Jenna Black - Resistance

“I don’t know who you think you’re impressing,” she said crisply, “but it definitely isn’t me. Now let go and show a little class.”

“Bossy,” he teased, though he doubted there was much humor in his voice. However, he’d created enough of a spectacle already, and Nadia was the one who would have to live with any consequences. He suspected gossip was like a national pastime at an Executive retreat—even more so than it was for Executives in the public eye. What else was there to do in a retreat, after all?

Reluctantly releasing Nadia, he took Gerri’s recently vacated seat and patted the spot beside him. Brow furrowed, Nadia looked across the room at Agnes. Their eyes met for a moment, and Agnes turned that particularly unattractive shade of mottled red Nate was already growing accustomed to. He felt his lip curling into an involuntary sneer as Nadia slowly took the seat beside him.

“I take it you and Agnes aren’t like this yet?” Nadia asked, crossing her fingers.

Nate snorted. “I’d rather marry Jewel, and you know how much I hate Jewel. But at least she has a personality, however loathsome.”

“And she’s prettier than Agnes,” Nadia said, and though he heard the tone of reproach in her voice, he chose to ignore it.

“I’ve seen cows prettier than Agnes.” He crossed his arms over his chest and slouched more comfortably into the love seat. “Even her name sounds ugly.”

“That sounds like something Jewel would say,” Nadia pointed out, the reproach in her voice growing sharper.

He was sure Jewel and her bitchy friends had said worse about Agnes already. As far as he could tell, Agnes’s only redeeming feature was that she was the daughter of a Chairman, and that would buy her very little slack with the Executives of Paxco. Particularly the teenage ones, who had such a propensity for playing games of one-upmanship anyway.

“Just wait till the press gets wind of the engagement,” he said. “I’ll sound positively flattering by comparison.”

Nadia’s eyes softened with pity. “The poor thing,” she murmured, and Nate felt that damn sneer twisting his lips again.

“This is a better marriage than she could have hoped for in her wildest dreams. And she doesn’t give a shit who she has to walk over to get what she wants.” He’d told her flat-out that she’d be ruining Nadia’s life, and it hadn’t seemed to bother her.

Nadia’s gaze turned positively fierce. “I know you think you’re the greatest prize in the history of the universe, but I can tell you from personal experience that you’re not as much of a prize as you think.”

Nate flinched at the anger in her voice—and at the truth of her words. Recent events had forcefully opened his eyes to how poorly he had treated her over the course of their friendship, of how he had taken advantage of her kind nature—and of the burden of responsibility that made her unable to protest his treatment.

“You haven’t the faintest idea what it’s like to be powerless over your life,” Nadia continued. “I doubt anyone sat down with Agnes and asked her if she’d like to marry a spoiled, selfish, mean-spirited ass who just happens to be the heir to Paxco. No one ever asked me. ”

Ouch! He couldn’t blame Nadia for being angry at him, not after the direction her life had taken lately. And he couldn’t argue that he hadn’t been spoiled and selfish through much of his life. If he’d grown up as much as he’d like to think, he’d have kept his mouth shut and taken the criticism like a man, but he just couldn’t refrain from trying to defend himself.

“I am not mean-spirited.” It seemed like a puny defense against her assessment of his character, but it was the best he could do.

“I wouldn’t have said so before today,” Nadia agreed, crossing her arms and glaring at him. “But without having spoken a word with her, I can tell from across the room that Agnes is painfully shy, and that you’ve been making her miserable. And you just described her as a cow with no personality. I hate to break it to you, Nate, but that’s the very definition of mean-spirited. It’s not her fault your father chose her as his instrument of revenge.”

Nate sank a little lower into his seat. “I’m hoping she’ll hate me and try to talk her father out of the marriage.” And if that wasn’t a rationalization, he didn’t know what was. Agnes had already made it clear she had no intention of opposing the marriage, so being unpleasant to her served no purpose. Other than to vent his anger, that is.

Nadia snorted. “You’re so used to getting your own way you have no idea what it’s like to be one of the rest of us. She’s an Executive girl, and from what I understand, she’s not her father’s heir. She’s been raised since birth to believe her purpose in life is to bring more power and money to her family by marrying well. She’ll do whatever she thinks is best for her family, no matter how personally miserable it will make her.”

“It’s not like I have a choice in this,” he retorted.

She raised her chin. “Yes, for two or three days, you’ve known what it’s like not to have choices in your life. Obviously, you understand exactly what it’s been like for Agnes and me to live with that our whole lives.”

This was not exactly how he’d been picturing his reunion with Nadia. His head was starting to ache, and his heart was a lead anchor in his chest. “You don’t understand, Nadia,” he said, staring down at his feet to escape the reproach in her eyes. “It’s not just that I have to marry Agnes and that I don’t like her.” His throat tightened, his voice going froggy. “Every awful thing that’s happened to you has been because of me. I was having a hard enough time living with what I’d put you through before, but now…” He sucked in a deep breath, because if he didn’t pull himself together he was going to lose every last scrap of his dignity. And he was sure people were watching, even if he didn’t dare to look up.

Nadia slid closer to him on the love seat and put her hand softly on his back. “Don’t use me as an excuse to be mean to Agnes,” she said. “I’ll agree that everything that’s happened and everything that probably will happen pretty much sucks. But it’s all your father’s doing, Nate, not yours. And certainly not hers. ”

Leaning forward and ducking his head, Nate clasped his hands together between his knees, wishing he could whisk Nadia off to somewhere private where he didn’t have to work so hard to keep himself under control. Not that he was doing such a great job of it as it was, but he really wanted to punch something right now, or maybe to yell out his frustration at the top of his lungs.

Yes, a yelling, screaming, kicking temper tantrum would feel damn good right about now.

“You have to hate me,” he said to his hands, letting his hair and shadows hide his face. “At least a little bit. If I’d listened to you on the night of the reception, if I hadn’t insisted on hooking up with Kurt at a public event just for the thrill of secretly giving my father the finger…”

Nadia sighed and leaned against his side. “I could have just played lookout for you, like you wanted. I didn’t have to choose that particular moment to put my foot down, not after all the other things I’d let you get away with over the years. Besides, we might be blissfully ignorant and safe in our old lives if we’d done things differently, but how many more people would Thea have vivisected by now? We might have screwed up both of our own lives, but we saved a whole lot of other people’s. How can we possibly regret that?”

Nadia was a better person than he. She was right, of course, but he suspected if he had it to do over again, he would have done things differently. Once again, he was showing how self-centered he was, even when he was trying to change his stripes. But then maybe if it had only been his own life he’d ruined, he might have been better able to see the whole picture. It was what his actions had done to Nadia that kept him up at night.