“Oh my God.” I pressed my fingers to my temples. “This is so unfair. Do you have any idea what they’re going to say about me when they find out? Do you have any idea what they’re probably saying about meright now?”
His voice softened. “Kate?—”
“No,” I said. “No, you don’t get to do that.”
He frowned. “Do what?”
“Be reasonable,” I snapped. “I don’t want reasonable right now.”
He inhaled a deep breath, eyes tracking mine as I paced up and down a few times, but he didn’t say another word, which was good. Because I wasn’t done.
“I kept this secret for five years and you told your brother the second things got complicated.”
“That’s not why.”
“Then why?” I asked, but as soon as the question came out, the answer popped into my head.
Nate wouldn’t have kept it to himself for so long only to finally run to his brother and blurt it all out simply because he felt guilty for kissing me. No. That didn’t make any sense.
As I looked at him, I realized what it had all been about. In that moment, we probably both knew what it was he didn’t want to say.
“You were struggling to choose.” I finally gave voice to my suspicion. “That’s why you went there, isn’t it? You needed to talk it through because you weren’t sure yet. Me or Emma.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “This is insane.”
“It is,” he agreed.
“All that time,” I said. “All those years. All those messages. Do you know how many times I almost flew out here to meet you? Do you know how many times I thought about it? How many times I imagined it?”
“I know,” he said quietly. “Because I thought about all those things too.”
“And we just…” I trailed off, gesturing around helplessly. “We just never did it.”
He nodded, pain and old hurt in the furrow between his eyebrows. “We’re together now, Kate. Why are we even talking about this?”
The question slipped out before I could stop it, raw, awful, and impossible to take back. “If Emma were real, if she were a different person than me, who would you have chosen?”
He paled. Like visibly, actually paling after the color had just come back into his cheeks. My heart was suddenly pounding so hard, I could feel it in my throat. I shouldn’t have asked thequestion. I’d known that even as the words were leaving my mouth. But I needed to know.
Nate went very still, but he didn’t seem confused or blindsided. He just wasn’t moving. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing. It kind of looked like he’d stepped in something deep and cold, and he didn’t want to move too fast for fear of waking the monsters lurking under the surface.
“That’s an unfair question,” he said finally. “Besides, we’ve already talked about this. I told you that I went to the park to break up with Emma, but it was you. So what did you expect me to do? Break up with your alter ego?”
My hands curled into fists at my sides as I shook my head. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It is the same thing.”
“It’s not.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, frustrated now. “Kate?—”
“I would have chosen you.” The words came out rough. “I would have chosen you. Nate Westwood.You. Not CB. Not some version of you behind a screen. You.”
He looked at me, something unreadable flickering across his face, but he still hadn’t actually answered my question. Tears welled in my eyes as I looked back at him. “And you know that, don’t you? You know it.”
He didn’t deny that he did either, which made it worse. “So why can’t you answer the question then, Nate?”
Something inside me cracked when I was met with complete silence. I nodded as my vision started to blur. “Okay, then. I guess I have my answer.”
He stepped toward me. “No. Kate?—”
