8. Nash
NASH
AGE TWENTY-THREE
Iclose the door and lean against it, my hand still gripping the handle like it's the only thing keeping me upright. The apartment feels smaller now, suffocating, like the walls decided to press in the moment Eve disappeared down those stairs.
"Who was that?"
Morgan's voice cuts through the silence from the living room. I can hear the curiosity threading through her words, but there's something else—concern, maybe. She knows me well enough to read the tension radiating off me like heat from asphalt.
I push off the door and walk toward her voice, finding her curled up on the worn leather couch with a cup of coffee balanced on her knee.
She's wearing one of my old Columbia t-shirts and black leggings, her coiled hair pulled back in a messy bun.
At nineteen, she still looks younger sometimes, especially when she's relaxed like this.
But her eyes—those dark, calculating eyes—they're ancient.
They've seen too much for someone who should be worried about college applications and weekend parties. Something she'll never do.
"Nash." She sets the mug down on the coffee table, studying my face. "You look like someone just gut-punched you."
I drop into the armchair across from her, running both hands through my hair. The motion feels automatic, like muscle memory from all the times I've sat in this exact spot, trying to process something that doesn't make sense.
"That was Eve."
Morgan's eyebrows shoot up, probably at my tone. She knows me well enough to hear the pain there. "Okay…And who is Eve?"
I swallow hard. "She's from…Wintervale." This feels like it's killing me. "I don't know what she's doing here."
She shifts forward, her attention sharpening. Morgan's always been able to read people—it's what keeps her alive in her line of work—but with me, she doesn't need to analyze. She just knows.
"You look like you aren't taking her presence well."
I shake my head, trying to process. "That's because Eve has always just been out of my reach."
She huffs. "Nash, I don't know what that means?—"
"I've been in love with Eve since I was eight years old and she's hated me just as long.
" The confession tumbles out before I can stop it, raw and unfiltered.
I've never said those words out loud to anyone.
Never admitted that every girl I've kissed, every woman I've taken to bed, has been measured against a memory of brown eyes and gentle laughter.
That I've thought of her and felt wrong after.
I tried to move on. I really did. But you can't move on when someone else is holding your heart hostage.
Morgan's mouth falls open. "What?"
The shock in her voice would be funny if I felt capable of finding anything amusing right now. Instead, I just sit there, staring at the scuffed hardwood between my boots.
"Jesus, Nash." She pushes herself up from the couch, pacing to the window that overlooks the street. "Why aren't you going after her?"
"Because—" I stop, the words catching in my throat like broken glass. How do I explain that everything I am now would disappoint the girl who knew me before? How do I tell her that the boy who left Wintervale with dreams of saving lives has become a man who takes bribes to let people die?
Morgan turns back to me, her arms crossed. She's got that look—the one that says she's not going to let me hide from whatever truth I'm avoiding.
"Because a girl like Eve doesn't deserve to be with an EMT who takes bribes." The words taste bitter, but they need to be said. "She doesn't deserve someone who helps a contract killer find jobs."
The silence that follows feels heavy, loaded with all the things we don't usually acknowledge.
Morgan and I have built our relationship on an unspoken understanding—I saved her when she was fourteen and drowning in more ways than one, and in return, she's become the closest thing to family I have.
But we've never talked about the moral weight of what we do.
We just... exist in this gray space where survival matters more than ethics.
"Nash." Her voice is softer now, gentler. "That's not?—"
"It is." I lean forward, elbows on my knees. "She deserves more than that. She's always deserved more."
Morgan moves toward me, her bare feet silent on the floor. When she reaches the armchair, she doesn't sit. Instead, she just stands there for a moment, looking down at me with something that might be pity or understanding—I can't tell which is worse.
"She's too good," I continue, the words coming faster now. "Always has been. Even when we were kids, there was this... light about her. Like she saw the world the way it should be instead of the way it is."
"And you think that means she can't love you?"
The question hits like a physical blow. I look up at Morgan, seeing my own reflection in her dark eyes—tired, worn down, nothing like the ambitious pre-med student who left Vermont with such certainty about his future.
"I think it means she shouldn't have to."
Morgan's expression shifts, and suddenly she's dropping to her knees in front of my chair, her hands gripping my wrists. There's something fierce in her face now, protective in the way she gets when someone threatens the small circle of people she actually gives a damn about.
"That's bullshit and you know it."
"Morgan—"
"No." Her grip tightens. "You saved me when no one else would. You gave me a home when I had nowhere to go. You've spent the last five years making sure I had food, clothes, a safe place to sleep. You want to talk about good? You want to talk about deserving love?"
I pull my hands free, standing up so abruptly that she has to scramble backward to avoid getting knocked over. But she follows me, persistent as always.
"This isn't the same thing."
"Isn't it?" She catches my arm, forcing me to face her. "You think what we do makes us monsters, fine. But you're still the same person who worked double shifts to keep us fed. You're still the same person who held me when I had nightmares about my father. You're still the same person who?—"
"Who lets people die for money." The words come out sharp, cutting through whatever point she was trying to make. "Who taught a teenager how to kill because it was easier than finding another way to survive."
Morgan's hand drops from my arm, but she doesn't step back. Instead, she moves closer, close enough that I can see the faint scar on her chin from a fight when she was sixteen.
"You didn't teach me to kill, Nash. I chose that."
"Because I let you."
"Because you trusted me to make my own decisions." Her voice is steady, matter-of-fact. "Just like you trusted me when I was fourteen and scared and had nowhere else to go."
I want to argue with her, want to explain that trust and enabling aren't the same thing. But the truth is, I'm not sure I know the difference anymore. Somewhere between taking my first bribe and watching Morgan walk out the door with her first contract, the lines got blurred.
"She looked at me like she didn't know who I was," I say instead.
"Did you tell her?"
"Tell her what? That the boy she knew—the one who was going to be a doctor, who was going to save people—became exactly the kind of man her parents warned her about?"
Morgan's quiet for a long moment, studying my face.
Then she reaches up and pulls me into a hug.
It's sudden, unexpected, and for a second I just stand there with my arms at my sides.
But then something in me breaks, and I'm wrapping my arms around her, holding on like she's the only solid thing in a world that's spinning too fast.
"You're not a monster," she whispers against my shoulder. "You're just trying to survive."
I close my eyes, breathing in the familiar scent of her shampoo and the faint smell of coffee that always seems to cling to her clothes.
Morgan's small against me, barely reaching my collarbone, but there's a strength in her that I've always envied.
She knows exactly who she is and what she's capable of.
She doesn't waste time questioning whether she deserves love or happiness—she just takes what she wants and deals with the consequences.
"I think about her every day," I admit into her hair. "Every single day since I was fifteen. Maybe longer."
"Well, you must if you've been in love with her that long."
I nod solemnly, the words pouring out as if I can purge the hurt from my soul. "Every girl I've been with, every date I've gone on—I see her face. I compare their laugh to hers, their smile to hers. None of them ever measure up."
Morgan pulls back just enough to look at me, her hands still resting on my shoulders. "So what are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing." The word feels like surrender. "I'm going to let her go back to whatever life she's built for herself. Let her find someone who deserves her."
"Someone who won't take bribes? Someone who won't help me find work?"
"Someone who's good enough for her."
"And you think that's not you?"
I look down at her, seeing my own reflection in those dark eyes again. But this time, I also see something else—disappointment. Not in what I've become, but in my willingness to give up.
"I know it's not me."
Morgan's hands slide down from my shoulders to my chest, her palms flat against my t-shirt. "You know what I think?"
"What?"
"I think you're scared."
The accusation hits harder than it should. "Of what?"
"Of finding out that maybe she loves you anyway. Maybe she loves you not in spite of what you've become, but because of it. Because you're real and flawed and human instead of some perfect ideal she built up in her head."
I shake my head, but Morgan keeps talking.
"You're scared that if you go after her, if you tell her the truth about who you are now, she might actually choose you. And then what? Then you'd have to live with the possibility of being happy."
"Morgan—"
"When's the last time you let yourself be happy, Nash? Really happy, not just content or satisfied or getting by. When?"
The question hangs in the air between us, and I realize I don't have an answer.
Or maybe I do, and I just don't want to say it out loud.
The last time I was truly happy was seventeen years old and dancing with Eve at Winter Formal, feeling like maybe—just maybe—she might see something in me worth loving.
Or maybe the briefest moment when I was nineteen and thought she would consider me as something more—before she ran as fast as she could away from me once she got what she wanted.
"She deserves better," I say again, but even I can hear how hollow it sounds now.
"Maybe." Morgan shrugs, her hands still pressed against my chest. "But shouldn't that be her choice to make?"
But I can't let her make this one. I love Eve too much to do that to her.
So I force myself to do the one that that has always killed me.
I let her go.