to his legs, and his damp white shirt was rolled up at the sleeves. People were giving him concerned looks but he couldn’t give a damn and instead sneered at them with a nod of his glass like the drunken idiot he was.
Everything about his situation sucked: having to go home to the States, having to return to a life-sucking succubus, having to go back to his mundane job with his mundane assistant that wasn’t her.
How the hell was he meant to go back to the strict structure of the real world when she had come into his life like a goddamn hurricane and disrupted everything about it like the most chaotic and perfect storm?
One last shot,he thought to himself as he pulled out his cell and tried calling her for the hundredth time in the past hour. As expected, her voicemail greeted him, his fist almost managing to bend the metal pressed to his ear as he imagined her arm around that redhead instead of him. He slammed his phone down on the bar before knocking back the burn of alcohol along with the sting of rejection.
He knew Ava was afraid of commitment and terrified of abandonment—any guy with half a brain could figure that one out. But did he really mean so little to her that he wasn’t worth an explanation or even a goodbye? Just phase him out of her life because it didn’t matter anyway since he would be out of her hair soon enough, was that it?
The worst part was being ghosted by someone who already haunted your every waking and sleeping thought.
Taking out his wallet, he pulled out a silver ring and stared at it as he slid it onto his finger. Natalia only wanted the rings for the wedding pictures that would forever be published in some tacky tabloid somewhere. She said that it spoke a louder message to not wear their rings, that it would tell people they didn’t need some expensive piece of metal to bind their love and marriage. What a fake fucking message,he thought before taking it off and dropping it into his empty glass.
He remembered watching Nat come down the aisle on their wedding day. Damn, she was beautiful. Her long dark hair was tied up, showing off the perfect curve of her long neck, and all he could think of was kissing it. Her skin was a flawless and deep honeyed brown that stood out against the ivory dress that stuck to all the right places. She was the definition of beautiful and what every man on this earth desired in a woman, but not a wife. Nat’s beauty was only skin deep, like a golden apple that was rotten at the core. The only things she valued in this life were social status and money.
Nate hung his head in his hands as the alcohol seeped into his bloodstream, slowly starting to realise that sometimes the safest choices in life were the ones most detrimental to your heart. He knew then that he couldn’t do it anymore. He could not continue the facade with Natalia and knew that the second he got home, he was filing for a divorce, even if it meant trudging through hellish financial lawsuits. Even if it meant being alone.
“Omigod, is it real?!”
Nate heard a woman gasp next to him, her high-pitched voice enough to bring on an early hangover as he rubbed at his bloodshot eyes.
“No idea, but look, it’s streaming live right now!”
Another woman answered, holding up her phone as they both gawked like bloodthirsty vampires at the latest scandal on the internet and caused Nate to stand up and move further down the bar.
“Holy shit! It’s going viral! Look at the views!”
“This is Ava!”Sam’s brazen accent cut across the phone’s tiny speakers and caught Nate’s attention as he paused and snapped his gaze to the two women. He couldn’t make out what was going on from the jumping images on the screen, unsure if he was so drunk that he was conjuring up scenarios in his head.
“I’m sorry, ol’ girl…”
“Do it.” He knew that voice.
Staggering towards the two women, he pushed himself between them and snatched their phone.
“Oi! What the heck do you think you’re doing?” the woman protested as she tried to get her phone back, but Nate was glued to it as he saw the familiar sunny glow of Ava’s hair. His stomach dropped with confusion and dread when he saw her knelt before Peter.
“Where is this?” Nate roared at the woman.
“I don’t bloody know! It’s live on Facebook!” she shot back at the disorderly stranger.
“Oh, my actual God, he’s got a gun!” the other woman said, gawking and pointing down at the screen where Peter held a silver revolver to Ava’s head.
“Do it, you goddamn foul ma—” The bang that cut off Ava’s sentence had crackled the speakers and made Nate’s shoulders jump. He stared down at the screen that turned black, his heart throbbing like it was about to derail.
“Ava?!”He heard Samantha Eastley cry out, his lungs taking sharp breaths to try to rationalise this madness as he watched with helpless desperation at the black screen flickering through flashes of light, the speakers sputtering before an error message popped up and the live-stream ended.
“What happened? Where did it go?!” Nate barked at the woman with a murderous glare, thrusting the phone towards her. “Bring it back, right now!”
“I—I can’t, they’ve taken it down!” She gaped at the drunken idiot, stumbling back into her friend as people began to pay notice to the commotion at the bar.
“Right, mate, I think you’ve had enough. Go on, out you go,” said the barmaid, pointing a stern finger at the door as Nate gave her a dismissive wave, his brain scattered. He felt like his whole world was spinning out of control as he staggered towards his seat and picked up his phone to see a notification on the screen.
Facebook: Samantha Eastley is sharing her live location with you.