She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 192

(Natasha)

I tell Chase the whole sordid story in my kitchen.

It takes forty minutes to lay the whole thing out properly.

My mother, the affair, James walking in at nineteen, the deathbed, why I was left behind.

I tell it like I’m presenting a financial report.

Flat and factual.

The way I tell things when I don't want to feel them while I'm telling them.

Chase doesn't interrupt once.

He poured coffee before I started.

It's gone cold.

He hasn't made another cup because moving would interrupt my train of thought and he can see how badly I need not to be derailed right now.

He's keeping still in a way he isn't usually capable of.

I manage to get the whole thing out without crying or breaking anything.

Lily is upstairs asleep with the monitor on the counter between us.

For a while her breathing on the monitor is the only sound in the room.

"What do you need? How can I help?" He asks eventually.

"I don't know."

He nods. Doesn't push.

I look at my hands.

There's a crescent of polish missing from my left thumbnail.

I don't know when that happened.

"Your dad," he says. “Where is he buried?”

"He was cremated. The Kellys and I scattered his ashes at Shell Cove. Not at the house, there was a spot down the cove from the house where he liked to walk."

"Do you ever visit the spot?"

"No. The last time I was there was the day we did it. I was too angry with him to want to visit."

"Do you want to go?"

I look at him, surprised by the sweet insightfulness of the suggestion.

I should have thought of that.

Shell Cove is currently synonymous with my mother in my mind, and I don’t want to see her.

But my father loved that beach more than she ever did.

She’s not stealing any more of my childhood from me than she already has.

"I do."

"I'll drive."

"Lily’s sleeping."

"We’ll put her in her car seat, she’ll conk right back out."

Lily is asleep again before we’re even at the stop sign at the end of my street.

Chase keeps the radio low and doesn't make me talk on the drive.

On the 101 a truck downshifts behind us and I jump.

My whole body jerks.

My hand finds the door handle, ready to jump, before I realize what I’m doing.

He sees. Reaches across without looking and puts his hand on my knee, squeezing reassuringly.

The truck passes.

He takes his hand back when I take mine off the handle.

Doesn't make a thing of it.

He parks at a turnout half a mile from the house.

There’s no need for me to tell him I don’t want to see my mother, or for her to catch sight of me.

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