All The Way (Natexus Book 2) Read online

  All The Way

  A Natexus Novella

  Victoria L James

  Contents

  Title

  THE STORY CONTINUES

  Other Books By

  Dedicated To

  A Note From Vic:

  Part Three

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  COMING 2017:

  All The Way Playlist

  Acknowledgments

  ALL THE WAY – A NATEXUS NOVELLA

  © 2016 VICTORIA L. JAMES

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, except that of small quotations used in critical reviews and promotions via blogs.

  All The Way – A Natexus Novella is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products, for the most part, of the author’s imagination only. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, events or any other incident is entirely coincidental.

  COVER DESIGN: L.J. Stock of L.J. Designs.

  EDITED BY: Claire Allmendinger of BNW Editing

  Heather Ross of Heather’s Red Pen Editing Services

  Katleen Lamour

  PROMOTIONS:

  Wendy Shatwell and Claire Allmendinger of Bare Naked Words.

  www.barenakedwords.co.uk

  FORMATTING:

  L.J. Stock of L.J. Designs.

  VICTORIA ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/VictoriaLJamesAuthor

  Twitter: @Victoria_LJames

  Instagram: @Victoria_LJames

  www.victorialjames.com

  Other Books By

  Victoria L. James

  Natexus Series

  Natexus

  Babylon Series

  Without Consequence

  Without Mercy

  Road to Wonderland Series

  Izzy Moffit’s Road to Wonderland

  Anthologies:

  Framed

  They Say I’m Doing Well

  Break The Cycle

  Dedicated To

  My husband Carl:

  Thanks for always letting me curl up in your lap when I’ve had a bad day.

  In case I don’t say it enough… I love you.

  I think I might keep you a bit longer.

  A Note From Vic:

  All The Way wasn’t meant to happen, but after nights laid awake staring at the ceiling, listening to Natalie Vincent and Alex Law shouting at me for more time together, I decided that I had to set them free for one more chapter. Creating them is easy. Getting them to be quiet is the hard part.

  This novella should not be read unless you have read Natexus first.

  Although I have tried to include their backstory, this is not a standalone.

  It’s merely an extension of Natexus that I had very little say in. This is all Nat and Alex.

  They’re bossy little beggers. ;)

  Thanks so much for reading and thanks so much for your support. I hope you enjoy it.

  Part Three

  THE TIME AFTER IT BEGAN AGAIN

  “There I was, way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute, and all of a sudden I didn’t care.”

  ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

  The Great Gatsby

  Suggested song: Speakeasy Kiss – James Newton Howard

  Prologue

  It took her two seconds to die.

  It took me twenty-two years to live.

  Seven years had passed since I watched my older sister leave me behind. Lizzy drifted off to another world with her fingers still in mine, her final words singing in my ears, and her last breaths in my sights. I saw her light go out easily, like someone came along and simply blew out the flame of a candle without any concern for the darkness it would leave behind.

  I watched my parents grieve. I bathed in it. I buried myself in their loss and made it seep into my own bones as I struggled to understand why I was alive and my beautiful sister Elizabeth wasn’t. I smothered myself with the pain of her absence, unsure how to go on until a boy found me drowning in the depths of my own sorrow and freed me from the shackles of grief that had begun to turn me into nothing more than a ghost with a heartbeat.

  Not just any boy. The boy.

  My boy.

  An unexpected light in a world of darkness where I’d become alone, afraid, and too lost to have any idea in which direction I was heading.

  I didn’t know where he’d come from.

  I didn’t know where he was going.

  When he left—when he made the decision to leave me in an attempt to save my future—I felt like another death had dragged me back into hiding: my own.

  Sometimes you don’t realise you’re dead until you’re reborn.

  Sometimes you don’t realise that you have to break things apart in order to rebuild them and make them better than ever before.

  Sometimes it takes other angels to pass through your life and guide you back to the one you were meant to be with from the start.

  My one.

  The one I was born to love.

  So there I was. Natalie Vincent.

  Age twenty-two. Hair still blonde, eyes of blue.

  Two parents who loved her. Her sister always in her heart.

  But I was sitting next to a boy on a bus… And I finally felt alive again.

  Living.

  Breathing.

  Seeing.

  Feeling.

  Because of love.

  Chapter One

  It was the moment, the minute, the hour, and the day that my new life began—where everything I’d ever dreamed of, thought about, and denied myself was finally there in front of me, no longer just a hallucination or a daydream. Alex was by my side again, and even though I’d told him just days earlier that I needed space, seeing and feeling him next to me made me understand just how much of a lie that had been.

  We were meant to be together. He was meant to be with me.

  Alexander Law–the man of my dreams–was now the man of my reality.

  I’d never forget the way I stared at him once he said those words to me on that coach.

  “I’ll be the man to try and catch you, even when it’s my hands that have let you fall. I don’t want to waste another second of this life without you in it. I want to be with you. I want to wake up and see your smile every single morning and know that no one can take you away from me again. I can’t promise I won’t fuck up or make stupid mistakes along the way, but I can promise to love you like no man has ever loved a woman, and I can promise to do that forever.”

  My cheeks ached when we arrived in London. I’d been goofy in my adoration of his face, making sure to take in every single detail I could while he sat beside me with his hand on my thigh and our shoulders pressed together. It didn’t escape my notice that my happy memories of Alex tended to start with a journey on a bus, and this was no different. I felt like a child at Christmas, finally getting a glimpse of Santa and seeing that he really did exist. Alex hadn’t seemed real to me in the five years of his absence. Everything I’d been pretending, those jaded thoughts and misplaced feelings of disdain I’d had about him—they all seemed to vanish as though they’d never existed, leaving me with nothing worthwhile to do but stare up at his strong jaw, his perfect cheekbones, and those incredible hazel eyes.

  But I couldn't lie to myself; I was nervo
us. I didn’t know what was going to happen next or how to be with him without feeling guilty or worrying about how it would affect somebody else. I didn’t dare look away from him in case he disappeared. I was scared that it was just another dream of mine, where my heart was infiltrating my mind with its most secret desires. I was terrified I was going to drop this moment, and it would shatter onto the floor like a glass ball never to be fixed again. My nerves were so prevalent, in fact, that when the coach pulled up at London Victoria Coach Station, those butterflies didn’t just flutter in my stomach—they began to cartwheel, triple-somersault, and roll over on the very tips of their wings.

  Yes, I’d dreamed of this moment. It seemed they had, too.

  I’d dreamed of Alex and me walking out into the open air without fear, uncertainty or a dark cloud of grief and mistrust hanging over our heads. I’d just never had the courage to prepare myself for how I would feel when he turned to face me before taking my hand in his and guiding me out into the streets of our new adventure.

  I froze at the small gesture, feeling the way his fingers curled around mine protectively as if to claim every inch of my skin as his own. I glanced down to where our hands were clasped together, and the smile that broke free soon ached while my heart hammered away in my chest, desperate to sing about the love it had for this man in its very own open-air concert.

  “I like that smile,” he whispered above me.

  I looked back up at him, but my eyes soon became glazed with happy tears, forcing me to swallow quietly in an attempt to push down the embarrassing lump in my throat.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m so happy,” I admitted shyly.

  He didn’t even try to hide his relief. It was only fleeting, a small second of uncertainty that was quickly drowned out by what was to follow: elation. His eyes lit up like fireworks, and his grin grew high and bright. Leaning down, he cupped my cheek with his palm. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing a perfect reflection of everything I was feeling inside. My toes tingled with a need to jump around the streets of London and bounce from pavement to pavement like a more frantic, unrehearsed version of Fred Astaire.

  I was happy. This was what it felt like. As soon as I stared into his eyes, not an ounce of guilt or a thought for anyone else existed.

  The only thing I could concentrate on was Alex smiling down on me—the two of us standing still in the middle of a foreign madness and mayhem, somehow finding a peace I guessed neither one of us had ever felt before.

  “I’m happy that you’re happy.”

  “It doesn’t seem real.”

  “This is just the start,” he told me with confidence. Before I could answer him or do anything in response, he’d pressed his lips to mine and we were kissing the first kiss of our time in London together.

  We’d always been Natexus, even when we’d been apart, but now it was time to go all the way standing side by side.

  The possibilities suddenly seemed endless. Everything we could now do and every moment we could share together flashed through my mind like a montage of future photographs being thrown down in front of me. I could hold his hand whenever I felt like it. I could walk down the street by his side and rest my cheek on his bicep. I could kiss him like this for hours on end. We could be naked together. We could sleep together. I could wake up to him every morning and run my hands through the unruly parts of his hair. I could do it all now, and I was going to. I was going to hold him, embrace him, and make sure I never let him go again.

  As a nervous giggle from me interrupted our kiss, I felt his smile rise against my lips. When I opened my eyes, his were still closed, as though he didn’t know what he wanted to do the most: kiss me or begin life with me.

  “Are you ready?” I asked him, eventually pulling away.

  Alex’s eyes flickered open and he sucked in a breath while I stared at the perfection of him and tried to ignore the goosebumps that rose on the back of my neck.

  “I’m ready.” He nodded.

  “This is it.”

  Alex grinned, dropping his fingers from my cheek as he turned to grab hold of my suitcase beside him. He never let go of my hand, though, and as we both turned to look at the bustling streets, I knew there was only one place I truly wanted to be.

  “Look at this, Nat. There’s a whole world of new things out there waiting for us. All those possibilities, all those firsts for us to experience together…” He paused and turned to look at me once more. “Never to be apart again, no matter where we decide to go.”

  “I think I know where we should go first,” I muttered, making sure only he could hear. My eyes quickly scanned the roads as I glanced at all the red buses, the black cabs, and the ridiculous amount of traffic.

  “Where?”

  “Our hotel room.”

  “To dump our things?”

  “No.” I shook my head slowly. “To bed.”

  “Are you tired?”

  “Nope.” I grinned.

  “Then wh… Oh.” Alex’s mouth stayed in that adorable ‘O’ shape for some time, his eyes practically popping out of his head. “Ohh,” he repeated slowly.

  “That’s right,” I whispered, biting back my smile as I watched his eyes darken.

  “Christ. Let’s go. Now. Now. We should go.”

  I barely had time to blink before Alex had his arm in the air, flagging down the nearest taxi he could find before throwing our bags into the boot of the cab with a force that was unnecessary but incredibly charming nonetheless. When he eventually dived into the back seat, he barked instructions at the driver to get us to a hotel he didn’t know the name of as quickly as possible.

  All I could do was stand back and laugh with every ounce of happiness I had in me until he grabbed my hand and dragged me into the cab with him, forcing me to tell the driver the name of the hotel I had booked.

  It took us twenty minutes to get there because of the traffic, and I was certain Alex touched every part of me he could that was above my clothes in the back of that taxi. It was the longest twenty minutes of our lives.

  But I knew it was going to be worth the wait when we got there.

  The entire five years had been worth the wait.

  Truth was, I’d have waited my whole damn life to love him how I was loving him now if I’d had to. He was who I had been destined for, and when we walked into our room, throwing our bags into a corner before he backed me up to stand over our bed, all I could do was thank every god that existed that they’d let me have him sooner rather than later.

  I finally felt alive. I could see the whole world around me clearer than ever before.

  I was breathing freely again. I was flying high.

  Just like those birds we used to talk about.

  Chapter Two

  I’d made love, had sex, screwed for fun, done all of it before. I was twenty-two and my fears about my own body had long since died. Deep down, I guess I knew that I had my ex-boyfriend Marcus to thank for that. But, no matter how many times I’d gone to bed with him, or how many times I’d replayed the night I first made love to Alex in my mind, nothing could have ever prepared me for the way I felt the moment the backs of my legs hit the mattress of that bed in our London hotel room.

  The air felt incredibly thin, and my vision went hazy as I held on tightly to Alex’s shoulders and looked up into his eyes. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think or do anything other than wait for him to make a move that would stop my body and mind from freefalling.

  My chest burned as it bounced up and down, trying to pull in enough oxygen. I was drunk from the smell of him, and his very presence had my legs trembling. It was embarrassing to have such lack of control. My mind was turning to mush and my body was already weak.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yes,” I squeaked, quickly clearing my throat. I swallowed and shook my head briefly to reassure him I was fine. “Yes. I’m good.”

  He smirked seductively, moving both his hands from my hips up to the middle
of my spine. “Natalie Vincent?”

  “Don’t.”

  “Are you…?”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Nervous?” he whispered.

  “Damn it, Alex.” I sighed. I had no idea what my face was doing, but one cheek felt like it was going into some kind of grimacing spasm, not helping me try to fool him into thinking I was perfectly calm. I really didn't want to be the scared little schoolgirl he remembered me as. I wanted to be new and confident, to show him how he never had to worry about breaking or hurting me again.

  “You are nervous.” Alex let his teeth sink into his bottom lip—the bottom lip that now belonged to me.

  “I’m not,” I lied.

  “Sweetheart, I can feel you trembling. Your knees are knocking together so hard they sound like coconuts.”

  “Maybe it’s your coconuts that are knocking together. Maybe it’s you that’s scared,” I countered, blinking quickly as I smirked back at him.

  “There’s no air between those right now. Trust me. The only sound they’re making might be a weak mewling from their suffocation.”

  “Oh my God.” I chuckled, slowly closing my eyes to compose myself. What was wrong with me? Why was I acting this way? This was everything I’d ever wanted. He was all I’d ever wanted. Now I had him right where I’d always dreamed of him being, and I was turning into a hot mess in the blink of an eye.

  “Breathe, Natalie,” he whispered softly to me before blowing a small stream of air over my face, forcing my eyes to flutter open. If he was trying to get me even higher from just the smell of him, it worked. I was dizzy, my head spinning as I tried to compose myself in front of him. “Breathe,” he repeated.