The Cheat Sheet: A Novel

I talk Nathan into letting me drive him home in his truck, and he arranges for someone from his entourage to go get my car and drive it back for me tonight. Hello, celebrity perks. We leave almost immediately even though Nathan is severely worried this is going to upset everyone.

“Let me take care of you,” I say, looking up into his hesitant eyes. “Please?”

He relents and hands me his keys. “Thank you.”

I get a kiss on the cheek, but I sort of want to do the move where you turn your face really quick and get a kiss on the mouth instead. Not the time.

On the drive home, we’re both physically and emotionally exhausted. Nathan turns on some mellow music, takes my hand, and laces our fingers. He kisses my knuckles with an aching tenderness that tears right through me. We drive for two hours, not saying a word, just listening to the music in comfortable silence.

“Will you stay at my place tonight?” he asks, finally breaking the silence as I pull into the parking garage of his building.

I’ve stayed at his apartment a hundred times, so that question shouldn’t feel heavy or important. But it is, because I’ve never been asked it while he holds my hand and the words “I love you” hang between us. It feels easy to say yes though. Natural.

When we finally walk into his apartment, he tosses his keys on the entry table. I toe off my shoes and go into the kitchen to get us both a glass of water. It’s all so normal, but also lightly scented with different. Neither of us speak, because we’re not sure what words would be adequate enough to follow the emotional roller coaster we just rode together. So we carry our waters down the long hallway that leads to our rooms. I get ready to part from him and go into mine for the night like I always do, but he catches my hand, tugging me back around. A bit of water sloshes onto the floor.

“Stay with me?” He says those three words not as a demand, but as a defenseless question. A need. A desperate hope. Tonight has peeled back everything I thought I knew about Nathan, and now I see a man who’s just as scared as me. I love him more.

I nod and step into his expansive room. Nathan gently closes the door behind us, and my heart gallops when I hear it quietly latch. The floor-to-ceiling window is ten steps away, and I take each of them with a measured calm then look out over the most incredible view of the ocean, nothing obstructing the dark expanse of water and white crests of the waves breaking against the sand. It looks peaceful yet dangerous out there. That’s exactly how it feels in here too.

“Bree?” Nathan asks from behind me, and I whirl around like a tornado that’s suddenly directionless.

“I’m nervous,” I blurt.

Nathan’s eyebrows rise, and then he lets out a long breath and a tiny smile. “Same.”

“Really? Okay, good. Because logically, I know it’s me and you.” I sputter a humorless laugh. “It’s a dream come true, in fact! I shouldn’t be nervous—I should be tackling you.”

“It’s harder to accomplish than you think,” he says, cracking a joke that instantly eases the prickling in my lungs.

“But what I’m nervous about—or afraid of, really, is that I said I love you back there and you said it too only to humor me.” I have big cartoon eyes now—I can feel it.

Nathan smiles in a way that shows barely contained amusement. “Humor you?” He takes a nervous step away and runs an awkward hand through his hair. “You thought I could have been humoring you by telling you I love you?”

“Yes. You don’t have to keep repeating it.”

“I do. Because if you were in my head, you’d see how difficult the concept is to comprehend. Bree, I…” His voice trails off and then he freezes. He deflates with a sharp breath. “Sit down,” he commands, and then he disappears into his giant walk-in closet.

I perch on the bed and bounce my knee. Then I realize I’m sitting on Nathan’s bed—something I’ve never done before—and I jump up like it just burned my butt cheeks. I force myself to sit back down and process this like an adult. I’m in Nathan’s bed. In his room. He loves me. Nope, see? None of these abstract ideas will permeate. I’ve spent too long believing he has not a care in the world for me outside of friendship. It’s all I’ve known. How am I supposed to retrain my thoughts?

Nathan steps back into the room, and if he notices that I’m barely letting my cheeks rest on his mattress, he doesn’t show it. His attention is fixed on the shoe box in his hands. He looks nervous, maybe even a little sick as he extends it toward me. When I try to take it, it doesn’t budge. He’s white-knuckling this thing so hard.

I grunt. “Nathan, do you want me to look in here or not?”

“Not,” he says, dead serious. “I mean, yes. But no.”

I shift back a little. “Well now I’m terrified. What do you have in here? Bones? Endless pictures of earlobes? Am I going to be scared of you after I lift that lid?”

“Probably.” He winces lightly and then relinquishes the box.

I set it down on the bed carefully (because who knows what’s in here or how fragile thousand-year-old bones are) and gingerly lift the lid. I steel my spine for something to jump out, because he’s prepared me zero percent for what’s actually in here. Lizards? Maybe he keeps a box of moths in his closet and when I open it, they’ll rush out and choke my airway.

It’s neither.

After the lid is off, it takes me a second to realize what I’m looking at. Nathan paces away from me with a tight hand on the back of his neck. I dip my fingers inside and pull out…my scrunchie. The sunshine yellow scrunchie I thought I lost after Tequila-gate several weeks ago. I look up and make eye contact with Nathan. He looks like he’s going to barf. His fist is pressed to his mouth, and his eyes are crinkled. Poor thing is really going through the vulnerability wringer tonight.

“This is my scrunchie,” I say, holding it up for his confirmation that what I think I’m seeing is actually true.

He gives me a tight nod. “You took it off and left it on the table that night. I kept it.” He gestures toward the box with his eyes. “Keep going.”

Nathan resumes pacing, looking at me every so often like someone might watch a surgical operation they have been forced to attend. Next, I find a cocktail napkin with my lipstick imprint from the epic poster-ripping night. Then the orange Starburst I threw at him on the couch.

The deeper I go into the box, the more I recognize things I haven’t seen in years. A concert ticket from a Bruno Mars show he took me to for my birthday (and got us backstage passes to, which he pretended to randomly find on the sidewalk because I never allow him to buy me extravagant things). Toward the bottom, I find a gum wrapper with my phone number scribbled on it from high school. I remember this day like it was yesterday. We had run together for the first time that morning before classes. That afternoon in homeroom, he asked me if I’d want to run together again sometime. Of course I said yes, and we exchanged numbers. I didn’t save the slip of paper he gave me with his number, though, and now I feel like a horribly unromantic monster!

Once I’ve gone through every single item in this box and spread it all out on the bed around me, I meet his gaze. He finally comes near me and plucks the scrunchie I’m clutching like it’s a million-dollar bill out of my hands. “This smelled exactly like your hair. Coconut. I should have given it back to you, but I couldn’t.” He tosses it in the box. I’m never getting that scrunchie back. Next, he grabs my hands to tug me up to stand with him. “Do you see now? You’re always giving me things that remind you of me, but I’m over here stealing things that remind me of you. I’m not humoring you, Bree. I’m not taking this lightly. I’m so devastatingly in love with you, it hurts sometimes—and I have been since high school.”

Hope, hope, hope. I hear it beating in my ears.

“I’ve been dying for you to love me back—but I never thought you would. Remember when you found out I’m celibate and I told you it was to help my game? That was a complete lie. I’ve been celibate because I am so gone for you I couldn’t even stomach the thought of another woman anywhere near my bed. She would never be you.” He cradles my face. “I love you with everything I am, and that’s never going to change for me. I think I should be the one making sure you’re not just humoring me.”

I can’t take the space between us anymore. I rise up on my toes to lay one soft kiss on his lips, feeling like this has to be a dream and I can do anything I want in my dreams. “I’ve loved you since the day you tied my shoe on the track. You didn’t tell me it was untied, you just tied it.”

The muscles in his jaw jump like he’s swallowing back tears. “Bree, that was the first day we met.” His tone says, Don’t toy with me, woman.

“I know. That’s the day it all started for me.”

His massive shoulders rise and fall in one huge breath, and then his eyes shut like he’s in pain. “Do you mean to tell me…we’ve both loved each other all this time and never said anything?”

I laugh even though it’s not funny at all. I run a finger over one of his eyebrows. “Yes. I think so.”

“But what about college? You completely pushed me away then. I thought I did something wrong.”

Oh. That.

I smooth a hand down the front of his shirt, suddenly very concerned about wrinkles. I guess while we’re emptying our emotional tanks, I might as well go ahead and squeeze a little more out. “I’m so sorry, Nathan. I pushed you away because I was terrified. I could see the way you were thinking of turning down your UT scholarship to stay home with me, and although I never told you, I was really depressed after the car accident. I was afraid you were about to completely give up your dreams for me, and after hanging around me in my mopey, angry, defeated state, you’d realize I wasn’t worth your time anymore and resent me. I was scared you’d see me low and heartbroken and not want me like that. So I pushed you away. I’m sorry, Nathan. I Old-Yellered you.”

His hand tenderly cradles my face. “I never would have felt that way. I’ve always just wanted to be the one to take care of you.”

“I know that now. But back then, depression told its own story, and it was hard to hear the truth through it.”

He dips his head and sighs against my throat. “Well, hear me now: I adore you, Bree. When you’re happy or sad, I love you.” Nathan lays a slow, open-mouthed kiss on my neck and climbs up to my mouth.

Heat swirls in my belly, and my head tips back to receive his lips. Softly, they sweep over mine. He gently tastes the corner of my mouth, and I part my lips to reciprocate. I am a puddle. So melted he has to hold me up. Kisses by themselves are nice; kisses after a declaration of love are life-changing.

I’m lifted off the floor and tossed playfully onto his bed. A laugh rips through me until Nathan grabs the back of his shirt and tugs it over his head. His eyes are as dark as the sky at his back. I swallow thickly as he moves to hover over me. His weight. GAH. Golden taut skin. OOF. That ripped abdomen I finally get to dance my fingers across. MMM.

Nathan smiles down at me as I explore every inch of his exposed skin. I rise up and kiss one pec. Then the other. I lightly bite his bicep, and he laughs. “So that’s how it’s going to be?”

I innocently bat my lashes at him, and he dips his head to crush his mouth against mine. This one is not soft or tender. It’s years and years and years of waiting. It’s a desperate breath at the surface of the water when you’re rescued from drowning. I cling to him for dear life. He kisses me deeply, thoroughly, lavishly. His hand slides under the back of my shirt, and that calloused skin scrapes delicious fire over mine. I feel branded.

Nathan is everywhere. And I am full of need. I have fallen for this man so completely, and now we’re finally here together, twisting in his sheets, kissing like it might be ripped away from us at any moment. Kissing like we love each other. He whispers soft declarations over my skin that I won’t repeat. They are for me and me alone.

Suddenly, Nathan pulls away, a drugged look in his eyes when he smooths the hairs away from my face. Breathless, he lets out a guttural groan, coming to some sort of unvoiced conclusion in his head. He adjusts onto his elbow beside me. “Bree, I want everything with you right now more than anything, but…dammit. I can’t believe I’m going to say this. I think we should wait.”

Shocked doesn’t begin to describe how I feel hearing those words, especially since he’s been celibate for so long. But I won’t lie, part of me is sort of grateful. I’m a girl who likes to be prepared for these kinds of things, mentally and physically, and tonight was so unexpected; I know I’m not in the right headspace for it yet. I need a little digesting time.

But then Nathan shocks me in a less-than-pleasant way when he continues, “Actually, I…I sort of want to wait until we’re married.”

WHAT!? My brain screeches to a halt. Did he say married?! Did he propose at some point tonight and I missed it?

My eyes must convey my thoughts because Nathan’s smile widens and he trails his finger down my neck to dance lightly over my collarbone. Conflicting body language there, buddy. “Don’t worry, I’m not proposing yet. But I know you don’t like to be surprised by stuff, so this is me saying I will propose to you at some point. And I’m hoping you’re okay with that time being pretty soon, because I feel like we’ve already been dating for six years, just not officially.”

He’s right, and I tell him so. I’ve never known another human more intimately than I know Nathan, and best friends like us don’t casually date. It was an unspoken agreement that by declaring our feelings, we were saying, I’m all in. You’re it for me.

“I agree,” I say in between his teasing kisses and light nips at my bottom lip. “But why wait until we’re married? That seems so…”

“Old fashioned?” he asks, his fingers feathering down my arm to trace my bare ring finger. He presses a firm kiss against my temple. “I know. I won’t lie, that’s part of the appeal. If I’ve learned anything over the past few weeks, it’s that I’ve never really had to pursue romance before. You know? Savor the little touches”—his knuckles brush against my belly, and it tightens—“instead of just going for it right away.”

A jealous little troll rises up inside me that he’s gone for it right away with so many women before, but I tell it to get lost. Because I’m the one who’s with him now, and hopefully forever.

He gazes into my eyes with a longing smile. “I just want to do things differently with you, Bree.”

I breathe in his scent and let my heart steep in it. “Okay. We’ll wait.” I grin up at him and poke him in the cheek. “You’re such a big softie.”

“With you, yes.”

He kisses me again, this time softly, sweetly, gratefully. He rises up onto one muscled arm to lean over me and turn off the light. That powerful image of muscles and tendons and masculine flesh is the last one I’ll see tonight, and it does nothing to cool me off.

Nathan drops down beside me and pulls me onto his chest. I kiss it. “Just don’t spread it around that I’m a marshmallow,” he says in a teasing tone. “It’ll kill my image.”

“Which image? The one of you secretly sneaking hundred-dollar bills into my widowed neighbor’s mailbox? Or you buying an entire building so little ballerinas can continue to afford their training?”

He kisses the top of my head, and I don’t miss the moment he breathes in the scent of my hair. We’re home in each other’s arms. I nuzzle into his strong chest like a little cat. It is a done deal. I’d marry him in five minutes if that were an option.

“It’s all for you, Bree.”