Purple Rain
NATE
Sonder is packed like it is most Saturday nights—locals mixing with the summer crowd, music pulsing from speakers mounted in corners, conversations bleeding into each other until it's just a wall of sound.
Tonight, though, there's a specific energy. A celebratory chaos.
Because today was Mia's baby shower.
Which means while the women spent the afternoon playing ridiculous games involving measuring Mia's belly with toilet paper and guessing baby food flavors, the men did what men do: retreated to the bar to drink beer and pretend we're not terrified about the fact that Ollie's about to be responsible for a tiny human.
Levi and Sonny are already halfway drunk when I arrive, laughing about something one of the girls seated with them said, the tension from rehearsal apparently dissolved thanks to alcohol.
Ollie's at our usual table in the back, laughing too loud, clapping me on the shoulder the moment I sit down like we're still nineteen and nothing hurts yet.
"Nate! Finally! We've been here for two hours. Where the hell were you?"
"Working," I say, sliding into the booth. "Some of us have jobs."
"Some of us," Ollie counters, "are about to be fathers and deserve a pass on productivity."
Jay's beside him, grinning, already ordering another round before I've finished my first drink.
"To Ollie!" Jay shouts, holding up a shot of Jager that materialized from somewhere.
"And to Mia!" Julian adds, raising his own glass. "For carrying his child and somehow still tolerating him."
"To surviving adulthood," Ollie laughs, raising his beer. "Barely."
We clink glasses, the boys knock back shots, while I sip my Coke.
The familiar pang hits—not craving, exactly, but the ghost of what it used to feel like to be part of this particular ritual. The burn, the looseness, the way alcohol made everything easier. But then I remember what it also made easier: lying, hiding, destroying everything I cared about.
So I sip my Coke and let them get drunk around me.
It's enough.
We fall into the easy rhythm of banter and conversations that don't require explanations or performance. Ollie leans closer after a few minutes, his voice dropping below the noise.
"You're gonna be the coolest uncle in Eden. You know that, right?"
"Adopted uncle," I say.
He studies me with eyes that are sharp despite the alcohol. "That could change, you know?"
"Ollie." I warn.
"Have you talked to her?"
I don't need to ask who he means.
"I haven't seen her today."
He takes another drink, then sets it down with more force than necessary.
“Yeah well she’s probably been in hiding anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wes, the cheating fucking bastard."
"What?"
The word comes out sharp. My hands grip the edge of the table and it takes everything in me to not want to flip the entire thing over. Ollie blinks at my tone, then seems to realize what he just said.
"Shit. You didn't know."
“No , I didn’t.”
"The lying dog proposes to her, then has the fucking nerve to cheat on her while she's out of town." Ollie's slurring his words slightly, but his anger radiates off him. "Camilla sent Nora the photos this morning. Paparazzi caught him with some actress at a restaurant in LA. They were—"
He makes a vague gesture.
“Getting more than friendly. I can tell you that much.”
Something dark and hot floods through my chest.
Rage. Pure, uncomplicated rage that makes my vision tunnel and my jaw clench so hard my teeth ache. Rage I haven’t felt in years since Scott was still alive. My pulse hammers in my ears.
That fucking—
"He doesn't deserve her," Ollie mutters, oblivious to the fact that I'm currently imagining very detailed scenarios involving Wesley fucking Grant and significant physical harm.
"Never did. I knew he was a piece of shit the moment I met him. He was too smooth and too polished. Proper loser drowning in Ralph Lauren or whatever shit they wear in Hollywood."
I can't speak. Can't form words around the fury building in my throat. Nora saw those photos. Saw proof that the man she agreed to marry, the life she built in LA, was built on lies.
And what did she do?
She texted me. Apologized to me. Asked to talk to me. While her world was falling apart, she reached out to me.
"You okay?" Ollie asks, peering at my face.
"Fine," I manage, though my voice sounds wrong even to my own ears.
"You look like you want to hit something."
"I do."
Ollie laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Get in line. Camilla's already planning his murder. Pretty sure she's got spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations ready.”
I force myself to breathe and unclench my fists. To remember that Nora doesn't need me to go to LA and assault her ex-fiancé, no matter how satisfying that would be.
His phone buzzes then, and he checks it, expression shifting.
"Mia says you're driving Nora home."
The anger gives way immediately to concern. "Is she okay?"
"She's drunk," Ollie says simply.
I wonder why, though it's pretty obvious. Finding out your fiancé is a lying, cheating prick tends to require alcohol.
"Apparently she and Camilla got into the Sangria at the shower. Mia's worried about her driving."
"I'll get her," I say immediately, already standing.
"Hey." Ollie grabs my arm, stopping me.
His eyes are serious now, the alcohol-induced haze clearing slightly.
"You know, everyone keeps telling me how lucky I am."
"You are," I reply.
He laughs softly. "Yeah. I know. But luck only gets you so far. The rest? That's about choices."
He releases my arm, leans back.
"Choosing to show up. Choosing to stay. Choosing to fight for what matters instead of letting it slip away because you're scared or proud or convinced you don't deserve it."
I grip my keys a little tighter, understanding exactly what he's not saying.
"You should tell her the truth. Especially now."
I don't respond. Because the truth is complicated and messy and wrapped up in his choices as much as mine.
"Nate," he presses, leaning forward. "She deserves to know."
"Drop it, Ollie." My voice is flat, final.
"But—"
"I said drop it."
The edge in my tone makes him pull back.
He studies me for a long moment, the humor gone from his eyes now, replaced by something that looks like guilt.
"I'm sorry, man. For everything. For what I did. For what you lost. For what you never got to have because I thought I was protecting you both."
"You've apologized countless times. It's in the past," I say quietly, even though we both know it's not.
Not really.
The past has a way of bleeding into the present, especially when secrets are involved.
He hesitates, then nods. "Yeah. The past."
But as I turn to leave, he adds one more thing:
"Just... don't let it stay there if it doesn't have to."
The drive to the lake house takes fifteen minutes but I get there in seven, and I spend every one of them trying to calm down.
Trying to push away the images I'd seen online. Because I stupidly looked it up.
After Ollie told me—after he dropped the bomb casually like he was mentioning the weather, I'd excused myself to the bathroom at Sonder and pulled up the article on my phone.
It took every ounce of restraint I had not to put my fist through the bathroom mirror. The rage was immediate. White-hot. Blinding. Not just because he cheated—though that alone was enough to make me want to drive to LA and have a very unpleasant conversation with his face.
But because he did it publicly. Because he humiliated her. Because while she's here, dealing with Alfie's death, he was out there making a mockery of their entire relationship.
I'd stood in that bathroom, phone in hand, knuckles white from gripping the sink, breathing hard, trying to talk myself down from doing something incredibly stupid.
Like driving to LA tonight and finding him, making sure he understood exactly what happens to men who hurt her.
Instead, I'd splashed cold water on my face, shoved my phone in my pocket, and walked back out to the table.
And now I'm driving to the lake house, hands still gripping the steering wheel too tight, trying to push away the images of the way he probably smiled at Nora when he proposed while already planning to cheat on her. If he hadn’t already been. The timeline doesn't matter—the betrayal is the same.
My jaw aches from clenching it.I force myself to breathe.
She needs support right now. Not my rage. Not my opinions about what Wes deserves.
Whatever she wants, I’ll give it to her. Even if what I really want is to put that asshole through a wall.
My phone goes off.
Camilla
She's on the dock.
She's sad, Nate.
I get out of the car, follow the path around the house past the porch to where the dock stretches out over the water.
And there’s Nora, sitting at the edge with her legs dangling, wine glass in hand, staring out at the lake as the sun sets in shades of amber and rose.
She's wearing a white sundress that catches the fading light, hair down and moving slightly in the breeze, feet bare. She looks beautiful and sad and judging by the way she’s slowly swaying, slightly drunk.
She turns when she hears my footsteps on the wooden planks, and her face lights up in a way that makes everything else fade.
"You came," she says, and there's relief in her voice. Like she wasn't sure I would.
"Of course.” I move closer, hands in my pockets to keep from reaching for her. "You okay?"
She laughs. "Define okay."
I sit beside her, our legs hanging over the edge, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. Near enough that her perfume surrounds me and somehow I feel intoxicated.
"You want to talk about it?"
"Not really." She takes another sip of wine, then sets the glass down beside her. "I want to sit here with you and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist for a little while. Is that okay?"
"Yeah, Len," I say softly. "That's okay."
We sit in silence, the water lapping gently against the dock posts, the last light of day painting everything gold. Distant laughter from the house, music playing faintly, the world continuing on while we sit here suspended in this moment.
After a beat, she speaks quietly.