Chapter 24 Evan
EVAN
Cal’s the last person to walk out of the building, leaving Nate and me alone in the office. It’s quiet, only the buzz of the fluorescent lights in the studio.
Nora left earlier with a quick kiss to Nate’s cheek and a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
She’s been distant since the wedding last week.
Both of them have. I guess I haven’t been the life and soul of the party either, but they’ve both been struggling separately and I wish they’d talk to me or each other.
Nate drums his fingers on the desk.
I pretend to focus on my screen, but I haven’t absorbed a single thing in the last five minutes. I’ve clicked the same folder three times as if it’s going to magically make everything normal again.
Nate shuts his laptop with one firm motion and stands, stretching his arms over his head. He grabs his jacket off the chair and glances at me. “You done?”
“Yeah.” I clear my throat. “Just finishing up.” I shove my notebook into my bag aggressively.
Nate steps closer, lowering his voice. “You still in a mood with me?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not in a mood.”
Of course he knows better. He always knows how I’m feeling. I’m not mad, but I need some distance for my own sanity. He bailed on me and spent the day hungover at home. The place I can only go when I get an invite.
He strokes his unshaven jaw, looking like he hasn’t shaved all week. “So I’m forgiven?”
I know this is his way of apologising. And I hate how it makes my chest ache because he sounds so sorry. And I hate even more that it makes me want to forgive him instantly. Who am I kidding? I already forgave him.
He slips his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “Come for a drink with me.”
I blink. “Now?”
“One drink.” He shrugs. “Just us.”
My stomach flips. I should say I’ve got stuff on, or I’m tired, or I can’t. But I’m weak when it comes to him and Nora. “One drink.”
He exhales as if he’s relieved. “Wanna go to The King’s Arms?”
“You paying?” With a chuckle, I grab my jacket and lift my bag from the desk.
Nate smiles and holds the door open for me. “I think I can manage a sparkling water.”
“You wish, mate. I’m ordering the dearest drink on the menu with a side of chips. You owe me.”
He locks the door behind us and slings an arm around my shoulders. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”
The weight of his arm reminds me of the night I had to carry him to bed.
My stomach tightens, all the emotions from that night hitting me like a twenty-kilo barbell plate dropped straight on my chest. He can’t give me what I want.
It’s unconventional. Inconceivable even.
But I let myself enjoy the closeness for the few seconds it lasts, the scent of his aftershave still clinging to his skin from this morning, mixed with a manly scent that’s only him.
I want to bathe in it. Hold him close and never let go, but it’s not just Nate I want.
We wander around the corner to The King’s Arms, the crowd spilling out onto the pavement, people in suits having a cheeky pint after work, sports fans arriving early for the game. It’s our local, being a stone’s throw from the office, but it’s been ages since we did this.
Nate pushes the door open with his shoulder and strides in with his confident swagger. “Two pints,” he says to the barmaid without even asking me what I want.
I nudge his shoulder. “What happened to sparkling water?”
He regards me, mouth twitching. “I said I’d give you whatever you want. May as well make the most of it while Nora’s not around.” He winks, his mouth unfurling into a full grin.
My stomach does that thing again where it’s like a rugby ball being tossed around.
We take a corner table beneath the TV, rugby highlights playing silently overhead. I shrug out of my jacket and drop my bag at my feet, my notebook falling out and thudding against the floor.
Nate reaches down for it at the same time that I do.
Our fingers brush.
I suck in a breath
He stills, his gaze locked on mine for a beat too long.
“Thanks.”
He straightens, reaches for his pint, and nods at the book. “What do you write in there, anyway?”
“It’s my notes and diary. You know, with appointments in.” I let out a sigh. “Unlike some of us, I don’t rely on Louise to tell me what clients I’m seeing from one day to the next.”
“But isn’t that what we pay her for?” Nate pulls his brows inwards.
“I like to be prepared.” I push my glasses up my nose. “Speaking of clients, you haven’t forgotten about the meeting in London next week, have you?”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “That’s next week?”
I open my notebook and point to the date in the diary section. “I can do it, but it’s the only day I could get the install for the Lakehouse Grill interior, so one of us needs to be there and Cal’s off next week.”
“Why is he off?” Nate sips from his pint, then wipes the froth from his top lip.
I shrug, trying to remember why Cal’s off. “His daughter is in some concert. She plays a musical instrument.”
“Oh, I never knew that.”
“She’s really good, apparently.”
Nate huffs. “Every parent says that about their kids, though, don’t they?”
I lift the snack menu from the table. “I don’t ever recall my mum telling me to take up guitar as a career, do you?”
Nate chuckles. “Fuck no. My parents hated me playing the drums. I think they were relieved when I swapped band for rugby.”
“This font on this menu’s so difficult to read.” I bring the menu closer to my glasses, but it’s not the size of the font that’s the problem. “They’ve used a display font for the complete description.”
Nate shakes his head and snatches the menu from me. “Amateurs. They’ve designed this shit themselves to save a few quid.” He takes a pull of his pint and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, glancing up at the screen as the rugby replay switches angles. “So, you never told me about Sunday.”
My shoulders drop. “Not much to tell.” I wipe a wet patch on the table with a napkin. “It was all right.”
“Just all right?”
I huff. “Yeah. I mean. It wasn’t the same without you.”
He winces. “I’m sorry I wasn’t up to it.”
“It’s fine,” I say, trying to act nonchalant. “I survived.”
He nods. “You going this Sunday?”
“Fuck no. You?”
“Mate, if you’re not going, I’m definitely not. I got better things to do with my time than hang out with Glen and Jamie.”
I smile behind my pint. “They’re okay when they’re not showing off.”
“So, never then.” Nate chuckles again, and I can’t help join in with him. Then his jaw tightens. He exhales through his nose. “Nora got her period.”
I adjust my glasses and stare across the table at him as he bows his head. The noise of the pub presses in around us—laughter, chatter, glasses clinking—but as I take in Nate’s defeated posture, it all fades, like we’re sat in a bubble, waiting for it to burst and drown the both of us.
“It didn’t work, Ev.” He lifts his gaze to meet mine, his brown eyes glazed over as if hiding all his emotions, but I know that look. The same look he had the night of the wedding when he was drunk and riddled with guilt, blaming himself for something that isn’t his fault.
“You didn’t expect her to get pregnant from two times, did you?” I lift my pint and take a big gulp. The beer does nothing to take the edge off or dull the way my chest aches every time I think of what they’re going through.
“Maybe.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I think Nora did, with your tens of billions of swimmers.”
“Sixty million. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Will you be willing to try again?”
My breath halts.
This drink was never about us.
It was always going to come back to this.
My fingers curl tighter around my glass. I thought he’d brought me here to hang out. To make up for bailing on Sunday. To be us again. But the timing clicks into place. The drink. The pub. The apology. The ask. And I hate myself for how quickly my chest caves in at the realisation.
Hate that I hoped for more.
Hate that I still do.
“I guess that’s all I’m good for these days.
” The words are out of my mouth before I even register that I'm saying them. I want to take them back. But it’s the ugly truth, and I need to accept it.
I hold my breath, lungs seizing. This is all my fault.
I made the offer, but I want to be more than a fucking solution to a problem.
“Ev. Don’t be like that.” Nate’s brow knits together, his jaw clenched tight.
“Like what?” I rise from the seat, the chair scraping against the wooden floor, cutting through the noise. “Something you slot in when it suits you.” My hand shakes as I snatch up my bag and jacket and weave through the bar towards the exit.
Heads turn as I barge through the horde, but I don’t care. I need air. Need space. Need Nate, but that’s the one thing I can’t have.
Outside, dusk settles over the town. Cool air hits my face, but it does nothing to diminish the rising temperature in my veins.
“Ev,” Nate shouts from the crowd, but I stomp alongside the bar, down the back alley that leads to my car parked behind our office.
“Ev.” Strong arms push me against the alley wall.
The impact knocks the breath from my lungs and I’m weak when it comes to him.
“I never meant—” Nate’s voice breaks as he rasps, holding me hostage between his heaving chest and the cold brick.
I’ve never heard that sound from him before. Nate doesn’t crack. He’s the one who holds everything together.
“You needn’t have run after me.” I glare into his eyes, willing myself not to show my true feelings, willing them to stay locked in that box. “I won’t let Nora down.”
Nate’s shoulders drop, his body sagging in relief, but he doesn’t break eye contact.
“I never meant for you to feel that way.” His hand moves from fisting my shirt at my shoulder to curling his calloused fingers around my neck, his thumb moving up and down in soothing motions at the bottom of my hairline as if he can rub away all the tension between us.
It’s instinctive. He’s done it a hundred times before, as if touching me like this is the most natural thing in the world, and fuck, I wish could be. I wish he would touch me all the time.
The usual lustre in his deep brown eyes is gone. This confident mountain of a man is crumbling right before me, devastatingly desperate.
I want to hold him and tell him everything will be all right, that I’m here and I’ll do anything for him, but I need to know I’m more than a fucking sperm bank.
I know they’ll never be mine, but I need their friendship at least. I need to know and feel like I belong and won’t be locked out the minute they want to have a quiet Sunday.
“I’m sorry for making you feel that way.” His voice is raw, his eyes swirling like deep bottomless pools.
This isn’t about Nate or me. It’s about her.
I lift my hand to his neck, my thumb stroking the stubble on his jaw as if I can help keep him together. “I’m sorry I threw a tantrum back there.”
Nate closes his eyes and presses his forehead to mine, our noses touch, his ragged breaths hit my face, warm and uneven, the smell of beer still on his tongue. He’s too close, yet not close enough. “I’m sorry. You’re so much more than a donor to me. To us.”
“I know.” Deep down, I know it’s true. We’ve been friends for so long, we’re like family.
I nudge my nose against his crooked one, my lips a whisper away from his as I breathe him in.
The quiet thrum of his heart beats against mine at the same irregular pace.
Does he sense how much I need him right now?
I close my eyes and let myself just be with him in this moment in the dark alley. Just the two of us and our demons. And the terrifying truth that we’re both standing in something dangerous that we don’t know how to handle.
But neither of us is stepping back.