Chapter 23 #2
Zac lifts one eyebrow, sipping from his beer and waiting for me to continue.
“Nate, my ex, has become my neighbor. He now lives in the building adjacent to mine.”
He puts the beer down and offers me his hand, palm up. “Are you good with that?”
I take his hand, but we don’t intertwine our fingers. “It’s … unexpected.”
I don’t understand what Nate’s doing here now, seven months later. I tighten my fingers around the stem of the glass: Nate here in Bend doesn’t help me. Zac’s gaze is focused on the TV. I shake my head, forcing the impulse to dissect anything regarding my ex to dissolve.
Instead, I scoot closer to Zac on the loveseat, knee bumping his thigh, offering warmth instead of wounds. He turns his head to me as the weight shifts.
“Does this change anything for you? My ex being in town?” I ask.
“No, certainly not your ex being in town.”
I take a second to let that sink in then wait for more clarification. When he doesn’t volunteer any information about his ex, I lean a little closer and take a chance.
“Want to go out for dinner Saturday?” I ask, soft but steady. It’s not exactly what he asked for, but a quiet, careful I hear you and I’m trying. “There’s that new place on Third.”
Zac’s brows lift, lips curling at the edge. “Yeah? Sure.” He leans in until his lips touch mine.
His tongue brushes my bottom lip, a soft, patient question, and when I part for him, our tongues meet in that warm, breathless space that belongs to neither of us.
This kiss, like every one we’ve shared, is held back by hurt and fear.
I don’t want to take what I’m not willing to offer, but we can both offer touch.
It’s an uncomplicated arrangement, but the baggage we both bring turns what we’re doing into something a bit more loaded.
Our wounds are so raw we need a bit more tenderness than a simple friendly hook-up would.
And I don’t always have it in me—not after Nate and all my softness getting spit out at me.
I don’t today, so I pull away. He does as well without lingering. Staying the night never crosses my mind and must not cross his either since he hands me my coat from the closet like a gentle offering. We don’t kiss before I leave.
Outside, the night air bites the sweat on my skin, even on the short walk to my car.
I take the long route home, twenty minutes instead of fifteen.
The roads wind around the frost-tipped pines.
When I step onto the complex’s paths, each step crunching along the icy sidewalk, the scent of cold wood and pine mingles with the hum of the heating units.
I reach my building and glance up at the second-floor west unit across the way.
Nate’s light is on.
Curtains drawn, but there’s a shadow pacing?
No. Just crossing the room. A silhouette I know too well, even distorted behind fabric.
I freeze for half a heartbeat. My chest tightens.
If he’s waiting for me, it shouldn’t matter.
The time when Nate and I were a team is long buried—though checking the emotional pulse, it might have been buried alive.
As I reach for the front door to my building, the light in his apartment clicks off.
Darkness swallows the window whole. He’s been here three days, across from me, and done nothing but stand guard. Conveniently always there whenever I come and go. Still, underneath it all, there’s a rush of curiosity. Julian said he’s changed, but even if he has, I don’t have to acknowledge it.
Feelings spring from hidden corners, each one rising only to be smacked down before I can name it. Robyn, Queen of Emotional Whac-A-Mole. Maybe deep down, I was so focused on landing a job, not sabotaging my rotation, that even when I moved on, I somehow never fully let go.
I tug my long puffer parka tighter around my shoulders. My reflection stares back at me in my car window: makeup done, hair down and curled. I look ready, but I don’t feel it. Slipping the keys into my hand, I see him.
Two weeks. Two weeks since he moved into the building next to mine, and somehow, Nate is always there, on the balcony, shadowed in the dim light, watching.
My chest tightens, and a low knot twists in my stomach.
I inhale slowly. Nate’s nobody to me, and I’m nobody to Nate.
We’ve owed each other nothing for a long time.
I climb into the car and turn the key. Nothing. And again, nothing but the click of a frustrated starter. I step out, kicking at the snow, my fingers stiff despite my gloves, and the balcony is empty now.
I find the portable battery in the trunk and fiddle with the hood until I’m able to pop it open. The cables click into place. A flash of red, a hopeful spark, then nothing. Damn it.
I glance up as someone’s shadow falls over my side. Nate’s arms are crossed, shoulders tense. He doesn’t speak at first, just watches how I keep adjusting each of the clips to try to get a better grip, leaning on my car, all poised and unhelpful.
“I think your battery is dead, dead.” He straightens. “You were on your way somewhere,” he says, voice low, clipped. “Let me give you a ride.”
“I can get a car, thanks,” I murmur, not meeting his eyes and pulling the cables away from the battery.
“Do you want to be late?” His gaze flicks to my face, then lower to the little bit of my legs that are left exposed between my parka and boots. I get the sense he couldn’t care less if I’m on time.
I do, though. And he knows I despise tardiness.
Also, Zac and I both kept canceling on each other for this weird non-date.
We’ve seen each other at Loam & Latte in passing, and no movies or dinners anywhere.
Nothing as much as a kiss since that last time, leaning more and more toward the friends than the benefits side of the arrangement.
I look into Nate’s brown eyes and clench my hands into fists, the feel of it bizarre around my gloves. Zac and I have outgrown what we were doing—or at least I have—and I hate admitting that.
I nod and follow Nate to his car. It’s not the same sedan he had back in Chicago.
This one’s a dark-red crossover—better for the terrain, bad for my emotions.
Not the same cabin where he gave me rides to and from work, not the same seats we ate tacos in, not the same one he kissed Tessa in. Whack, whack, whack.
Once inside, Nate’s radio kicks up in the middle of a podcast, discussing the latest research on memory consolidation and neuroplasticity.
He doesn’t change it and nods here and there like he’s really making sense of the information.
I let it run, half listening, half trying to ignore the rapid thump of my heart.
The conversation is stilted, small talk about streets, the weather, the moon casting a silver glow over the mountains. I give directions to the steakhouse, watching the darkened streets through the windshield.
“Do you have a job lined up here?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, signaling right as I point to the turn. “I got an offer before I even moved.”
“Same thing you were doing?”
“Mostly,” he says. “More residential housing than corporate. I lost a chunk of my licensing hours moving across states, so I’m spending more time on-site than in the office.”
“You what?”
“It’s no big deal. Actually, I’m enjoying it, more hands-on, less theoretical. More examining if things hold together, less staring at drawings all day.”
I try not to look at him when he pulls up at the corner across from the restaurant.
Through the passenger-side window, I see Zac, phone in hand.
Mine beeps in my bag. Nate’s hands wrap around the steering wheel, and I can’t help but notice every subtle twitch—knuckles whitening, jaw tight, posture rigid.
I thank him and step out, crossing the street.
As I lean forward to give Zac a side hug, I feel Nate’s eyes pressing against the back of my head, a quiet weight.
It feels as if my ribs are pressing in. Whac-A-Mole feelings spike—curiosity, resentment, old ache—but I shove them down before they can fully surface.
Don’t think about the hours he’s logging, whatever his plan is. Just don’t.
Dinner is easy, uncomplicated, and it helps exile every mental snapshot of Nate and what he does in Oregon. Zac reaches out across the table and squeezes my hand once, but he doesn’t keep it there, and after we split the check, we go our separate ways without either of us suggesting otherwise.
Getting out of the cab at my complex, I get a glimpse of Nate’s building—his light’s on, curtains pulled wide, shadows moving within. When I focus on his window, Nate’s still there, framed in light, shamelessly watching me.
My pulse hammers, a familiar surge of tension as I impulsively stomp to his building. Nate doesn’t need to buzz me in, he’s at the door, opening it for me in the less than the two minutes it took for me to get there.
“What game are you playing, Nate?” I whisper-yell while he closes the door behind me. “You say I know what you’re here for, but none of this makes sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
He steps into me, and I step away, pressing my back against the wall next to the glass door. Nate’s breath fans my cheek, and his vestibule feels three times smaller than mine, even though they’re identical.
I catch the faint trace of his body wash—different now, but familiar—and I know this green sweater he’s wearing.
He used to wear this one and others like it on our dates.
Dates we don’t go on anymore. I inhale, and the closeness hits me, twisting in my chest. I could slap him or fold into his arms and cry.
“You,” I breathe out, air cracking the syllable in half. “You move here, and then you do nothing but watch me.”
His cognac eyes flash darker, and he leans a fraction closer, the static charge between us prickling the skin on the back of my neck. “I do more than watch you.”
I shake my head. “You drove me to a date.” My pulse hammers in my ears, chest tight, anger and pain spreading low in my belly. “Why did you come here?”
His nostrils flare, neck taut when he presses his palms against the wall behind me.
“You’re wrong.” His voice no louder than an exhale, his SCM muscle tics and the tension seeps on my skin.
“Sometimes, I can’t sleep, wondering what you’re doing with this man you’re seeing.
” He swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Sometimes, I can’t stand still, imagining your body wrapped around others the way it did around mine.
” His hand flexes, knuckles whitening. “Every time I see you, I fight against myself so I don’t drop to my knees and remind you that I know exactly what you like best.”
He lifts his rugged palm off the wall, and the air between us zaps as he trails the strip of nylon-covered skin of my thigh.
He isn’t touching, yet he knows he doesn’t have to as the echo of his skin calls forward memories that make my stomach flutter.
I bite my lip, almost trembling from the sharp line of jealousy in his tone and the low hum of desire I won’t allow to take root.
He takes a slow step back, releasing some of the tension in his shoulders, but his gaze stays locked on me, intense and burning.
“However, I made mistakes and lost that right,” he says, voice dropping into something heavier, deliberate.
“My first mistake was losing sight of our big picture. What I … wasn’t always aligned with was what you wanted.
So now … I’m here to show you that I can hold myself together while you chase after your dreams.”
I’m rooted to the spot and so conflicted I have to shut my eyes to avoid his. Part of me craves the words he’s saying, part of me aches for the raw desire he’s holding in check, and part of me is beyond pissed off he dared to come here and disturb my hard-earned new normal.
“Even if that means … being with other people,” he continues, a flicker of steel in his eyes. “So now … go back to your home. I’m determined to be better, Robyn, but I’m still just a man.”
“So, what’s your big plan?” I cross my arms over my chest. “Watching, lurking?”
He takes one more step back, his scent lingering long enough that it heightens his absence. I get the urge again to test the line he’s drawn, to prove it’s all for show, that he hasn’t changed and still gets distracted.
“Oh, sweets, you’re not ready for what I have in mind.” He smirks, eyes dark with amusement and something sharper. “I admit, though, I didn’t see this coming. You, here tonight.”
“I’m here because you’re intruding in my life.” I lean into him and press my hands against his chest. He feels different—more solid.
“Maybe.” He wraps his fingers around my wrists and lifts my hands off him, then drops them to my sides with a gentleness that somehow stings more than if he’d shoved them away. “Go home, sweetheart. I’ll be watching.”
And for all my trying-not-to-feel, I can’t pretend there isn’t humming under my skin. I chose this life I’ve built. I have no need or desire for Nate Leighton, but I look over my shoulder—and yes, he’s watching—and don’t look away.