Page 59 of The Fate Of Us

A stream of laughs starts to trickle out of Alice. “Nate, honey, I’m starting to thinkthat I owe you a rebate on the amount you spend here. You know, buy a thousand sessions, get the next thousand for free sorta thing?”

Both of our heads fell forward as we laughed. “You know, Alice, as much as I adore you,I’m hoping I won’t need to see you another thousand times.”

“Me too, honey.”

“Nate, Sebastian needs you in five for the fight scene with Asher.”

How fitting.

I turn around in my egg chair to face the assistant who ducked their head in mydressing room.“Okay, thanks,” I murmur, dishing them a smile before they snuck away, gentlyclosing the door and leaving me alone again.

I get up with a groan and waltz over to the dressing table, ignoring how almost all ofthe lights around the mirror were out, and instead taking in how, for the first time in a while, no dark circles existed under my eyes.

Probably the work of having a week of decent sleep, after I met with Alice.

Her telling me to talk to Addy about our complicated history wasn’t a new suggestionfrom our meetings; after the first few sessions were over and I’d gotten comfortable with telling someone else who wasn’t Addy about everything that was swimming around my head, she asked if I’d spoken to Addy about what I’d found. I told her I hadn’t. She asked me why not. And that’s been our routine for the years I’ve been seeing her.

And I hate it. I’ve always hated it.

I hate how comfortable I am with nothing changing. I hate walking in there and tellingher I’m not ready to let go of what happened. I hate sitting on that armchair, the one that remembers my shape from the number of times I’ve sat in it, telling Alice that I’m too weak to even think about patching things up with Addy.

But now… things were different.

Perhaps it was because we were getting closer, in ways we hadn’t been for years.Perhaps having her close again was unearthing all the feelings I’d done so well to keep at bay, and only now were they becoming too much to ignore. Perhaps it was because I was sick of tossing and turning, having that nightmare haunt me for too long that I was ready for it all to stop.

The only problem was I had no idea what to tackle first. How to unpack years ofbuilt-up tension and neatly sort it out until things started to feel clearer.

Here wasn’t the place to do it. We’d tried that before, last year, and look where thatgot us.

No… Sunfall was where we needed to be. And however ironic that sounded… I knewit was right.All I had to do was keep things civil for the next few weeks until we left for L.A.

Until we were home.

The idea of stepping foot on that pier made the swarms of nerves soar around mystomach.

Having time until then was good, I’d realised. I needed time to plan what I was goingto say to her when that day came. And for now, we’d exist in whatever civil charade we’d mastered. At least that’s one thing we knew how to do well around each other.

I pushed away from the dressing table, spinning to face the door and pulling it openwith whatever enthusiasm I could muster up.

It took all of three seconds of me leaving the sanctuary of my dressing room for me tospot Addy, her eyes finding me, narrowing at me, before turning away and heading in the other direction.

Like she’s been doing all week.

I made a mental note to call my publicist later on, to see if there was any update ongetting the articles about my and Amber’s little outing, what progress had been made on their end to have it taken offline and away from the gossip mongers and snappy magazines for good.

I knew she’d seen it. She’d been avoiding me, more than usual. When we had scenestogether, she’d barely look at me. Amber had suffered the quiet rath of Addy, too, only spending time with her that she contractually had to.

But who was I kidding? The whole world saw those pictures and had all come to onesingle conclusion: me and Amber were together.

It was ridiculous. I was so annoyed by the questions, and the looks, and theassumptions that, by the end of the day, I was scarily close to releasing a statement denying the whole thing.

I’d been photographed with Jacob on our days out with Bagel more times than I couldcount, why weren’t people speculating about our relationship? I got spotted with Florence just a few weeks ago, as she waved me off from her and Jacob’s place after my birthday disaster, why weren’t people assuming that she and I were secretly together?

But to be honest, I didn’t care if that’s what Addy thought was going on, becauseshe—

“Do you mind being quiet for a second, Nate? I’m trying to remember my lines.”Asher barked as he brushed up beside me, as we overlooked the set.

“I wasn’t saying anything.” I gritted out.

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