Chapter 18
NATALIE
T he fire crackled, popping softly as flames licked the edges of the logs, bathing their faces in firelight that flickered like a heartbeat.
The whole wedding party was scattered around in a circle, some wrapped in blankets, others holding long sticks over the fire with marshmallows slowly melting into gooey perfection.
Someone passed me a chocolate bar and a graham cracker. I took them absently, still half listening to Paige’s dramatic retelling of her skiing disaster from two years ago, complete with hand motions, ski pole miming, and a questionable imitation of a snowplow.
I sat close to Easton, our knees brushing now and then. It was the kind of gentle, unspoken closeness that made my chest ache in that quiet, hollowed-out kind of way.
The kind I’d been missing since the moment I walked away.
His arm rested behind me on the back of the bench we were sharing—not touching me exactly, but so close I could feel his warmth along my shoulder.
The stars were out, clear and sharp and painfully pretty above us, and a speaker sat near the woodpile, someone’s phone feeding it a soft stream of acoustic Christmas covers, each one more whispery and nostalgic than the last. It gave the whole night this strange, dreamlike hum, like we were inside a snow globe that hadn’t been shaken yet.
“You need help with that?” Easton asked, nodding at my assembled but unroasted s’mores ingredients.
I raised an eyebrow. “I can toast a marshmallow, thank you very much.”
He gave me a skeptical look that was entirely unwarranted. “I seem to remember someone lighting hers on fire four separate times that year at the cabin.”
“That was intentional,” I said, lifting my chin. “I like a little drama with my sugar.”
He laughed, and the sound of it, familiar, unguarded, laced with something wistful…it wrapped around me like one of the flannel blankets strewn across the benches. “Fuck. I’ve missed this. I don’t know how I’ve survived without it.”
“What? The threat of third-degree sugar burns?”
“No,” he said, his smile softening. “Just…sitting next to you. Sharing the fire. Talking about nothing. You…you weren’t just the love of my life. You were my best friend.”
The words lodged somewhere tight in my lungs.
I didn’t respond right away. My throat felt tight, like something unspoken was pushing its way up through all the defenses I’d carefully rebuilt. The ones that used to hold steady. The ones that had started to crumble the second I saw him again.
“I missed this, too,” I finally whispered, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
His eyes searched mine like he could hear everything I wasn’t saying. And maybe he could.
He took the stick from my hand with gentle fingers, the graze of his skin electric, then speared a marshmallow onto it with practiced ease.
“You know,” he said, his voice low and warm, “you used to always do this thing—burn a marshmallow beyond recognition on purpose, take one dramatic bite, and then hand it to me like you were doing me the favor. ”
I smiled despite myself. “Still a valid strategy.”
“I fell for it every time.”
“You liked it,” I said, nudging his knee with mine.
He gave me a look. “I liked you.”
The words slipped out so easily, so confidently, like they weren’t holding the weight of years between us.
I looked down at the fire, the orange glow flickering across the snow-dusted ground. My heart thudded against my chest in slow, careful beats, like it was trying to decide whether or not to believe him.
Maybe it was the cocoa I’d had earlier. Maybe it was the stars or the way his shoulder kept brushing against mine like he couldn’t stop reaching for me in these small, unconscious ways.
But for the first time, I didn’t want to dodge the feeling.
I wanted to lean in to it. Let it warm me. Let it burn…even if it only lasted the night.
“Hey, Nat,” he said, brushing a marshmallow onto a graham cracker and handing it to me like an offering. “Do you ever regret it?”
The question hit like a gust of cold air, unexpected and sharp.
I stared down at the s’more in my hand. My fingers clenched around it too tightly.
“Regret what?” I asked, but we both knew the answer. He didn’t have to say it.
He didn’t look away. “Ending it.”
For a moment, all I could hear was the snap of the firewood and the thud of my heart behind my ribs.
I stared into the flames like they held the answer, the flickering light catching on the edges of the chocolate bar still unopened in my hand. I turned it slowly, unthinking. Stalling.
“You know, it all happened so fast,” I whispered finally, my voice barely audible above the crackle.
“I know,” he said.
“I was eighteen. You were going to L.A. I knew enough about Hollywood to understand what happens there. I didn’t want to be the girl waiting by the phone. I didn’t want to hold you back. I didn’t want to tie you down.”
He was quiet for a moment before saying, “I wasn’t asking for strings, Natalie. I was asking for you .”
His voice wasn’t angry. Just quiet. Honest. Like he was gently picking at the stitches of an old wound, not to reopen it, but to understand how it had ever needed closing in the first place.
“I know,” I whispered. Shame crawled up my throat, bitter and hot. “But I thought…if I let myself need you that much, and it didn’t work…” I trailed off, eyes stinging. “I wouldn’t recover.”
He nodded slowly. “So you left before it could break.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. The truth sat between us, a living, breathing thing. Heavy. Real.
He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees, staring into the fire. “I used to think…if I just became successful enough, you’d come back. That if I did something big enough, you’d regret letting go.”
I jerked my head toward him, startled by the rawness in his voice. “Easton…”
“I don’t mean it to guilt-trip you,” he said. “I know we were just kids. But that didn’t make what I felt any less real.”
I swallowed, my fingers tightening around the melting chocolate in my hand. “It was real for me, too,” I said hoarsely. “It was so real. That was part of the problem.”
He turned toward me again. “So…do you regret it?”
He’d already laid everything bare—his hurt, his hope, the ache he’d carried alone. I owed him the real answer. Not a deflection. Not a half-truth. The real one.
So I gave it to him.
I stared at the fire, my voice barely above a whisper. “Yes.”
He blinked.
“Not because it wasn’t the choice I thought I had to make,” I said quickly. “I believed it was right at the time. But I still missed you. Every year. Every birthday. Every time I saw a movie trailer with your name on it and thought, He’s still him .”
He didn’t say anything. Just looked at me like I’d cracked open a part of myself he thought he’d never see again.
“And then I buried it,” I admitted. “Because if I let myself regret it too much, I’d have to face what it cost me. And I wasn’t brave enough to do that.”
The fire hissed. Someone laughed somewhere to my left, completely unaware the ground beneath my feet was shifting like sand.
Easton’s eyes were soft, searching, his thumb brushing against the side of his hot cocoa cup like he needed something to ground him. And I knew I wasn’t the only one remembering how it felt to be us, back then. Two kids—one already sure, the other too scared to believe it could last.
I turned slightly to face him more fully, my voice quieter, but more sure. “Can I ask you something now?”
He looked over at me, that gentle steadiness in his eyes. “Anything.”
“If you felt all of that,” I said slowly, heart thudding in my chest. “Why didn’t you come after me?”
He didn’t flinch. His jaw tensed, but his eyes didn’t leave mine. They stayed steady, steady and deep, the way they used to when he was trying to make sure I really heard him.
“I did,” he said quietly.
I stared at him, stunned, the crackle of the fire suddenly too loud in my ears. “You—what?”
“I came back the next morning,” he continued. “Before I left for L.A. I hadn’t even finished packing. I just got in the car and drove to your house. I had no plan. Just this desperate need to see you…to convince you to change your mind.”
My breath caught. I felt it like a snag in my chest—sharp and sudden, unraveling everything I thought I knew about that day. “I didn’t know that.”
“I just couldn’t breathe knowing you were really gone.
” He looked down at his hands, flexing them slightly like he was still holding the steering wheel, still feeling the tremor in his fingers.
“The whole drive, it felt like my chest was too tight. Like if I didn’t see you, I’d lose something I wouldn’t get back. ”
I stared at him, frozen in the space between then and now.
“But I didn’t make it past the front step,” he said quietly. “MeMaw opened the door before I could even knock—and then she stepped outside like she’d been waiting for me all night.”
The image hit me like a memory half remembered: I could picture her perfectly—arms crossed, wearing that leopard-print robe she always packed when she spent the night, standing at the door like some kind of Southern oracle who already knew the ending and was just waiting for everyone else to catch up.
A lump rose in my throat. “She didn’t tell me.”
“She told me you didn’t want to talk,” he said thickly. “But she asked if I would walk with her. Just for a bit.”
I could see it now—the dirt road that ran alongside the woods, the early morning light slanting through the trees. MeMaw marching down the road like she was headed to deliver a sermon the world didn’t know it needed.
“She asked me if I loved you,” Easton went on, his voice low. “And I told her I’d never loved anyone more.”
He paused, eyes on the fire, like the flames were reflections of that morning, of frost on car windows and the ache of goodbye that never got said out loud.
“She believed me. But she told me that wasn’t the question that mattered. Not really.”
I held my breath.