Chapter 50 Updating Her WhatsApp Status
When Chloe finally called Lisa, her friend was in the middle of reading a bedtime story to her youngest child.
After answering the phone, Lisa could barely get two words out before her exhausted toddler started immediately whining in the background. "Mommy, why did you stop reading? Read more, please. I'm not sleepy!"
"I’m on the phone, sweetie. Why don't you try to close your eyes?" Lisa gently coaxed, her voice thick with exhaustion. But the toddler absolutely refused to settle down, beginning to fuss and kick at the blankets.
Lisa sighed heavily. "Chloe, I'm so sorry, can you hold on? Let me try to knock her out, and I'll call you right back, okay?"
"Of course! Take your time," Chloe readily agreed, ending the call.
Chloe sat entirely alone in the center of the massive king-sized bed in her hotel room.
Outside the window, the Minnesota night sky was pitch black, occasionally punctuated by the distant, lonely wail of a truck horn on the interstate.
Clutching her phone, she pulled her knees tightly to her chest, resting her chin on her knees as she stared blankly at the beige wallpaper directly in front of her.
Nathan was just on the other side of that wall. What was he doing right now? Was he still hurting? Was he completely exhausted?
Chloe didn't want to be separated from him for even a single minute. She had been biting her lip raw, physically forcing herself to stay on the mattress, violently resisting the overwhelming urge to march next door and force her way into his arms.
She desperately, selfishly longed to return to her old life—that warm, untouchable sanctuary where he was her husband and she was completely safe.
But Nathan was aggressively barricading the door.
Maybe she just needed to be unequivocally clear with him. Maybe if she explicitly broadcasted to the entire world exactly where he stood in her life, he would finally believe that she didn't give a damn about a twenty-year age gap.
Chloe lit up her phone screen and opened WhatsApp.
Inside, she saw the group chat with the six or seven old friends who had just reunited at dinner.
She tapped on Nathan's profile. His avatar was a generic, sterile photo of the sky, and his status was entirely blank.
Chloe clicked over to her own status update. She thought for a mischievous second, and deliberately selected three photos from her camera roll to post to her timeline.
The first was a picture of the scarred sugar maple tree in the municipal park. The second was a candid shot of Nathan walking ahead of her, his broad shoulders filling out his tailored coat, his back to the camera. The third was a radiant, smiling selfie of herself.
She typed the caption rapidly: "My sugar maple tree is absolutely thriving at the state park—tall, sturdy, and completely anchored. Thank you, Nathan! You officially have to bring me back here every single year for the rest of our lives. Love you!"
With a decisive tap, she hit Send.
She sat there, anxiously watching the screen. After a long while, the first comment popped up. It was Eugene: "Nathan and I supervised the transplant together. You should technically be thanking me, too."
Chloe smirked and typed back: "Thanks, Captain! You're really the one to rely on when it counts."
Eugene: "Cut it out. The last time you called me 'Captain' was when we won the state championship."
Chloe: "That was entirely different. This time, I actually mean it!"
A new notification pinged.
Nathan: "Sickeningly sweet."
The absolute moment Chloe saw Nathan's name, her heart leapt. She immediately clicked out of the comments and opened their private chat window.
"Are you still awake?" she typed.
She stared intensely at the screen. The "typing..." indicator bubble immediately popped up beneath his name.
Chloe held her breath, waiting. She watched the three little dots dance for what felt like an absolute eternity. No message appeared.
After three agonizing minutes, the typing indicator vanished completely.
Chloe let out a heavy, frustrated sigh, tossing her phone onto the duvet. Was he seriously overthinking a simple text message? At forty-two years old, what the hell was so terrifying about having a beautiful young wife who was obsessed with him?
Just as she was about to turn off the bedside lamp and force herself to sleep, her phone vibrated loudly. It was Lisa calling back.
"Hey, Chloe. I finally got her down. Did you need something urgent?"
"No, nothing major," Chloe said, a soft smile returning as she leaned back against the headboard. "We just didn't get to actually talk at the restaurant with the guys being so loud. Since we're flying back to Chicago tomorrow, I just wanted to hear your voice."
"I really wanted to catch up, too," Lisa sighed, her voice deflated. "But the little one is incredibly clingy right now. She won't let me out of her sight for a second."
"Are you managing both kids by yourself?" Chloe asked gently.
"No. My ex got full custody of my older son. He lives with his dad across town. I'm just raising my daughter." There was a profound, bone-deep weariness in Lisa's tone, entirely devoid of the vibrant, reckless energy Chloe remembered from high school.
Chloe’s heart ached for her friend. She lowered her gaze to the sheets. "Next time I come back to town, you have to bring her. I've never even met your daughter."
"Absolutely!" Lisa agreed, her tone brightening slightly. "Speaking of kids... shouldn't you and Nathan get moving on that? I mean, you practically haven't aged a day, but Nathan is forty-two now, Chloe. Time waits for absolutely no one."
"I want to!" Chloe groaned, burying her face in her hands. "I'm ready right now. But he entirely refuses."
"He doesn't want to?!" Lisa gasped, genuinely shocked. "How is that even possible? He has literally done nothing but wait for you for two decades! When his mother was still alive, I used to run into Samantha at community fundraisers. She was constantly begging him to meet new people. But he would just offer that terrifying, polite smile of his and entirely refuse to go."
Lisa paused, her tone softening with absolute awe. "Samantha told me she had introduced him to daughters of senators, heiresses, incredibly qualified women. He wouldn't even look at their resumes. He was entirely incapable of letting you go."
Listening to Lisa talk about Samantha's quiet, desperate worry, a sharp tightness gripped Chloe’s chest.
She sighed softly, twisting a loose thread on the duvet cover around her finger. "I don't know why he's pushing me away, Lisa. I can physically feel that he still completely loves me. But he just refuses to try again. He keeps aggressively telling me that he's 'changed' and that he's an 'old man' now. But honestly? Looking at him... I don't see anything different."
Chloe brought her knees closer to her chest, whispering into the receiver. "You know what, Lisa? He doesn't feel like a stranger to me at all. Even though waking up twenty-three years in the future is terrifying... whenever I look at him, my entire heart feels so incredibly grounded."
She swallowed hard, a fragile, bittersweet smile touching her lips. "I know he endured unspeakable pain for me. I know he threw his entire life away waiting for me. And yet... hearing that he never looked at another woman... I feel so selfishly happy."
"I just realized that Nathan truly loves me that much," Chloe whispered, tears prickling her eyes. "I am so incredibly, unbelievably lucky. My entire soul is filled to the absolute brim with his love. Even if a hundred years pass, I will never forget how completely anchored this feels."
She violently tugged at her own hair in frustration, lightly slapping her cheek. "Am I a total monster, Lisa? Am I just converting all of his agonizing trauma into romantic sweetness for myself? God, I am such a terrible person."
Lisa couldn't help but let out a soft, wet chuckle on the other end of the line. "Chloe, listen to me. If any man on earth had ever loved me with a fraction of the feral devotion Nathan has for you... I would gladly live off that sweetness for the rest of my life. You aren't terrible. You're his reward."
"But Lisa..." Chloe hesitated, the terrifying memory of Nathan convulsing on the floor suddenly flooding her mind. "I've noticed something. Nathan has severe epilepsy now. He never had seizures when we were young. He was perfectly healthy. Do you know what happened to him?"
There was a heavy silence on the line.
"I think Eugene mentioned something about it a few years ago," Lisa said slowly, her voice dropping to a serious, hushed tone. "He told me Nathan got critically injured saving your dad."
"Saving my dad?" Chloe sat bolt upright, her blood running cold. "What are you talking about?"
"Actually, I don't know the full story. Just what Eugene told me at a bar," Lisa clarified quickly. "Over a decade ago, Nathan and your dad followed a lead on your disappearance out to some remote town in the Midwest. They hit a torrential storm and their car was caught in a massive landslide."
Lisa took a breath. "Eugene said Nathan physically threw himself over Alvin to shield him from the impact. Nathan got completely crushed under the rocks and mud. They were trapped in the wreckage for nearly two days before rescue teams dug them out. I heard Nathan's skull was fractured. But they were in the middle of nowhere, and the local hospital didn't have the neurosurgeons to operate on him. They nearly lost him on the table."
Chloe completely stopped breathing.
"Eugene told me that Nathan's father had to wire exorbitant amounts of money to charter an emergency medical helicopter just to get Nathan to the East Coast," Lisa continued, oblivious to the absolute devastation happening on the other end of the line. "But the treatment window was too delayed. They saved his life, but the invasive brain surgery left him with severe, permanent neurological complications."
The words came through the phone speaker one by one, detonating like mortar shells in Chloe's mind.
She froze completely.
The romantic sweetness, the selfish joy, the triumphant feeling of being loved—it all instantly shattered into jagged shards of ice, violently stabbing her directly in the heart.
Hot, uncontrollable tears immediately flooded her eyes, spilling over her lashes and soaking into her lap.