“So you weren’t kidding about the Porsche last year, were you?”

He smiled grimly. “She was a graduation gift. Don’t break her.”

Nate had made it to the elevator and then the parking garage on crutches that Emma had sent over the day before. We got him into the passenger side and I walked around to the driver’s seat. I put the car in gear. It jerked and Nate winced.

“Maybe this wasn’t—”

“Kidding! I can drive stick. Where to?”

He sighed and shook his head. “I’ll direct you.”

I maneuvered us out of the parking garage and he pointed out along 37th.

“Do you want to talk about this?” I asked as we settled into the midday traffic.

“About the Porsche?” he asked dryly.

I glanced over. “About the fact that your father just had a heart attack.”

“No.”

“Do you want to call your mom?”

“No. Just drive.” He leaned forward and turned on the radio, effectively shutting me out.

I had questions but couldn’t push him and drive at the same time. Whenever I glanced over he was staring out the window, lost in thought.

We passed a million lights and crossed two bridges. I looked down at the clock and was startled to realize we’d been on the road for forty minutes, silent except for Nate’s occasional directions. I turned the radio down and the Red Hot Chili Peppers faded. “Ah, Nate? Your parents live in Queens?”

“We’re past Queens.”

My eyes narrowed. “Then where exactly are we going?”

Nate shifted in his seat. I was suspicious even before he said, “East Hampton.”

“What?” I swerved.

“Careful.”

“How could you not tell me this?” I exclaimed.

Nate looked at me as if the answer was obvious. “I didn’t think you’d take me.”

“So you tricked me,” I accused.

“Come on. You get more time driving this.” He tapped the dash lightly with his fingers. “About ten miles ahead you can really open her up.”

The casual tone made it seem like we hardly knew each other. Like I was here to drive his damned car instead of as a favor.

I pulled off the road and put the car in park.

“What are you doing?” Nate demanded. I had his full attention for the first time in an hour.

“Nate, I get that you’re upset. But given you’ve pretty much kidnapped me, I need you to fill me in.” He started to shake his head, so I pushed. “Tell me something, Nate. Anything. Like why you wouldn’t let Abby take you home. Especially given she’s on calling terms with your mom.”

He stared at me and I stared at him. I won.

“All right, fine. My mother’s been dropping hints. Pushing me and Abby together. Abby’s onto the plan.”

“And that’s bad.” I tried for a neutral tone. Like picturing him with the cool blond didn’t give me serious indigestion.

“I haven’t had more than a one-night stand in a year,” he admitted. “And I don’t want to. It’s a long story,” he added at my look.

“Well, apparently it’s a long drive.”

Maybe realizing I wouldn’t give up, he finally undid his seatbelt and swiveled his body in the seat to face me. He pulled off his sunglasses and held them in one hand.

“Jamie was my best friend. As kids we did everything together. But being a year apart, he wanted to compete. Grades, sports, girls—all of it. In high school we still butted heads. Then I went to Yale. I got wrapped up in my own life. Jamie went to Harvard. For a while, everything was good. I figured that’d be it.

“The summer after graduation, I brought someone home with me. Hannah was special. We’d met at school the year before. She was a music major and used to sing in these concerts every month. She had the most incredible voice.”

I listened, riveted. This was the most I’d heard Nate talk about himself.

“I thought things would be good with Jamie. We were finally grown-ups. When I brought Hannah home, she didn’t have a summer job and I was starting at Townsend Price. Dad had me busting my ass. Jamie just had two online courses for his grad psychology degree.

“For a few weeks we all coexisted. Then it started, the competitiveness. Jamie would say things to undercut me or show me up in front of Hannah. At first she brushed it off, told me not to worry about it. But at some point something changed. I didn’t see it at the time. I was too crazy about her.

“I knew they hung out when I wasn’t around. I don’t know if it was boredom or something else. But they got closer. I don’t know if they were …” He trailed off, and I could imagine what he’d thought. Though I couldn’t imagine any girl cheating on Nate.

“Last August when Jamie died, she was with him. In the car.”

My body reacted to his words before he finished the thought.

“Did she …?”

“Yeah.”

Nate had lost two people he loved, probably the two people he loved most, at the same time.

“Nate, I—”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Ava,” he said, voice low but forceful. “I told you because you asked, and because you deserved to know. That’s all.”

I immediately recalled his reaction to the car horn and brakes last winter, when we’d been in the cab. And on the balcony afterward. That had been a man who’d not only suffered, but who blamed himself. I wanted to ask why, but I knew if there was one place I needed to tread lightly, it was this one.

Instead I asked, “And you don’t want to date Abby because you’re not interested or you’re not ready?”

“Abby and I went to the same schools, had the same friends. Until Hannah, part of me always thought we might end up together. We might still.”

“That doesn’t sound very romantic.”

Nate laughed humorlessly. “Life isn’t romantic, Ava. Good decisions aren’t romantic.”

His cynicism raised the hairs on the back of my neck. It seemed so wrong for someone with his whole life ahead of him to feel that way. Even someone who’d been through as much as Nate had.

“Well in that case, why not just cave now?” I countered. “Get a ring, a date at the Four Seasons, and some baby names?”

“Because I’ll get there when I get there. I don’t need my mother throwing girls at me.”

“Then don’t let her,” I insisted, banging the steering wheel with my hand. “You’re a lot of things, Nate, but you’re not a coward. You would really consider marrying someone you’re not even into because it’ll make your mom happy? Know what else would make your mom happy? Flowers. Grow a pair and get her some damn flowers, Nate. Because a loveless marriage means a lot of years in a rocking chair next to someone who makes you want to stab your eyes with a fork.”

Nate tossed the sunglasses he’d been playing with on the seat between his legs. Cool eyes watched me, but I could see a muscle tic in his jaw. “That’s a big speech for a hypocrite,” he said quietly.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

At first he looked like he regretted what he’d said and wasn’t about to say more. Finally he continued. “When I found out about you and Josh, it bothered me. I admit it. But I thought ‘Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s something there I’m missing.’” Nate shook his head. “That’s why I went that day, with all of you. I wanted to know what it was between you.”

My mouth dropped open.

“I thought it’d be hard, seeing you together.” His eyes narrowed. “It was worse. It was a damned revelation. Because I saw you look at him. Watched him kiss you. And that’s when I knew.” He looked grimly triumphant and somehow I hadn’t caught up.

“What?”

“That whatever you feel for him, it’s not love. Not your love. Not steals-your-breath, strips-you-bare, indie-makeout love. So don’t sit there and call me out for being unromantic.”

His words sucked the oxygen out of the car.

I’d known there was something between us but had no idea he’d thought that much about me and Josh. That he’d remembered our conversation that rainy night.

As much as part of me wanted to give him something, I had nothing to give.

Except for one thing.

“I ended it. With Josh.”

Nate’s eyes roamed my face. “When?”

“Sunday.” After you left the bar.

He studied me with an unreadable expression. “Good.” Then he slipped the sunglasses back on and turned away, leaning his elbow on the frame.

What the hell just happened?

Guys always complain that girls get in their heads. This time Nate had gotten in my head, set up shop there, and was proceeding to pull my brain to pieces from the inside out.

At a loss for anything else to do, I put the car in gear and pulled back onto the road.

We drove through beautiful country, the city giving way to wineries, quirky antique shops, and cafés I could only half appreciate because of everything running through my mind.

Eventually Nate directed me off the main road, and we stopped in front of a brick home with a big driveway a few streets back.

“We’re here,” he said ominously.

I helped Nate out, and together we walked and hobbled from the car to the house.