Chapter Eighteen

Justin stacked the empty plates and pushed them to one side. Despite her protests that she couldn’t stomach a thing, she’d done a surprisingly good job polishing the pancakes off. “Must’ve been hungrier than I thought,” she had sheepishly admitted.

It was almost lunchtime but he’d cooked her breakfast anyway, and they’d sat out in the garden, taking advantage of the sunshine.

Justin crossed his arms, leaning forward on the wooden table in front of him. “Okay, talk,” he instructed the girl opposite him.

Natalia sighed, leaning back in her chair. “What do you want to know, Justin?”

Everything, he wanted to tell her. “For starters, why didn’t you tell me about your mom?”

“Does it matter?”

“That she’s in a wheelchair?” He shook his head. “No, it doesn’t matter to me, but you seem to have some problems with it.”

She looked at him with fire in her eyes. “Don’t tell me how I feel about my own mother.”

Not a good move Timberlake. He sighed. “I’m not trying to scrutinise your relationship with your mom, Nat, it’s obvious you love her a lot. It’s just…all you’re taking on, it’s too much.”

“I can handle it.”

“It’s too much for anyone, Nat, not just you.”

“I don’t have a choice, Justin.”

“What happened?” he asked gently.

She averted her gaze. He reached out and grabbed her hand. “Look at me.”

She breathed in deeply. He was getting to her. Eventually she did as he asked. His eyes pleaded with her to tell him, and she knew she had to. This man, who she had only known such a short time, had got to her, he was slowly getting inside her and she was powerless to stop him. “Justin please.”

“No, I’m asking you to please let me in.”

“I can’t.”

“Why? Do I mean that little to you?” Getting an attitude with her was probably not the best way to go about it but he was frustrated.

She looked up at him, hurt in her eyes, her jaw set. “Car accident, 4 years ago,” she finally said, bereft of any emotion.

There was more to this and he knew it. “Anything else you want to add?”

She sighed. “My father was driving,” she said, staring out at the pool.

She’d never mentioned her father to him before. Justin cleared his throat. “Was he…”

She looked at him coldly. “He’s not around.”

“I’m sor-”

“He’s not dead Justin,” she said bitterly, “He’s just not around.”

He took a deep breath, he’d hit the nail on the head it seemed. “You wanna talk about it?” he asked sincerely.

“Talk about how my so-called father ran out on his wife and two children? Talk about how he left us with nothing? Talk about how he plunged us into debt up to our eyeballs?” She shook her head. “No thanks, Justin, I’d rather forget “daddy” ever existed.” With that she pushed away from the table and stormed into the house.

“Natalia,” Justin called.

She didn’t stop.

He gave her five minutes to cool off before he followed her into the house. He found her in the living, her knees drawn up to her chest. In her hand she held a photo frame. It was split into two, a photo on each side.

He cautiously approached her, sitting sideways next to her to study her face. “You okay?”

She shrugged, not taking her eyes off the photographs of Justin with his mom and stepfather, and with his dad, stepmother and brothers. They were picture perfect.

“You know my parents aren’t together anymore either.”

“You have two perfect families.”

He shook his head. “We’re not perfect, Nat.”

“Would your father have run out on your mom six months after she nearly died? Would he have left you to care for your mom when she could barely get around in a wheelchair?”

He said nothing, his head hung low.

“No, I didn’t think so, because your father loves you, my father proved he never cared about me at all.” She clenched her jaw and squeezed her eyes shut, trying her best to keep the tears at bay.

He took the frame from her and placed it on the coffee table. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and drew her head down to rest on his shoulder.

“He’d been drinking; they were on their way home from a party when it happened. The police totally fucked up and didn’t give him a breathalyser. He should be in prison right now, but he’s not, he’s off having the time of his life while ours is crumbling all around us.”

Justin didn’t know what to say so he just listened, stroking her hair soothingly as he did so.

“They never bought a house. We spent most of the time travelling around, living in hotel rooms. Whenever we weren’t on the road though we stayed in a rented house in Orlando.”

Justin was confused but he let her continue. “He practically cleaned their bank account out when he left, only left us a couple of thousand dollars. We couldn’t afford to live in the old house, that’s when we moved to where we are now. We had to get a lot of renovations done to the house so my mom could get around.

“Our insurance sucked, we had a ton of medical bills and then bills for work on the house, then food, electricity, phone. The list goes on. We had almost no money coming in but the money was going out like it was going out of fashion.

“Me and Alex got part-time jobs to try and help. When I wasn’t looking after mom or at my job I was working my ass off with schoolwork. I finished school early and got a job at Devlin through an old friend of my mom’s.”

“A job you obviously don’t enjoy,” he pointed out.

“It’s not about enjoyment, Justin. We need money, they pay, end of story. I have to work there and I’m going to have to continue working there until we clear our debts.”

“Are they really that bad?” he asked cautiously.

She shrugged. “They’re bad enough. One pay cheque is the difference between us having a roof over our heads or not.”

He couldn’t imagine living under that kind of pressure. Right now he could buy pretty much anything he wanted, it was sometimes easy to forget that other people didn’t have the same luxury. “You know I could…”

“Don’t,” she warned. “Don’t even go there, we don’t need handouts.”

“I didn’t mean…”

She softened a little, knowing his intentions were good. “Justin, I know you mean well, but no. My mom has a hard enough time having to deal with her daughter being the provider in the house, a stranger bailing her out…do you know how that would make her feel? She’s a proud woman and it kills her that she can’t do more for us. She didn’t have the best schooling, she came here when she was very young and although she can speak English well, she barely knows how to read and write the language.”

The phone rang and Justin cursed whoever it was for their timing. They were getting somewhere at last and now they had been interrupted.

“You better get that.”

Justin had been willing to ignore the insistent ringing, let the machine pick it up. He sighed as he stood up and reached for the phone. “Hello,” he said with a hint of irritation.

Natalia returned her focus back to the photo of Justin’s family. Maybe she’d have her own happy family one day…maybe.

“That was Johnny,” he informed her after hanging up and settling back down next to her.

“Oh?” she asked distractedly.

“Yeah,” was all he said.

She knew he had more to say but he seemed to be hesitant. “You can go to work if you need to Justin, I’ll be okay.”

He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere today. We have to go to New York at the end of the week though.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t been expecting that and the news was hitting her harder than she expected. Just when she’d grown used to having him around he was going. “It was gonna happen sooner or later, right?” she said, putting a brave face on.

“Yeah…yeah it was,” he agreed with a sigh. Long ago he had grown used to leaving the people he loved… Wait a minute…love? He didn’t know if he could go that far yet but he definitely cared…a lot.

He leant forward and gave her a hug; she wasn’t the only one who could use one right then.

She rested her chin on his shoulder. “Could you drop me off at home? I want to get changed before I go over to the hospital. If it’s any trouble I’ll just get a cab.”

He drew back, brushing her hair behind her ears as he looked down at her. “Of course I can. Then, if you don’t mind, maybe I could come meet your mom.”

“In the hospital?”

“Well I can’t say I’ve ever met one of my girlfriends’ mothers in the hospital before, it’s certainly original, but yeah, I’d like to meet her.”

Girlfriend? She took a deep breath. Was that what he thought of her as? “Um yeah, if you want to. I don’t know what kind of state she’ll be in though, don’t be surprised if she’s totally out of it.”

He smiled. He was being let in further. “One drugged up mother.” He nodded. “I think I can handle that.”

He smacked him on the arm. “Justin! This is not funny!”

He laughed at her face. “I know, it just kinda slipped out.”

She couldn’t help but smile a little at his innocent face. She knew what he was doing, he was trying to lift her spirits and the funny thing was it was working. “I hope she gives you hell,” she smirked.

“You’re mean.”

“I know…but you like it.” She winked and pushed herself up off the couch and made her way back upstairs to change.”

He watched her go, shaking his head. “That I do.”

“Justin, you really don’t have to come.”

“I want to come.”

She turned and looked at him in disbelief as he parked the car. “And you can’t think of anything better to do with your day?”

He turned and looked at her, a smirk playing on his lips. “Nope, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend a day with you.”

She shook her head and opened the car door. “You’re such a suck up, you’re gonna have my mother eating out of your hand, I just know it, and I’ve got to sit back and watch!”

“Wouldn’t you just love to be me?” he chuckled.

He walked around the car and met her at the other side. “Aren’t you even a little bit nervous about meeting my mother?” Seeing as I’m apparently your girlfriend and all, she thought.

He shrugged. “Do I need to be nervous?”

“I guess not.”

He grabbed her hand and dragged her towards the main entrance. “So let’s go see your mom then.”

His confidence amazed her. Years of performing in front of thousands had to give you a boost though.

The hospital was buzzing with everyday activity. Relatives paced the corridors, nurses carried out their duties and patients were coming and going.

They reached the room her mother occupied just as a doctor was leaving. He smiled at the pair as he stepped past. Natalia rapped her knuckles against the open door. “Knock, knock.” She poked her head around the corner and smiled when she saw her mom sitting up in bed. She looked a lot better, the colour was back in her cheeks. “Hey.”

“Natalia.” Her mom returned her smile and motioned for her to come in.

“How are you?” She carefully hugged her, careful not to knock her bandaged arm. She winced as she looked at it. “Is that sore?”

“A bit. My head is worse if you can believe it though,” she laughed. She looked past Natalia. “And who do we have here?”

Natalia rolled her eyes. “Mom, Justin, Justin, Eva,” she said unenthusiastically.

Justin stepped up to the bed, cheesy grin in place. “Hi Mrs Thomas, how are you feeling?”

Natalia turned and looked at Justin, he turned the cheesy grin on her. “Smart ass,” she muttered.

“Please, call me Eva. I’ve heard a lot about you, Justin,” she said.

Justin noticed she still had quite a strong accent. He turned to Natalia with interest. “Oh you have, have you?”

Natalia held her hands up. “Don’t look at me.”

“She’s telling the truth, I have to get it all from her brother.”

“He’s just a gossip,” Natalia grumbled.

“Natalia, could you go and get me some water?”

“Now?” She had a feeling her mom just wanted to get rid of her so that she could talk to Justin alone.

She nodded. “Please.”

She looked between the man who was practically charming the pants off her mother and back to her mom, who looked back at her expectantly. “Okay,” sighed.

She left the room, looking back just the once before she headed out into the hall.

Eva struggled to sit up further in the bed. “Need any help?” Justin asked.

“If you could just grab that pillow,” she smiled gratefully. “Thank you,” she said, settling back. “So Justin…”

He pulled up a chair next to the bed. He cut straight to the chase. “You want to know my intentions towards your daughter, right?”

She smiled. “Well actually, I was just going to ask why a busy man like you is sitting in my hospital room.”

“Oh…” Justin said sheepishly.

“But what you said would be nice to know too,” she chuckled.

“You have no need to worry, I’m not setting out to hurt her.”

“That’s good.”

“And my lifestyle,” he laughed, “you could hardly call it wild.” He laughed lightly. “Me and Alex, erm we’ve kinda been known to gang up on Nat,” he admitted meekly.

“Justin, I know my daughter needs a good kick up the backside at times.” Justin couldn’t help but laugh at that. Her mother certainly had her pegged. “She doesn’t always see things the way others do. She’s very guarded and sometimes she needs things written out clearly for her…your feelings for her being one of those things.”

Justin blushed. “I think she knows.”

“Are you sure?”

Justin nodded. “I think so. I’ve made it pretty obvious from the start.”

Eva bobbed her head in understanding. “Stalking her you mean?”

Justin’s eyes flew wide and his cheeks flames. “She told you that?” he asked in disbelief. When he got his hands on her… She’d probably made it sound ten times worse than it actually was. Natalia kept things to herself, why couldn’t she have kept that to herself?

Eva chuckled. “Not in so many words, it was more an observation by Alexei.”

Justin laughed nervously. “I guess you can say I’m pretty persistent.”

“I think she needs that. My son was right, I think you’d be good for her, Lord knows she could do with a few more friends,” she said sadly.

Natalia had been listening in for the last few minutes but she didn’t want her mom getting further into that. “Here’s your water mom,” she said, setting it down on the table in front of her.”

“Thank you. Now what do you two have planned for today?”

“I don’t know about Justin,” she looked down at him, “but I’m staying here.”

Eva shook her head. “Justin, you wouldn’t mind taking my daughter away from this place would you?”

He wasn’t about to argue with a sick woman. “No Ma’am.”

“Good that’s settled,” she said triumphantly, a smile on her face, “you’re spending the day with Justin.”

“But mom, we just got here!” Natalia protested.

“Natalia, I’ll be out of here in a few days and we’ll be sick of the sight of each other again.”

“I can’t just leave you here.”

“I’ll probably just be sleeping, these drugs are knocking me out. Besides, your brother will no doubt be by to pester me.”

“But…”

“No buts, go have fun for me.” She winked at Justin.

Reluctantly she said her goodbyes to her mom and walked back to the car with Justin. “She basically just kicked me out,” she said in disbelief. “Have you two got some kind of conspiracy going on now as well? First my brother and now my mom!”

“Hey, I can’t help it if they love me! Besides, now you get to spend the day with me,” he grinned.

“Whatever,” she mumbled.

Justin had walked ahead of her and was now standing next to his car patiently waiting for her. “Come on, I’m hungry!” He bounced impatiently on the spot like a little boy.

“You just ate!”

“And your point is?”

“Men!”

Chapter 19
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