Page 81 of Fighting Words

I want to give him every opportunity for the truth. If he wants it, I’ll be brutally honest in any way that he wants.

Andrew shrugs. “Sounds exhausting.”

I smile.

“I’ll box up your things at my place and pass them to Emma.”

“Thanks, yeah. I’ll do the same when I get back to the States.”

His brows gently furrow. “When do you think that will be?”

His gaze suddenly feels intrusive.

I blush. “Oh. Well, I guess it just depends on this project.”

“AndNate.”

He tosses out Nathaniel’s nickname so casually. I didn’t realize I’d been using it with him. I give Andrew a curious look.

“And Nate, yes. We’ve hit a stride with plotting his third book.”

Andrew smiles knowingly. “It’s not about the book. He has feelings for you.”

I swallow, careful to keep my expression neutral. There’s no reason to hurt Andrew with details of my relationship with Nate.

But Andrew sees straight through me.

“It’s obvious, you know. The guy wouldn’t even look at me. I’m surprised he didn’t poison my dinner last night.”

A laugh spills out of me. “Andrew.”

“I’m serious.”

He watches me process this, and though at first, I think about denying the whole thing, it seems more fair to Andrew to just let it be. If the situation were reversed, I wouldn’t want to be fed a bumbling lie.

Andrew and I spend the remainder of our drive to Leeds tying off the loose ends of our relationship. It’s already so neatly packaged. A breakup parsed out over months is hardly a breakup at all. When we’re near the airport, I do try to apologize again about the fact that we didn’t work, but I get the impression it only hurts Andrew to hear it. No one wants to feel pitied for the way they feel.

The driver pulls up in front of the check-in for international departures, and I step out and wait for Andrew to get his luggage before giving him a hug. Neither one of us cries when I step away. I offer a small smile and tell him I’ll see him soon because in all likelihood, I will. Emma will throw a dinner party in the city and Andrew will be there with a new girl. I’ll vet her not out of jealousy, but out of fierce protectiveness. Andrew deserves only the best.

I wave at him as he rolls his suitcase through the sliding glass doors and then I look to the driver.

“Ready to head back?” he asks.

And all at once, it hits me.Thisis the feeling.Thisis what I should have felt when Andrew surprised me on the phone yesterday. I tremble in the back seat as we pull away from the airport and head back toward Nate’s cottage. There’s a wave of nausea followed by a rush of panic.

I think of the kiss I shared with Nate in the kitchen last night, my sharp words after he told me to “be with Andrew” like he was perfectly fine with the idea.

I have a lot of time to consider how Nate will react when I get back. In fact, I replay the various options over and over in my head the entire drive up from the Leeds airport. There’s a frenzy of emotions battling inside me: trepidation, excitement, worry. Butterflies dance in my stomach one second and then anxiety douses them the next.

I barely know what to think or feel when the cottage finally cuts into view, nestled among the snowy hills. Nate’s out repairing the fence when the driver pulls up near the shed, and he doesn’t stop when I get out of the car. He’s still at it as the driver pulls away, as the sound of the tires grows faint and eventually fades out altogether.

I’ve dealt with this Nate before—the quiet man who’d rather bury his feelings than admit to them. I could go inside and give him space, but that won’t solve my problem. If anything, it’d make him double down.

“Not even going to look at me?” I call out,plentyloud enough for him to hear me.

He sets another heavy rock down without acknowledging me. A fury builds inside me. Before I know it, I’m leaning down to scoop up snow, forming it in my hands. The first snowball I aim at him is loose and ineffective, smacking his leg. It barely gets his attention. So I do it again, really going for it with the second one, shaping the snow into a compact ball before taking aim straight for his head. I miss the mark and the snowball hits his right shoulder, but he turns around, annoyed all the same.

Of course the first thing he notices is my clothes. I’m standing out here with no jacket, no mittens, no hat. I left the house in such a hurry this morning, and it’s not like I needed a coat to sit in the back of a car.

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