Saving Her Billionaire

Chapter 6

Nate felt his breathing constricting. He could not understand why he was feeling so anxious, but he was starting to find that the why that was attributed to certain feelings became irrelevant when one was feeling these feelings. Love was an example, of course. A less romantic example was the anxiety that Nate was currently feeling.

He was starting to panic, and although the reason behind this was a mystery to him it was a panic that was so overwhelming, so overpowering that he was starting to feel like it would consume him. He had had a very good time with Phoebe. He had gotten to know her in a very intimate way and was very happy when he was around her. The s*x had been absolutely amazing, and he was completely okay with the fact that she knew certain things about him that he would, perhaps, not have been comfortable with her knowing had she been anyone else in the world.

Yet, now as Nate lay next to her after their amazing fu*k session, he was starting to feel like something was wrong. This was the inevitable post coitus feeling of panic that a lot of men felt. Some men got depressed, other men got bored. Nate, on the other hand, felt panic after he had s*x with a woman that he had just met. Had he and Phoebe been in some kind of a relationship he would not have felt this way, but the fact that she was practically a stranger was having a real impact on him and he didn’t quite know what to do.

He got up all of a sudden. Phoebe ran her fingers down his chest saying, “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I… I have to go,” said Nate. He did not know where this inexplicable desire to run was coming from. Just five minutes ago he had been completely and utterly happy. He had been so happy that he had not cared about anything in the world. Even the death of his father had not been weighing as heavily on his mind as it had been for the past few hours. He was starting to feel like his real self again and he was immensely grateful for this.

Now, however, with the exhilaration of s*x behind him, he was starting to feel all of that emotion rushing back into him and he did not know how to stop it. He felt like he was drowning, like his emotions were water that was rising up to his face. He felt his chest constricting again. Panic, fear, the need to do something, anything at all. He wondered if all that he had felt for Phoebe recently had been real at all, or if it had just been some kind of temporary feeling, something his body experienced to help him get past the death of his father. This thought depressed him. He did not want it to be a temporary emotion. He did not want it to be something fleeting that he had only felt so that he could get past the death of his father. Nate had wanted that feeling to last, he had wanted it to consume him. Nate had wanted to surrender himself to the nascent love that had been brewing inside of him, for in surrendering himself to this love he would make himself invincible, immune to everything in the world that would harm him or make him feel powerless.

Why, then, was he feeling this absence, this emptiness? Was he really this shallow, this evil that after having s*x with a woman he would abandon her and run off? If that wasn’t the case, why was Nate feeling that way right now?

He got up from the bed and started to put his clothes on. “Baby?” Phoebe asked, sounding a little disturbed. “Baby, what’s wrong? Where are you going?”

“I just have to go,” he said. “I’m sorry, I am so very sorry. I swear I didn’t think that… I mean… I just need to get out of here. I’m sorry. I know it’s weird and I’m not asking you to understand, I just need to be out of this place for my own good you know what I mean? I need to…”

Nate realized that he was sounding mentally unstable and this concerned him. Was he mentally unstable? His mind was racing, his heart was pounding, he had no idea what was real anymore.

His father was dead. The sudden realization came once again, crashing past the dam that had been up the past few hours with Phoebe. His father was dead, and here he was having s*x with beautiful women. His father was dead, and here he was drunk out of his mind. His father was dead and Nate didn’t even have the decency to mourn him properly and to give him the proper respect he deserved by putting all of his affairs in order.

Nate felt like a despicable human being, a human being unworthy of love. Why, then, was Phoebe looking at him with genuine concern? Why wasn’t she looking at him with the disgust he knew he deserved to be looked at with? Was she out of her mind too, to be feeling this way about somebody that ran away from his responsibilities and did not care what was going on with his family enough to do the right thing?

He didn’t even know how his mother was doing. He suddenly realized this, and flew into a panic. He didn’t know how his little sister was doing. His father was dead now. Nate was the man of the house. He was the one that was going to have to handle everything, he was the one that they would be depending on and yet here he was, getting drunk and doing horrible things. He was the one that they depended on, yet he was letting them down so thoroughly.

He rushed out of the hotel room with his clothes barely on, ignoring Phoebe’s cries. He was starting to cry now, starting to feel the hot tears run down his cold face. He was starting to feel the grief of his father’s death consume him in a way that he had simply not allowed it to consume him before. He felt the grief claw at his insides, turn him inside out, make him feel such pain that he had never felt before in his life.

This grief would be the end of him, Nate feared, if he did not run away immediately. This grief would be what took him to his grave if he was not careful. He needed to get back home, he needed to be the one that handled everything. He realized that this was where his true salvation lay, in handling all that was going on for his family. In doing this, he would end up feeling good about himself and then nothing else that had gone on would matter. None of that would matter because he would be helping the people he loved, the people that loved him.

He got into his car.