Chapter Sixteen Nate
Nate Brennan was two blocks away from Ava Lane’s house when her message hit his phone and nearly put him into a stop sign.
AVA: Rule update.
A second bubble appeared before he could pull over.
AVA: I don’t think we should stop yet.
Nate hit the brakes a little harder than necessary.
The rolls were gone. Sunday dinner was over.
The fake boyfriend operation had technically ended.
Nate was supposed to drive back to campus, attend team dinner, pretend Tyler did not have spreadsheet access, and spend the rest of the night convincing himself that Ava’s grandmother had not looked directly into his soul and found a lease agreement.
Instead, Ava had texted seven words that made every rule in his notes app stand up and file a complaint.
I don’t think we should stop yet.
Nate stared through the windshield.
A man walking a golden retriever on the sidewalk gave him a concerned look.
Nate lifted one hand in apology, pulled to the curb, and parked.
Then he read the message again.
Bad idea.
Very bad idea.
Not because he did not want to say yes.
Because he did.
Immediately.
With the kind of speed that suggested his self-control had been decorative this entire time.
His thumb hovered over the screen.
He could answer too fast and look eager. He could wait and look careless. He could call her and risk hearing her voice while his brain was still lying in a ditch somewhere between her driveway and Grandma Ruthie’s cobbler.
He chose text.
NATE CALLAHAN: What does not stopping mean?
Her reply came after one minute.
Ava took one minute often. Nate had started noticing that. She did not answer important things right away. She made the sentence wait outside until she had checked its pockets for weapons.
AVA: Trevor texted again.
Nate’s hand tightened around the phone.
No jaw crimes.
He was alone in his truck. Surely jaw crimes committed in private were not legally binding.
NATE CALLAHAN: What did he say?
Another pause.
Then three screenshots arrived.
Trevor’s words filled Nate’s screen.
TREVOR: Cute lunch. He seems nice.
TREVOR: Does he know this is what you do? Turn things serious, then act surprised when men leave?
TREVOR: Tell your hockey boy good luck. Guys like that usually hate being used.
Nate went very still.
There were hits a guy saw coming. A shoulder dropped. A defenseman angled wrong. A puck skipped weird off bad ice.
Then there were hits like this.
Soft voice. Clean shirt. Public smile. Private blade.
Nate had not been there freshman year. He had not watched Trevor make Ava doubt the rightness of wanting clarity. He had not seen the version of her sitting in a Wendy’s parking lot, crying because some guy with a collar and a five-year plan had convinced her wanting the truth was embarrassing.
But he saw the result.
He saw it in the way Ava apologized too fast. In the way she turned every soft thing into a joke before anyone else could touch it. In the way she had written rules for a fake dinner like desire was a legal liability.
Nate looked at Trevor’s last text again.
Guys like that usually hate being used.
The man knew exactly where to aim.
Nate typed.
NATE CALLAHAN: What do you want to do?
Ava answered quickly this time.
AVA: I don’t know.
That landed harder than any plan could have.
Nate leaned back against the seat.
I don’t know meant she was telling the truth.
I don’t know meant she had not turned this into a neat little strategy yet. No rules. No categories. No tidy joke protecting the bruise.
Nate could not rush that.
He could not make the decision for her just because he already knew what he wanted.
And that was the problem.
He knew.
Not all of it. Not the final shape. Not what happened after Trevor, after summer, after the bet, after the lake packed away its string lights and the season started demanding everything he had.
But he knew he was not ready to stop.
He knew holding Ava’s hand had stopped feeling like pretend before Ruthie Lane ever asked if he fought.
He knew he wanted to be the person Ava texted when Trevor made her feel small.
He knew that was dangerous.
He typed carefully.
NATE CALLAHAN: Then we don’t decide the whole thing tonight.
Ava’s reply came slower.
AVA: That sounds suspiciously healthy.
Nate smiled despite the heat still sitting in his chest.
NATE CALLAHAN: I ate salad today. It changed me.
AVA: The salad was a trap.
NATE CALLAHAN: I suspected.
AVA: I don’t want him thinking he gets to define what this is.
Nate read that twice.
Not me.
Not us.
This.
NATE CALLAHAN: Then he doesn’t.
AVA: Easy for you to say. You are not the one who turned a fake boyfriend into a family dinner and possibly emotional fraud.
NATE CALLAHAN: I brought rolls. I am involved in the fraud.
AVA: The rolls were your choice.
NATE CALLAHAN: The good rolls were your escalation.
There was a pause.
Then:
AVA: True.
Nate exhaled.
NATE CALLAHAN: Do you want cover for a little longer?
The typing dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
AVA: I don’t want cover.
Nate frowned at the screen.
Then another message appeared.
AVA: I want him to be wrong.
Nate’s chest went tight.
There it was.
Not a fake-boyfriend request. Not a strategy. Not even revenge, exactly.
Ava wanted Trevor’s story about her to stop being the one that mattered.
Nate could understand that.
Too well.
How many times had he played the charming guy because people had already decided that was all he was good for? How many times had he smiled through coaches saying leadership was more than being liked, through his father’s sighs, through girls who called him fun like fun was a hallway with no doors?
He knew what it felt like to live inside someone else’s conclusion.
He typed.
NATE CALLAHAN: Then we make him wrong by not letting him write it.
Ava did not answer immediately.
Nate stared at the phone until his screen dimmed.
Then it lit again.
AVA: You are dangerously decent again.
NATE CALLAHAN: Intermittently.
AVA: Persistent.
He smiled.
Then his phone buzzed with a call.
Ava.
Nate sat up so fast he hit his elbow on the console.
“Ow,” he muttered, then answered before the second ring. “Hey.”
Silence.
Then Ava said, “Do not sound like you were waiting for my call.”
Nate closed his eyes.
Her voice was quieter than her texts.
He softened his own. “I was parked near a stop sign reconsidering my entire personality.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“The salad.”
A pause.
Then she exhaled. “I hate that he can still do that.”
“I know.”
“You don’t, actually.”
“No,” Nate said. “I don’t know exactly.”
That seemed to matter, because she did not argue.
“He always makes it sound like I’m the one creating drama,” she said. “Like if I feel something, that is proof I am the problem.”
Nate looked through the windshield at the quiet street. “Feeling something is not the problem.”
“Very therapist of you.”
“Do not insult me like that. I am emotionally undeclared.”
She laughed once, weak but real. “Grandma would approve of that answer.”
“Grandma Ruthie scares me.”
“Good. That means your instincts work.”
“She asked me what I noticed about you.”
“I am aware. I walked in during emotional trespassing.”
Nate tipped his head back against the seat.
This was dangerous.
Not because she needed him.
Because she was trying not to.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I meant what I said.”
Ava was quiet for a long second.
“Which part?”
“All of it.”
“That’s vague.”
“You are hard to miss.”
Her breath changed.
Nate’s pulse shifted.
“That sounds like a line,” she said.
“It’s not.”
“How do I know?”
“You don’t.”
That silence was different.
Honest and sharp.
He kept going before he could turn coward.
“You don’t know yet. That’s okay. I can be patient.”
“You are a hockey player.”
“We wait all game for the right shot.”
“That was almost smooth.”
“Almost?”
“I am grading generously because you survived lunch.”
Nate laughed under his breath.
“I’ll take it.”
“Do not get used to it.”
“Too late,” he said automatically.
Ava gasped like he had committed a crime.
He smiled. “Sorry. Banned phrase. I know.”
“You did that on purpose.”
“Maybe.”
“Dangerous.”
“Persistent.”
The line went quiet again, but not empty.
A different quiet.
The kind he had felt on her porch before Ruthie yelled through the window.
“I don’t want to stop yet,” Ava said finally.
Nate’s hand tightened on the steering wheel.
“Okay.”
“But I also don’t want this turning into a thing I can’t control.”
“Then we keep checking in.”
“That sounds mature.”
“I’m trying it out.”
“How does it feel?”
“Restrictive in the shoulders.”
This time, she laughed harder.
Good.
Nate would have taken a puck to the ribs for that laugh.
Which was alarming.
“Lake tomorrow?” Ava asked. “Before my shift. We need rules if this is continuing.”
“More rules?”
“Do you have a problem with structure?”
“I have a problem with your notes app having more authority than my coach.”
“Smart app.”
Nate smiled at the roof of his truck.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Before your shift. Bring the scary notes app.”
“Bring discipline.”
There was no possible answer to that that would not get him into trouble.
He chose trouble.
“Persistent,” he said.
She hung up first.
Of course she did.
Nate sat in the truck with the phone still against his ear, listening to the dead line like an idiot.
Then he lowered it and stared at the contact name.
Ava Lane.
Not Snack Shack Ava. Not fake girlfriend. Not line judge. Not content. Not a bet.
Ava Lane.
Hard to miss.
Harder to leave alone.
His phone buzzed again.
Tyler.
TYLER: You missed team dinner check-in. Griffin is calm, which is worse than yelling.
Then Beckett.
BECKETT: Did the rolls work? One word answer.
Then Griffin.
GRIFFIN: Tell me you are alive and not making a choice that requires paperwork.
Nate started the truck.
He had no idea how to answer any of them.
By the time Nate reached the team house, the guys had eaten without him and left an aggressively labeled plate in the fridge.
A sticky note on top read:
NATE’S SUNDAY DINNER EMOTIONAL RECOVERY MEAL
Under it, in Griffin’s handwriting:
Do not encourage this.
Under that, in Tyler’s:
Too late.