Chapter 6
FUCK IT
NATE
Luiza
Where did you disappear to last night? Everything okay? xx
I stare at the message for a long moment, trying to figure out how to explain what happened without sounding completely insane. How do you tell someone that your entire world shifted because you saw a ghost from your past dancing in a club in Barcelona?
Nate
The girl from the club, I knew her from back home, so I walked her home.
Luiza
Dios mío. It was her, wasn’t it!?
Tell me everything later. xx
I toss the phone aside and check the clock. 4 AM, enough time to go for a run and try to clear my head before I go and see Nora.
I still can’t believe she’s here.
Like, what the actual fuck?
The run does nothing to clear my head. I spent most of it trying figure out what the fuck I'm doing, what I'm hoping to accomplish by showing her any of these places I’m taking her to today.
I just know that I can't let her disappear again without trying to understand what last night meant.
If it meant anything at all.
Nora answers the door wearing ripped denim jeans and a simple white t-shirt, her hair loose around her shoulders, even dressed this casually, she still takes my breath away. This is how I remember her best—not dressed up for some event or trying to be anyone other than exactly who she is.
Just Nora, simple and beautiful and so fucking perfect it makes my heart ache.
Everything I ever felt for this girl comes flooding back like a dam bursting. Not that it ever really left—I've just gotten better at keeping it locked away where it can't consume me.
"Ready?" I ask, because if I look at her for too long I'm going to do something stupid, like tell her I've missed her every single day for the past eight months.
"Where exactly are we going?"
"You'll see."
Montserrat looks different at sunrise.
More mystical, more otherworldly. The massive serrated peaks rise from the Catalan plains like something from a fairy tale, and the early morning light makes the limestone formations glow like ancient cathedrals carved by giants.
This sacred mountain, with its monastery perched among the rocks, feels like a place where earth reaches toward heaven.
Nora stands beside me on the cliff overlooking the scene, and for a moment it feels like it always did with her—like we're the only two people in the world, like we exist in our own private universe where nothing else matters.
"Wow, it's beautiful," she says softly.
"Legend says it's the third most magnetic place on Earth," I tell her. "Some people say it has healing properties. Others say that it's cursed. Guess it depends who you ask."
She looks at me sideways.
"And you? What do you think?"
“I think some places, they collect the shit people leave behind. Not in a poetic way—more like they absorb every fear, every prayer, every bad decision whispered into the air. Some mountains feel heavy with it. This one? It feels like it’s holding all the people who came here hoping they could be put back together. ”
We fall into comfortable silence, watching the sun climb higher over the horizon. This is what I've missed most—not just her, but this feeling of peace that comes from being with someone whose presence says more than words ever could.
"When are you supposed to leave?" I ask, even though I don't really want to know the answer.
"I’m flying back to London tomorrow night."
Instantly, there’s a pit in my stomach.
I knew this wasn't permanent, knew she had a life to get back to, but hearing it makes something in my chest tighten painfully.
“So what brought you to a nightclub in Barcelona exactly?”
“Camilla got this huge opportunity. It was super last minute and I came for moral support. Thankfully, Liam covered me so I could.”
“Liam?” The name hits me like a sucker punch.
She raises a brow.
“Oh, just someone I work with. His aunt is the chief editor of Macmillan. I mean he could’ve easily gotten a better paying job at the company, but he wanted the experience first.”
I shouldn’t care about some guy she sees at work every single day. I mean, I have no right to care. And yet jealousy curls low and slow inside my ribs, a stupid, territorial flicker I thought I’d buried. Obviously fucking not.
I clear my throat.
“So, London’s treating you alright then?”
She smiles softly, looking out at the mountains.
“It is. Chaotic, but good. I feel like I’m finally finding my place,” she pauses, looking down at her hands, the way she always does when she gets shy. “But I wouldn’t even be there if it wasn’t for you.”
“What do you—”
“I know it was you who submitted my application for that scholarship program Nate. They told me and by they, I mean your Mom.”
I stay quite admiring the colours of the morning sky.
“You never said anything.”
“I didn’t need to. You earned it.”
She smiles softly. “Your turn, what brought you to Barcelona then?”
“I’ve been touring with this band—Midnights. We played our final show last night and went out to celebrate. There’s talks about us touring internationally next year.”
“Holy shit! Nate, that’s incredible.”
When she touches my arm, it’s like electricity snaps straight through me.
Her touch still does that—undoes me.
I swallow and try to keep my composure.
“It’s cool I guess. They want me to stick around and help write the next album.”
“You were always too humble for your own good.” She says with a teasing smirk.
More silence stretches between us, and I realize I've been gifted this time with her—away from the noise and complications of real life—and I want to hold onto it for as long as I can.
I want to memorize the way she looks in the morning light, the way she breathes when she's thinking, the way she exists in the world.
“Truth or dare?" she asks suddenly, breaking the quiet.
I almost laugh at the randomness of the question.
"What?"
"Come on. Truth or dare?"
"Truth," I say, because I'm tired of running from it.
"Why didn’t you reply?"
Her question cuts through the peace like a blade. I've been expecting it, dreading it, but that doesn't make it easier to hear.
You going to tell her how much you hated yourself after everything that happened?
The shadow voice slips in, oily and familiar, sounding exactly like it did the years it ruled me—mocking, precise.
Go on. Confess. You drowned like a coward and let her watch herself bleed because of you.
"How much do you know about what happened after the accident?" I ask instead of answering directly.
"Well, everyone treated me like I was made of glass. Which made everything so much worse when I woke up because all I knew was the accident happened, I was in a coma and you were gone."
I take a deep breath, trying to find the words.
“So nobody told you why I had to leave? The real reason?”
She stays silent.
“I overdosed. On heroin. Nick and Jay found me and literally had to drag me out of a halfway house."
She turns to face me fully, and I can see the shock and pain in her eyes.
"Why would you do that to yourself?"
"You almost died in my arms Nora. I held you while you bled out in the middle of the road and there was nothing I could do about it.
" The words come out raw, scraping against my throat.
"And before you tell me I can't blame myself for what happened—I do.
You wouldn't have been on that road if you hadn't come looking for me. "
"Nate—"
"Every time I closed my eyes, that’s all I saw. You—blood everywhere, silent and slowly dying. It replayed over and over, like some fucked-up loop I couldn’t escape. I begged it to stop, but it wouldn’t.”
The shadow voice slithers in: Of course it didn’t. You earned every second of that hell and you know it.
"It was my choice," she says fiercely. "Going after you was my choice. What happened was an accident, a terrible, horrible accident, it wasn't your fault."
There’s something in her face when she mentions the word accident.
"I can understand why you had to get out. But radio silence for eight months?"
I run my hands through my hair, trying to find words that don't sound like excuses.
"I was so fucked up, Nora… I—" I can't finish the sentence. "The drugs, the guilt, the way I felt about you—it was all toxic. I was toxic."
"Nate, that wasn't your decision to make." Her tone holds frustration now.
"Maybe not. But it's the one I made." I pause. "When I got here, Javier said I needed to cut ties with everything from before. No contact. No messages. I had to get my head straight."
Good. Blame Javier. Much easier than admitting the truth—that fear owned you. That you drifted exactly the way weak minds do, drifting until someone else makes your decisions for you.
"I mean, at first, it was his idea but I convinced myself I was doing the right thing, that staying away was protecting you somehow."
I take a deep breath, knowing what I’m about to tell her won’t really fix things.
“Every time I saw your name on my phone, I wanted to answer."
But you didn’t. Because you knew she’d see right through you.
"But I couldn't. Because I wasn't okay. I was barely holding it together, and every day felt like I might break. And then the guilt started eating at me—guilt about not responding, about making you worry, about being the reason you were hurt in the first place."
Nora reaches for my hand and I let her. Somehow her touch still has the power to keep the shadow at bay.
"The longer I went without responding, the worse it got. How do you come back from that? So the guilt turned into something else. Something darker. I needed to believe you were thriving in London and you were. That’s all I wanted for you."
Say it. Tell her how ashamed you were. Tell her how weak you became. How your own mind owned you like a puppet.
"I'd let everything fall apart and I’d turned to drugs to make me feel better about what I’d done. Do you know what guilt like that does to your mind? It destroys it. It fucked mine, royally. I couldn’t interfere in your life like that—not when I felt like poison."