Page 74 of Fate Fiction

Focus, Dani.

“Can we talk?” I asked.

He stepped around me and opened the door of his cabin, gesturing for me to go inside. I sucked in a breath, feeling the weight of everything settle onto my shoulders.

“Let me change real quick,” Evan disappeared behind the curtain to the cabin’s makeshift bedroom. I settled onto one of the kitchen chairs, resting my elbows on the table and clasping and unclasping my hands as I made feeble attempts to push the thoughts of him being naked behind that curtain out of my mind.

He walked out in silence and took the seat opposite to mine, clad only in a pair of athletic shorts, his hair still damp.

I shut my eyes for a second to steel myself and rested my trembling palms on my thighs. I couldn’t look at him. “When I was sixteen I skipped coming up to camp. My dad had died the year before, but my grief took a long time to catch up to me. It all hit at once and I had no way to process it. So I wrote. I filled an entire composition notebook in the span of a weekend, and I realized that writing was the only way I could say the things my brain wanted to say but my mouth couldn’t. I’ve always been a loner. I didn’t have family or friends or a boyfriend to help me get through those feelings, but I had a pen and those notebooks.”

Evan nodded, twiddling his thumbs in clasped hands.

“This is a really, really long winded way of me saying that I don’t know how to convey all the feelings I have. It’s a piss-poor excuse, I know, but I’m sorry that I can’t tell you how I feel right now, because honestly I’m still not sure.”

“Have you written about me?”

The question sent an ice-cold knife straight into my spine. He knows. How does he know? Did he ask someone to do a background check on me? Did he sneak into my cabin and read through my notebooks?

“About this week,” he clarified. “You said that writing helps⁠—”

A weight lifted off my chest. “A little bit,” I admitted. “I’m sort of in the middle of a bout of writer’s block.” Which was true. “When I’m not with you I’m alone with my unchecked thoughts which is…not good.”

Evan chuckled.

“If we could stay here forever I wouldn’t think twice about any of this,” I continued. “But here isn’t the real world, I’m not the same person here that I am in my day-to-day life.”

He stood up from his chair and circled the cabin to stand behind me. He draped his arms over my shoulders and played with a stray curl that had fallen out of my claw clip. “The real world can wait. We’ll have these conversations, we’ll dig deeper. Someday I’d love to know all of you, Dani. But I’ll take the pieces of you I have for now.”

I nodded as he kissed the side of my head. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach.

I’m a liar. I’m a piece of shit.

I’m so many horrible things.

I’m not deserving of Evan McLeod and the gentle kisses he’s planting on top of my head.

Guilt built up like a hydrogen bomb in my chest. I jerked my head away, dodging his affection.

“I’m a fan, Evan. I need to be crystal clear about that,” I said. “Like, Thorndown is one of my favorite shows of all time. I didn’t know you, you obviously didn’t know me, but you’ve been a crucial part of my twenties. I have merch, I have shirts with your face on it for fuck’s sake. I’m no better than that woman who chased you down. I⁠—”

“What? No, Dani, no. You’re nothing like her. In no universe would I categorize you two together. Do you think you can get past all that?” He cut me off, his throat bobbed nervously as he sat back down in the chair across from me. “Is there any future where you see me as more than the guy on your TV screen? Or…on your t-shirt?”

I didn’t know. Saying “yes” could be a lie, my brain hadn’t caught up to that yet. Saying “no” could end this all tonight. Neither was the truth. Neither felt right. This was all hitting a precipice.

“I’m already starting to,” I replied sincerely. “The person I’ve gotten to know these last few days is the person I want to explore this whole…thing…with.”

I didn’t know if all the space and time in the world could cure me of this sickness. I’d have my fire extinguisher at the ready for when the crash and burn happened. Because it would be happening, it was only a matter of when.

He nodded.

Pursuing anything with Evan at all had to have been one of the worst decisions I’d ever made. It was an even worse decision for Evan that he was blissfully unaware of. I hated my future self for the pain I’d cause him.

A loon cackled somewhere on the lake, breaking the silence that had settled between us. Evan’s eyes darted towards the porch and the dark wilderness that extended past the front door.

“I like you a lot,” he whispered.

My heart shattered. The dam burst open and tears spilled over onto my cheeks. I didn’t even know what the precise trigger was, all I knew was that I was sobbing in front of someone who was still a stranger to me.