Chapter 33
NATE
The flight back to Chicago was so quiet, it felt unnatural. It was just Kate and me, but she didn’t even sit next to me.
With Alex and Jane already back in Chicago, the jet felt too big with only the two of us in it, the cabin lights dimmed and the steady drone of the engines filling the silence that neither of us seemed willing to break.
The first thing I noticed when we boarded was that Kate had taken the seat across from me instead of the one beside me. She’d also angled herself toward the window, but she didn’t really seem to be looking out of it.
Instead, she just sat there, tense and silent. Perhaps staring inward, trying to untangle the knots inside.
For the first few minutes after takeoff, I stared at her from across the aisle, but even as I waited for her to look at me, to say something, I wasn’t really seeing her either.
In my mind’s eye, there were only pages and pages of emails.
Emma’s name popping up on my screen and how I’d smiled like an idiot whenever it had happened.
Kate didn’t even glance in my direction while I mentally relived it all. The confessions, the secrets we’d shared, and the inside jokes. My gaze lifted back to her, but when I found her still staring at absolutely nothing, I realized she needed time to process all this, and frankly, so did I.
Essentially, the flight gave me two hours to myself. Two hours to think, to replay everything, and most importantly, two hours to feel so stupid, it actually hurt.
Of course I was attracted to Kate. I loved our banter and now I knew why. It was so similar to how I’d conversed with Emma, except that Emma was somehow softer. I dragged a hand down my face and leaned back in the seat.
Emma. Kate. Kate is Emma.
It made sense in a way that felt obvious now. Painfully so. Like I’d been staring at the answer for years and just refused to see it. I’d loved talking to Emma, the rhythm of it, the teasing, the back and forth, and the way she’d pushed me just enough to keep me sharp.
Just like Kate.
It had felt so familiar, but I hadn’t realized why. Emma’s softness hadn’t really been soft at all. It had been honesty and Kate when she was unguarded. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that softness wasn’t new to me with her.
I’d only recently started noticing the vulnerability she tried so hard to hide, but was so clear during the quieter moments. Emma had always felt like something private. Someone just for me. A version of herself that no one else got to see. And it turned out to have been true.
I’d just never understood why until now, but it was because, like me, Kate didn’t let people in on a whim. She didn’t get close to just anyone. It took time and effort with her, a certain level of dedication to prove you were worthy and wouldn’t disappoint or hurt her.
The plane touched down in Chicago, the moon disappearing behind a wall of heavy clouds. By the time we left the airstrip, the rain was coming down hard enough to blur the skyline into streaks of gray.
Neither of us said much on the drive back to the St. Regis. I was starting to wonder if we would ever talk again, but I left her to it, just listening to the sound of rain splattering against the car, grateful that it was loud enough to drown out my thoughts. At least partially.
We rode the elevator up in silence. If I was being honest, my head was still spinning. The hallway felt too narrow when we stepped out on our floor. Kate walked ahead of me, her heels soft against the carpet and her shoulders tight.
When she reached her door, she finally slowed and I was suddenly terrified that she would disappear completely if I let her go in there while things were so up in the air. Before I could think too much about it, I reached out and caught her elbow, gently turning her toward me instead of the door.
Her eyes were wide when they met mine, searching my face like she was trying to read something she didn’t understand yet. I stepped closer, crowding her space just enough that she couldn’t avoid me any longer.
“What the hell happened?” I asked quietly.
Her lips parted, but for a few seconds, nothing came out. Finally, she shook her head. “I, uh. I don’t—”
“How did this happen?” I pressed. “Did you know? Did you have any idea?”
“No,” she said immediately. “God, no.”
“Did you have any suspicion at all?”
“No. Of Course not.” The answer came fast enough that I knew it was honest. Her tone also matched the shock I’d seen on her face in the park. Just moments before she’d dropped her phone like it had burned her hand when she’d realized.
She lifted her chin then, holding my gaze as she folded her arms. “Did you suspect anything?”
“No.” I scoffed. “Not even a little.”
If I had, it would’ve changed everything. Years ago.
“Do you…” She trailed off, inhaling a deep breath before she tried again. “Do you like her better?”
It took me a second to understand what she meant. Emma. She’s talking about Emma. She’s asking if I like her better as Emma.
As soon as realization dawned, I shook my head. “No.”
Her eyebrows pulled together. “But—”
“I was going to break up with her today,” I said quietly, looking right into those whiskey eyes that had been haunting me for months. “When I went to Central Park to meet her, it was only so I could tell her face to face that it was over. I felt like I owed her that.”
She frowned. “Why?”
Because I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Because kissing you ruined me for anyone else. Because somewhere along the way, you stopped being the woman I hated and became the only one I wanted.
I exhaled slowly, choosing to tell her the simpler, less intense version of the truth.
“Because I want you, Kate.” Her breath caught, but I had to be sure that she understood what I was saying.
“You’re all I want. However you want me.
Whether our marriage is just convenient for our businesses and we don’t speak otherwise, or if we just casually hook up when we’re forced to make appearances. ”
I inhaled a deep breath, my hands sliding to her hips as I finally came out with it. “I realized I’d take that over not having you at all, but yeah, I wasn’t going to share my feelings with Emma because it wasn’t fair to you.”
That was the truth of it. The ugly, stripped-down truth. I would’ve taken scraps. Occasional proximity. Anything she was willing to give.
Kate looked down at the carpet, her shoulders drawing in slightly before she spoke again, her voice coming out small. “I was going to break up with CB in the park too.”
My eyebrows shot up, my heart suddenly thumping against my ribs. “Yeah?”
“Not because I wanted to. I mean, I did, but…” She trailed off for a beat, exhaling shakily.
“God, this is hard, but I couldn’t hurt you, Nate.
That was the thing. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, but especially not you.
I kept thinking…” She shook her head. “If I married you, I couldn’t keep him.
I wouldn’t be able to give him what he deserved if I was married to someone else, so I had to let CB go. ”
The name sounded strange now. Distant. Like it belonged to someone else entirely.
“I loved him,” she said after a quiet moment and it slayed me that it was past tense, but still. “And I don’t—” She stopped, cutting herself off with frustration radiating from her. “I don’t talk about feelings like this. I’m bad at it.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said gently.
She let out the slightest huff of a laugh before she shook her head. “But I loved him. So does that mean I love you? Or is that just… another version of you?”
It was a fair question. One that had no easy answer. Emma had been real. Those years we’d spent talking had been real. The feelings had been real.
But so was this. So was Kate, standing in front of me with her hair a mess from the rain, her eyes too bright, and her whole world just as shaken as mine.
“Hey,” I said softly. She looked up. “Everything is fine, Kate.”
It wasn’t, obviously. Nothing about this was fine, but the words seemed to steady her anyway.
“We just…” I searched for the right way to put it. “We just found out something huge. That’s all.”
She nodded faintly. “It feels like…”
“Like grieving?” I suggested when she stopped talking in the middle of the sentence.
Her eyes widened slightly. “Yes. Exactly that.”
“Well, the way I see it, we are grieving. Something has ended. Something that was a huge part of our lives for a really long time. Emma and CB aren’t real anymore. Not in the way we knew them, anyway. Those people are gone, but we’re still here.”
As soon as the words were all out, I pulled her into a hug and she came easily, folding into me like she belonged there. My arms wrapped around her shoulders, holding her close as she curled against my chest.
I pressed a kiss into the top of her head, breathing in the faint scent of her shampoo and rain. Outside, the storm was still raging, but I was barely even aware of it.
I kept circling back to one thought over and over again: Emma had been right here the whole time. Every late-night message. Every joke. Every confession. Every time I’d needed someone and she’d been there. Kate had been there.
She shifted slightly, her hands resting against my shirt. When she looked up at me again, her eyes were softer than I’d ever seen them and I lifted one hand to run the backs of my knuckles gently across her cheek.
My Emma was right here. My Kate. The same person.
As I finally started absorbing that fact, I leaned down and kissed her, holding her to me, and this time, I really didn’t plan to ever let her go.