She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 190

(Nathanial)

The sand is wet from the tide. We sit on it anyway.

I don't say anything for a while.

Natasha doesn't either.

Far down the beach there's a dog running in circles, barking joyfully.

For a minute I envy that dog with everything in me.

I try to think.

Can't.

My brain keeps starting sentences and abandoning them.

The man I grew up believing was my father, is not my father.

The man whose name I have was my father.

My mother slept with my grandfather.

For thirteen years.

While Will loved her, and built her a beach house, and named me after the man she was sleeping with.

I don’t want to think about any of this, but it won’t stop.

Natasha picks up a piece of driftwood and turns it over in her hands.

"Did you suspect any of this?"

"God. No. I could never imagine what could have been so bad she had to leave. Part of me wishes I still didn’t know."

She nods. Keeps turning the driftwood.

"I keep thinking about dad knowing. Having to deal with all that anger and grief, only to find you and her both gone before he could even start processing it."

She wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

"I’ve been angry with him all this time," she says. "He drank himself to death and I thought it was because I wasn’t enough."

"Nat."

"I'm going to have to restructure every memory I have of him. He wasn't just a sad drunk who couldn't pull it together. He was a man whose wife slept with his father for thirteen years and ran off with his son."

"Well."

She looks at me.

"Nate. He never stopped calling you his son. He missed you so much."

We sit with that.

A car door slams up by the road and her shoulder jumps.

She tucks her hair behind her ear like that's what she meant to do.

I don’t comment on how skittish she is.

"How are you?" I ask.

"You first."

"I asked first."

"I'm asking second. Yours is worse, you go."

That's almost funny but I can't quite get there.

I scrub a hand over my jaw.

"I don't know yet. I keep trying to think about him and my brain stops. Like it won't load the file. I just keep getting stuck on..."

I stop, fruitlessly trying to order my thoughts.

"I can’t wrap my head around not calling him dad. He raised me. He was at every school thing. He taught me how to throw. He fully believed he was my father, but he wasn’t."

She nods slowly.

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