Chapter 31 Full Circle （Eden） #2
I clear my throat and sink onto the sofa beside Mom. Nate’s gaze tracks every step, burning into me, fierce and unyielding. Janice presses a glass of wine into my hand, and it trembles against the stem.
Dinner is loud, fragrant, endless. Platters of pasta, roasted vegetables, Antonio’s famous artichokes, all tastefully arranged in the center of the big dining table.
Halfway through the meal, Ryan’s youngest wriggles free of his high chair and toddles straight toward me.
“Lap!” he declares, pudgy hands reaching up and insistently tugging at my dress.
I scoop him up, settling him onto my knees.
Nate reaches across the table, slides the boy’s dish in front of me, his knuckles grazing mine.
It’s fleeting, familiar, and enough to light me up.
The boy demands a bite. I guide pasta toward his mouth while Nate dabs sauce from his cheek, so gentle it makes my chest ache.
For a moment, it’s the three of us—my lap, Nate’s steadying hand, a child between us.
And of course Ryan notices. His chuckle rumbles across the table, smug enough to fill the whole house. “Well, doesn’t that look cozy.”
“Ryan,” his wife groans, burying her face in her hands.
“Don’t Ryan me. I’ve got eyes.” He raises his glass, smirk sharp. “To second chances…and the guts to finally take them.”
The table erupts. Janice snaps photos, everyone laughs, relieved Ryan is calling it. Everyone except Leo, who just sits there, jaw locked, his stare cutting through me sharper than the toast itself.
Heat rushes up my neck, mortification clawing at my chest. I want to disappear under the table, crawl into the fire, anything but sit here on display while the whole world drinks to secrets I’ve barely admitted to myself.
Nate meets my eyes over the rim of his glass, mouth twitching, daring me to laugh. And against every instinct, a helpless giggle breaks free.
I try to keep my head down, forcing forkfuls of pasta past the knot in my throat.
For one blessed minute, the table’s attention shifts away from me.
Then Janice claps her hands, bracelets jingling, eyes twinkling.
She’s been waiting all night to spring her trap.
“Nate, baby, did you show Eden the boat yet? Antonio had it winterized, it’s tied up at the dock.
You oughta go check it before the freeze. ”
“Hold up,” Leo says immediately. “I’ll come.”
Janice waves him off with a breezy smile. “Now, sugar, you’ve been chasing those kids all day. Sit down and rest.”
Ryan jumps in before Leo can argue. “Actually, Leo, do me a solid? Watch the monsters for twenty minutes so I can show Meghan the renovation.” He’s tugging his wife to her feet, lips twitching.
Leo’s mouth opens to protest, but the kids are already climbing on him, shrieking, “Uncle Leo!”
“See?” Janice says, sweet as pie. “Perfect solution.”
The dock stretches into darkness, salt and woodsmoke threading the air. Nate’s hand closes around mine with quiet certainty.
I glance at him, pulse skipping. His eyes glint in the dark, steady and unreadable. He doesn’t let go. Instead, he tugs me in, close enough that my breath hitches.
“Nate—”
He doesn’t let me finish. His mouth claims mine, hot and hungry, a kiss that rips the air from my lungs and buckles my knees. A shiver tears through me, scorching down my spine. “Show me how much you missed me today,” he murmurs against my throat, scattering kisses over the exposed skin.
My breath drags in sharp and searing. His mouth covers mine again—slow, deliberate sweeps that consume me whole. My hands fist against the hard plane of his chest, every nerve sparking alive. Heat coils low in my body.
“They all know,” he mutters, rough against my lips.
A shaky laugh slips out. “We weren’t exactly subtle.”
He kisses me again, tongue tangling with mine until the cold disappears, replaced by the furnace of his body pressing into me.
“This is all I thought about that last summer.” His grip locks around my hips as he draws me to the rail.
“Walking you out here. Having you to myself.” His voice drops, rough velvet.
“You drove me crazy, Trouble. Every night your brother glued himself to us, and all I could think about was how to get you alone. How to touch you the way I wanted.”
Memory surges. Hot sand, porches crammed with friends, Leo always between us, the ocean working the shore in tireless swells.
“You had no idea what you were doing to me,” Nate says, confession scraping through him. “Running into the surf, stretched on your towel, laughing without a care. Half the time, I couldn’t breathe.” His jaw goes tight. “And I hated myself for wanting you that bad when I wasn’t supposed to.”
Every nerve wakes.
His stare sharpens. “So tell me, Eden, why didn’t you come to the ferry when I left for camp? Why did you cut me off?” He swallows, eyes searching mine. “You were always there. Every summer parting. Except that last year. I kept looking back. Waiting to see you run down the dock.”
The memory lands heavy: me on the sand, waiting, wrecked.
“The night before, I wanted to talk to you. I was looking everywhere,” he continues, voice rough. “I went to the bay. Sat on the steps. Checked the beach stairs. You were gone.”
My stomach drops; my fingers catch his coat. “Then why didn’t you come to the beach? I waited for you.” My words splinter. “I left you a note. In your drawer with your T-shirts, ‘Meet me at the beach after dinner.’”
He goes still, every muscle braced. Below us, the tide hisses against the pilings.
“There was no note,” he says, voice scraped raw.
“Christ.” His eyes shut, control cracking.
“After that kiss—those idiots hooting—I couldn’t think about anything but doing it again.
I didn’t dare. I waited. And then the last night hit, and I finally found my nerve.
I went looking for you after dinner to tell you how I felt. I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
The dock lifts and settles under my boots. Laughter spills from the house behind us.
He drags a hand over his mouth. “After I left, I called. I texted. First from the train, then from camp. Every day. Nothing. “
Each word lands heavy. I remember letting the phone ring. Deleting his voicemails without pressing play. Telling myself I was protecting my heart.
“I sent emails. Called your parents’ house.
For months. Eventually, I told myself I’d imagined it—misread the way you looked at me.
Or you were done with the kid who couldn’t say what he wanted.
” Ten years of quiet stack between us, and it hurts to stand under it.
“And now I finally understand why you cut me off. You were hurting.”
“I didn’t think of you as a friend, Nate,” I whisper. “I thought that’s all I’d ever be. When you didn’t show, I told myself you didn’t feel it. That you were sparing me.”
His gaze flares hot, furious. “I was a kid. I didn’t have the guts to take what I wanted. But you—” He tips my chin up. “You were always more than a friend to me. I was in love with you long before I knew what to call it.”
“So was I,” I admit, the truth finally clean. “For years. I don’t even know when it started.” Anger sharpens inside me. It was Leo. The answer lands with cruel clarity. There’s only one way a note in Nate’s drawer would disappear.
Nate’s thumb finds my jaw, rough and steady. “Eden,” he says, mouth a breath from mine. “I kept calling because I was yours long before I knew the word. Years before. You were never nothing.”
I press my forehead to his, the old hurt shifting into something I can hold. “I thought you chose not to come.”
“I didn’t,” he says. “I would have come if I had known.”
We stand in the shared wreckage for a long beat. I exhale; the pain inside me loosens after a decade of knots. His hand settles at the back of my neck, and when he kisses me, it isn’t frantic. It’s steady. Certain. A promise in slow, careful passes, writing new history over the old.
My fingers fist in his coat and pull him closer. The dock, the tide, the salt in the air—everything settles.
For the first time in years, the ache eases.