Page 192 of Before We Were

His fingers twitch on the wheel, and I know he's fighting the urge to reach for me, uncertain if he still has the right. I keep my eyes forward, watching the road stretch endless as my fears into the darkness ahead.

"Sometimes," I whisper, my voice barely audible over the engine's hum, "it feels like I can't move. Like everything around me is swallowing me whole and I'm drowning in air."

The words hang between us, raw and jagged as broken glass. I feel exposed, like I've peeled back a layer of myself I wasn't ready to show. Then his hand finds mine, our fingers lacing together.

"Like no matter what you do, you're stuck in this place where everything hurts, and there's no way out." It isn't a question, it's recognition—a truth I half expected he'd carry too. We're both walking through life with matching scars we try to hide.

Tears spill down my cheeks before I realize they've formed, but when I finally dare to look at him, there's no judgment in his eyes. Just that quiet intensity he always carries.

"What do you do," I ask softly, my voice trembling like autumn leaves, "when everything goes wrong?"

Nate signals and pulls the car to the side of the road, tires crunching on gravel like broken promises. When the engine cuts off, we're left in an almost sacred silence, the world outside fading until it's just us, painted in soft blues and shadows by the dashboard lights.

"What are you doing?" The words barely escape my lips.

He turns to me then, hazel eyes locking onto mine with a depth that steals my breath. In the half-light, his gaze holds something ancient and understanding, like he's carrying answers to questions I haven't learned to ask yet.

"You know what you do when the world crumbles around you, Len?" His voice is soft but unwavering, pulling me closer like gravity.

I swallow hard, searching his face like trying to read a language I once knew but have forgotten. "What?"

He lifts my hand, turning it palm-up in his own with a gentleness that makes my heart stutter. Slowly, he brushes his lips against the inside of my wrist, the gesture so tender it leaves me undone. Through that single point of contact, it feels like he's trying to pour all his strength into me.

"The only thing you can do," he whispers against my skin, before pressing another kiss to my palm. "You breathe it all in, and then you let it out. Because the more you hold onto it, the more it eats at you from the inside out, like poison in your veins. You can't let the fear, the hurt, or the pain win. You just have to learn to let it live by your side and acknowledge it when it's there, like an old scar. One that reminds you that you survived. You can't just give in when it wants to consume you like wildfire."

His words settle around us like a blanket heavy with truth. "It's not easy, but I think it's possible."

The faint glow from outside catches on his face, highlighting the bruise darkening his cheek and the split in his lip that looks like a crimson fault line. He's both breakable and unyielding in this light, a contradiction I can't look away from. His thumb traces patterns on the back of my hand that feel like secrets being written on my skin.

"You don't have to hold onto it alone anymore," he murmurs, his voice steady as bedrock but tender as dawn. "I can carry it with you. If you'll let me."

Something inside me shatters.

His words are a lifeline thrown into deep water, a promise that feels both impossible and inevitable as gravity. He sees me—every broken, messy part, all the jagged edges and dark corners—and he's still here, still holding on.

Nate Sullivan is my paradox, my calm in the chaos, the eye of a hurricane. The one person who can reach me when I feel unreachable. With his eyes on me like this, it makes me feel like I'm his whole universe condensed into flesh and bone. I know one truth that burns through me: I don't want to hide from him anymore.

We drive home in comfortable silence, his hand steady in mine like an anchor. Every gentle squeeze of his fingers says what words can't:I'm here. I still got you.

For the first time in what feels like forever, I believe it with every fractured piece of my heart.

The car rolls to a stop in the driveway, gravel crunching softly beneath the tires. Nate comes around to open my door, and without a word, I start walking toward the dock by the lake, my feet finding the path like muscle memory. The night air whispers cool against my skin, but it does little to quiet the tempest raging inside me.

I sink onto the edge of the dock, wrapping my arms around my knees as the wood creaks beneath me like old bones. Nate's presence hovers a few steps behind, hesitant as morning fog.

"I can leave," he offers, his voice quiet as falling snow.

"I don't want to be alone right now."

He settles beside me, careful to maintain a small distance, like I might shatter if he gets too close. The lake stretches before us, black as ink and just as willing to swallow secrets.

"What did Evan say to you at the party?" The tension beneath his steady voice rumbles like distant thunder.

"It's not worth repeating," I mutter, staring into the darkness of the water.

"Nora." My name on his lips is soft but insistent as waves against shore. "Please."

I exhale sharply, the sound like glass breaking. The determination burning in his eyes tells me he won't let this go—he's as relentless as the tide.

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