CHAPTER 36 THE EDGE OF SOMETHING NORA
THE EDGE OF SOMETHING
NORA
Wes
If you're not back in LA by the end of the week, the studio is pulling out. I've given you ample time now. Come home.
I stare at the message until the words blur. It's been three days since Wes showed up at the cabin.
This book was my life before it was ever a movie deal.
It was my heart, my grief, my survival stitched into sentences. And now it feels like something that can be taken away with one angry text message.
I lean against the kitchen counter, playing out my options.
I should go back.
That's what the responsible version of me says.
The version who built a life in LA. The version who fought to be taken seriously. The version who doesn't fall apart over old feelings and soft memories. But there's another version of me here.
She breathes differently. She laughs more easily. She sleeps better.
She feels like herself again.
And she is standing in the kitchen right now, watching Nate pour coffee like it's the most natural thing in the world. He looks calm. The same way he always has—like he belongs to this place in a way I think I outgrew.
"You've been quiet today," he says gently.
I nod. "Just thinking."
He studies me for a moment longer than necessary, like he knows there's more I'm not saying.
"About what?" he asks, setting a mug in front of me.
Instead, I say, "Can I ask you something?"
“You know you can just ask the question without prefacing it with a question, Len.”
"What really happened with Scott? Before he died. I know he went to prison, but..." I trail off, not sure exactly what I'm asking. Just knowing I need to understand.
Nate takes a sip of his coffee, and he considers how much to tell me. Then he sets the mug down gently.
"Jake had been collecting evidence," he says quietly.
"For months before everything went down. Documents, recordings, financial records. He gave it all to a guy called Adrian Di Laurentis—who gave it to me months later, while I was still in rehab. Between what Jake collected and what Danny had already found, there was enough to put Scott away for twenty years, if not more.”
“What were the charges exactly?"
"Money laundering. Racketeering. Aiding and abetting in a homicide." His jaw tightens. "The warehouse fire that killed Jake. Scott orchestrated it all, but Monty went rogue and, well, you know the rest."
It resulted in Jake dying and Nate almost losing his life too.
"He killed his own son."
"The plan was to just scare Jake." Nate's voice is flat, but pain lives underneath.
"But the plan went sideways because of Monty's personal vendetta with me.
Monty's still serving time for his part in it.
But Scott was diagnosed with cancer while he was in jail.
Brain cancer. He died before he could serve out his full sentence. "
He pauses, and darkness flickers across his face.
"Part of me is angry he didn't suffer more. That he got to die relatively quickly instead of rotting in prison for decades the way he deserved."
His hands tighten around his coffee mug.
"But apparently the brain cancer was its own kind of hell. Maybe that was karma doing its thing in a different way. I don't know."
The memory surfaces slowly—Mom calling me, her voice careful and measured.
Scott's dead.
The relief I'd felt, followed immediately by guilt for feeling relieved.
I'd already given my written statement to the police about the hit-and-run when I was seventeen. About how Scott had deliberately tried to run me down. About the terror of headlights coming straight at me and nowhere to go.
But there had been enough charges against him by then—Jake's death, the heroin Monty injected into Nate on Scott's orders, the years of abuse documented by hospitals and social workers.
My statement was just one more piece of evidence in a mountain that had already buried him.
Mom had called to tell me I wouldn't need to testify after all.
That it was over. All of it, just... over.
"I always wondered," I say quietly, "if you ever spoke to him. After everything that happened."
Nate is quiet for a long moment.
When he speaks, his voice is distant, like he's somewhere else entirely.
"Once. He asked for me. The day before he died."
"He asked for you?"
"Yeah." He runs a hand through his hair. "I almost didn't go. I sat in the hospital parking lot for an hour trying to decide if I could do it. Face him one more time."
"What made you go in?"
"Nick. I called him and he talked me into seeing what he had to say. Said I'd regret it if I didn't at least hear what he had to say." He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "He was right. I would've regretted it."
"What did he say?"
"He tried to apologize." Nate's eyes are distant now, seeing something I can't. "Told me he knew he wasn’t cut out to be a father. That he understood why I hated him but wanted to make it right before he died."
"How?"
"He offered me Jake's trust fund. Everything he had built, the entire Sullivan empire—he wanted me to have it."
My breath catches. “And how much was that?”
"Close to $187 million."
The number is so large it doesn't even feel real.
"Jesus, Nate."
"I told him no."
“Oh.”
"I told him there was only one thing I wanted if he actually meant what he said about forgiveness.” His eyes meet mine, and there's steel in them.
"I told him to sign over every cent to Eden. To the community he helped destroy. To the people in South Eden who lost their homes, their businesses, their lives because of him.”
"What did he say?"
"He asked if that would make me forgive him." Nate's voice is quiet now. "I told him forgiveness wasn't mine to give. But if he wanted any chance at peace before he died, that was the price."
“Wow.”
"He died the next morning." Nate stands, moves to the sink and rinses his cup. "Three weeks later, I got a letter in the mail along with signed documents. His will, revised. It stated that every penny was going to the Eden Community Trust. No conditions. No strings."
I stand and move to him, place my hand on his back between his shoulder blades. The moment my palm makes contact, tension is there—coiled tight but then, slowly, it starts to ease.
His muscles soften under my touch, his shoulders dropping just slightly, his breathing deepening. He exhales long and slow.
We stand like that, connected, and I realize this is what we've always done for each other. Found the quiet spaces where we could set down our burdens, even temporarily. Where we could just be, without armor or walls to shield us from the world.
I lean my forehead against his shoulder blade, and he laces his fingers through mine, holding my hand against his heart.
"That money rebuilt the community center," he continues, his voice steadier now. "Funded the new school. Gave low-interest loans to families to buy back their homes or start new businesses. It's why South Eden is thriving now instead of being a wasteland.”
"You did that," I say softly against his back. "You could have taken that money, could have set yourself up for life, and instead you gave it all away."
"It wasn't mine to take." He turns to face me, and I let my hand slide from his back to rest on his chest. "It was blood money. Built on suffering and corruption and Jake's death. The only way it meant anything was if it went back to the people it was stolen from in the first place."
I look at him—really look at him—and something cracks open in my chest.
This man who could have been a multimillionaire but chose to live in a cabin he built himself and pour everything into his music and his community.
"You're incredible," I whisper. "You know that?"
He shakes his head. "I just did what was right."
"That's what makes you incredible." I move closer, cup his face in my hands, need him to understand what I'm seeing. "Most people wouldn't have. Most people would have taken the money. But you? You chose this place and its people. You chose to be better than him in every possible way."
His hands come up to cover mine, and his throat works as he swallows hard.
"If I'd taken that money, he would have won. Even dead, he would have controlled me. This way, at least some good came from all that evil."
I kiss him then, soft and deep, trying to pour everything I'm feeling into it.
When we break apart, his eyes are searching mine.
"What?" I ask.
He's quiet for a moment, just looking at me with an expression I can't quite read.
Then he says it.
"I love you."
The words land like a physical blow.
My breath catches. My chest tightens.
"Nate—"
"I needed you to hear me say it," he continues, and there's vulnerability in his voice that makes my eyes burn. "After everything, after last night, I needed you to know. I love you, Len. I always have."
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Because I know what I have to say next.
And saying it after he just told me he loves me—after seven years of not hearing those words from him—feels like the cruelest thing I could possibly do.
He kisses me again, slowly, like he's trying to hold onto this moment before something inevitable happens.
And when we break apart, I can see in his eyes that he knows.
He knows something's coming.
The pit in my stomach grows heavier. My throat goes tight.
"Nate, I have to go back to LA."
"For what?" he asks, though the answer is already forming in his tone.
"The film and what's left of my life there."
"Let me guess. Wes is threatening to pull the plug if you don't go back."
I nod.
Silence stretches between us, thick and heavy.
"You just got away from him, Nora," Nate says carefully. "From all of that."
"I know."
"Then why go back?"
Because like you, I built something there. Because I'm terrified of losing everything I worked for.
"I don't really have a choice," I say softly.
"That's bullshit. You always have a choice."
His eyes darken and I don't know why, but it hurts.
"So what," he continues, and he's trying to keep calm, "you go back to LA, to the place that's been slowly draining you, and then what? Spend the next six months in pre-production meetings with a man who cheated on you and tried to manipulate you into staying and will probably continue to do so?"
"I'm not going back to him," I say. "I'm going back for me. For the career I worked my ass off to get."
His laugh is quiet. Bitter.
"So, where does that leave us?"
I don't answer, because I don't know.
Because the hurt in his voice is triggering something in me—old patterns, old fears. The feeling of being trapped between what I want and what I've built. The panic that rises when I feel like I'm being asked to choose, even when he's not explicitly asking.
I recognize this spiral. The one where his pain becomes my guilt becomes my defensiveness becomes us hurting each other without meaning to.
"I need to see this through, Nate." I say, though my voice is rising, fear making it sharp. "I have nothing here."
The words are out before I can stop them.
"Nothing?" He says it so quietly, but the hurt in his eyes is deafening.
And I realize—I just fucked up.
Catastrophically.
"No, I—I didn't mean it like that."
But the damage is done.
I can see it in the way his expression shutters. In the way he takes a small step back, putting distance between us.
"Right," he says, and his voice is so carefully neutral it breaks my heart. "You have nothing here."
"Nate, that's not what I meant—"
"What did you mean then?" He's not yelling. Not angry. Just deflated. "Because it sounded like you just said that this—us, last night, everything—is nothing."
"That's not—"
"I told you I loved you." His voice cracks on the words. "For the first time in seven years, I told you I loved you. And now you're telling me you have nothing here."
Tears burn behind my eyes. "I didn't mean you. I meant I don't have a job here, I don't have an apartment, I don't have—"
“You said you have nothing here. And I'm standing right in front of you."
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Because he's right.
I said it. I can't take it back. And no matter how I try to explain it, the fact remains: I'm leaving.
"I have to go back," I say finally, and my voice is barely above a whisper. "I have to handle things. The film, the contracts, all of it. I can't just—"
"I know." He cuts me off, and the defeat in his voice is worse than any anger could be. "I know you do."
He takes a breath, and I watch him physically pull himself together. I watch the hurt get tucked away behind careful neutrality and watch the walls go back up, one by one.