Page 86 of The Fate Of Us

I smiled at him.

And to my surprise, my heart did a summersault when I watched him smile back at me.

Chapter twenty-five

Adaline

“Soyou’retellingme,”Eleanor starts, elbows resting on her black pantsuit-coveredknees, hands interlocked underneath her chin. “You and Nate met when you were kids, started getting feelings for one another when you got older, then Asher…” she nods her head over to the door. “Somehow made his way between you two, had a crush on you, and told Nate that he didn’t have a chance of being with you…”

“Uh-huh.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, probably to straighten out the mental timeline I’d justmapped out for her over the past hour. “Then Nate confesses that he loves you, and you kiss for the first time after letting him read another one of your novels, which I absolutely want to read by the way—”

“Keep going,” I urge her, because she’s an easily distracted woman, it turns out. When Igot to the part about Asher, she kept talking about how she couldn’t stop staring at him the first time they met, and wondered if he’d had something done to his eyes to make them that blue.

“Right, sorry. Okay. So, he says, ‘I love you,’ and then you two are officially together. Butit’s nearing the start of summer, meaning you only have a few months together before he leaves for college, and you leave home. So, at the end of the summer, you make a promise to meet at Sunset—"

"Sunfall," I correct her, smiling up at her.

"SunfallPier, a year to the day. You would let each other grow and have that sense of independence, but you could still keep in contact.”

I bounce my head at her. “That’s right.”

“But then, a year later, he never shows.”

“Yep.”

“And he never responded to your calls and texts over the year?”

“Not a single one.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know!! That’s the thing. He won’t tell me.”

Her spine arched back into the chair, her hands falling into her lap. “Huh… and nowyou’re…”

“Playing childhood enemies to lovers.” I nod, like I still can’t quite believe it either.

Eleanor mirrors me, as her eyes bore into the white ceiling of the office we snuck into.“My God, I should put the lottery on.” her head nods back to me, guilt melting into hersmile. “I’m so sorry for casting you.”

“It’s fine,” I assure her. “To be honest, it’s probably been a blessing, being so close.We used to be inseparable before everything happened. There wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t see him. Apart from the times I’d be out of town for shoots or he’d be on vacation. And those weeks apart would drive me crazy, even before he told me… you know what he told me."

Slowly, I let my back fall back too, the threads of the white tee tied at my waist tugging onthe fabric of the office chair. “Maybe we needed to spend some time together, as adults. Maybe… maybe it’s all played out exactly how it was meant to.” Without moving my head, I bolted my eyes back to Eleanor. “Or do I sound insane?”

Her bob swished as she shook her head. “No… you sound like a woman who has beendenied the truth for so long and is doing her best to see the positives in all of this. And I admire you for that, Adaline. I really do.”

I shrug, my shoulder blades rustling on the chair. “Yeah, well. What else is there to do?”

Eleanor let her shoulders roll too. “You could’ve told yourself you didn’t care whathappened to him. You could’ve sat here and ripped him to shreds for how he’d treated you. You could have strung Asher along just to get back at Nate. You could have clung to every negative thing that happened to you and made it who you were."

Static hummed between us, my legs almost slipping right off the chair at how safe I wasto hear whatever was about to slip out of her mouth.

“But you didn’t.” That silvery voice of hers said. “You fought. You carried on and tooklife one day at a time, until the world knew you were ready for him to come back into your life again. Perhaps you needed him to never show up to fully spread your wings and have that freedom you never had. Perhaps… it was fate taking the reins you had no idea how to hold yet.”

The voice that told me to deny everything she just said was barely louder than a summerbreeze, barely making a whisper. Perhaps that was because, deep down, I’d never wanted to get back at him. I’d never wanted to hurt him. I’d never wanted revenge.

I just wanted him.

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