“I-I’m just in shock.” He laughed, but it was strained. “What made you decide to stay?”

I cocked my head, studying him. “A lot of things.” My excitement deflated, and I stared at my menu with a frown. “Working with the kids has meant a lot to me. My family is here, and I want to be near them.” I stopped myself from saying he was part of the reason because it seemed like that would be the last thing he would want to hear right then. And that hurt.

“How did your dad take it?”

I shrugged. “He doesn’t know.” This is too much. I lifted my head and stared at Nate until he looked at me. “You’re the first person I’ve told.”

His face softened, but his fist still gripped the edge of the table. “Are you sure you’ll be happy here?”

I lost my thin hold on my composure. “Nate, what’s going on? I thought you’d be thrilled to hear I’d not only finally made a decision but that I’d chosen to stay. After all, you’re the one who told me about this position.” I shook my head, trying to wrap my mind around what had happened between then and now. “I understood why you held back when it wasn’t clear I would take the job, but here I am, telling you that I’m staying, and it’s like you don’t want that anymore.”

“I just know that part of your indecision stemmed from your mom, and I don’t want you to regret staying like she did,” he blurted out. His face went red, and he clenched his jaw.

I narrowed my eyes as everything clicked into place. So it wasn’t about the job or my decision to stay. No, this is about the secret he’s keeping.

“Enough is enough, Nate.” I stared him down. “Spit it out.”

He fidgeted with his napkin, and I expected him to change the subject or insist he wasn’t hiding anything. But then he gave a defeated nod and sighed. “You know how I told you your mother and I made our peace?”

“I vaguely recall,” I said, a hint of sarcasm in my tone. Like I would ever forget that.

“Well”—Nate shifted in his seat—“I-I went to see her, your mother, before she died.”

“You did?” I racked my brain for any memory of him being at my home, but nothing came to mind. “When?”

“She planned it for when she knew you’d be gone,” he continued, staring at his hands. “She wanted to talk to me alone.”

My heartbeat picked up its pace, but I worked to keep my expression neutral. “Why? What did she say?”

“She apologized.”

“Apologized?” I stilled. I could think of a laundry list of things for which she could apologize. “For what?”

Finally, Nate raised his eyes to meet mine. “For breaking us up.”

Whatever I had expected him to say, it wasn’t that. I moved my lips, but no words formed, and no sounds came out. My mind reeled from the news. Mom felt responsible for breaking us up? Why? Sure, she had started dropping hints before I left for college about what I would miss out on if I stayed with him, then her hints became more direct the closer we got to my leaving date. And while, yes, she’d certainly never kept her dislike of Nate a secret, I would never have dreamed of blaming her for our breakup. I blamed the distance; it was too much for us. I blamed our youth because we were too young to make that kind of commitment. There was even a part of me that still suspected Nate had found someone else, despite his denials then and now. But my mother? I couldn’t wrap my head around what he was saying.

Nate searched my face and sighed. “Melody told me things she did to try to convince you to break up with me. Pushing you to have new experiences in college, trying to stop you from making the same mistake she did in marrying your father so young.”

I didn’t know what to say. None of that made any sense. Nate rushed to fill the silence.

“The weekend she went to visit you, she took a lot of photos. Of you, the campus, but several of the photos of you were with various guys from your college.” His brown eyes filled with an emotion I couldn’t place. “When she came home, she not only showed me the photos, but she also told me I needed to let you go.” His voice broke, and he cleared his throat. “She said that I was holding you back.” He reached for me, but I pulled my hand away. “I don’t know if she hoped I would think you were cheating on me or if she wanted to prove that you were better off without me, but whatever her motivation, it worked.” He looked down, his shoulders drooping. “It’s why I stopped responding to your texts and calls. I thought I was doing what you wanted, and when you came home and we argued, it just confirmed what she showed me. That you were better off without me.” His voice lowered, and there was a wistful note in it. “After she told me all that, she made me promise to tell you. She hoped it might lead us back to each other, without any further interference from her.”

Like death would stop her. An errant giggle bubbled up in my throat, and Nate frowned at me. Clearly, he thought I wasn’t handling the news well, but the idea that Mom would allow a little thing like her own death to stop her interfering in the lives of those she loved was hilarious. Only Melody McAllister could continue to meddle in my love life from the great beyond. The small giggle morphed into a wide grin, and before I could stop myself, hysterical laughter burst out.

Nate’s frown deepened as his eyes darted around the room, like he was debating whether he needed to find reinforcements to have me committed. Somehow, being placed under a seventy-two-hour hold didn’t sound like such a bad idea at the moment.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I regained control. “It was just... When you said, ‘without any further interference,’ I found that amusing because she’s clearly still interfering by having you be the bearer of this news.” I struggled to process what he’d told me, but I felt overwhelmed with all the information. It was just too much. So, my mind homed in on the one thing it thought I could handle. “I still don’t understand when you would have had this conversation. I never saw you.”

“I told you, she wanted me to meet her when you weren’t home,” Nate replied. “The nurse set it up.” He must have sensed my disbelief because he leaned back and crossed his arms. “After everything I just told you, why would I lie about that?”

Before I could respond, the server arrived with our food. I wasn’t sure what to believe as I tried to logic my way out of myths, legends, and first loves. I ate a french fry, but it tasted like ash in my mouth. Nothing about the conversation made sense.

I decided to approach it from a different angle. “If she wanted you to tell me, why did you wait so long?”

Nate stared at me as a plethora of emotions crossed his face as if an internal battle raged inside him. A few times, he opened his mouth but quickly closed it again.

“You were already in so much pain. And I thought, well…” He stopped and squared his shoulders as if steeling himself. “At first, I figured things were over between us. As far as I could tell, you had moved on. You planned a new life on the other side of the country, and then, when I learned you had a boyfriend, I didn’t see the point.” His eyes bored into mine with an unfathomable emotion. “But then, after that song you sang at karaoke, and when you broke up with James...” He shook his head. “I didn’t want it to sound like I was telling you these things to manipulate you into staying. I wanted you to choose to stay because you wanted it, not because I wanted you to or because your mother had had a change of heart before she died.”