The Nora I knew always knew what she wanted.
Did I overreact?
Maybe. Probably. Yes.
Definitely yes.
I overreacted in the same way the Titanic had a minor leak. Catastrophically and with zero ability to course-correct once it started.
He asked a simple question. A fair question, really, given that I showed up here in the middle of planning my wedding, without my engagement ring, staying on his property, looking at him the way I've been looking at him—like the last seven years didn't happen.
Like I'm seventeen again and he's the only person in the world who matters. Extremely well-adjusted behavior for an engaged woman.
I should be wearing the stupid overpriced ring.
The one that cost more than my first car. The one that screams"I have excellent taste and zero financial anxiety."The one that makes other women do that thing where they grab your hand and gasp.
I should be happy about wearing it.
Thrilled, even. Posting photos of it on Instagram with captions about being #blessed and finding my #forever.
But when Nate asked me why, I panicked.
Lashed out like a feral cat and demanded he take me home like he'd crossed some unforgivable line when really he just poked at a sore spot I've been trying to ignore.
Professional conflict avoidance. I should teach a masterclass.
The truth is, I don't know why I'm not wearing it. That's the lie I told him, and it's the lie I've been telling myself. The actual truth—the one that makes my stomach twist—is that I know exactly why.
I just don't want to say it out loud.
I don't want to make it real.
Because if I make it real, I have to deal with it. And dealing with it means admitting things I'm not ready to admit. Because if I admit why I took it off, then I have to admit everything else: that I said yes to Wes because it felt like what I was supposed to do. That the life I've built in LA looks perfect from the outside but feels hollow from the inside. That coming back to Eden has made me remember what it felt like to want something so badly it scared me, and I haven't felt that way about Wes once in the two years we've been together.
That seeing Nate again has cracked open something I thought I'd sealed shut.
I set down the coffee mug harder than necessary, the sound sharp in the quiet cabin.
This is his fault.
If he hadn't offered me the cabin, if he hadn't been so understanding about everything, if he hadn't looked at me yesterday with those eyes that see too much, I wouldn't be standing here questioning my entire life.
Except that's not fair either, and I know it.
He didn't do anything except exist. Except be the version of himself that he's become—steady, grounded, successful in ways that matter. He rebuilt himself and this town and created something meaningful, while I've been in LA writing books about love I'm not sure I believe in anymore.
And yesterday, when he asked about the ring, what I heard wasn't judgment.
It was concern.
It was the same care he used to show me before he told me there was no future for us, that I was naive to think there could be.
God, why am I even thinking about that? About him? About us?
There is no us. There hasn't been for years.
He made that clear at Ollie's wedding.
