The Brightest Stars ✨

Chapter 10

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?"

He stared at her across the car's console, his face like a storm with the emotions in his eyes flickering like temperamental weather patterns. She could see him wrestling with it, what to tell her. The extent of it. If he should tell her at all. The struggle was plain as day.

"I'm afraid," he confessed. "I'm afraid that whatever I say will drive you away."

"Nothing you say would drive me away."

He gave her a sceptical look.

"Okay, that's with the usual caveats and I think you know what they are."

"Mm," was his only response.

"Why do you think I would take flight so easily?" she tried again.

"I just feel like we're at a crossroads and the universe is throwing everything at us to derail things and I'm trying as hard as I can to mitigate it all but there's only so much I can do." He bit his bottom lip waiting for her reply; the white of his teeth gnawing at the fleshy crimson.

They had just gotten home. Neither of them acknowledged their arrival, as they stayed seated in the car. Rain pelted down on the windows. Fogging everything up. With no engine running, no radio to drown out the long silence it was just them and the hard truth.

She thought for a while. She could see his point, they had endured a lot in such a short time. She felt like it had been six years, not a mere six months into their relationship.

They were at a tipping point, when it could all go right or it could go south depending on the circumstances. She felt guilt pool in her belly, she was contributing to those set of circumstances too. Tomorrow, she would talk with Ella and try to find a solution otherwise she would have to come clean about everything. She owed him not to be the hypocrite that she felt like.

"Hi."

"Hi?" He parroted, confused.

"I'd like to introduce myself." She undid her seatbelt, and shifted in her seat so she was sitting facing him with her legs crossed. She held her hand out and he stared at it like an alien limb.

"Nat, what?"

"Yes, I'm Nat. You know, the other party in this relationship."

"You dork," he laughed, a rich warm sound that echoed in the car, when he realised what she was doing and it was nice to see him relax and not look so worried about her reaction.

"I'm serious. I'm in this too. It's not up to you to carry it all. I have a voice too, and I want it to work just as much as you do."

"Okay," he said quietly. He took her hand, shaking it with a wry grin, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was doing. "Nice to meet you, Natalia."

She leaned over the console, pulling him into a hug, inhaling his scent and peppering small kisses into his stubbled jawline. "I love you."

"I love you more." There was a brief beat, where they looked at each other before simultaneously grimacing and pulling apart. "That was way too cheesy."

"I know," she groaned. "I almost vomited up my lunch. We're gonna have to do something gangster as fuck to redeem ourselves."

"Narcos marathon?"

"Yaas. But without your commentary, I don't need to know how you handled drug trafficking in the triple frontier of South America. Nobody watches Netflix for realism." They were out of the truck now and Gabe was opening the front door.