Dysphoria

Chapter Fourty

"It's okay, I don't mind waiting for you." He said watching her walk to the women's bathrooms. He sat back into his chair, moving the coffee cup from one hand, then back into the other.

Nate Jacobs was in love.

He didn't know how it happened, because he had actively avoided it for as long as he could remember. He didn't know why it happened, but he could just feel it.

For the first time in his life.

And it felt so fucking good.

Nate didn't like to fantasize too often. It made him feel too soft.

But after the last football game of the season and the fight with his Dad...he had started to fantasize about her more and more.

Although at the time he was filled with a murderous rage and he had scared his own father into another room, she flung herself on top of him to stop him thrashing and head butting the ground. She held onto him, on the floor and didn't let him go during his whole break down.

No one had ever done anything like that for him.

He was in such a rage, he was so filled with anger and pain he couldn't even remember what words he said. And he didn't like that feeling, of being so out of control. He felt insecure about it and never wanted her to see him like that again.

Maddy would have stood there watching him judgmentally, Cassie would have panicked and started to cry. His Dad ran away. His mother wasn't there.

Nia just held him, helped him. She pieced him back together.

He felt an immediate soul stirring emotion for her, he had never felt before. Impulsively he tried to kiss her. He knew he shouldn't have, he wasn't thinking properly in that moment. And even though she rejected him trying to kiss her in that moment, he dreamed of them being close like that again.

The Jacobs household had never been a happy place. Outwardly it was perfect of course, but inside it was cold, sterile. A web of secrets. It had never been a place that felt safe or loving. Nate realized being with Nia felt like being home. And he knew it was a little early to say but, he could see himself spending his life with her.

He was in love, his scars were starting to heal. It was like a black clouds opening up for the sunshine.

He would lie in bed at night and imagine her there again, asleep beside him. Or sometimes on top of him, begging to feel him inside of her. He wanted to know every inch of her body, where every freckle, line, scar was. He wanted to make her fall apart in his arms.

He knew he could never tell her but more than once, he had flipped Cassie over on the bed in front of him and closed his eyes. Imagined her hair, longer, dark, her hips fuller, her accent softer just so he could fool himself for the few seconds it would take him to climax.

He knew it was wrong, and Nia would expect better of him than using Cassie like that. But honestly, Cassie was a bad fucking person. She was selfish and weak, she wanted him to use her. He didn't even have to persuade her to fuck him at New Years. Her and Maddy went way back for years but that didn't matter. She knew it was wrong and a terrible betrayal but she fucked him anyway. She lied and told herself and everyone else she never would have said yes if him and Maddy were together but he knew that wasn't true, she would have jumped at the chance even then, he had just never offered it. She took off her panties in his truck like a whore and begged him with her eyes to do something about it. She didn't care that it was unforgivable.

He didn't even bother to kiss her first.

The memories of the New Years party left a bad taste in his mouth.