Page 13 of Worth the Wait
Still, Freddie’s heart thundered as if caught red-handed. As if Nathan had looked straight at him through those curtains and all the time and silence and distance in the world hadn’t been enough to bury what still lived inside him.
He blinked hard, forcing back the sting behind his eyes.
Get a fucking grip.
He’d seen him. That was enough. Nathan was here. In Worthbridge. That was all Freddie had any right to know. All heneededto know. Anything else—how long he was staying, who he was with, what the hell had brought him back into town—none of it belonged to Freddie anymore. Not after learning to live without him. Of trying to forget how to miss him.
So he shifted upright, fumbled for the keys, and started the engine.
But the red door swung open and Freddie froze, blood hammering in his ears as Nathan stumbled out, half-staggering into the porch light. For a heartbeat, Freddie couldn’t breathe.
Fuck.
Hemusthave seen him.
And any second now, he’d storm across the street, and in some cruel twist of fate, in a world flipped upside down,he’dbe the one reading Freddie his rights.
But a second figure came into view. Shorter than Nathan now. Wiry. With dusts of grey hair catching the light. Ron Carter. Nathan’s father. Still built like a scaffold pole, with a permanent scowl he used to wear like a badge of honour. He shoved a couple of bulging bin bags into Nathan’s arms, along with a recycling crate, then disappeared back inside.
Course. Bin day tomorrow.
As a kid, Freddie had been afraid of Ron Carter.Mr Carter,back then. The name alone enough to make him stand straighter. The ex-army man with a voice like gravel and a stare that could silence a room. A veteran of The Troubles, Ron had a thousand stories from Northern Ireland, most of them told with a pint in hand and a far-off look in his eye. But even as a kid, Freddie had sensed the fractured soul beneath the bravado. A man who hadn’t just returned from war but brought the war back with him.
He’d always been a hard man. Unflinching. Iron-willed. But when Nathan’s mum died, when the cancer took her quick and cruel, Ron had unravelled. As if whatever glue had been holding him together dissolved overnight.
Nathan had been twelve.
He’d become a man far too soon.
Freddie remembered the funeral like a photograph etched into his bones. Grey sky, wet grass, the scent of lilies clinging to his coat. Nathan had held onto him in the churchyard, gripping Freddie’s jacket, face streaked with tears and grief too big for his twelve-year-old frame.
And Ron,Mr Carter, stood nearby like carved granite. Arms crossed. Jaw tight. Eyes hard and dry. When Nathan had tried to wipe his face with the cuff of his sleeve, Ronhad looked at him with something close to disgust and said, flat and final, “That’s the last time you cry, do you hear me? Men don’t cry.”
Freddie hadn’t ever forgotten the way Nathan had gone still. How he’d swallowed his sobs as if they were poison, shoulders quaking with the effort of holding everything in. And Freddie, even in his own awkward grief, had felt something close to guilt. Because he’d realised then how lucky he was.
His mum might be chaotic. Scattered as dandelion fluff and forever chasing some harebrained business venture that never quite took off. But at least she let himfeel. Let him and Piper be loud, messy, heartbroken if they needed to be. She never once told them to be tougher, harder, quieter. Never even flinched when Freddie came out gay or when Piper got pregnant two months into a new relationship. And when their dad had walked out before Piper could even saydaddy, she never let that absence become an authority.
No man had a say in who they could be.
Not like Nathan.
Not like that day.
Now, as Freddie sat in the car across the road, watching the older man move in and out of the porch light, Ron looked like any other pensioner Freddie might have to talk down from a shouting match or shuffle home from the pub on a Friday night. Another worn-out soul the years had softened around the edges. He was the local mechanic now. Owned a garage. Near to the station. Freddie took his car out of town when it needed an MOT to avoid having to see him.
Under the porch bulb, Nathan hobbled down the drive, dragging the bags behind him, a limp unmistakable. Injury or old wound? Freddie didn’t know. Only that it made hisgut twist. Because he didn’t know how that had happened. He’d missed it all.
He should look away.
Should put the car in gear and drive back to the life thatdidn’tinclude Nathan Carter.
But he couldn’t.
He shifted out of sight, ducking low. Studying Nathan as if this was another surveillance job. Nathan reached the bin, dumped the bags in with a grunt, then paused. Stood there at the edge of the drive, breathing as if he hadn’t done that all day, head tilted back, hands on his hips, and closed his eyes beneath the sprinkling of stars.
And in that quiet, splintering second, Freddie saw him. Not the man from earlier, not the stranger behind a pane of glass, buthisNathan. The boy who used to laugh too loud, who kissed as if he was drowning, and swore he’d never turn out like his old man.
Freddie’s heart cracked at the edges.
