You looked like a dog waiting for someone who isn’t coming back.
Nate
Don’t wanna talk about it, man.
38
CUE THE SAD GIRL EDIT
Holly
“You ever regret a pause? A breath? A silence? Because I do.”
Holly stared straight ahead like the road personally offended her, gripping the steering wheel with a white-knuckled intensity usually reserved for final bosses and emotionally unavailable men. She was one intrusive thought away from screaming into the void. Why thehellhadn’t she said anything to that reporter?
Brain? You in there, bestie?
She’d comeso farfrom the girl who once thought Nate was just a walking concussion with abs. Hollyknewhow to handle the press. She’d finessed trickier interviews while hungover and halfway into a wardrobe malfunction. And yet there she was, blindsided and mute while Nate stood there holding her like a Nicholas Sparks wet dream. Why had her entire frontal cortex suddenly hit the eject button?
The gravity in the car had shifted, and everything was being pulled sideways. Nate sat silently in the passenger seat, as though someone had unplugged all the warmth in him andswapped it out for arctic-level chill. Not dramatic. Justempty. Somehow that was so much worse. Because if he’d yelled, she could’ve fought back. If he’d glared, she’d at least know where she stood. This frozen version of him felt like watching a fire die one glowing ember at a time and knowing she was the one who poured water on it.
Well, that’s it. You’re the villain now.Cue the sad girl car edits. Cue the moody rain filter. Cue the video essay voiceover that starts with ‘Holly Martinez’s fall from grace began on a Tuesday…’
She gripped the wheel tighter, knuckles aching, trying to breathe around the sudden pressure in her chest. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. Hadn’t meant to hesitate. She opened her mouth twice. Closed it again. The third time, she forced the words out.
“Nate, I didn’t mean…” She stopped. Adjusted her grip. “I wasn’t trying to hang you out to dry.”
“I know.” He didn’t look at her, and she could tell every word was being measured. “You just didn’t know what to say.”
But the problem was that shehad.
In the split second after the question hit the ice, a thousand fears had surged to the surface. Career fallout, headlines, the cameras, the contracts. But none of them were louder than the quiet, terrifying voice that whisperedif you choose him now, it’s forever. No going back. No pretending. She’d been right there, toes curled over the edge of the leap, and he’d seen it. Had felt it.
Now, he sat beside her in the car, all wounded composure and distant calm, retreating in that careful, quiet way people didwhen they were trying not to bleed on the upholstery. And the worst part? He wasn’t wrong. Because for one gut-wrenching second, she hadn’t been brave enough to fight for him in front of the world.
Now her fear was having lost him.
“I was caught off guard,” she tried, forcing the words out around the knot in her throat, stealing a glance at him like she could win him back into warmth through sheer determination. “You saw how fast it happened. I didn’t know what they were going to ask.”
“You don’t have to explain,” he said, and the softness in his voice was the cruelest part of it, like he’d shoved everything he felt into a box and snapped the lid shut. He kept his gaze out the window, jaw working once like he was chewing glass. “It’s fine.”
Fine.
That word hit the inside of her chest like a slammed door. It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t reassurance. It was a dismissal. A boundary. A quietdon’t come close again.Holly swallowed, palms sweating against the wheel even though the car was warm. “Nate?—”
“Seriously,” he cut in, and there was a laugh in it, technically, but it was bitter and didn’t reach his eyes. It was the sound of someone pretending it doesn’t hurt because it always hurts. “Don’t worry about it, Holly. I’m used to it. My team does it all the fucking time.”
And there it was. The real wound. The one he’d dressed up like a joke so she wouldn’t have to see the blood.
Holly blinked hard, her throat tightening with a rage that wasn’t for him but for the world that had taught him to expect abandonment as the default setting.
“That’s not fair.” Her voice cracked. It wasn’t just unfair, it was devastating. The message beneath his clipped, Danish-tinted words was that he’d finally started to believe in her… and now he was forcing himself tostop.
“Isn’t it?” he said, finally turning his head to look at her as they pulled up to a set of red lights. And just like that she wished he hadn’t, because the look on his face wasn’t cold or furious or punishing. It waswounded. Hollow in a way that split her right down the middle. “I let myself believe someone was finally in my corner,” he said softly. “Shouldn’t have. That’s on me.”
Her stomach dropped so hard it felt like missing a step in the dark. She opened her mouth and closed it for the second time. There was nothing she could say that wouldn’t sound like an excuse.
They didn’t speak again for the rest of the ride, but it wasn’t silent. It was the slow ache of something fragile caving under pressure. By the time she pulled up outside her apartment, it felt like the air in the car had turned solid. Unbreathable.
