LOVE BUG

CHAPTER 44: POWERLESS

'Don't get out of the bathroom. I think someone has heard us.'

Nate's heart crashes against his ribcage as if trying to find a breach to pass through the phone and reach Anastasia.

What? Who? How? Why? Where? What do you mean? How do you know? Where are you? A million questions are exploding with the impact. She can't send a text like that and nothing more, leaving him suffocating.

He's been soaring so high, finally having her back, and now, he's coming back in the harsh reality with a crushing weight falling on his stomach, on his chest, on all of him, as he's the one who has put her in danger.

He needs to know she is safe; it's more important than oxygen for him. He needs to know where she is. His legs are itching to run after her, but her words are sealing his feet to the floor, and they're clashing with the questions in his head, leaving him in a shaky trance with his fingers paralyzed on the screen of his phone.

He's about to move, at least, his thumb on the call button, when the answers come from somewhere else: behind the door opening slowly, and holding his non-existent breath, he prays to see his angel's mystical eyes. However, it's a pair of piercing blue eyes that is appearing behind the door instead.

He doesn't know if he can heave out a sigh of relief or not because the look in his friend's eyes is more serious than he's ever seen it, yet at the same time, he trusts his best friend with his life, now more literally than ever. So he sighs out a shaky, shallow breath.

"Darrell..."

His best friend is unusually silent, and it's only adding weight on the heavy atmosphere, but he takes this opportunity to rake his brain for a plausible lie.

"Care to explain?" Darrell speaks as if seeing the wheels spinning in his friend's head from under his lifted eyebrow, a look Nate has already seen many times during their questioning missions. Yet standing before it is so much more gut-wrenching, especially because it reminds him of the direction it could lead Anastasia and him.

"Explain what?" Nate tries, and he, himself, can note how pathetical it is.

"Um... I don't know, let me think..." Darrell strokes his chin ironically before stopping all his movements in a deadly serious expression. "The blond chick who's just got out of here, and who is clearly not your wife. You on your knees behind that stall." He points to the stall by their side, and whatever heavenly daze Nate has felt behind that door is dissipating to let appear everything clearly, including the memories of hell in his mind.

The little, but dangerous, detail of the space between the floor and the door is now glaring at him, and it's not the only detail he has overlooked because one of them is standing in front of him and continuing his listing.

"The 'There is just you and me, baby. This is safe'." Darrell mocks in a deeper voice, though there is not a hint of humor in his eyes as he goes on in a pitched voice, "The 'Oh yes, yes, Nate!'"

"She doesn't call me like that, and we've stayed quiet," Nate protests, trying to bite back his words as soon as they leave his mouth, although Darrell has enough evidence even without his admission.

"I don't know. I didn't stay for the whole performance," Darrell points out, which pulls a sigh of relief out of Nate's lips. "But 'quiet'? Did you hear yourselves with the panting and all?"

Nate lowers his head as he has no argument coming to his brain for this, only the awkwardness crawling up his neck in a burning course.

"And how does she call you then? Daddy? Captain?"

His eyes almost pop out of their socket as he snaps his head toward his friend. There is a curious, amused glint in his blue gaze, and even if it irks Nate, it's also comfortable to find a glimpse of his best friend's playfulness.