Nora studies us closely, like she's bracing for something that hasn't happened yet. Like she's waiting for me to make this awkward or painful or difficult.
"I'm going to grab us drinks," Liam says, leaning in to kiss her cheek.
A casual gesture that speaks of intimacy and comfort and all the things I used to have with her. She smiles at him—small but real—and something in me breaks a little more.
She used to smile at me like that.
As soon as he walks away, the space between us shifts, like all the air has been sucked out and replaced with memory.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," she says, and her voice has an edge now.
"It's Ollie's wedding."
"Right." Her jaw tightens slightly.
Silence stretches between us, then she exhales, and when she speaks again, her voice is quieter but sharper.
"Why'd you disappear, Nate?"
The question lands like a punch and I don't have it in me to argue.
My throat closes up. My pulse races.
"I went to rehab. You knew that."
"Yeah, and then you vanished." There's pain in her voice now. Raw and unfiltered. "Two years. Two years of nothing. No calls.No texts. Nothing. I had to find out through Jay that you'd moved back to Eden."
The words confuse me because that's not true. That's not what happened.
I wrote to her every week for two years. Poured my heart into pages and pages when it felt like I was losing everything. I told her about the hard days and the small victories. About how I was getting better for myself but also for her. Told her I still loved her, still believed in us, still hoped that when I was whole again we could try.
And she never wrote back.
Not once.
I thought she'd moved on. Thought she'd decided I wasn't worth waiting for. I thought the silence was her answer. But looking at her now—at the hurt written across her face, the genuine confusion in her eyes—a different possibility begins to take shape.
"Nora, I?—"
"I waited," she says, and her voice cracks. "I waited for months thinking you'd reach out. That you'd call or write or something. And then I realized you weren't going to. That you'd decided recovery meant cutting me out completely."
"That's not?—"
Before I can finish, Liam returns with two glasses of champagne.
"Did I miss anything?"
"No." Her voice is flat.
Liam looks between us, sensing the tension but not understanding it.
She hesitates, then says, "Enjoy the wedding, Nate."
And just like that, she walks away, Liam's hand finding the small of her back again, guiding her toward a group of people I don't recognize.
I stand there, holding my sparkling water, mind racing.
She never got the letters.
