The thought should have given me satisfaction, should have fed the petty part of my soul that had spent six years nursing the wound of his abandonment. Instead, it just made my chest tight with something that felt uncomfortably like protective concern.
Because I'd never stopped caring about him, had I? Never stopped wanting him to be happy, even when his happiness had meant leaving me behind.
Fuck. I was so screwed.
“Didn't think I'd see you here.”
Nate's voice was closer now, and I looked up to find him standing beside my table, coffee cup in hand and that familiar half-smile playing around his mouth. He looked older. Tired. Beautiful in a way that made my throat close up with want and regret and all the words I'd never been brave enough to say.
“Needed work,” I said, surprised that the words came out at all, that my voice didn't crack under the weight of seeing him again. “Gideon's truck finally gave up the ghost, and apparently I'm the only one in town stupid enough to crawl under a dying Ford and pretend I know what I'm doing.”
It was more than I'd spoken to most people in weeks, and definitely more than I'd planned to say to him. But something about Nate had always made words easier, had always made the careful barriers I maintained feel less necessary.
“Yeah,” he said softly, and there was warmth in his voice that hit me like a punch to the solar plexus. “Figures.”
“Evan.” Dad's voice cut through the moment, and I turned to see him approaching our table. His presence immediatelyshifted the atmosphere, conversations quieting as people instinctively acknowledged the authority he carried.
He clapped a hand on my shoulder, the gesture casual but deliberate, a public display of approval that everyone in the room would notice and remember. It was pack politics disguised as paternal affection, a reminder of who I was and who I was becoming.
“How's the truck coming along?” he asked, but his attention was already shifting to Nate, assessing this unexpected variable with the sharp focus he brought to anything that might affect pack dynamics.
“Should be running by tomorrow,” I said. “Carburetor was more fucked up than I thought, but it's fixable.”
“Good.” Dad nodded, then turned to Nate. “Nate. Heard you were back in town.”
“Yes, sir,” Nate said, standing automatically in a show of respect that made something twist uncomfortably in my chest. “Just for a visit.”
“Well, you're always welcome here.” Dad's tone was perfectly cordial. “I'm sure Evan's glad to see an old friend.”
The words hung in the air like a challenge, an invitation for me to confirm or deny the sentiment. But I'd never been good at performing emotions on command, and the complicated tangle of feelings Nate's return had stirred up wasn't something I could package into polite conversation.
So I just nodded, letting Dad draw whatever conclusions he wanted from my silence.
After Dad left, the space between Nate and me felt charged with electricity, heavy with six years of unfinished business and the weight of too many things that had never been said. He finished his coffee in careful sips, eyes tracking the Lodge's afternoon rhythm while I pretended to review invoices that had already been corrected.
When he finally stood to leave, I felt something close to panic flutter in my chest. Because this couldn't be it, could it? One stilted conversation and then back to pretending we'd never meant anything to each other?
“Nate.”
His name escaped before I could stop it, rough and raw and carrying more weight than a single syllable should have been able to bear. He stopped mid-step, shoulders tensing like he'd been hit by lightning.
For a moment, I thought he might not turn around. Thought he might just keep walking, leave me sitting there with his name hanging in the air like evidence of everything I'd never been able to let go.
But he did turn, slowly, and when his eyes met mine, I saw something that looked like hope mixed with terror.
“See you around, Callahan,” he said, and his smile was fragile and real and exactly like the one I'd been dreaming about for six years.
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with the echo of my own voice saying his name and the uncomfortable awareness that Gideon was watching from the doorway, those sharp eyes missing nothing.
I went back to the invoices, but the numbers blurred together until they looked like abstract art instead of accounting. Because Nate Harrington was back in Hollow Pines, and I had no idea what that meant for the careful life I'd built in his absence.
All I knew was that seeing him again had felt like coming alive after years of sleepwalking, like someone had turned the color saturation back up on a world that had been running in grayscale.
And that was dangerous as hell, because I'd learned to live with grayscale. Had made peace with the muted version of existence that didn't include the possibility of heartbreak.
But now he was back, and I could feel myself starting to hope for things I'd given up on six years ago.
Which meant I was probably about to get my heart broken all over again.
