22. Nash
NASH
The apartment feels different when I walk through the door.
Warmer somehow, despite the December chill that followed me up the stairs.
Christmas lights twinkle from every surface, casting everything in a soft golden glow that makes the place look less like the sterile bachelor pad it actually is and more like somewhere people might actually want to spend the holidays.
Morgan's handiwork, obviously. She's sitting cross-legged on my couch, but her usual sharp energy seems muted, replaced by something that looks almost like concern. That alone is enough to put me on edge.
"Where's Eve?" I ask, shrugging out of my jacket and hanging it on the hook by the door.
The question comes out rougher than I intended, but I can't help it.
After this morning—after touching her the way I did, after seeing her come apart in my hands—I've been walking around feeling like my skin doesn't fit right.
"Sleeping," Morgan says, keeping her voice low. "She had another episode. A memory came back."
The words set me on edge. It's been taking so long for any pieces to come back that I was starting to wonder how much she would remember.
Part of me hoped that maybe, just maybe, the damage was permanent.
That she'd never remember the mess I made of things between us, the way I fucked everything up so completely that she ran straight into another man's arms.
But I also know that's selfish as hell. Eve deserves to remember her life, even if it means remembering why she hates me.
"What did she remember?" I force myself to ask, though every instinct I have is screaming at me to change the subject, to walk away, to do anything but hear the answer.
Morgan's dark eyes study my face with uncomfortable intensity. "High school stuff. The winter formal. You beating the shit out of that kid who ditched her. How you were everywhere after that."
Christ. Of all the memories to come back, it had to be those. The months when I was young and stupid and thought that proximity was the same thing as connection, that if I just stayed close enough to her, she'd eventually see me the way I saw her.
Instead, I'd terrified her. Pushed too hard, too fast, without understanding that Eve needed gentleness, needed time. I'd been eighteen and arrogant and so fucking desperate for her attention that I'd scared her away instead of winning her over.
It also was the first time I actually tried to tell her how I felt.
I asked her to dance. I told her she was the prettiest girl at the formal.
And then, when I thought maybe I had been wrong to hold back for so many years, she stormed off and left me on the dance floor alone.
She showed me how I'd already crossed too many lines and hurt her too many times.
I can only imagine how she's trying to make sense of that memory now.
"How did she take it?" I ask, though I already know the answer from the tight set of Morgan's shoulders.
"About as well as you'd expect. She's confused, Nash. And she's scared." Morgan shifts on the couch, pulling her legs up under her. "She asked if you two ever..."
She doesn't finish the sentence, but she doesn't need to. I can fill in the blanks myself, and the thought of Eve remembering that night—remembering how good we were together before I ruined it—makes something twist painfully in my chest.
"What did you tell her?"
"That you don't talk about your past. Especially not about her.
" Morgan's voice is matter-of-fact, but there's an edge to it that suggests she's getting tired of being caught in the middle of whatever this is between Eve and me.
"Which is true. You mention her name maybe twice in ten years, and both times you looked like someone was pulling out your fingernails. "
Because talking about Eve hurts. Because thinking of what I could have had with her—what I threw away by getting in my own way—feels like pressing on a wound that never quite healed.
Because for ten years, I've been trying to convince myself that I'm better off without her, that she's better off without me, and saying her name out loud makes it impossible to maintain that lie.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, the sharp sound cutting through the tension in the room. I pull it out, expecting another work text, but the contact name on the screen makes my stomach drop.
Ma.
"I need to take this," I tell Morgan, stepping into the kitchen for some privacy.
"Hey, Ma," I say, keeping my voice low so I don't wake Eve.
"Nash, honey, I found what you were looking for.
" My mom's voice is warm but cautious, the tone she uses when she's not sure how I'm going to react to whatever she's about to tell me.
"Eve's fiancé is named Ethan Caldwell. He works for her father's business—some kind of financial consulting. I got his number if you want it."
Fiancé. The word sits in my stomach like a stone, heavy and cold and wrong.
I've been avoiding thinking about the asshole that I can't deal with.
Until now, he's just been a guess, a faint memory.
But hearing it confirmed—hearing that there's some man out there who has a claim on Eve that I don't—makes me want to put my fist through something.
"Text it to me," I say, my voice coming out rougher than I intended.
"Nash..." My mom's voice is gentle, probing. "It might be time that you call him and let Eve get back to her life. I know how you feel, but you getting involved might now be right. You were both so young when everything happened, and you've finally found your own ways."
She doesn't know about the text I got today, about the fact that someone wants Eve delivered somewhere for double my usual rate.
She doesn't know that Eve's accident probably wasn't an accident at all, that someone out there wants her hurt or dead or worse.
All she knows is that her son is getting tangled up with a woman who broke his heart once before.
"I know that, Ma," I lie. "I just want to make sure she gets back to her life safely."
It's a shit lie, and we both know it. I've already gotten in the way of her life, have been since the moment I saw her lying in that street. Maybe since the moment I first laid eyes on her twenty-one years ago and felt something fundamental shift in my chest.
"Okay," she says, but I can hear the doubt in her voice. "I won't say anything to anyone about this. But Nash? Be careful. I don't want to see you get hurt again."
The line goes dead, and I stand there in my kitchen, staring at the phone in my hand. A few seconds later, it buzzes with a text containing Ethan Caldwell's contact information. I stare at the number, memorizing it, while my mind churns through possibilities.
Where the fuck is he? It's been five days since Eve disappeared, and this asshole hasn't even called the hospital to see if she's been admitted.
Hasn't filed a missing person report, hasn't reached out to her parents, hasn't done a single thing that someone who loves her should do when she vanishes without a trace.
Either he's the most negligent fiancé in history, or he already knows exactly where she is.
Neither option sits well with me.
I walk back into the living room, where Morgan is still perched on my couch, but now she's got her phone out, fingers flying over the screen. She looks up when I approach, eyebrows raised in question.
"Eve has a fiancé," I say without preamble. "Ethan Caldwell. Works for her dad's company."
Morgan's expression doesn't change, but I catch the slight tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers pause over her phone screen. "Congratulations?"
"He hasn't called the hospital looking for her. Hasn't called her parents. Hasn't done shit, as far as I can tell." I sink into the chair across from her, my hands clenched into fists on my knees. "Either he's a complete piece of shit, or he knows something about what happened to her."
"You think he's no good?" Morgan says quietly, voicing the thought I've been trying not to have.
The idea makes something dark and violent unfurl in my chest. The thought of some man—some man who has the right to touch her, to wake up next to her, to call her his—hurting her makes me want to tear the city apart brick by brick until I find him.
"I need to know. Think you and Antonio can look into him?" I say, forcing my voice to stay level. "DI want to know what kind of man Eve was planning to marry."
Morgan nods, already typing something into her phone. "You going to call him? Let him know where she is?"
"Not yet." The words come out harder than I intended, but I don't take them back. "Not until I know who I'm dealing with. If he's innocent, fine. But if he's not..."
I don't finish the sentence, but I don't need to.
Morgan understands the kind of man I am, the kind of things I'm capable of when someone I care about is threatened.
She's seen me let people die for money, seen me stand by while others suffer because it serves my purposes.
But she's also seen what happens when someone crosses a line with the people I consider mine.
And Eve—confused, fragile, beautiful Eve—is definitely mine.
Has been mine since she was fourteen and leaned into my kiss.
Mine since she stomped up to my locker earlier that week and gave me the Christmas cookie I'd left on my desk when she handed them all out to the class, telling me she made me the damn thing and I was going to eat it.
The fact that she doesn't remember that yet doesn't change anything.
"What about her parents?" Morgan asks, pocketing her phone. "They're probably worried sick."
I consider what my mom said, weighing the options.
Eve's parents are good people—I remember that much from high school.
Her mother taught at the school, her father owned the local lumber business.
They loved their daughter, would do anything to protect her.
But they also trusted easily, would probably call this Ethan asshole the minute they heard from me.
And if Ethan is behind what happened to Eve, that could put her in more danger. Especially if she had been distant from her parents anyway.
"I'll call them when I know more," I decide. "When I can be sure that telling them won't make things worse for her."
Morgan studies my face for a long moment, and I can see her weighing whether or not to push. Finally, she nods. "You're scared someone's going to hurt her."
It's not a question, but I answer anyway. "Wouldn't you be?"
"Yeah," she says softly. "I would be."
The admission hangs between us, heavy with understanding. Morgan knows what it's like to care about someone who's vulnerable, someone who needs protecting. She knows what it feels like to be willing to burn the world down to keep them safe.
The difference is that Morgan's person—Antonio—can take care of himself. Eve can't. Eve is gentle and trusting and sees the best in people even when she shouldn't. She's the kind of person who gets hurt because she doesn't expect the people who claim to love her to be monsters.
But I know better. I know that the people closest to you are often the ones most capable of destroying you. I know that love and violence often wear the same face, that protection and possession can be impossible to tell apart.
I know because I've been both victim and perpetrator, because I've let people die and saved others based on nothing more than my own twisted sense of justice.
And I know that if someone has hurt Eve—if someone has put their hands on her with the intent to harm—I will not let them live to regret it.
The thought should probably bother me more than it does. Should make me question whether I'm the right person to be protecting her, whether my own darkness makes me just as dangerous as whoever might be hunting her.
But it doesn't. Because whatever else I am, whatever sins I've committed or lines I've crossed, I would never hurt Eve. Would never let anyone else hurt her, not if I can help it.
She's asleep down the hall, curled up in my spare room, probably dreaming about memories that make her hate me. But she's safe. She's here, under my roof, where I can watch over her and make sure that no one—not her mysterious fiancé, not whoever sent that text, not anyone—can touch her.
And that's going to have to be enough for now.