Chapter 27
ALWAYS
NORA
The late afternoon wind breezes across the pages of my book, one I'm completely absorbed in, lost in someone else's story, when I feel eyes on me. That familiar warmth that means someone is watching, studying me with the kind of attention that makes my skin prickle with awareness.
But it's not Nate. It's Jake.
"What?" I ask without looking up, though I can feel the corners of my mouth threatening to betray me with a smile.
"I always liked watching you read."
Now I do look up, marking my place with my finger because this is the first time all summer Jake has started a conversation that wasn't loaded with tension or carefully constructed distance.
"That's a weird thing to say?"
He's leaning against the doorframe with that expression he gets—the one that makes me feel like I'm being studied, catalogued, understood in ways that should terrify me but somehow don't.
"You feel every emotion with every page you read. And it's always spread across your face."
I close the book completely now, dog-earring the page despite my usual reverence for books. Some moments demand sacrifice, and this feels like one of them. Jake doesn't start conversations lightly anymore, and when he does, it usually means something is breaking apart inside him.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I used to gauge how you were feeling just by watching you in that exact spot reading."
I'm not sure how that makes me feel—the fact that he observed me so closely, that he remembers those little details. There's something both flattering and unsettling about being seen so completely.
"Well we're a lot like books, I guess." The words come out measured, deliberate, because this metaphor has been forming in my mind for weeks.
"Most people only see the cover—judge us by our appearance, our reputation, the stories others tell about us. A minority read the first couple of pages, maybe give us a chance to make a first impression. Or they just believe what everyone else says about the story. But few..."
I pause, meeting his eyes, seeing something there that looks like recognition, like relief.
"Few actually know what's really on the inside."
The silence that follows isn't empty, it's full of understanding. I can see it in the way his expression shifts, the way something settles in his chest like he's been holding his breath for months and finally remembered how to exhale.
Jake comes and sits down next to me, hands clasped on his knees, leaning forward and tilting his head toward me while resting his cheek on his shoulder. The position is so familiar, so achingly reminiscent of all the times we've sat exactly like this.
"I ended things so shitty last summer with you," he says, his voice quiet but steady. "You didn't deserve any of that. I was just angry. At myself, at the Nate—"
“At me?”
“It wasn’t like that, I just—”
"We don't have to go back and revisit the past."
"You're right. But I still owe you an apology. I was a dick. To you, to Ollie, to Nate."
"I mean..." I let the words trail off with a slight smile, the kind of gentle teasing that used to be our language, and Jake laughs—actually laughs—for the first time in what feels like forever.
"Look, it was a rough time for everyone. I’m not holding anything against you Jake."
"You'll always be my person Nora. Even if I'm not yours."
I reach for his hand, squeeze it once, and let the gesture speak for itself.
"Jake—"
"No, look... I'm trying to... Fuck."
He runs his hands over his face that gesture that means he's wrestling with something bigger than he knows how to handle.
"I'm sorry. Everything is just so fucked up right now, with you, with Nate, with this shit going down with dad."
Something in his tone shifts, and I feel the conversation tilting toward darker territory.
"Wait, what is going down with your dad?"
Jake's face changes, and suddenly I'm looking at someone who's been carrying a weight that's slowly crushing him.
"Everything he’s been doing," he says, his voice flat with the kind of exhaustion that comes from holding toxic secrets.
"I know it was all illegal. He's been planning it for years, and I tried to pretend it was just business until some things started setting off alarm bells in my head.
So I started digging only to realise how deeply I've been part of the process. "
"Jake..."
"Nate is about to have all the documents that will burn it all to the ground," he continues, and there's something like relief in his voice, like he's finally allowing himself to speak the truth out loud.
"What? How did he get the documents?"
"I gave them the location on where to find them, him and Jay are there now. But I don't think it'll be enough. Dad is always two steps ahead of everything, of everyone. There's more, in the office and on other offsite locations. I'm going to get them."
The determination in his voice scares me more than his confession.
"Jake, this sounds dangerous. If your dad finds out you've gone behind his back and—"
"And what?"
He stands up abruptly, pacing to the window like he can't contain the energy of his own frustration.
"I can't do this anymore, I can't sit by and watch him fuck people's lives. I can't be the person who helps him do it, I won't. That's not going to be my legacy."
I watch him struggle with the weight of his own conscience, and I recognize the pain in his movements. It's the same restless energy I've carried since the accident, the feeling of being trapped between who you've been and who you want to become.
"Hey, sit down," I say gently, because I can see how upset he is—not just at his father, but at himself, at the choices he's made and the person he's become in the process. "This isn’t on you."
He slumps back down beside me, and I can feel the defeat radiating from him like heat.
"It is on me. I did this, I fucked things up because I let him get away with things and now innocent people are losing everything because of it. Because I couldn’t say no to him."
Jake looks at me with tired eyes and my heart starts to ache at what he'd given up for a false kind of love. "The worst part is, a part of me always knew."
"Knew what?"
"Knew that Nate was right from the very beginning. Knew that Mom and dad had issues growing up. Knew about what Nate had to do to keep me from everything. But I think I just got it in my head that I could change things. That maybe I could be the one to fix things for once."
I watch him struggle with the weight of his own realization.
Jake has always been the family peacemaker, the one who smoothed over Scott's rough edges and made excuses for Lydia's willful blindness.
He's spent years trying to be the perfect son, thinking that if he could just be good enough, loyal enough, successful enough, he could somehow transform his father into the man he needed him to be.
"You can't change people, Jake," I say gently, because I've learned this lesson in my own painful ways. "In the same way some people aren't loyal to you, they are loyal to their need of you. Once their need changes, so does their loyalty."
"I was so sure I could," he continues, his voice breaking slightly. "I thought if I just played along, maybe he'd see that there was another way to be successful that didn't involve the shit he’s been pulling." He laughs bitterly. "I was so fucking naive."
"You weren't naive," I tell him. "You were hopeful. And there's nothing wrong with hoping the people we love will become better versions of themselves."
“When did you get so wise?”
I hold up the book I’m reading, “Haven't I always been?”
Jake smiles, for the first time since I’ve seen him this summer.
“True.”
His face crumples slightly, and I can see him processing years of choices through this new lens.
"I kept telling myself that if I could just stay close enough, if I could just be involved enough, maybe I could influence him from the inside." He runs his hands through his hair. “ Like I could be some kind of moral compass he didn't know he needed.”
He scoffs at the last part.
"You were trying to save your family," I say, because I understand the impulse even if I can see its flaws. "That's not a character defect, Jake. That's love. It's just love that got misdirected."
The resignation in his voice breaks something inside me.
"There's this quote, I think Hemingway said it but I could be dead wrong, about how everyone breaks differently. Some people break like glass—all sharp edges. Others break like old books—the binding gives way, but the words are still there."
Jake looks at me with eyes that are too old for his face, too tired for someone who should still be figuring out who he wants to be.
"Which one am I?"
I study his face, seeing all the layers of him—the boy who used to build forts with me in the backyard, the teenager who debated which books were better, the young man who's been carrying his father's sins like stones in his pockets.
"I think you're both. And I think that's why it hurts so much."
We sit in silence for a while and I think about all the ways we've hurt each other and all the ways we've tried to heal. Jake reaches for my hand, and I let him take it, because sometimes comfort is more important than complexity.
"I'm worried," he admits quietly. "I'm worried about what happens when this all comes out. I'm scared of who I've become. I'm scared that I've lost all of you—you, Nate, Ollie, my Mom—because of choices I made."
"You haven't lost us," I say, and I mean it, moving closer to him, as if my presence will somehow ground his racing thoughts. "You've made mistakes, congratulations, you’re human. But you're trying to make them right. That has to count for something."
"Does it though? Does trying to be better actually make you better, or does it just make you feel better about being who you are?"
The question hangs in the air, and I realize it's one I've been asking myself since the accident.
Am I actually healing, or am I just getting better at managing my damage?
Am I becoming stronger, or am I just learning to live with being broken?
"I don't know," I admit. "But I think maybe that's the point. Maybe we're not supposed to have all the answers. Maybe we're just supposed to keep trying, keep choosing to be better, even when we don't know if it's working."
Jake squeezes my hand, and the simple touch confirms all the ways we've shaped each other and been shaped by each other.
"Thank you," he says with a faint smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
"Always." I reply, and it's true in all the ways that matter.
Later that night, after Jake has disappeared in his room and I've spent hours thinking, I text Nate, who still hasn’t come home from wherever he’s been.
Nora
Want to go for a drive?
His response comes back almost immediately:
Nate
Meet you outside in ten.
I grab a cardigan and head downstairs, finding Nate waiting by his car with that easy smile that never fails to make my chest warm.
He holds out his arms to me and when I feel them wrap around me, he kisses me.
I almost want to pull the pin on everything I’m about to tell him but tonight, I need to be the one in control.
"Can I drive tonight?" I ask, and something in my tone must signal that this isn't a casual request because his expression shifts, becomes more attentive.
"Uh, sure," he says, handing me the keys. "Where are we going?"
"There's something I need to show you."
As soon as the Mustang fires up, and the radio is on, “Cast No Shadows” by Oasis starts to play. The melody drifts through the car as I pull out of the driveway, and I can feel Nate's eyes on me, studying my profile.
The drive is quiet at first, both of us lost in our own thoughts. But as we leave Eden behind and head down the highway, I feel Nate's tension increase. He realizes we're not just going for a casual drive around town like we usually do.
"Where are we going?" he asks, and there's something in his voice that suggests he's preparing himself for whatever I'm about to reveal.
I reach over and take his hand, intertwining our fingers over the gearshift, like he’s done a dozen times on drives like this where he was trying to soothe my nerves.
"Do you trust me?"
"Always," he replies without hesitation.
The word echoes in the car, heavy with promise and possibility.
Always.
I drive us toward the place where everything changed, toward the road where my life split into before and after. I'm not sure what I'm going to say when we get there, not sure how to explain everything about that night. But I know that Nate deserves the truth, all of it.
And I know that I'm finally ready to trust him with the weight of what I've been carrying.
The road stretches ahead of us, dark and uncertain, but for the first time in months, I'm not afraid of where it leads. Because I'm not traveling alone anymore. The road curves ahead of us, and I feel Nate's hand tighten around mine, anchor and promise all at once.
Whatever happens next, we'll face it together.
And maybe that's all any of us can ask for—someone willing to sit with us in our brokenness and see beauty in the pieces that remain.
Always, I think, remembering Nate's promise.
Always.