Page 107 of Seven Lost Summers
We’d just finished moving into this house. It was late. We were on the couch, beers in hand, bodies half-sprawled from exhaustion. Shoulder to shoulder. Music low. The air still sharp with fresh paint and sawdust.
We sat there, taking in the house we had designed. The walls. The kitchen Nate had always wanted, all steel and dark counters. Eight fucking burners. A monster of a stove he’d gone on about for months before we bought it. Said a man wasn’t a real cook until he could command a range that big.
Boxes lined the edges of the room, still half-unpacked. Shit we’d collected over the years—band posters, beat-up vinyls, that dented kettle we shared. All stacked and labeled in Nate’s handwriting. Every piece proof of a life we built without ever having to say that’s what it was. The history of every fucked-up version of ourselves that somehow found something steady.
Watching Nate sip his beer and glance around as if he was letting himself breathe for the first time in years, I felt it hit me hard.
I felt the need to say it. That I loved him. Not the way you love a best friend. Not the way you love a brother. Something heavier. Messier. Something that’s lived in my chest since we were sixteen, before I even had the words for it.
The confession sat behind my teeth. I opened my mouth. Then I shut it.
Because what if it destroyed everything? What if he looked at me and saw something he couldn’t unsee? What if he walked away? I wouldn’t survive that. Not when he’s my entire fucking world.
So I swallowed it.
One more secret.
Another piece of myself buried with the rest. Maybe it will always stay there. It’s safer that way.
When we fuck, it’s always about the girl. We share them, pass them between us, the same way we always have. The rules never change. She’s the focus. The center of it. Never us. It’s never us.
But there are moments when I sense him.
In the way he moves. In the way our bodies fall into rhythm without thought.
He fucks with control. With intent. He always has. And somehow, I always fall into sync with him every single time.
Every first that ever mattered, Nate was there.
The first time I fucked, Bianca. Both of us tangled in her body, her breath, that single moment where everything seemed right. Him on one side, me on the other. Hands, mouths, sweat. Chaos and beauty all at once.
He’s threaded through every memory worth holding. Every scar I carry from the life I crawled out of, he softened just by standing next to me. Every win I’ve ever had, he’s been in the room.
And I’ve never told him, because I’m terrified of what it would change.
Of what it would ruin.
So I stay quiet.
I let it bleed through every smile I throw his way.
Every joke I crack.
Every night we sit together, pretending this isn’t something more.
I watch him.
I love him.
And I keep my mouth shut.
He’s my everything, and yet I’m too fucking scared to let the words out.
Chapter 19
Quinn
TheoandNatemovearound the kitchen, clearing plates, stacking dishes, wiping down counters.
