Chapter 28 Get Together Right Now!
The boy wore the same black-and-white athletic uniform as everyone else, yet he stood out with a striking, undeniable magnetism.
He was the tallest in his group, with refined features, pale skin, and an effortless, sunny charisma that instantly commanded the space around him. He radiated a youthful, untouchable brightness.
Michael’s steps faltered. Mason? What is he doing at this school?
Mason glanced up and recognized Michael from the dinner they’d shared. But since they weren’t exactly close, the boy just offered a polite, somewhat awkward smile, gave a quick wave, and jogged off with his friends toward the locker rooms.
Michael stood frozen, watching the boy disappear down the hall.
“You know Mason?” Randy asked, surprised.
“Yeah. I’m pretty close with his dad.”
“Ah, Professor Archer.” Randy nodded, his tone softening with genuine respect. “He’s had a brutal time of it, raising Mason completely on his own. Thankfully, the kid is incredibly well-behaved and top of his class.”
Michael’s brow furrowed sharply. “Wait. What do you mean, ‘on his own’? What about his wife?”
“What wife?” Randy raised an eyebrow. “Professor Archer has always been a single father. The rumor around the faculty is that Mason never had a mother. No one knows if it was a surrogacy or an adoption, but Professor Archer has raised that boy single-handedly since he was an infant.”
Michael tilted his head, his mind spinning violently.
No mother?
If Mason was adopted, or born via surrogate… then Nathan never had another woman.
Michael thought back to the way Nathan looked at Chloe—the suffocating, desperate affection he couldn’t hide, the way he watched her like she was the only breathing thing in his universe. A massive, devastating realization slammed into Michael’s chest.
He never moved on. He never betrayed her.
But that made no sense. If the child wasn’t the product of a second marriage or an affair, why had Nathan let Chloe believe he had a wife? Why did he let her brutally break things off to “save his family”?
After finishing the campus tour, Michael sped back to the agency.
The moment he pulled into the underground parking garage, he spotted it: Nathan’s black Bentley, parked in the darkest corner, the engine idling.
Nathan was sitting in the driver’s seat, staring up through the windshield at the only illuminated floor in the office building. Chloe’s floor.
It wasn't the first time in the past fortnight that Michael had caught Nathan lurking in the shadows outside the agency, just silently watching her window. Before, Michael had pretended not to notice. Today, he marched straight over and rapped his knuckles hard against the tinted glass.
The lock clicked. Michael yanked the passenger door open, slid onto the leather seat, and shoved one of the coffees he’d just bought into the cup holder.
“Want a coffee?” Michael asked.
“No,” Nathan replied, his voice rough and exhausted. “Caffeine keeps me awake, and I already don’t sleep.”
Michael chuckled darkly and took a sip of his own cup. He leaned back and looked at the older man. “Waiting for Chloe again?”
Nathan didn’t look away from the illuminated window above. “No. I was just passing by.”
“You know what?” Michael said, his tone sharpening. “When I was a kid, I used to watch those cheap soap operas. The ones where the leads clearly want to devour each other, but they’re kept apart by some idiotic, unspoken misunderstanding. Every time I watched them, I wanted to smash the TV screen. I wanted to grab them by the throats and scream, ‘You clearly still love each other! Just sleep together and get it over with! Stop torturing yourselves!’”
Michael turned his head, his gaze piercing. “You understand exactly how I feel right now, don’t you, Nathan?”
Nathan finally tore his eyes away from the window. He looked at Michael, a bitter, hollow smile touching his lips. “I understand. But you don’t know the whole truth.”
“What is so hard to explain?” Michael’s voice rose, the frustration boiling over. “I know about Mason. I know there is no wife. Just tell her! You’ve been obsessively protecting her since she woke up. You are still completely in love with her. Why are you letting her walk away?”
“Michael, what kind of man do you think I am?” Nathan countered, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly quiet whisper.
Michael studied him. “You’re brilliant. You’re incredibly wealthy. You’re reliable.”
“Such high praise,” Nathan laughed, the sound entirely devoid of warmth. “If someone needed a guardian, or a mentor, or a blank check—yes, I am the perfect choice.”
Nathan shifted, the shadows of the car carving harsh lines into his face. “But being a lover is entirely different. I know exactly who I am, Michael. And I know that the man sitting in this car is not the man Chloe fell in love with.”
Michael frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Back in college, I meticulously engineered every single aspect of myself to make her crave me,” Nathan confessed, his voice dripping with dark self-loathing. “I analyzed her preferences like a lab experiment. She liked young, athletic bodies. She liked boys whose smiles were sunny but shy. She liked it when I acted a little spoiled, when I let her think she was taking care of me. I knew exactly what angle to tilt my head, exactly what words to whisper against her skin to make her lose her mind with desire.”
Nathan stared at his own hands gripping the steering wheel—hands that were no longer twenty years old.
“I was her perfect, beautiful fantasy. But look at me now. I am a forty-two-year-old man. I am tired, I am ruthless, and my hands are covered in twenty years of blood and grief. Chloe is practically transparent to me; I can read her every thought. And I know she loves the nineteen-year-old boy she left behind. Not this.”
“But you are that boy!” Michael argued fiercely. “If you just tell her you waited twenty-three years for her, she would be completely devastated! She would come back to you right now!”
“I know,” Nathan said softly, his dark eyes shimmering with a sudden, violent agony. “She would come back to me instantly.”
“Then why the hell won't you let her?”
“Because it’s a trap,” Nathan breathed out, his chest shuddering. “For me, it would be heaven. But for Chloe? It would be a life sentence. Her life is just restarting. She is young, beautiful, and full of light. If I tell her the truth, she won't come back to me out of pure, unburdened passion. She will come back to me out of crushing guilt. She will feel obligated to spend the rest of her youth repaying my suffering.”
Nathan closed his eyes, his jaw clenched tight enough to snap. “I will not chain her to my trauma. She deserves a young man who can give her a normal, happy life. I’d rather she hated me. I’d rather she kept the memory of the boy I used to be, than force her to settle for the ghost I am now.”
Michael stared at him, utterly floored by the terrifying depth of Nathan’s obsession and self-sacrifice.
“You’re an idiot,” Michael finally murmured, looking down at his coffee. “In my eyes, you were always perfect. And I know Chloe feels exactly the same. Women don’t care about the act, Nathan. They care about the man.”
Nathan looked at the younger man, suddenly seeing the ghost of the angry, snot-nosed little boy who used to cling to his leg two decades ago.
“Michael,” Nathan said softly. “I’ve owed you an apology for twenty years. When she died… I abandoned you. I just cut off contact.”
“It’s fine. You were dying, too,” Michael replied with a soft, forgiving smile. “You’ve done more than enough for me since. I just want you to be happy.”
With that, Michael grabbed his coffees and stepped out of the Bentley. Nathan watched him walk toward the elevator banks, feeling a strange, heavy relief. The broken little boy he had left behind had grown into a strong, resilient man.
Upstairs, the agency was quiet. Only Chloe’s desk lamp was still burning as she meticulously refined a billboard rendering.
Michael walked straight up to her desk and tapped his knuckles against the wood.
She blinked, her eyes unfocused from staring at the screen.
He didn’t say a word. He just hooked a finger, motioning for her to follow him into his glass-walled office. She put her stylus down and trailed behind him.
Michael stood by the window, hands shoved deep into his pockets. Finally, he thought. I can do the one thing I couldn’t do when I was a kid. I can fix this.
He didn’t care about Nathan’s tragic, self-sacrificing martyrdom. He refused to let two people who were agonizingly obsessed with each other throw their lives away over a misunderstanding.
He turned around and told her everything.
He told her about Mason. He told her there was no wife. He told her about the twenty-three years of absolute, solitary devotion, and the heartbreaking confession Nathan had just made in the car downstairs.
Chloe’s face drained of all color. Her eyes went impossibly wide, her chest heaving as the sheer magnitude of Nathan’s lie crashed into her.
She didn’t say a word. She spun on her heel and bolted.
She sprinted out of the office, slamming her hip against the glass door, and tore down the hallway to the elevators. She practically broke her finger jabbing the lobby button.
When she burst out of the ground-floor doors and into the freezing parking garage, her breath pluming in the air, she was entirely alone.
The Bentley was gone.
Panic seized her throat. Her hands shook violently as she dug her phone out of her pocket and hit his contact name.
She ran toward the street, her eyes scanning the taillights fading into the Chicago night. The phone rang once. Twice.
Click.
“Hello,” Nathan’s deep, steady voice filled her ear.
Chloe stopped dead under a streetlight. Her chest was rising and falling in ragged gasps. She gripped the phone so hard her knuckles turned white.
“Nathan Archer,” she practically screamed into the receiver, her voice breaking with a mix of fury, heartbreak, and overwhelming desire. “I am giving you exactly ten minutes. You get your car turned around and get in front of me right now, or don’t you ever show your fucking face to me again!”
There was a long, stunned silence on the other end of the line.
And then, softly, darkly, Nathan began to laugh.