Cushioned inside the box was a simple gold band, topped with a single small, but quality, diamond. Holding it to the light of the lamp, I was mesmerized by its sparkle and pulled it from its cushion, sliding it over my ring finger before I even knew what I was doing.
Chapter Thirty
When I walked back into the room carrying the delivery menu for Crazy Dough, I’m sure I still wore the same contented smile that I’d seen in the fogged up bathroom mirror. It wasn’t even that it got better every time we were together; it got sweeter and softer, got deeper into my pores, like I’d never be able to pull her out. And because that’s where my brain was at, it was also why I didn’t notice the strange look on her face when I cleared the door.
She was just sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapped in my sheets, hair rumpled and cheeks still flushed. But it wasn’t the sated, almost tender look that I was used to seeing in her eyes. I was about to ask her what was wrong, when my mouth closed and I narrowed my eyes. It was guilt. She looked guilty as hell. And then her eyes flicked down to her left hand.
The light from the lamp on the bedside table hit the ring, that modest speck of diamond Grandma Coulton had given to me before she’d died. My heart stuttered to a stop, a cold flush covering my skin, and for a second I actually wondered if I was going to pass out.
“Where did you find that?” I croaked out. The icy flush of my skin fanned to heat, making me blink against the sudden swing in my temperature.
Adele fisted her left hand underneath her right and pressed them against the bunched-up sheet covering her breasts. I’d never seen her look so … terrified. She looked terrified.
“I’m so sorry, Nathan. I didn’t think … I didn’t—”
I held up a hand for her to stop, pinching my eyes shut for a few seconds while I tried to collect my thoughts. My gut reaction was to rip it off her finger, clench it in my hand and feel the cold metal against my skin. But I’d never told her a single significant thing about Diana. Not how she died, not the guilt I’d carried on my shoulders since the day she had. And I’d never told Adele that sometimes, even when I was wrapped around her, I was afraid that I’d never love anyone the way I loved Diana.
She stayed quiet, only the sound of her uneven breaths filling my ears.
“I’m not,” I wiped a hand over my mouth and let it stay there while I finally opened my eyes, “I’m not mad, Adele.”
I half meant it. Her ghost-white face helped ease my racing heart a little. She nodded and I walked over toward her, making sure my towel was tightly knotted around my hips.
“Why did you go looking through my stuff?”
Her nostrils flared, and she blinked rapidly, like she was fighting tears. “I don’t know, honestly. I was just happy, Nathan. I was so happy, what happened in the shower and ordering naked pizza in bed and … and we’ve never done that. And you were so happy to see me when I got here,” she paused, looking up at me with giant pleading eyes, and I could see the pulse hammering in her throat. “Weren’t you?”
“Happy?” I repeated, trying very hard not to sound snappish, since her nerves were obviously limiting her vocabulary.
“Yes. You seemed like it, at least. And it felt real, like I was coming home to you. Like we were real. And with what I did today, it just… I don’t know, all bubbled over, and I was cleaning up water and—”
My brain had caught mid-way through her rambling, tripping words. “What did you do today?”
“Oh.” She swallowed, shifting on the bed and hiking the sheets a little higher on her chest. “I did something for us. So we didn’t have to hide as much.”
Suddenly, I needed clothes for this conversation. I reached down to grab my fleece pants, hiking them up my legs, only dropping the towel when I was covered. “Adele, what are you talking about?”
The smile she tried to push across her face was shaky at best, but her eyes were so genuine and beseeching, asking me for something when I didn’t even know what the question was yet. “I changed my major.”
“What?” I yelled, ice prickling over my skin again. “You did what?”
“I changed my major,” she repeated, her voice stronger this time, her chin tilted up an inch.
“Why? You’re a damn good writer, Adele. Why the hell would you do that?”
Holding her head up like a queen, instead of a girl wearing a wrinkled sheet, she stood from the bed. “I changed it because of what happened today in your office. Because it will make our lives easier. So I don’t have to constantly worry about who’s looking at us and who suspects something. I changed it for you. And I changed it for me.”
I spun, hands gripping my hips, because I had a split second where I actually wanted to throw something across the room.
“Nathan, I can do anything else and still be satisfied. I’m smart, it’ll be easy for me to find something else. And now once this class is done, I’m not technically your student any more. I’ll be twenty two in three months, there’s nothing anyone can say about us.”
The walls pressed in on me, the pale grayish blue that always used to soothe me now felt like I was being swallowed by salt water, filling my lungs until I couldn’t breathe. That was the thing about guilt, it filled every part of you until you couldn’t get the oxygen that you needed to survive.
I felt guilt over Diana, how I’d not only ruined, but ended her life. And now Adele, making a unilateral decision about her future, which seemed so long and unending given how young she was, throwing away something that she was so talented at. Because of me. I think my skin started vibrating, because I clenched my stomach muscles tight to try and stop my shaking.
When she laid a hand on my shoulder, I erupted, whipping around and shoving it off of me.
“Why would you do this?” I bellowed at her face, and she shrank back. “Did we have a talk about our future that I missed?”
“Okay,” she said, staying remarkably calm considering I was ready to shatter my entire room, “I get that I surprised you. And I’m sorry that I put on Diana’s ring—”
“Don’t you dare,” I whispered. “Don’t you fucking dare say her name right now. My wife has nothing to do with this bullshit conversation we’re having right now.” Her face paled even more, but the black bile churning in my head wouldn’t slow, wouldn’t settle. My body wanted it out, like the words I aimed at her would somehow purge them from me forever. “You don’t just flippantly make those decisions, Adele. A grown-up would know that.”
“Fuck you,” she snapped. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And if you’d calm down for one second so I could explain, you’d know that.”
“Explain? Oh yes, please explain to me how any of this makes goddamn sense.”
“You know what? I’m going to go. You need to chill the fuck out before we talk about this again.” She moved over to where her clothes laid in a pile on the floor. For the first time since I’d met her, she hid her body from me. She kept her back turned while she slipped on her leggings, kept the sheet wrapped around her shoulder while she put her bra on.
“Ahh, so now you want to talk to me about things. I get it. You’re one of those girls.” Her body stilled, shoulders curved in while she’d been attempting the awkward task of pulling her shirt on while not exposing herself to me. “Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. And that makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? You come in here and think that getting me off, that screwing me before you tell me is somehow going to make it better that you made a huge fucking decision about a future that we have never talked about.”