"Nathan," I whisper, my voice hoarse from screaming.
He shakes his head, pulling away even though I haven't moved. "You should hate me. You should run as far from me as you can. I'm the reason your brother is dead. I'm the reason everyone blamed him. I'm the reason your parents—"
"I know," I say quietly, my voice breaking. "And I should hate you. Part of me does hate you, right now. But I don't—I can't—"
He looks at me with such raw vulnerability that my heart breaks all over again. "Why?"
"Because you were seventeen. Stupid and reckless and terrified." I move closer, tears streaming down my face again."Because you've carried this guilt for sixteen years. Because you loved him too. Because I can see it—how much it destroyed you."
I kneel beside him, cupping his face in my hands, forcing him to meet my eyes through our shared tears. "It doesn't make it okay. It doesn't make it right. But it makes it... human."
The sob that tears from his throat is the sound of something breaking. He buries his face in my neck, his shoulders shaking violently, and I hold him.
I hold him the way I wish someone had held me when I first learned Alex was gone. I hold him like he's precious and broken and worthy of comfort despite everything he's done.
Because in this moment, he's not my captor or my stalker or the man who destroyed my life.
He's just a boy who lost his best friend and spent his whole life trying to make it right.
"I'm so sorry," he whispers against my skin, his voice raw and broken. "I'm so fucking sorry, Eve. I've never told anyone. You're the only person who knows the truth."
"I know," I murmur, stroking his hair, my own tears falling into it. "I know you are."
And I do. I know he is. I can feel it in every tremor of his body, hear it in every broken word.
It doesn't erase what he did. Nothing ever will.
But maybe, just maybe, it's enough to start healing.
Both of us.
We stay like that for a long time—two broken people holding each other, bound together by shared grief and impossible love.
And somehow, in the wreckage of our pain, I feel something shift. The last wall between us crumbles, and what's left is raw and real and terrifyingly honest.
This is who we are. Two survivors. Two people shaped by the same tragedy. Two halves of the same shattered memory.
And I love him. Not despite what he's done, but because of all of it. Because his obsession came from grief. Because his control came from guilt. Because everything—the stalking, the manipulation, the beautiful cage—came from a seventeen-year-old boy's desperate need to atone.
I pull back just enough to look at him, wiping the tears from his cheeks with trembling hands.
"I forgive you," I whisper.
His eyes widen, disbelief warring with desperate hope. "You can't—"
"I do," I say firmly, tears streaming down my face. "I forgive you, Nathan. For the accident. For everything after. I forgive you."
He pulls me into his arms, holding me so tightly I can barely breathe, his whole body shaking with sobs. But I don't pull away. I just hold him back, crying with him, feeling his heart race against mine, and know that this is real.
This is us. Broken and twisted and impossibly bound together by grief and love and shared history.
And somehow, that's enough.
More than enough.
It's everything.
Chapter 26 - Nathan
