Chapter 42 She Really Hasn't Changed a Bit
At the time, Chloe had found Nathan's deep-seated jealousy highly amusing.
"If you were so terrified of me dating Eugene, why didn't you just ask me out first?" she had teased him one night, tracing patterns on his bare chest. "Why did you wait for me to do all the work and confess?"
"I was afraid you wouldn't like me," Nathan had murmured, his dark eyes lowering. The raw, unguarded fear on his face—the idea that this brilliant, untouchable boy was genuinely terrified of being rejected by her—had aggressively tugged at her heartstrings.
Chloe couldn't resist him. She immediately cast all restraint aside, throwing her leg over his hip and burying her face in his neck. "How could I possibly not like you? You're completely adorable! I'm obsessed with you! You are the absolute love of my life!"
"But I wasn't your first crush," Nathan had muttered, still sounding thoroughly unconvinced and petty.
"Well, that’s just because you were shorter than me when we were kids! I saw you as a little brother!"
Nathan had shot her a lethal glare.
Chloe quickly flashed a desperate, flattering smile, leaning up to kiss his jaw to coax him out of his bad mood. "When I was little, I was too focused on studying to think about boys! As soon as my hormones actually kicked in, I came straight to you, didn't I?"
"Your very first love letter was written to Eugene. Not me," Nathan had stated flatly, refusing to let it go.
"I was just following the crowd! High school graduation was stressful, everyone was writing them! I just wrote it casually, I didn't even mean it!"
Nathan snorted coldly.
"Nathan, don't dwell on the stupid past. I love you the most." Chloe wiggled his hand, her voice dropping into a sweet, pleading whine.
Hearing her relentless confessions, Nathan finally couldn't suppress his smile any longer. He pressed his lips together, his dark eyes gleaming with a sudden, predatory heat. "Then prove it. Kiss me."
"You are absolutely impossible," Chloe gasped softly, a thrill shooting down her spine. Unable to hold back any longer, she laughed, throwing her full weight against him and pulling his mouth down to hers.
Back then, wrapped in the tangled sheets of his dorm bed, Nathan had truly believed those days were flawless. He had wanted to stay locked in her arms until the sun burned out.
But who could have possibly imagined that those intoxicating, golden days would last only two short years?
Still, those two years remained the absolute brightest era of his entire life.
Whenever he closed his eyes—whether he was thirty, thirty-five, or forty-two—he could perfectly recall the exact weight of Chloe throwing herself at him. He could perfectly recall the devastating radiance in her eyes, and the suffocating, all-consuming love that had enveloped him, leaving him restless and sweetly intoxicated.
The enclosed space of the SUV and the familiar streets of their hometown inevitably stirred the ghosts of the past.
Sitting in the back seat, forty-two-year-old Nathan glanced sideways at Chloe, his dark eyes completely brimming with a heavy, unspoken tenderness.
Chloe sat beside him, completely lost in thought, her face pressed near the cold glass of the window.
The city where she had grown up had sprouted massive, unfamiliar skyscrapers, making the skyline feel completely alien. But as Eugene steered the car into the old district, her spirits visibly lifted. Most of the brick landmarks, the old shopping plazas, and the schools remained exactly where she had left them.
"Oh!" Chloe exclaimed in delight, pointing out the window. "Isn't that Dayton's department store? Why is the parking lot completely empty?"
Twenty-three years ago, Dayton's had been the absolute epicenter of wealth and status in the city. Anyone wearing clothes from that building came from serious money.
"The building doesn't have a modern parking garage," Eugene remarked from the driver's seat, glancing at the decaying structure. "Minnesota has built six or seven massive, climate-controlled mega-malls in the suburbs since you left. People stopped coming down here ages ago. Most of the luxury brands moved out."
He tapped the steering wheel. "This specific block is too close to the historic city center. Demolition costs are astronomical, and the foundation is too old to renovate. So, the city is just letting it slowly rot into disrepair."
"Oh. I see..." Chloe murmured, her shoulders slumping with regret.
Eugene glanced at her through the rearview mirror. A hint of a fond smile touched his stern, lined face, suddenly softening his entire intimidating aura.
"This city has changed drastically, Chloe," Eugene said warmly. "If I dropped you off on a random corner right now, you would absolutely get lost trying to find your own house."
"You are severely underestimating me! How could I possibly get lost in my own hometown?" Chloe retorted, instantly defensive.
"Alright then. After dinner, I'll hand you the keys and let you drive us back. We'll see if you can navigate the new highway interchanges," Eugene chuckled, a low, rumbling sound.
"No problem," Chloe declared, lifting her chin with total, unearned confidence.
Beside her, Nathan simply pressed his hand over his mouth, smiling silently into his knuckles.
Their entire graduating class knew that Chloe possessed absolutely zero sense of direction. She was a geographical disaster. She could only navigate in straight lines, and she would routinely circle the same intersection repeatedly. Even when she was standing fifty feet from her destination, she would fail to find the entrance and wander aimlessly.
Nathan remembered when they had first moved into their newlywed apartment. She would get off the bus after work and immediately lose her bearings, wandering the neighborhood endlessly without finding their gate. She would inevitably have to call him from a payphone to come rescue her.
When he asked where she was, she would confidently declare she was standing under a specific billboard.
But by the time Nathan jogged out into the street to find her, she would have completely wandered off. She would keep walking in circles while on the phone with him, forcing him to literally hunt her down through the city blocks. Every single time, Nathan would get so frustrated he genuinely wanted to throw his Nokia into the river.
One evening, during a massive, torrential downpour, she had gotten off work late and completely lost her way in the dark. She was wandering aimlessly on the flooded sidewalks.
Nathan had to grab an umbrella and sprint out into the storm to find her. The rain was blinding, and she was nowhere to be found. Finally, in sheer panic, he had hailed a taxi and furiously circled their own apartment complex—only to find her huddled under an awning, shivering, not fifty yards from their own back entrance.
When he finally reached her, he was so angry and terrified that he refused to even look at her.
She was soaking wet and deeply embarrassed, but she absolutely refused to admit how clueless she was. Instead, she had trailed behind him, grabbing the back of his shirt and whispering, "Nathan, I think there's something supernaturally wrong with the layout of this neighborhood. How else could I keep getting lost?"
Hearing her absurd, stubborn excuse, the fury had instantly drained out of him. He couldn't help but laugh out loud in the freezing rain.
The moment he laughed, she had thrown her arms around his waist, burying her wet face in his chest. "Nathan, are you still mad? Didn't you read that article that said guys like women who are a little dumb? I am incredibly dumb! Don't you love it?"
Nathan had sighed irritably. "No. I absolutely do not."
"Oh, come on! Admit it—you think I'm adorable. When we get upstairs, I'll give you a full back massage, okay? Hm? I promise you'll love it," she had cooed, her hands wandering restlessly up and down his wet chest under the umbrella.
Nathan couldn't take it anymore. He grabbed her wandering hands firmly. "Stop it. We are literally standing in the street."
"Who can resist my adorable Nathan?" Chloe had giggled, clinging tightly to his waist, practically gluing herself to his side as they walked toward the door.
He had held the umbrella steady, shielding her from the storm with one arm, while gently pressing his cheek against her wet hair. In that moment, his heart had completely, irreversibly melted.
After that night, Nathan made absolutely sure to pick her up from the bus stop every single day.
Once, Chloe had asked him if he ever got annoyed having to wait for her in the cold.
He had just smiled. "It's slightly tedious. But it's infinitely better than having to run around the city hunting for you in the dark."
What he had never told her, amidst her indignant protests, was that he didn't find it tedious at all.
Every single evening, when he stood by the bus stop and watched her practically leap off the steps—her face breaking into a blinding smile the second she saw him, before she threw her entire body into his arms—he felt a surge of immense, staggering joy. It was as if he had spent the entire day just holding his breath, waiting for that exact moment, waiting for that exact embrace.
When Nathan finally snapped back to the present, Eugene's SUV had already pulled up to the valet entrance of The Bayview.
The loud, chaotic group of friends immediately ushered Chloe out of the car and toward their private dining room. As she walked through the revolving doors, she kept glancing back over her shoulder at Nathan, waving frantically and signaling for him to hurry up.
Nathan smiled, adjusting his coat to follow her, when Eugene suddenly stepped into his path.
The older man silently pulled a silver cigarette case from his pocket, offering one to Nathan.
Nathan hesitated for a fraction of a second—he rarely smoked anymore due to his health—but he accepted it without a word. He followed Eugene to the designated smoking vent near the hotel entrance, leaning in as Eugene sparked a lighter for him.
The two men stood in the freezing Minnesota air, smoking in heavy, loaded silence.
After a long while, Eugene exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, his eyes fixed on the street. "She really hasn't changed a bit."
"No," Nathan nodded, taking a slow drag of his cigarette. "She hasn't."
"But we both got incredibly old," Eugene chuckled, a rough, self-deprecating sound.
"Yeah. We're just old men now," Nathan laughed softly, though the sound didn't reach his eyes.
They exchanged a brief, understanding glance. Eugene tapped the ash from his cigarette. "What are your plans going forward, Nathan?"
Nathan fell completely silent. He stared at the glowing cherry of his cigarette, looking suddenly exhausted and entirely lost. "I don't know, Eugene. I honestly haven't figured it out yet. It's all so incredibly sudden."
"Yeah. I imagine it's like suddenly winning a billion-dollar lottery," Eugene noted quietly. "First, you can't even process that it's real. Let alone have the mental capacity to figure out how to spend the money."
"That is exactly how it feels," Nathan murmured.
Eugene took one last drag and violently stubbed his cigarette out in the metal receptacle. "Well. Whatever happens... it's a good thing, Nathan."
"Of course it is," Nathan rasped, his voice tightening. "It is the ultimate blessing."
"Yeah. Take good care of her, man." Eugene reached out, his heavy hand clapping solidly onto Nathan’s shoulder.
"I will," Nathan swore softly.
Eugene didn't say another word. He turned and walked through the sliding glass doors into the warmth of the hotel.
There were some things Eugene simply didn't know how to say, and he knew saying them would be entirely pointless anyway.
Truthfully, when Nathan had called him yesterday to arrange this dinner, Eugene had been completely, overwhelmingly stunned by the news. But the shock of Chloe’s return paled in comparison to the absolute devastation he felt looking at Nathan now.