Chapter 14
Nate
Idon’t know why I said it.
Tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at noon. We’ll try again.
The words have been rattling around in my skull since they left my mouth, mocking me. I’d been so close to driving away clean. So close to letting her walk into that house and out of my life again.
And then I’d opened my damn mouth.
I stare at the ceiling of my bedroom, same as I’ve been doing for the past four hours.
Sleep didn’t come. Hasn’t come in days, if I’m being honest. Every time I close my eyes, I see her face in the passenger seat of my truck.
The way she looked when I wouldn’t talk to her.
The way her scent went thin and hurt when I drove her home in silence.
The way she still smelled like honey and citrus, even after ten years. Like nothing had changed.
Everything changed.
I roll over and check the clock. 6:23 AM. Almost six hours until I have to pick her up.
This is fine. I can do this. I’ll take her somewhere, sit in silence for an hour, and then it’ll be over. Debt paid. Auction obligation fulfilled. And then I can go back to pretending she doesn’t exist.
That’s the plan, anyway. That’s what I keep telling myself.
Except she does exist. She’s here, in Honeyridge Falls, staying at Eileen’s house three miles from where I’m lying.
She’s here, and she’s been on dates with Lucas and Theo.
I know because I had to watch them get ready.
Had to listen to them talk about it after.
Had to smell her on them when they came home.
Things went well. Obviously. Lucas and Theo know how to talk. Know how to open up and share their feelings and all that shit that comes so easily to everyone except me.
I throw off the covers and head for the shower. Cold. I need it cold.
The morning drags.
I try to keep busy. Clean my gun, even though it doesn’t need cleaning. Organize my closet. Do push-ups until my arms shake. Anything to keep my mind from circling back to the same thoughts.
Cara’s back. Cara’s here. Cara is going to be sitting in my truck in a few hours, looking at me with those green eyes, wanting things from me I’ve never been able to give.
At 9 AM, Liam texts.
Liam: Heard you’re taking her out again today.
I don’t respond.
Liam: Mrs. Patterson called the station. Said she saw Cara walking into Eileen’s house yesterday looking “absolutely devastated.” Her words.
Still nothing.
Liam: You know you don’t have to do this alone, right? You could actually try talking to her.
I turn off my phone.
At 10:30, I catch myself standing in front of the mirror, staring at my own reflection. Dark circles under my eyes. Jaw tight. The same face I’ve worn since she left—closed off, guarded, giving nothing away.
I’ve always been the quiet one. Even before she left. Theo was the charmer, Lucas was the talker, and I was the one who showed up. Fixed things. Did the work. That was how I loved her—not with words, but with actions.
Apparently that wasn’t enough.
I turn away from the mirror. Enough brooding. I’ve got a date to survive.
Except... I don’t want to just survive it. Not really. Not if I’m honest with myself.
Today will be different. I’ll actually talk to her. Explain why I’ve been... like this. She deserves that much, at least.
I practice in my head while I get dressed. Cara, I’m sorry I’ve been shutting you out. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I care too much, and I don’t know how to—
I stop. Even in my head, the words sound wrong. Incomplete.
I’ll figure it out when I see her. Maybe it’ll be easier face to face.
By 11:45, I’m parked outside Eileen’s house, fifteen minutes early because apparently I’m a masochist.
The truck idles. Heat blows through the vents. I grip the steering wheel and stare at the front door, willing myself to put the truck in reverse and drive away.
I don’t.
I kill the engine and get out. The walk to her door feels longer than it should. I knock before I can talk myself out of it.
The door opens at 11:58, and there she is.
Cara.
She’s wearing jeans and a sweater—green, the color that always made her eyes look like forest pools—and her hair is down around her shoulders. Surprise flickers across her face. Like she didn’t actually expect me to show.
That makes two of us.
“You came,” she says.
“I said I would.”
She studies me for a second, then grabs her coat and steps outside. We walk to the truck in silence. I open the passenger door for her—my mother raised me right, even if I am an emotional disaster—and she climbs in.
Her scent fills the cab the second I get in the driver’s side. Honey and citrus and something warm underneath—familiar and foreign all at once.
My hands tighten on the wheel.
Every instinct I have sits up and takes notice. Omega. Ours. Want. The same damn response I had when I was eighteen, like my body never got the memo that she left. Like ten years means nothing when she’s right here, smelling like home.
I shove it down. Lock it away with everything else.
I put the truck in drive and pull away from the curb.
“Nate.”
Nothing.
“Are we really doing this again? The silent treatment?”
I keep my eyes on the road. My scent locked down so tight it hurts, like holding my breath underwater.
“Okay.” She settles back in her seat. “Fine. Where are we going this time?”
I haven’t actually thought about that. Yesterday was the lookout point, which was a mistake. Too many memories up there. Too many ghosts of who we used to be.
I turn toward town instead, heading for the one place I know she won’t expect.
The Barn Bar is nearly empty at noon on a weekday. Just a couple of old-timers nursing beers in the corner and Milo behind the counter, wiping down glasses.
He looks up when we walk in, and his eyebrows shoot toward his hairline.
Great. Of course he’s working the day shift.
“Well, well,” Milo says, setting down the glass. “Nate Thorn bringing a date to my bar. Someone mark the calendar.”
“Milo.” I nod at him, then steer Cara toward a booth in the back. She hesitates for a second before sliding in across from me.
Milo appears almost immediately. “What can I get you two?”
“Coffee,” I say. “Black.”
“We have food too, you know. It’s lunchtime.”
“Coffee. Black.”
Milo’s eyes flick to Cara, then back to me. I can see him cataloging everything—my locked-down scent, her nervous energy, the six feet of tension between us. He’s always been too good at reading people.
“I’ll have the same,” Cara says. She’s watching me with those green eyes, trying to read something in my face. She won’t find anything. I’ve had a long time to practice this.
Milo fills two mugs and sets them down, lingering a beat longer than necessary. I shoot him a look that says back off, and he holds up his hands, retreating to the bar.
The silence stretches between us, thick and uncomfortable.
I study the surface of my coffee. Black, like I’ve taken it since I was nineteen.
Theo used to tease me about it—said only old men and people who hated joy drank their coffee black.
Lucas took his with cream and sugar, like a normal person.
Cara used to steal sips from all three of our cups, never committing to her own order.
I wonder if she still does that.
Stop it. Don’t think about the past.
Cara wraps her hands around her mug. “So. A bar.”
I take a sip of coffee. Say nothing.
“This is romantic.”
Nothing.
“Nate.” Her voice sharpens. “You said we’d try again. This doesn’t feel like trying.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Physically. Barely.” She leans forward, and I catch a stronger wave of her scent—honey and citrus, tinged with frustration. She’s trying so hard. Part of me wants to put her out of her misery, tell her it’s not her fault, that I’ve always been like this.
But that would mean opening my mouth. And if I start talking, I might not be able to stop.
“You won’t look at me. You won’t talk to me. You’re sitting there like I’m holding you hostage.”
“You kind of are.”
Her jaw tightens. “I paid for this date.”
“And I’m honoring it.”
“By being a brick wall?”
I finally meet her eyes. That’s a mistake—I know it’s a mistake the second I do it—but her voice cracks through the wall I’ve built, and suddenly I’m looking right at her.
She’s beautiful. That’s the worst part. Ten years, and she’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Same green eyes that used to look at me like I hung the moon. Same mouth that used to whisper my name in the dark. Same stubborn set to her jaw when she’s not getting what she wants.
My gaze drops to her lips before I can stop it. Stays there a beat too long.
I remember that mouth. Remember kissing along her jaw, feeling her shiver under my hands.
Remember the sounds she’d make when I found that spot below her ear, the way she’d gasp my name like a prayer.
The way she tasted. The way she felt pressed against me in the bed of Theo’s truck, summer heat and teenage desperation and a future I thought was guaranteed.
My body responds to the memory before my brain can shut it down. Heat coiling low in my gut. The urge to reach across the table, pull her into my lap, remind her exactly who she belongs to—
I look away. Force my breathing steady.
Same girl who left without saying goodbye.
“Nate. Please.” Her voice drops, goes soft in a way that makes my chest ache. “Talk to me. Yell at me. Something. I can take it.”
I open my mouth.
The words are right there. I can feel them pressing against my chest, ten years of things I’ve never said. I missed you. I waited for you. I don’t know how to do this without you.
But when I try to push them out, my throat locks up. Like there’s a wall between what I feel and what I can say, and I don’t have the tools to break through it.
Say something. Anything. She’s asking for the bare minimum and you can’t even give her that.
“There’s nothing to say.”
The words come out flat. Wrong. The exact opposite of everything I meant.
What is wrong with me?