Tell Me You Crave Me (Search and Seduce #3)(47)
“She’s stronger than you think,” East said.
“Sure, but come on. She’s dating all these guys, no real winners, and suddenly she likes one of them? You know she didn’t think this through. Dating is one thing, but liking him is another.”
“So she can’t win?” East asked. “You and Lemon-Anne wanted her to find a date, she has, but now, even though you haven’t even met him yet, he’s not good enough?”
Matt leaned in, and his voice got low. “Bridget was talking with Michelle the other day. I guess Natalie isn’t as discreet as she thinks. Apparently this guy she’s been seeing has been kind of a secret, and she’s hung up on him. I guess he even hurt her feelings or something, and she tried to stay away but he wouldn’t let her.” Matt shook his head. “I don’t know. Bridget just told me about it. But this guy doesn’t sound good if he’s already f*cking with her head.”
A stab to the kidney would have felt better than what Matt had just said. But he wasn’t exactly wrong. At any point, East could have handled the situation with Natalie differently. Could have claimed her, or better, could have left her alone. Instead, he’d played with her. Fought with her. Fucked her. Worse, he’d f*cked with her mind.
He wanted to crawl into a hole.
He wasn’t just trash compared to Natalie, he was just plain trash in general.
“Hey, speaking of dating,” Matt said. “Bridesmaids are in town.”
East just chugged his beer. His buddy would never see him as more than a ladies’ man with no staying power. Hell, that’s probably all he was, judging from the shitty way he’d treated Natalie. She deserved better than that. She’d even said so before: he made her crazy.
Of course, Matt had no idea how close to home he was hitting. Granted, East had hit everything close to home when he’d pursued Natalie. He’d known from the beginning that he wasn’t good enough for her. Known he wasn’t on the same level as the St. Clairs. They’d done him a favor, taken him in, made him family. Even now, Matt was talking to him with total trust. And he’d turned around and just f*cked everything up.
It was time to stop.
Stop making shitty decisions. Stop running from reality. Because reality was, he was a player without a committed bone in his body. That’s what his own best friend saw, too.
“Something in the air,” he muttered to himself after finishing his beer.
“Well, I’m glad you feel that way because…” Matt trailed off and East followed his eyes. Bridget and three women walked in. The bridesmaids, he guessed.
“The tall blonde is Bridget’s sister Kelly, and we’ve told her all about you.”
Kelly’s eyes were fastened on him, and East knew exactly what was happening. He was being set up. He wanted to be angry with Matt, but the truth was he was almost grateful. He’d set out to keep his eye on Natalie and make sure she didn’t get hurt, and here he was, being the guy who’d end up hurting her more than anyone. He couldn’t keep f*cking with her when deep down he knew it could never be more. He didn’t even know how to love a woman like Natalie. He was trash. He might as well let Natalie see him for who he really was.
Chapter Fourteen
“I want you. And I don’t care who knows,” Natalie said out loud. She was finally speaking the truth about how she felt about East. “We’ve been together the past couple of weeks, and I’m not sorry. In fact, I want more. And I want everyone to know that you annoy me, but I love…” She trailed off and closed her eyes as she let the truth sink in. The truth she’d known all along. “I love you, East. You make me feel alive. Seen. And you drive me insane. But I’d rather be crazy with you than normal and boring without you.”
Natalie smiled and fluttered her eyes.
Now if only she could say that to East in person, instead of to the rearview mirror of her car as she sat in the parking lot of the hotel where Matt and Bridget were going to get married tomorrow.
“You can do this,” she said to her reflection. “Get your butt in there, and tell him how you feel, and tell Matt what’s been going on.”
Honestly, she was worried about her older brother finding out about her and East, but she cared too much about East to let that stand in their way any longer. It was time to come clean and face Matt, even if he got furious. And he likely would. But he’d understand. Eventually. East was a good man. The man she wanted. It would all be okay.
It had to be.
Natalie took a deep breath, got out of her car, and ran her hands over her pink dress. It was the fluffy one she’d worn when she’d danced with East. Was it only last week? It felt like a lifetime ago. She walked into the rehearsal hall feeling confident and ready to tackle the man and the situation that had been driving her crazy for the past couple of weeks.
She’d realized last night that it had been the good kind of crazy the whole time. The challenging kind.
Because East sees me.
She felt confident—for the first time in her life, honest-to-goodness confident. And tonight she was going to claim East as her date, and he was going to claim her back.
She didn’t need a job offer in Connecticut. She didn’t need to sell her recipes. She could stay and be happy with the man who made her happy. Anyone who didn’t like it, well, they could just shut their mouths. It wasn’t like they’d ever paid her any attention to begin with.