Love Expectations (Season 1 of Nata and Phillip's Romance) ✔️

9. 'Blame everything on me'

Natalia

The small rectangle of reinforced glass in the white metal door that leads into the walk-in fridge room—housing anything the labs can't store—shows enough of the space to confirm it's empty.

"No one's there." I push the bar and step in, silent Samson trailing behind me.

We go past the shelves on the left and the counter on the right to the corner of the room that's impossible to see if you're just walking by.

The time we take to reach the wall is enough for me to regret not bringing in the fleece zip up I usually keep for this purpose. I fold my arms over my chest and hide my hands in my armpits.

Samson is not the villain.

But neither am I.

"What d'you need to tell me?" I ask calmly. The walk here put a damper on my irritation.

He rocks on the heels of his shoes. "I shouldn't have mentioned kids at the event."

"One thing we agree on."

"But"—there is always a but. I resist rolling my eyes at him. Let's see what his but is about before I bring on the litany—"But it didn't come out of nowhere. I've been thinking about it a lot with the whole wedding prep. I talked to Mom, and she agrees. This is not the best time to have kids if both of us are working as hard as we are. She had me at thirty, but she quit her job for ten years until Madeline and I were both in school before she returned to work part-time. And she was exhausted those ten years without having to go to work on top of that."

Wow. The sub-zero temperatures are turning my skin under the lab coat into a thin layer of ice, but my ears are working perfectly. I heard every word he said, yet my mind refuses to believe that bullshit came out of his mouth. The dumpster-fire my love for Samson has turned into feeds my anger. "So you propose we don't have kids because your mom thinks it's going to be too hard?"

He drags all ten fingers through his curls. "I don't propose anything."

"Doesn't sound like it to me."

"Natalia, please, let's not fight anymore. I'm not trying to make this worse than it already is." The serious, even-keel guy I've lived with, whom not much can affect, is not who's in front of me. He rubs the stubble on his always-shaven face. "I'm trying to make up with you and patch up this bizarre situation we find ourselves in."

Empathy should be one of the things filling my gut, but my anger is taking so much space, it leaves no corner for pity or tenderness. I poke Samson into his chest, my fingers shaking with me. "The situation you created."

"Sure." He lowers his eyes to mine. "Blame everything on me." He raises his arms and encompasses the room, as if it's me and not him who's exaggerating.

"Who should I blame it on?" I push away from him. The cold seeps through my pores. My bones are trembling. "We had a plan: get married, have at least one kid before I'm thirty-six, get my lab to a point where I can get a larger headcount,"—the chattering of my teeth makes it hard for me to talk—"move to Boston, where I can be part of the nano-delivery history."

"That was your plan," he shouts over the hum of the air-conditioner.

"Well, you didn't even have a plan when we met," I shout back. "I gave you my plan. You agreed to my plan."

Samson waves his index finger in front of my face. "I never agreed to your plan. I loved how passionate you are about it." He presses both palms into his stomach. "But I have goals too."