All of Me (22 page)

Stella stepped
closer and Nathan backed up.  “What’s going on, Nathan?  Is something wrong? 
You seem…upset.  Did something happen?”

“No.  It was a
long shift before and then all this shit happened.”  He put his hands on his
hips – like he always did when he needed to regain control.  “I need a good
night’s sleep.” 

“Gotcha.  Well,
call me tomorrow.  If you want.  If you feel up to it.”  At his nod, Stella
walked away. 

She was dying to
look over his shoulder to see if he was still watching her, but didn’t.

Chapter
Seventeen

Stella pulled her
legs up Indian style on her couch and cradled her wine glass.  “So, that’s the
long and short of it.  Are you shocked?”
   “A little, to be honest.”  Kat shifted in the armchair to position her leg a
bit better.  She grabbed her glass off the end table and took a long sip.  Kat
swirled the Riesling around and around thoughtfully.  “Not that you met someone
and or even that you caved so quickly.  Just that it got so serious so fast.”

“Wait, wait, wait…caved? 
What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“For the past
twelve months, all we’ve heard is how you’re not going to date anyone for a
really long time – if ever.  That you would need years to get to know someone
well enough to trust him not to treat you the way Ryan did.  Not that any of us
blamed you.  In fact, we all agreed.  We never want to see you hurt like that
again.  I actually think it hurt the seven of us more than it hurt you.”

Stella didn’t
doubt it.  Sometimes the person going through the trauma at least has some
shock and numbness carrying them through.  Their loved ones feel the pain
without those benefits.  And she was lucky enough to have a brother and
sister-in-law who loved her like she was blood.

“And then you meet
this guy and what?  A few weeks later you’ve already fallen in love?”

“And had sex a
bunch of times,” Stella added glumly.  “Kat, what was I thinking?  It’s like
all judgment flew right out of my brain.  Again.”

“Thorough analysis
and thoughtful decision making are not your strong suits, darling.  We all know
it and love you for it, but, Stella, that’s how you get hurt.”

“Yeah, I know.” 
Stella thought of the cold, detached way Nathan had spoken to her at the
hospital a few hours ago and wanted to barf.  “I think he’s grossed out, Kat. 
Honestly.  What other explanation could there be?  Either that or I got too
clingy asking to see him again tonight.”

“That’s your
insecurity talking.  Because, as crazy as I think you were to get involved so
quickly, I think you must be misinterpreting Nathan’s behavior.  I’ve met him. 
Twice.  Briefly, yes, but enough to determine he’s no super smooth Casanova. 
In fact, he seemed the opposite.  I don’t see him saying all that incredible
stuff and then blowing you off.  Quiet, serious guys like that don’t usually
play mind games or spend time with people they don’t like.”  Kat smiled wryly. 
“And I should know.  I spent time with men like that all through college and
still spend time with them every day at work.  They are way too socially inept
to screw with your head.”

“Maybe he’s
playing me.  I mean, he’s gorgeous and his body…”  Stella nearly broke out into
a sweat just thinking about Nathan’s muscles and ink.  “It’s sick, Kat.  He’s
smart, he’s sweet…for God’s sake, the guy was an Army Ranger and now he’s a
police officer.  I’m pretty sure he’s had more women than he can remember.  How
could a guy like that be socially inept?  A guy that good-looking with all that
stuff going for him?  I don’t know…maybe he did play me.”

“Think about what you
know about him, Stella.  He grew up in foster homes.  Dad and Gigi think they
remember him as a poor, hungry, messed up kid from the old neighborhood.  It is
much more likely that his behavior is stemming from his own psychological
issues than anything related to you,” Kat said.  “It sounds like he’s been
nothing but respectful and honest with you.  I think you should give him the
benefit of the doubt.

“Jesus, Kat, could
you stop being so damned logical,” Stella said with an eye roll.  “It’s taking
all the fun out of assuming the worst and bashing him.”

Car headlights
pull into the driveway.

“That’ll be Fi.” 
Kat grabbed her cane and pushed herself to her feet. 

“Thank you for
letting me pick you up.  And listening to me ramble on and on.”  Stella grabbed
Fi’s windbreaker off the kitchen chair and handed it to her.  “I know you have
to get up early tomorrow.”

“Eh, it worked out
with Fi studying late at her friend’s.  And now that Christopher and Stellan
are inseparable, my social life has really dropped off.”  Kat pulled on her
jacket.  “I never realized how much my extracurricular activities revolved
around Stellan until I lost him this past week.  I’ll be attending a lot fewer
museums and watching lot more
Matlock
movies with Pops.”

Both women
shuddered. 

“Well, you can
always come hang with me,” Stella said.  The doorbell rang and she walked to
open it for Fi. “Because I’m not sure I’ll be seeing much more of Nathan.”

Stella swung open
her door.

“Haven’t we had
this conversation already, Stella?  And this time, it’s after midnight.” 
Nathan was standing on her porch, in a tee shirt and mesh shorts, in the rain. 
And he didn’t look happy. 

But Stella was
ecstatic
.

“Nice to see you
again, Officer Drazek,” Fi said from behind Nathan.  He turned around to find
her grinning up at him from beneath her fuchsia umbrella.

Fi looked around
him.  “Let’s go, Kat.”  She quirked her brow at Stella.  “Four’s a crowd, eh,
Stell?”

“I didn’t realize
Stella had company,” Nathan said, almost bumping into Fi as he backed up. 
“I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Oh, no you
don’t,” Fi said with a laugh.  She pushed Nathan toward the door and then moved
to get Kat under the umbrella.  “Have fun you two.”

Stella grabbed
Nathan’s forearm and pulled him inside.  “You’re getting soaked.  Come on in.” 

Nathan stepped
into her foyer and shut the door behind him.  He looked down at himself. 
“Ugh.  I’m getting your floor all wet.  Do you have a towel, Stella?”

Stella waved it
off.  “I don’t care.  Come in and sit down and we can worry about my water
logged floor later.”

When Nathan
hesitated, Stella laughed.  “Can’t do it, huh?  Chafes your OCDness?” 

Stella grabbed a
towel off her bathroom counter and tossed it to Nathan.  After he’d properly
mopped up his mess and folded the (wet and dirty) towel up, he set it to side
and finally stepped in. 

“Feel better
now?”  Stella laughed again when Nathan nodded.  “Good.  Now will you come sit
down?”

Nathan sat in the
same arm chair he’d sat in last time and Stella curled back up on the couch.  A
huge crack of lightning was followed by a loud rumble of thunder. 

“Some weather,”
Nathan said, brushing the rain drops from his hair. 

 “I love
thunderstorms.  My parents’ house has this great screened in porch and, growing
up, I always sat out there during storms.”  Stella smiled at the memory. “It
drove my mom nuts – she was really afraid of storms.  Something about a house
in the Old Country getting by lightning and burned down, yada, yada,
yada.”     

“Are your parents
still alive?” 

Had Stella not known
about Nathan’s connection to C’s, she would have thought nothing of his
question.  But, knowing what she did, she knew he must be genuinely curious
what happened to them.

“My mom died of
breast cancer about ten years ago.”

“God, Stella…I’m
sorry.  And your dad?”

“Dad’s still alive
and kicking.  He lost it a little after my mom died…”  Stella fidgeted with the
string on her sweat pants.  “He tried to kill himself, actually.”

Nathan brows rose.

“Yeah.  They
called it a ‘suidical gesture’ because he tried overdosing on his blood
pressure medication instead of blowing his brains out, but we all know he was
serious,” Stella said.  “He spent a while in the hospital and we’ve all taken
turns watching him ever since.  He got a lot better when my sisters had their
kids.  They were new reasons to soldier on, you know?”

Nathan nodded.

“What about your
parents?  Your family?”  Stella hesitated when Nathan’s expression darkened. 
“You mentioned having siblings before…on that walk…”

Nathan went into
full statue mode and Stella knew she was in for the fight of her life. 

Stella stood. 
“Want a bottled water?”

He said, “Fine,”
because he knew better than to argue.

Stella grabbed him
one out of the fridge and handed it to him.  “Wait…why are
both
of your
hands bandaged up?”

“I, uh, scraped
the other one up in the scuffle too,” Nathan lied.  “So I’ve got a little
Neosporin on it.”

Well, at least the
Neosporin wasn’t a lie.  He’d actually ripped up his palm weight lifting again,
but that was just another fucked-up thing he wouldn’t be sharing with Stella
any time soon.

“Here.  Let me
look at it…” 

“No.  It’s fine. 
I’ve got it wrapped up good.  Thanks anyway.”  Nathan cleared his throat as
Stella sat down.  “I’m sorry to come over so late, but something occurred to me
on my drive home and I wanted to talk to you about it right away.  In person.” 

“Okay.  Shoot.”

A flush crept up
his neck.  “I was thinking about our…encounters.  And how I didn’t use
protection.”  Stella’s expression hardened subtly.  “I, uh, wanted to make sure
you were using something.  Regularly.  Or not.” 

He’d never been so
careless in his life.  In fact, even when he’d known a woman he was sleeping
with was taking birth control, he still used a condom.  But he’d had sex with
Stella a bunch of times and hadn’t used anything.  The thought that he might
have…

Don’t even
think
it.

“I thought of that
afterwards too, but not because of pregnancy.  I was thinking more about STDs,”
she said, her voice flat.  As if accusing him of having a STD and knowingly
giving it to her was no big deal.

“I would never
have unprotected sex with you – or anyone - if I had an STD.”  Nathan shook his
head. “Jesus Christ, Stella, what kind of person do you think I am?”

“I guess the kind
that would have unprotected sex with me – and who knows who else – knowing you
might get someone pregnant!” 

“For your
information, you are the only woman I have ever had unprotected sex with.  I
don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such a low opinion, but I can assure you I
am not an irresponsible person.”  He paused. “Usually.”

Stella had the
decency to look the slightest bit abashed.  “I’m sorry.  That was another
jealous lash-out and you didn’t deserve it.  I apologize.”  She exhaled a
shuddering breath and fidgeted with the hem of her pants.  “But it doesn’t
matter anyway.  I can’t get pregnant.”

“Why not?”

“The chemo.  The
radiation.  The cancer drugs I had to take.”  Stella shrugged.  “It was a
difficult decision, but, at the end of the day, if I had died from the cancer,
I wouldn’t have been able to have kids anyway.  So I did what I had to do.”

Nathan’s insides
knotted up and he felt like someone was roundhouse kicking him in the face.

“My mastectomy was
actually a harder decision, believe it or not.”  Stella exhaled a hard laugh. 
“You’d be surprised how attached you get to something you’ve had since you were
11 years old.”
   Nathan sat there – like an asshole – not saying anything because he had no
idea how to express anything he was thinking or feeling.  As usual. 

Stella smiled
tightly.  “But you didn’t come to get my medical history, did you?  You were
concerned you’d knocked me up.  And now you know that’s not possible, no
worries.  So…I guess you can get back to whatever you had going on tonight.”

“I didn’t have
anything going on tonight.”

Except
obsessively thinking about you, worrying about you, and sporting a painful
erection since you hugged me six hours ago
.

“Then why didn’t
you want to come over?”  Stella asked quietly.  “Was I smothering you?  Or
maybe you’ve decided you don’t want to do this after all?  Because if that’s
what’s going on here, you need to tell me, Nathan.  It will only hurt me worse
if you drag it out.”

Wow…that’s not
where he thought her head had been.  He was embarrassed to feel sort of…
good
. 
That she seemed to care for him so much.

“I haven’t decided
anything like that, Stella.  I-“ 

Nathan tried.  He
tried really hard.  To say something that would make her feel good.  Something
that would explain his awkward behavior. 

But he couldn’t,
so instead he said, “I get worked up when I work domestic calls.  I needed a
little time and space to cool off.  That’s it, Stella.  I swear.”

She exhaled a
relieved breath.  “I understand.  Thank you for telling me.  I know I have the
tendency to get a little smothering.  Feel free to tell me to back off in the
future,” she said with a half-smile.

Nathan nodded and
they slipped into silence again. 

“Nathan?”

“Hmmm?”

“Speaking of
smothering, I hate to push you, but I feel like we can’t move forward until I
figure some stuff out.”

Uh-oh.

 “And maybe right
now isn’t the best time to get into it, but can we agree to talk about it
later?  But not too much later?”

Nathan squirmed a
little in the chair before finding settling on the forearms-braced-on-the-knees
pose.  “What exactly do you need to figure out?”

Stella twirled the
drawstring on her sweat pants around and around her ring finger.  “Well, your
scars, for one thing.  The whole foster home thing for another.”  She
hesitated.  “And I know about you living in the old neighborhood.  I swear I
didn’t know when we met.  I was way too young when that all happened. But when
I mentioned your name, my oldest sister Gigi and my dad remembered.”