Chapter 28
FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT
NATE
Doesn’t even dent it.
I keep looking at Nora, trying to read her, but she’s gripping the wheel like she’s steering through fog thick enough to drown in. Her eyes don’t leave the road. Her jaw hasn’t relaxed once.
“So, uh…” I try.
She doesn’t bite, doesn’t even look at me.
Doesn’t even flinch.
I shut up because what the hell am I supposed to say?
She asked me to come, told me she had something to show me, but gave me nothing else. Just that look—the one that says trust me even if this feels like a mistake.
The highway looks familiar and foreign all at once. My stomach drops when I recognize the stretch of road ahead.
A year.
A whole year since I’ve been here. And then I see it—the curve, the replaced guardrail, the repaved asphalt that still looks wrong in all the ways that matter.
“Nora.” My throat tightens on the word. “What are we doing here?”
She doesn’t answer. Just slows down, pulls over, kills the engine.
Then she gets out.
I stay in the car longer than I should, watching her through the windshield as she walks toward the spot that changed everything. The place where I almost lost her. The place I still see in nightmares.
I force myself out of the car. My legs feel like they’re made of wet cement. The air tastes like memory—burnt rubber, fire, fear.
She kneels down in the gravel, her fingers brushing the ground like she’s searching for a ghost.
And the ghosts hit me all at once.
The fire.
The petrol.
Jay screaming, “Move, Nate. Now, or she won’t make it!”
And her body in my arms in the ER. Barely warm, barely alive.
My hands shake and my chest locks up. Now my fucking brain starts replaying the worst night of my life like someone’s jamming fast-forward and rewind at the same time. This place feels cursed, like the devil marked it and me both.
“It’s almost been a year to the day,” Nora says quietly. Her voice slices straight through my spiral.
She still won’t look at me.
“Remember when I asked if you believe in coincidences?”
I nod because right now talking feels impossible.
“What do you think about chance?”
I drag in a breath but my lungs don’t feel big enough.
“Chance?” I echo. “I think it’s just another word for things we don’t understand yet.”
She hums like she’s weighing that.
“Maybe chance isn’t random,” she murmurs. “Maybe it’s just inevitable. Like gravity, things fall. We just pretend we’re in control of the direction.”
My heart is pounding so loud I’m shocked she can’t hear it. None of this makes sense, everything feels like warning signs and quicksand.
“Nora.” My voice cracks. “Why’d you bring me here?”
She keeps staring at the asphalt like she’s afraid if she looks at me, she’ll break whatever fragile air exists between us.
“I know who it was,” she whispers. “The drunk driver who hit me.”
Something in my chest lurches—like my heart forgets how to beat. My stomach drops straight through the fucking earth.
“No,” I breathe. “No—please—”
But she finally lifts her eyes to mine.
And the second our gazes lock— I know.
I know who she’s about to say. I know the shape of the pain behind her eyes. I know the truth she’s about to hand me, and I swear the world pauses, waiting for the sound of it.
“It was Scott.”
The name hits like a gunshot.
Sharp. Final. Fatal.
The whole world tilts— cracking down the middle, splitting open beneath my feet, collapsing into something dark and violent.
Scott.
The man I already hate with every fucking cell I have left. He took my childhood, my sanity, my brother—
and now this. He almost killed her then walked away and left her here bleeding and alone to die.
Something primal detonates inside me—slow at first, a spark catching on dry bone, then spreading fast, furious, unstoppable.
My vision burns at the edges. My hands curl into fists without permission.
I feel myself leaning forward like my body’s trying to find something to destroy.
The rage is a fuse lit deep in my ribcage—hissing, glowing, traveling straight toward the part of me that’s still human, ready to blow it apart.
The things I want to do to him? They’re vivid, violent. Detailed enough to scare even me.
I pace because if I stay still, I’ll explode. Gravel crunches under my feet. My hands tremble. My nails dig crescents into my palms. But then I look at her—kneeling in the same gravel she almost died in—and the violence slams into a wall made of her.
I kneel beside her because towering over her like this, I can’t do that to her. My hands cup her face gently—gentler than I feel.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
She closes her eyes.
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“You.” She breathes out. “I was scared of what you’d do to him. Of losing you again and I couldn’t lose you to him again. I couldn’t Nate. I’m sorry.”
And that breaks me because she was protecting me—from myself—while she carried this alone.
Her tears fall and I pull her into me. Hold her like she might slip through my fingers if I don’t keep a tight enough grip.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I whisper into her hair. “Nothing, you hear me?”
She pulls back, voice trembling.
“What are you going to do now that you know?”
The truth flashes through my mind:
Kill him.
Slowly.
Beautifully.
But I swallow it like poison.
“He’s not getting away with it,” I say. “But we’re taking him down the right way. I’m not becoming what he wants me to be.”
The drive home is quiet, but softer and less suffocating.
Our hands stay linked over the console. Her thumb brushes mine every now and then like she’s checking I’m still here.
When we get to the porch, I pull her in and kiss her like I’m starved for her. Because I am.
She pulls back, breathless.
“What was that for?”
“For being the bravest person I know.”
“I don’t feel brave.”
I tilt her chin up.
“I love you.”
Her eyes widen like I’ve ripped open the sky.
“I fell in love with you because of a million tiny things you never saw yourself doing,” I tell her. “But brave—that’s one thing I’ve always known you were.”
I kiss her again, and when she starts to speak, I stop her.
“I don’t need you to say it back. Not yet. Just hold onto it.”
She kisses me instead, tears on her lips, and it’s the most devastatingly beautiful thing I’ve ever felt.
Love isn’t just the soft stuff.
It’s carrying someone’s pain as carefully as their joy.
Jake’s bedroom light is on when I go upstairs. The glow of his monitor spills through the cracked door. When I walk in, he jumps slightly, eyes bright with anticipation.
“You got the files?” he asks.
And the hope on his face kills me before I even speak.
“No,” I say quietly.
His face falls.
“No? What do you mean no? They—”
“They were gone. He moved them or destroyed them. We didn’t have time to keep searching. He knew we were coming.”
“Nate, I swear I didn’t tip him off or—”
Jake’s breath stutters.
I sit on the edge of the bed, and it hits me how bone-deep empty I am.
Not just tired—hollow.
Everything I learned about Nora tonight is still echoing through me, rattling around in my ribs. The files, the floor plans, the missed intel—right now it’s all just… noise.
Static compared to the image of her on that road, bleeding, scared, alone because of him.
“I know,” I say, rubbing a hand over my face. “We’ll figure it out.”
“But I saw them,” Jake insists. “I memorized everything. The entire floor plan. How did he—how the fuck did he know?”
He’s spiraling.
I can hear it in the way his words start collapsing into each other. Blaming himself while carrying weight that was never his.
“This was supposed to be my shot,” he whispers. “My chance to actually help. And I—fuck—I messed it up.”
“You didn’t.” My voice is rough, frayed. “Scott’s just good at being Scott. He has other ways of knowing things.”
Jake looks away, shoulders sinking, defeated.
And I sit there, barely upright, fighting the urge to put my fist through a wall—or just lie down and let the world fall apart for a minute—because the only thing I can think about is Nora and the truth she finally said out loud.
Everything else can burn. But he deserves the truth. Even if it hurts him as much as it hurts me.
“It was him.”
Jake frowns. “What was?”
“He was the drunk driver on the night of Nora’s accident.”
I watch as Jake’s entire world shatters across his face.
“Fuck,” he chokes out. “He really is… there’s nothing he won’t do…”
He sits beside me, staring at the wall like he’s looking into the abyss.
“Nate, what are we going to do?” he whispers.
“I don’t know yet.”
Silence settles between us. Not heavy—just tired.
Then Jake speaks, voice soft, almost ashamed: “You still love her, huh?”
“I never stopped.”
He nods once.
“Then don’t fuck it up this time. Make all of this right.”