Nate’s entire body sagged. Was it possible to feel sick with relief? Was this relief, or was it thwarted adrenaline and disbelief making his stomach churn and his hands shake?
She’s… not going to die. Probably. Hopefully.
He pushed down the tumult of emotions rising in his chest and looked at his mother. Her mouth was slightly open, and she’d wrapped a finger around the edge of her head scarf as she stared blankly at the floor.
He reached across the space between their seats, which moments ago had felt like a gulf of mortality. “Are you okay?”
She blinked at nothing for a moment, then turned to look at him. “I’m not sure. I… I should just be happy, shouldn’t I? But I thought…” Her face crumpled like a sheet of paper, and he realised that the cheerful calm she’d radiated over these months had been a front. He watched as her wall collapsed, brick by brick.
“I thought I was going to die,” she whispered. “I was dying. I was dead. Now I’m not. What do I?”
He shook his head slowly, mind racing. “From this moment on? I’d say whatever the fuck you want.”
Oh, what a joy it was to be drunk.
Nate sat in his mother’s living room while she slept like the dead—the not dead—upstairs. He had his seventh shot of Jack in his hand and his little brother by his side. Which was, to Nate’s mind, the perfect way to handle the revelation that months of dread had been a lie.
This strange, new lack of fear was making him afraid all over again. There was a huge gap in his mind where a dragon named Terror had once stood, and he was telling himself to walk through it—while fighting the certainty that he’d be hit with invisible claws and burned by invisible fire.
“You’re overthinking again,” Zach accused, his voice slightly slurred. “Shot.”
Ordinarily, fraternal pride required that Nate contradict his brother’s every word. But tonight, he downed the fucking shot.
“Now you,” he croaked out, letting the sickly-sweet burn sting his throat.
“I’m not overthinking. I never overthink.”
“Have a fucking shot before I pour it down your fucking throat.”
“You’re in a smashing mood tonight,” Zach muttered. But he took a shot.
The little glasses were piling up on Ma’s doily-covered coffee table, surrounding the central plate of left-over Celebrations from Christmas. Nate had the oddest urge to pull out his phone and take a picture—and an even odder desire to start carrying his camera around with him again. But that must be the alcohol talking, because he only really photographed people, and he wasn’t even managing that, these days.
So instead, he looked at his brother, finding eyes that mirrored his own: a bright, clear blue dragged down by the dark shadows beneath and the exhaustion dulling their shine.
He’d never wanted his brother to look like him. Not like this. Not his Zach.
“We’re fucked up,” Nate said. “All of us.”
“Why’s that?” At least Zach’s tone was light as ever, even if his hands shook as he put down his shot glass.
Nate reached for one of the pamphlets they’d been given hours earlier and sneered at its minimalist cover. “This… this thing, it can be life-threatening. But it’s not fucking lung cancer. We should be happy. But we’re here getting pissed out of our minds, and Ma looks like she’s seen her own damn ghost.”
“Because she has,” Zach said softly. “Nate… Do you have any idea how much I’ve cried in the last few months? I fucking cried. Because I thought—I thought she was dying. Do you know I asked Hannah to take me to church? I went to church, and I prayed to…” He sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “I just wanted to take the pain. To take it for her. And I couldn’t. And it made me want to die.” Something thick and brutal curled around Zach’s voice, like suffocating smoke.
Nate understood every single word his brother had just said. He’d felt it all himself. But he wished, more than anything, that he hadn’t understood that last part. That he wasn’t the kind of man who could hear those words and know instinctively that Zach wasn’t just being figurative.
His heart squeezed as he laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Zach’s lips twisted into a smile. “Are you really asking me that? Like you don’t get it?”
Because he did, of course. Nate had been wondering, ever since that day when Hannah had said so simply, “I suffer from depression,” if he should say… something. Something like, Hey, I kind of get it, because for about six months, so did I! He hadn’t wanted to, in the end, because it didn’t feel the same. His wife had died and he’d fallen into a bad place, but he was better now. And he got the impression that Hannah would never quite be ‘better’. The last thing he wanted was to be insensitive.
Which is why he didn’t push for further explanations from Zach. Instead, he pulled his brother into a clumsy sort of sideways hug, pressing his face into the other man’s silky hair. It was like hugging Josh. A very big Josh.
“I’m sorry,” Nate said.
“Not your fault,” Zach mumbled.
“I mean I’m sorry that I left. I’m sorry I left you.” Because he shouldn’t have. Even as Nate learned to conquer his rage and like himself, even as he’d found photography and met Ellie, even as he’d built a new life… he’d felt like a traitor. Because he’d been building it all without his family.
They broke the hug. Looking at Zach was like seeing a younger, cockier, pretty-boy version of himself. Sometimes he wondered how his geeky little brother had become a man. Then he remembered that he’d missed that, too. Because he’d left.
“I can see your brain moving a mile a minute,” Zach said. “You really are an angsty motherfucker.”
Nate huffed out a laugh. “Shut up.”
“You didn’t leave me. You didn’t leave us. You were suffocating here so you did what you had to do. You don’t need to apologise to me, Nate. Because, when we need you, you’re here. That’s what matters.”
It was exactly what Hannah had said—and Hannah was the smartest person Nate knew, so he’d almost let himself believe her. But it was only now, hearing the same sentiment in his little brother’s voice, that he really accepted it.
“And while I’m fixing all those fucked-up ideas of yours,” Zach said, “let me tell you this.” He lowered his voice slightly, his eyes gentler now. “Ma’s not okay. She’s still as sick as she was yesterday, whether they call it cancer or sarco-whatever-the-fuck. And she’s still taking the same awful drugs. She might have to take them forever, Nate. So just because she’s not terminal, doesn’t mean you can’t feel like you’re falling apart right now. And I said the same thing to her. Don’t think you have to feel better. You don’t have to feel anything. Let yourself hurt sometimes.”
Nate blinked blearily at the pile of shot glasses stacked in front of them. “When did you get so smart?”
Zach laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe when I started hanging out with Hannah?”
Hannah. The tenuous peace Nate had found in the last few minutes was disturbed by the way his brother said her name. “What’s going on with you guys, anyway? Are you still trying to…”
Zach sighed. “Want to know a secret?”
If that secret concerns you, Hannah, and anything other than extremely innocent and platonic friendship, absolutely not.
Unfortunately, Zach seemed to take Nate’s silence as a Yes. “I’m not into Hannah.”
Nate jolted. The words took a moment to fully sink in. His first, ridiculous instinct was to say, Why the hell not? Are you high?
But he managed to choke that down in favour of a non-committal, “Oh?”
“I should be,” Zach said. “I really like her. She’s funny. And she’s hot. So hot. I mean, she’s got that—”
“Alright, I get it.” Please don’t make me hit you when we’re getting on so well. “So what’s the problem?”
Zach sighed. “I don’t know. I think something’s wrong wit
h me. All of a sudden I just can’t get into anyone, you know? I see people, and I think Yeah, you’re cute. You’ll do. In theory, anyway. But then in reality, I just don’t want to. Christ, I haven’t had sex in about six months.”
Nate didn’t point out that he regularly went without sex for six months. It didn’t seem tactful. Instead, he said firmly, “There’s nothing wrong with you. Okay?”
“Whatever,” Zach mumbled.
“I’m serious. Whatever it is, doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.” Nate paused as he figured out how to ask his next question politely. “When you say you haven’t had sex, do you mean that you… can’t…”
It took a second for his meaning to filter into Zach’s tipsy brain. “Oh, no, I can. Everything’s, you know, working. I just don’t want to.”
“Huh.” Nate sat back, thinking on everything he knew about his little brother. “That is unusual, for you.”
“I know,” Zach said glumly.
“How do you feel otherwise? Is anything else different?”
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“Hm.” Nate was honestly at a loss. He might be biased, but he was of the opinion that if Hannah Kabbah couldn’t inspire proper lust in Zach, no-one could. “Sorry, man. I don't know. Should we drink some more?”
“It’s okay,” Zach sighed. “And yeah. Yeah, we should.”
So they did.
Chapter Eleven
Hannah sat in the dimly-lit living room, the kids’ fort—still going strong—casting strange shadows on the walls. When she heard the front door creak open, she almost leapt out of her skin. But by the time Nate appeared in the doorway, she was composed, her oversized cardigan pulled tight over her chest.
“You’re up.” He didn’t sound surprised.
“Are you okay?” she asked. It was a ridiculous question, when he was standing there swaying on his feet. He seemed small, somehow, even though his broad shoulders filled the doorframe. Nate definitely wasn’t okay. But she couldn’t say What the hell happened? Tell me everything, the way she wanted to, so silly questions would have to do.
After a moment’s hesitation, he came closer. Hannah realised he was drunk after his second step, and by the time he sprawled onto the sofa beside her, she decided that he was actually wrecked. That didn’t do much to ease the frantic pounding in her heart, the pounding that hadn’t stopped since he’d disappeared earlier that day.
But then he said, “Ma doesn’t even have cancer.”
And she was too astonished to feel anything but numb. Somehow, she managed to say, “What?”
So, in meandering, rambling, bitter tones, he told her everything. It didn’t take her long to realise why his words were so slurred and his eyes so hazy.
“Fuck,” she breathed. “Fuck. Wow. What? Wow. I’ve never even heard of that. What’s it called? Sarco—”
“Sarcoidosis,” he said, only stumbling over the word slightly. “I Googled it a few hours ago. The results weren’t great. I have decided to save further research for another day.” He sounded so controlled, she wondered if she’d been wrong to assume he was drunk.
But then he turned his head and looked at her, and she saw… everything. He was fucked. He was absolutely fucked. And she wasn’t just talking about the sweet scent of whiskey on his breath.
“You should go to bed,” she whispered.
The corner of his mouth twitched up into a zombie of a smile, one with a dangerous edge. “You know I won’t sleep.”
“You can take things for that.”
“I,” he said grandly, “am generally resistant to sedatives and hypnotic agents.”
“Oh,” she replied. “Well… that’s…”
“Irritating,” he finished. “It’s very fucking irritating. Do you take sleeping pills, Hannah?”
She swallowed. “Not really.”
“I’m just asking because, you know, the kitchen’s right under your room, and the other night I dropped a Wok on my foot and swore for ten minutes straight. But you didn’t wake up.”
She tried, rather unsuccessfully, to hide her laughter. “I see.”
“Sometimes you sleep hard. Like the kids. But other times you come down here and see me. So I thought, maybe sometimes you take something.”
Every night, she took something. She still had no idea what it was that made her wake up sometimes. But all she said, tentatively, was, “I don’t know if we should talk about my…”
“Your private medical history?” he suggested. “Mm. Yeah. You’re right. Because, you know, technically, I am your employer. Do you ever forget that? I forget that.”
He’d thrown his arm over the back of the sofa at some point, and she was conscious of it like a burning flame, just behind her neck. She’d have been lying if she said anything other than, “Yeah. Sometimes I do forget.” Mostly because I want to.
“I think we forget in different ways. I feel bad about it—I really do. But I didn’t know, when I hired you.”
She frowned, partly in response to his odd words and partly because his expression had just turned dark and stormy. He looked… troubled. And he sounded baffling. “Know what?”
In the shadows, his eyes were like twin black holes. “Maybe I did know, and I was just being an oblivious prick. But your face, you know, is perfect. Perfectly imperfect in the way that’s actually perfect. I think that blurs the lines. Don’t you? How was I supposed to know, when I thought it was just… just about your face?”
Hannah blinked. “Are you always such a rambling drunk?”
His tense expression melted into a half-smile, that harsh gaze softening. “I’m never drunk. When Ellie died, that’s the last time I was drunk.”
Oh, dear. “And when did Ellie die?” she asked softly.
“Tuesday the 7th of February 2014 at 11:57 a.m.,” he said. “Hey, I sounded like you for a second there. Queen of details. Hannah Kabbah, Her Royal Highness, Queen of Details.” He sounded… disarmingly cheerful. He sounded oddly like his son. She could even see him smiling through the darkness, that single dimple sending an arrow of unwilling affection to her chest. He settled deeper into the cushions, and the heat his arm gave off, so close to her neck, increased. As if he were closer, now. As if, in a minute, she might feel the fine hairs on his arm whispering against her skin.
“Nate…”
“What?” he asked, propping up one of his legs. His knee, covered in denim, grazed her bare calf. Suddenly, that arrow of affection in her chest didn’t seem so innocent—because one glancing, accidental touch sparked another, hotter arrow, and another, and another. They slammed into her so hard, she barely remembered to breathe.
Focus.
“Are you…” She frowned, pursed her lips, wrestled with the awkward words. “I mean—do you think you’re over Ellie’s death?”
He’d told her before that he was. But they hadn’t been close then. He could’ve lied. There were family pictures all over the house that included the woman who must’ve been his wife, a woman with cropped, brown hair and dark eyes and a broad smile. If he was still hurting, would he keep the pictures up? She wasn’t sure. Because occasionally he’d say something—like the precise minute that his wife had died—and she’d worry that despite his cheerfulness and his casual attitude, he was secretly crumbling inside.
He looked at her now, his expression thoughtful. “I ask myself that sometimes,” he said calmly, as if they were planning the week’s dinners. “You know, I talk about Ellie a lot. I mean, a lot. I think it’s important for the kids. Don’t you think that’s important for the kids?”
She would’ve said yes, but his words stumbled on without pause.
“I do, I think it’s important,” he decided. “I want them to feel like they know her. But the thing is, talking about her, and the way they talk about her—it’s good. I think if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have the balls to mention her name. Because at first, it hurt so much to even think about her, and I had to force myself. But now I’
m used to it.”
He reached beneath the neckline of his T-shirt and drew out the cord he always wore around his neck. She saw his wedding ring flash in the hint of moonlight through the window, and then its gleam was hidden by his fingers as he toyed with the gold band. “I didn’t take off my ring for a while. Maybe a year. I couldn’t. I tried to take it off one day and I thought I was going to be sick. But then, after a while, I tried again, and I felt okay.
“I think I’ve been fine for a couple of years, and I didn’t even notice the change. Until now, I mean. When Ma was diagnosed…” He grunted, corrected himself. “Misdiagnosed. It felt like this huge hole ripped open inside me. And that was when I realised: I used to have a hole like that for Ellie, but it’s gone now. I can feel the scar, but it’s healed.”
He fell silent, his thoughtful gaze settling on her. It didn’t feel like the kind of scrutiny that made her skin crawl. When their eyes met, it felt like touching him, like putting a hand on his shoulder. It made Hannah suddenly sleepy after hours of being too worried to relax. She found herself simultaneously glad that he’d recovered and furious with the world for giving him another hole to deal with.
But he would deal with it. She suspected he could deal with anything.
“You took Zach to church,” he said abruptly.
Hannah blinked, yanked from the mire of her thoughts. “I did. A little while before you arrived.”
He nodded. “Do you know why he asked?”
“I thought it must be to do with your mum,” she said carefully.
Nate grunted. Then, after a pause, he said, “Is that where you go on Sundays?”
“Yes. And then I have dinner with my mother and sister, and sometimes Evan.”
“That’s cute.”
Hannah had decided to forget that his arm was resting on the back of the sofa, right behind her. She’d told herself firmly that she was imagining its warmth, imagining the comfort it seemed to radiate. So of course he chose now, when her tension had eased, to touch her. He slid a hand under the curtain of her braids and ran a slow, absent finger over the indent of her spine, stopping just above the neckline of her shirt. Every part of her, every inch of her body and thought in her head, focused on that contact like it was the centre of the fucking universe. But Nate wasn’t even looking at her. He was staring into the shadows, frowning hard, his teeth sunk into his lower lip.
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