Cruel Legacy (Cruel 3)

I still thought there was a chance for us. I just…had to convince her of that.

Totle trotted out of the back bedroom with his head cocked to the side, as if to say, Where’d she go?

“Excellent question, buddy. I have to get her back.”

I pressed the elevator button and then dashed around my apartment, pulling on shoes, grabbing my jacket, and then realizing in horror that Natalie had left my house in nothing but a T-shirt. I grabbed a second jacket just as the elevator doors opened.

My foot tapped impatiently on the short ride to the bottom floor. She might have taken a cab and then had no need for the jacket. But knowing Natalie, her anger would have fueled her straight into Central Park. Especially since her apartment was nearly directly across the park from mine. And without another book contract, she probably wouldn’t want to spend the money.

I jogged across Fifth Avenue and into the park, taking the direct route. My eyes scanned the park, looking for the only person insane enough to be out in a T-shirt this time of year.

I knew that she wouldn’t have let me say anything else when she was that upset. But that didn’t mean I was comfortable with her going out in the cold like this. Let alone going back to her apartment when there was a chance that Lewis could be watching the surveillance footage. There was no fucking way I was letting him near her ever again. No fucking way.

She might be pissed at me for telling her no, but I’d put her safety first. We could figure out the rest.

A breath of relief escaped me, puffing a cloud of white in front of my face, as I saw Natalie’s shivering form stumbling across the park.

“Natalie!” I called out to her.

She turned around with a look of surprise on her beautiful face. Her lips were already leaning more toward blue than pink, and she ran her hands up and down her arms. But a small smile touched her features as I approached her.

I held the jacket up and swung it around her shoulders.

“Hey,” she muttered.

“You ran out too fast,” I said softly. “I couldn’t let you walk outside in just a T-shirt.”

“Thanks. I can’t feel my fingers now,” she said, stuffing her hands into the oversize pockets of my jacket. “And…I shouldn’t have stormed out.”

I shot her a lopsided grin, flashing my dimples. It was good to hear her admit that. The cold must have knocked some of the oomph out of her fire.

“I’m glad that I caught up to you. At first, I didn’t know if you’d grabbed a cab.”

“Nah. Didn’t even think about it until I started to freeze.” Her eyes dropped to the ground and then came back to mine. “I should have controlled my temper. I took my problems out on you when you aren’t even the crux of them.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” I told her.

She just nodded, as if accepting that we were past her anger. “I’m guessing the dash out here didn’t change your mind?”

I shook my head once. We were going to figure out what the best way was to be in each other’s lives. But I couldn’t see how helping her learn the games us Upper East Siders had been playing since birth would be the right answer.

“No, but I don’t want you to go to your apartment alone. Even if Amy is there, it doesn’t feel safe to me. Especially since you just told me what Lewis did. I wouldn’t put it past him to do something worse.”

“Great,” she grumbled as we fell into step toward her apartment.

I thought she might tell me not to come with her if I didn’t agree with her, but the thought that Lewis might do something else must have been enough incentive to let me tag along. I’d be happy when she was finally out of that fucking apartment. Natalie might not want me to say anything to Lewis, but he had it coming.

“I wish you’d told me what he’d done.”

She shrugged helplessly. “I was overwhelmed. I could barely tell Amy the truth, and she’s my best friend. I thought, if I didn’t talk about it, then maybe the end of my career wasn’t real.”

“It’s not the end of your career,” I assured her.

She gave me a disbelieving look. “You should have heard my agent.”

“It’ll blow over.”

“No, it won’t. It would blow over for someone with the wealth, status, and family connections to control what happened to them and make this sort of thing go away. It won’t blow over for a nobody who they deem a jilted ex, fraud, and whore.”

I had a million fucking things to say to that. But the crumpled look on her face said that those opinions wouldn’t be welcome right now. She didn’t need someone to tell her she was wrong and that everything would be all right when it felt like the sky was falling.