I Fucked Up
NORA
I've been back in LA for less than forty-eight hours and I already know I don't belong here anymore.
The realization hits me standing in the middle of my temporary rental—a shoebox studio in Silver Lake that costs more per month than most people's mortgages.
I couldn't bring myself to go back to the house I once shared with Wes. Couldn't stomach the idea of sleeping in a bed we shared, walking through rooms that still smell like his cologne, pretending that version of my life ever made sense.
So I'm here instead.
Surrounded by IKEA furniture and white walls and the relentless hum of a city that never shuts up. Even at night, even in the soft hours when everything is supposed to slow down, Los Angeles buzzes with sirens in the distance, cars rushing past on wet pavement.
It's bizarre, this feeling returning to a place that once felt like home only to realize you were a stranger in your own life. Existing in a parallel reality that wasn't real but more illusion than anything else.
I've been moving through the motions since I landed.
Unpacked my suitcase, responded to emails, scheduled meetings with my agent and publisher. Did all the things that are supposed to signal I'm here, I'm back, I'm committed to the life I built.
But I'm not.
Every conversation feels hollow. Every smile feels forced. Every plan for the future feels like I'm reading lines from a script someone else wrote for a character I no longer want to play.
I miss Eden.
I miss the way the air smells.
But most of all, I miss Nate.
I'm standing at my window, coffee going cold in my hand, staring at a city I used to think I loved, when there’s a knock at my door.
More of a pounding than a knock but I'm not expecting anyone. Camilla doesn't even know where I'm staying yet. My agent wouldn't show up unannounced.
I set down my coffee and cross to the door, peer through the peephole. Ollie is standing in my hallway looking rumpled and anxious and like he's been awake for forty-eight hours straight.
I panic and open the door.
"Ollie? What are you doing here? Is everything okay? Is it Mia? The baby?"
He doesn't answer.
Just pushes past me into the apartment carrying a parcel that looks like it's been through a war—worn edges, faded label, corners held together with what looks like sheer force of will.
"Ollie, what—"
"I fucked up." The words tumble out of him.
"I fucked up so bad, Nora, and I can't—I've been carrying this for years and I thought I was doing the right thing but I wasn't and now you're back here in this fucking city when you should be in Eden and he's there waiting and you don't even know, you have no idea—"
"Ollie." I grab his shoulders. "Slow down. What's going on? What are you talking about?"
He sets the parcel down on the coffee table with trembling hands before turning to face me with eyes that are too bright, too guilty, too desperate.
"What's this?" I gesture to the parcel.
He takes a shaky breath. "Proof that Nate never gave up on you."
The words don't compute.
"What?"
"Just—" He runs both hands through his hair. "Just let me explain. Please. Before I lose my nerve."
I sit down slowly on the couch.
Ollie paces in front of me like he's trying to walk off whatever confession is burning a hole through his chest.
"While Nate was in rehab," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "He wrote to you. Every week for two years." Ollie's voice cracks. "Letters. Long ones. Pouring his heart out about recovery and how much he missed you and how he was fighting to get better so he could be worthy of you."
My breath leaves my lungs.
"What?"
"You never got them," he continues, and now he's crying openly. "Because I kept them from you."
Everything I thought I knew about the last seven years suddenly fractures, rearranges itself into a completely different picture.
"You... what?"
"I took every single letter he sent and I kept them." The confession explodes out of him like he's been holding it in so long it's become toxic. "When the first one came, you were living at Mom's. You weren't in a good place, Nor. I was scared you'd spiral even harder. I just couldn't—"
He pauses and walks to the sofa, before crashing down on it. I can't speak. Can't do anything but stare at him.
“We’d just lost Dad," Ollie continues desperately. "Then Jake died. Then Nate left for rehab and you couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, could barely get out of bed. Mom and I were scared out of our fucking minds. And then the first letter came."
"So I redirected them," Ollie says. "Told myself I was helping. That I was keeping you both from dragging each other backward. That you needed to get better without the constant reminder of what you'd lost."
"Two years?" The words come out as barely a whisper.
"Seventy-three letters." His voice breaks completely.
I stare at the parcel on the coffee table like it might bite me.
“So, at your wedding," I say slowly, pieces clicking into place. “When he told me he'd outgrown what we had—"
"I'd just told him the truth." Ollie sinks deeper into the couch like his legs won't hold him anymore. "I told him you never got the letters. That I'd kept them. And he saw you with Liam looking happy so he did what Nate does best and decided—" He lets out a breath before continuing.
"—he decided to protect your happiness. He wanted me to burn the letters and made me promise never to tell you. Then he went and lied to your face about not caring because he thought that's what would get you to move on."
Everything I believed about that night—about Nate, about us, about why we ended—crumbles to dust.
"He lied," I repeat numbly.
“Only to protect your happiness. Like he has been since we were kids, Nor," Ollie says. "Letting you think he didn't fight for you. Carrying the truth so you wouldn't have to know what I did. So you wouldn't hate me. That's why he lied. So you could be happy.”
"Happy?" I almost laugh. "I haven't been happy. I've been settling. I've been building a life that looks good on paper while feeling empty inside. I've been choosing safe over real because I thought the person I actually loved didn't want me enough to fight."
"I know." Ollie whispers. "I know and it's my fault. All of it. I took that choice from both of you because I thought I knew better. Because I was scared and stupid and—"
"Why now?" I interrupt. "Why tell me now?"
"Because I'm tired of watching both of you be miserable," he says. "Tired of carrying this secret. Tired of being the reason you're in LA right now instead of Eden where you belong. Tired of knowing that if you don't go back to him, it'll be because of a lie I told.”
He stands up, moves toward the door like he can't bear to be in the same room with himself anymore.
"All the letters are in there," he says quietly, gesturing to the box. "All seventy-three of them. Plus some CDs. You were never anything but everything to him."
"Ollie—"
"Read them," he says. "And then decide what you want to do. But at least make that decision with all the information this time. At least know that when Nate said he'd wait for you, he meant it."
He opens the door, pauses.
"I'm sorry," he says. "For all of it. For—" his voice breaks, "—for costing you seven years with the only person you've ever really loved."
"Ollie—"
"My flight leaves in an hour. Mia will kill me if I'm not on it."
He walks over to me and wraps his arms around me just like he used to do when we were kids.
"Don't let him go.”
“Why?”
“Because he looks at you, the way dad used to look at mom.”
My heart falters.
“And you can’t let my mistake be the end of the greatest love story there ever was."
The door closes behind him and I'm alone with the parcel. I stare at it before I finally decide to open it and letters are bursting out of it. Some tied with faded ribbon, some loose, some in envelopes that look like they've been opened and resealed.
My vision blurs with tears.
And then I start to read.