“How the fuck did this happen?” Dad demands between Natalie and me.
Nate crosses his arms and drops his gaze as if bracing himself to hear Natalie’s confession a second time.
“It was me…I-I s-started this,” she sniffles.
“Natalie, don’t,” I object, but she ignores me by walking herself directly in front of the firing squad.
“I found years’ worth of personal emails between my father and Stella while searching our paper’s archives. I contacted Easton under false pretenses,” she twists her hands nervously in front of her, the sight of my ring on her finger bringing a surge of brief relief before I again attempt to stop her.
“Beauty, don’t,” I jerk my chin, knowing that she’s not going to let me take any of the brunt of this.
“It’s the truth,” Natalie says softly. “We owe—”
“What, son? You don’t think we deserve the fucking truth, especially now?” Dad scoffs as Nate shakes his head in clear contempt.
“It was me,” she confesses. “I found the emails, read them, and then used a tip-off from our paper’s gossip columnist, Rosie. She got word from a credible source that Easton may be releasing a debut album without so much as a press release, so I used it…” Natalie rushes out the rest of her confession as Nate’s head snaps to her, his arms going slack in disbelief. “…I used it to catfish Easton into a false interview.”
“You fucking what!?” Nate growls. “Jesus Christ, Natalie!”
“I know it was wrong,” Natalie utters as Dad’s expression zeroes and hardens on her.
“Dad,” I grit out, my patience running thin as he shifts his gaze to mine. “Don’t.”
“You know it was wrong?” Nate repeats, fisting his hands at his sides. “Is that the word you’re choosing?”
“She came clean to me in Seattle,” I speak up as Dad’s expression morphs into one of livid accusation.
“You flew to Seattle?” Nate prompts her, his tone bone-chilling.
Natalie’s face falls. “Daddy, I was—”
“You had no right! No goddamned right!” His snarl has Natalie flinching as I struggle not to go to her, knowing it will only escalate things. My only solace is knowing that no man in this room will lay a hand on her, but it’s doing fuck all now as she’s battered by condemning glares from both our fathers.
“I’m so sorry.” Face crumbling, she cups a hand over her mouth to muffle her cries, and all at once, I feel helpless, my dad’s behavior turning up the heat on my simmering anger.
“And then what?” Nate presses as Dad remains silent, seeming just as intent on more explanation.
Natalie’s neck splotches red as I fist my own hands to remain idle. “I was…I wanted to see if Easton knew—”
“She told you, Easton. You knew?”
“Yes,” I nod. “She did.”
“So, you knew she was off-limits and still fucking pursued a relationship with her?” Dad shakes his head, his question rhetorical, as Nate gapes at Natalie, equally as mortified.
“How long has this been going on?” Dad asks between us.
This time, I answer for us both. “Four months.”
Searching for the right words to explain the truth of us and how we came to be, I fail us both. What the hell can we say right now? We didn’t mean to hurt them?
Too cliché and more insult to injury as I grasp for anything I can think of to temper them both—because I knew this fight was coming. I just didn’t know it would be coming so ferociously. It’s when Dad eyes Natalie suspiciously that I start to boil over.
“Stop looking at her like that,” I explode at them both as Natalie continues to shudder with her cries. “Need I remind you both that you’re happily married?” Two sets of hostile eyes fix on me, and I’m thankful for it. I shoot Natalie a reassuring look as her chest heaves, and sob-induced hiccups escape her lips.
“Yeah, you’re a real fucking wealth of knowledge, it seems,” Nate quips dryly. “You could write the book.”
“My mom did write the fucking book, and you weren’t in it,” I snarl over his blatant insults.
“Only the version you know of.” To my surprise, that reply doesn’t come from Nate but from my own father, as my anger starts to best me.
“You know what? Both of you need to ease up, or we’re done here. We might owe you an explan—”