56. The Call
CHAPTER 56
THE CALL
NORA
The soft strumming of an acoustic guitar drifts through the car like whispered confessions. The Goo Goo Dolls' "Before It's Too Late" fills the space between us, its melody rising with an urgency that mirrors the storm inside my chest. Each note feels like a plea to hold onto something precious slipping away, and I can't help but appreciate the universe's cruel poetry in this moment.
My forehead rests against the cool glass of the passenger window, seeking relief from the inferno of emotions burning beneath my skin. Outside, the world blurs as streetlights and shadows pass by. All I can focus on is the quiet hum of the engine and the way the music wraps around us like a living thing.
Nate's presence beside me is steady as a heartbeat, but the tension radiating off him charges the air like static before lightning. The fresh cut on his lip stands out angry and red—a harsh reminder of everything that's brought us here.
"I know the answer, but I'm still going to ask," he says finally, his voice low and careful. "Are you okay?"
I keep my eyes fixed on my ghostlike reflection in the window, unable to meet his eyes. After everything—not just tonight but all the moments leading here like dominoes falling—words feel impossible, trapped behind walls I've built between my heart and my tongue. Instead, I shake my head, a motion so small it's barely there, but he notices, like he always does.
The song shifts to a softer, almost pleading riff that resonates in my bones like a second heartbeat. It mirrors everything we're yet to say—all the things I can't voice and the questions he's too afraid to ask. We're like two people speaking different languages but understanding the same pain.
His fingers twitch on the wheel, and I know he's fighting the urge to reach for me, uncertain if he still has the right. I keep my eyes forward, watching the road stretch endless as my fears into the darkness ahead.
"Sometimes," I whisper, my voice barely audible over the engine's hum, "it feels like I can't move. Like everything around me is swallowing me whole and I'm drowning in air."
The words hang between us, raw and jagged as broken glass. I feel exposed, like I've peeled back a layer of myself I wasn't ready to show. Then his hand finds mine, our fingers lacing together.
"Like no matter what you do, you're stuck in this place where everything hurts, and there's no way out." It isn't a question, it's recognition—a truth I half expected he'd carry too. We're both walking through life with matching scars we try to hide.
Tears spill down my cheeks before I realize they've formed, but when I finally dare to look at him, there's no judgment in his eyes. Just that quiet intensity he always carries.
"What do you do," I ask softly, my voice trembling like autumn leaves, "when everything goes wrong?"
Nate signals and pulls the car to the side of the road, tires crunching on gravel like broken promises. When the engine cuts off, we're left in an almost sacred silence, the world outside fading until it's just us, painted in soft blues and shadows by the dashboard lights.
"What are you doing?" The words barely escape my lips.
He turns to me then, hazel eyes locking onto mine with a depth that steals my breath. In the half-light, his gaze holds something ancient and understanding, like he's carrying answers to questions I haven't learned to ask yet.
"You know what you do when the world crumbles around you, Len?" His voice is soft but unwavering, pulling me closer like gravity.
I swallow hard, searching his face like trying to read a language I once knew but have forgotten. "What?"
He lifts my hand, turning it palm-up in his own with a gentleness that makes my heart stutter. Slowly, he brushes his lips against the inside of my wrist, the gesture so tender it leaves me undone. Through that single point of contact, it feels like he's trying to pour all his strength into me.
"The only thing you can do," he whispers against my skin, before pressing another kiss to my palm. "You breathe it all in, and then you let it out. Because the more you hold onto it, the more it eats at you from the inside out, like poison in your veins. You can't let the fear, the hurt, or the pain win. You just have to learn to let it live by your side and acknowledge it when it's there, like an old scar. One that reminds you that you survived. You can't just give in when it wants to consume you like wildfire."
His words settle around us like a blanket heavy with truth. "It's not easy, but I think it's possible."
The faint glow from outside catches on his face, highlighting the bruise darkening his cheek and the split in his lip that looks like a crimson fault line. He's both breakable and unyielding in this light, a contradiction I can't look away from. His thumb traces patterns on the back of my hand that feel like secrets being written on my skin.
"You don't have to hold onto it alone anymore," he murmurs, his voice steady as bedrock but tender as dawn. "I can carry it with you. If you'll let me."
Something inside me shatters.
His words are a lifeline thrown into deep water, a promise that feels both impossible and inevitable as gravity. He sees me—every broken, messy part, all the jagged edges and dark corners—and he's still here, still holding on.
Nate Sullivan is my paradox, my calm in the chaos, the eye of a hurricane. The one person who can reach me when I feel unreachable. With his eyes on me like this, it makes me feel like I'm his whole universe condensed into flesh and bone. I know one truth that burns through me: I don't want to hide from him anymore.
We drive home in comfortable silence, his hand steady in mine like an anchor. Every gentle squeeze of his fingers says what words can't: I'm here. I still got you.
For the first time in what feels like forever, I believe it with every fractured piece of my heart.
The car rolls to a stop in the driveway, gravel crunching softly beneath the tires. Nate comes around to open my door, and without a word, I start walking toward the dock by the lake, my feet finding the path like muscle memory. The night air whispers cool against my skin, but it does little to quiet the tempest raging inside me.
I sink onto the edge of the dock, wrapping my arms around my knees as the wood creaks beneath me like old bones. Nate's presence hovers a few steps behind, hesitant as morning fog.
"I can leave," he offers, his voice quiet as falling snow.
"I don't want to be alone right now."
He settles beside me, careful to maintain a small distance, like I might shatter if he gets too close. The lake stretches before us, black as ink and just as willing to swallow secrets.
"What did Evan say to you at the party?" The tension beneath his steady voice rumbles like distant thunder.
"It's not worth repeating," I mutter, staring into the darkness of the water.
"Nora." My name on his lips is soft but insistent as waves against shore. "Please."
I exhale sharply, the sound like glass breaking. The determination burning in his eyes tells me he won't let this go—he's as relentless as the tide.
"He threatened me," I admit, my voice shaking. "With the photos from that night."
Nate stiffens, his hands curling into tight fists. "What?" The word comes out dangerous and low.
"He said if I opened my mouth, if I said anything to anyone, he'd leak them. To everyone back home." I look away, unable to face the fury I know is blazing in his eyes. "I have one more year until I can get out of there. I just want to make it through without any more drama."
His silence stretches longer than thunder, and when he finally speaks, his voice is raw as an open wound. "Fuck, Nora. I wish I'd known."
I flinch at his words, not because they're harsh, but because they drag up a memory I've tried desperately to bury. The reaction doesn't escape his notice—nothing ever does.
"Nora?" His head tilts with careful precision, amber eyes darkening like storm clouds gathering. "What's wrong?"
I stare at my hands, watching them twist together in my lap. The air between us thickens like smoke before fire, heavy with words that taste like ashes.
"Okay," he says, gentler now, like someone approaching a wounded animal. "You've got about twenty seconds to tell me what's on your mind. And please don't lie to me."
A weak smile tugs at my lips. "I never could."
"Then tell me." His words fall between us like stones in still water.
When I remain silent, he moves closer. His hand finds my chin, tilting it up with a gentleness that breaks something inside me. The intensity in his eyes steals my breath like a plunge into winter water.
"Hey, Leni." The nickname falls from his lips.
He searches my face like reading a map to buried treasure, and I know I can't keep this secret any longer—it burns in my throat.
"I did," I whisper, avoiding eye contact.
His brows furrow, creating valleys of concern. "You did what?"
"Call you. To tell you.” The admission hangs in the air like mist over the lake. "The night it happened."
His hand drops from my chin as if burned, confusion shadowing his face like clouds across moonlight. "You… you did?"
"I didn't know who else to call," I continue, each word like glass in my mouth. "Jake was at training camp. I couldn't call my parents. Ollie would've told them. So, I called you."
Nate freezes beside me, becoming still as stone. His silence fills the space between us with unspoken regret as realization dawns in his eyes like a cruel sun.
"I don't…" He shakes his head like trying to clear fog. "I don't remember."
"I know." My laugh comes out bitter and broken. "Farrah answered."
He flinches as if struck, and I watch something break inside him like ice cracking on a frozen lake.
"She told me I should call someone who cared." I continue, unable to stop now that the dam has broken. "Because apparently you were too high to care about anyone that night."
"Nora…"
"I shouldn't have called you." My voice cracks like thin ice, betraying my weakness. "But I didn't have anyone else."
He buries his face in his hands like trying to hide from the truth, his breathing rapid and shallow. "I—I'm so sorry."
"Nate—"
"No, don't," he cuts me off, voice raw. "I should've been there for you. And I wasn't."
"There's nothing you could have done anyway. You were thousands of miles away, it's not like??—"
"I should have been there for you, Nora," he interrupts, self-loathing thick in his voice. He stands abruptly, running hands through his hair like he's trying to pull the memories out by force, pacing in circles like a caged animal. "Instead, I was too busy getting fucking high."
I rise and grab his wrists, stilling his restless movement. His pulse races beneath my fingers like trapped birds. "You were dealing with your own demons. But you're here now," I say, trying to catch his eyes that seem to hold all the darkness of the lake behind us.
"That's not??—"
I silence him with a kiss that tastes like forgiveness and fear mixed together. When I pull away, the look he gives me makes my heart stop—not pity or anything I feared, but a fierce pride.
"You're brave. So fucking brave, but I—" His voice breaks, and his hands begin trembling.
I see what he's thinking in the way his jaw clenches like steel, in how his eyes darken to match the night. He wants to destroy Evan. The thought terrifies me—not for Evan's sake, but for Nate's, for how violence seems to call to him like a siren song.
"Don't," I whisper, my voice steady as the north star despite the storm inside me. "Whatever you're thinking of doing, please don't."
His gaze snaps to mine, his expression torn between rage and devotion.
"I don't want anything to happen to you," I say firmly, anchored in certainty. "Please, Nate."
He looks away, chest heaving like he's running from something. He's falling apart before me, and I can't bear to watch.
I place my hands on either side of his face, feeling his warmth beneath my palms despite the cool night air. The pain in his eyes makes my chest ache like an old wound reopened.
"Listen to me. You're here now," I whisper, the words a balm against broken things. "That's what matters."
I lean in, pressing my lips to his in a kiss that's as much a plea as it is a promise. For a moment, he's frozen, but then his hands come up to cradle my face and he kisses me back with a tenderness that feels like coming home.
The world falls away, leaving just us, broken but together, finding wholeness in each other's fragments. The lake whispers secrets behind us, and the stars above bear witness to this moment where pain and healing dance like light on water, where two damaged souls find sanctuary in each other's arms.