Chapter 18

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Happy Bank Holiday Monday <3
NSFW things ahead.
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Natalia wasn't an impatient person by any means but she was on the edge today. Gabe's mother had been visiting for more than a week now, and she was always...around. She never left the house and she hogged all of Gabe's attention. Natalia got it, they had decades of catching up to do. Gabe was her only child and for all his pretending otherwise, Natalia could tell that Gabe had been a Mummy's boy growing up.

It had been such a welcome surprise for him, discovering that his mother had been against much of his father's parenting decisions, and that she had finally left him. Natalia couldn't begrudge him the opportunity to make amends with his mother. If Natalia could choose, she too would want a close relationship with her own mother. But it just wasn't possible for them. Plus she was glad their future children would have at least one grandparent in their life. It was a topic that had been giving her some anxiety as of late.

Natalia could admit that it was nice having someone make dinner for them every night, and for having interesting conversations with. She was enjoying getting to know the woman that raised Gabe, and putting the picture together of where the different parts of his personality came from. But also, what wouldn't she do for just a smidgen of privacy. A sliver. Just a crumb.

"What's up with you?" he asked in the car ride home. Natalia had sat down and crossed her arms as soon as she had gotten herself seated in the truck. She turned off the radio, and picked a song from her Spotify playlist.

"Okay. I see we're not doing words today? Did something happen at school, Nat?"

"Nope," she snapped, huffing and looking away. He had gotten a haircut. The long hair that used to fall over his collar was gone replaced by a much shorter tapered fade. It brought out his sculpted bone structure, the strong jaw, the glass sharp cheekbones and his dimples. He was just walking around looking entirely too delectable, and she couldn't do anything about it, because they got no privacy.

They didn't even talk much, most of their private conversations were either in the car on the way to and from work, or whenever they caught each other in the teacher's lounge.

"Okay, have it your way. Let me know when you're not in a pissy mood." His jaw flexed as he drove, looking straight ahead. Now she had pissed him off too. Why was she in such a self-sabotaging mood? Why was she pushing away the person she craved?

She sighed. "It's —"

His mobile phone rang, and he picked it up. "Hey, Mom. Yeah, we're on our way back from work. About another 20 minutes. Okay. See you soon."

Natalia seethed in silence. When they weren't home on her schedule, she called to check like they were kids, not grown adults. Even if she explained what was going on, he likely wouldn't understand, she barely understood what was going.

"Sorry, Baby, were you going to say something?" Gabe asked when he ended the call, glancing at her with concern.

"Nope. Nothing."

"Are you annoyed with me? Have I done something to make you mad?" He tried again.

Natalia looked at his earnest green eyes and started to feel a little bad about her behaviour. "It's just..." she trailed off. How could she possibly put this into words, without looking like a deranged, selfish bitch?

"It's you," she said.

"It's me?" he repeated back with a frown.

"Yeah, it's just this, everything..." she said vaguely and ran her hand from the back of his shorn head, to his muscular shoulders, his huge bicep and ending at his forearm.

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