“I can’t believe I let this happen,” he berated himself, pacing across the lobby while he waited on the okay to head to the recovery room.
“These things happen.” Matthew’s mother wrapped him in a hug again and plopped several big kisses on his cheeks. “Don’t you recall how many broken bones you and Robert had between the two of you? His mother and I knew the emergency staff by name.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“We were boys, and Carrie has already suffered so much.”
“Being boys makes it okay how?” his sister piped up. “Just because you and Robert were guys didn’t make it okay. You scared us all several times. Remember that time you...?”
While his family continued to go on and on about the past, about how accidents happened and how a parent couldn’t bubble-wrap their child, more and more unease took hold inside Natalie.
Matthew hadn’t wanted her touch, her comfort.
Of course he hadn’t. She was nothing more than a temporary lover.
As she recalled her thoughts when they’d been playing on the swings, her longings for their relationship to be real, nausea churned.
She was getting too involved in his life, in Carrie’s.
Seeing the child hurt had torn at her heart, had filled her with a protectiveness for the girl that surprised her. She’d have willingly taken Carrie’s place, taken the pain so she wouldn’t have to experience it.
Natalie wasn’t supposed to get attached, nor was she supposed to let the child get attached to her.
Carrie’s pleas for her to stay echoed through her mind, reminding her of her own silent cries over the years not to be left behind yet again by one foster parent after another.
Yet she’d always been left.
Just as she’d be left behind this time, too, if she didn’t make a preemptive move.
Matthew’s mother had her arm wrapped around him and was telling another childhood story. Part of Natalie would have liked to hear it—and all of her would have liked to know what it felt like to have a mother’s arm wrapped around her. It had been so long since she’d been held with love. None of her foster parents had really shown her love. The McCulloughs had been wonderful, encouraging, but they’d not been warm and fuzzy kind of people. Jonathan sure hadn’t loved her. Matthew’s touch gave a glimpse of what it could be like, but she didn’t want to fool herself. He didn’t love her.
She needed to get away, to escape childhood memories and personal demons, to go somewhere to decompress, to get her head on straight and put an end to this fiasco she was caught up in with Matthew.
It was time to leave.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“WHERE DID YOU GO? Do you have any idea how embarrassed I was when I came back from seeing Carrie, expecting you to be waiting, and my family said they hadn’t seen you since prior to my going to Recovery?” Matthew demanded, storming into Natalie’s office and closing the door behind him with a loud thud.
Looking up from her desk, Natalie cringed, but didn’t defend her actions. Then again, what could she say? She’d bailed when he’d needed her, when Carrie had been hurt.
How could she have just left without a word?
At first, he’d thought she’d slipped out to go to the restroom. When he’d finally gotten to see Carrie in Recovery and had reassured himself she was going to be okay despite his poor care, Natalie was nowhere to be found.
He waited for her to say something, pacing across her office, then turning toward her. “Why?”
She didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I didn’t belong.”
“I invited you. Of course you belonged. Probably more so than I did.”
Visibly rattled, she shook her head. “I was just a temporary lover, Matthew. Taking me to your family function was inappropriate.”
“A temporary lover?” He frowned. “We’re dating, Natalie.”
>