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“It’s fine,” Erin said casually, but with an undercurrent of finality.
Nate peered at her, slightly discomforted by the way she closed off ever so slowly. The silence didn’t feel as amiable as before. Concerned that his words hadn’t been taken as intended, he decided to venture forth once more. Perhaps his tone hadn’t been well-meaning enough.
“I hope you two will continue to improve your relationship. I know the distance may seem insurmountable at times, but your mother loves you very much.”
The reaction was so instantaneous that Nate almost flinched. Erin tensed under his arm, her blood pressure spiked, and a distinct scent of stress suddenly wafted off the detective. It took a moment to taste it on his tongue and identify not only anger, but fear, and in that moment Erin had already pushed herself off the couch.
For two long seconds she simply stood there facing him, facial muscles frozen, her chest expanding and deflating at a rapid pace. Her lips opened, something on the verge of falling out, something crucial. Then she pressed them back together.
“I better get going,” Erin finally said in a tone that was all-too-reminiscent of Adam, and Nate’s face fell.
Because with Adam, his clipped responses never meant the end of anything but the conversation. Regardless of how often they would disagree on something, his and Nate’s friendship remained untouched. There was a security there that he had thought he had with the detective as well, until now. And the sense of her potentially slipping through his fingers had a slick fear gliding through his belly, constricted his throat.
He rose from the couch slowly, smoothly, while Erin darted over to the table to grab her bag. She had trouble expressing her feelings, she’d told him so. But now she didn’t seem to trust him enough to meet his eye, and this hurt most of all.
“Erin,” he called out softly once her fingers clenched around the deep red strap of her leather satchel.
He could hear the way her heart skipped a beat, indicating that she’d heard him. She turned in a tightly controlled whirl, a strained smile on her lips that reminded him of Rebecca.
Talk to me. Tell me what I’ve done wrong.
“It was nice,” Erin said, voice softer than the stiffness in her stance would suggest. “Thanks for hanging out with me, Nate. I’ll see you soon.”
And then, with a deep inhale that she would not release, Erin started towards the door to leave the living room, pulling the mobile phone from the pocket of her jeans.
I can tell you of the love you will share. Of a love so strong it may survive eternities. Of comfort. Of passion. Of truth.
Nate finally started to feel his limbs again. He couldn’t let her walk out on this note. Couldn’t bear to spend a day or more apart wondering if he’d irreversibly broken what they’d been building. If she would ever look at him with precious candidness again.
Just as Erin had exited the living room, he heard her exhale and sped after her.
“Erin, wait!”
Look at me.
She turned, the expression in her eyes weary and knuckles pale where her hand clenched over her phone. But she did return his gaze.
“I-” Nate’s mouth grew dry before he composed himself. “I didn’t mean to overstep. Your relationship with Rebecca is yours alone. As someone who cares for both of you, I simply meant to offer some support. Forgive me. I didn’t know this was such a sensitive topic for you.”
To his absolute relief, the air around the detective immediately lost some of its acidic tasting static. Her shoulders dropped immediately, her head tilted back, and her breath and pulse both slowed. She gave a short nod. Averted her eyes. Hesitated. Focused her gaze back on him.
“I don’t like talking to you guys about Rebecca,” Erin said, speaking in a slow and measured manner.
Nate had noticed this way of speaking a few times now, and suspected she adopted it when she wanted to express herself with the utmost accuracy.
This can be salvaged.
With renewed hope, Nate stepped closer, a warm, careful smile playing about his lips.
“May I ask why?” he asked, low, so the rest of Unit Bravo wouldn’t overhear too much.
It took Erin a while to reply. She simply looked at him, the same as she had after jumping off the couch, as if she were measuring how well he’d take her thoughts. Previously, he must have left her wanting. This time, he hoped she would reconsider.
“Because,” she began, “I feel like you guys think my issues with Rebecca just come from her lying about her job, and that’s not true. I don’t wanna put myself on a pedestal, but I think I handled myself well enough when I found out about the supernatural world.”
Nate choked his instinct to jump in and validate, lest the interruption cause Erin to break off. And sure enough, the more she talked, the more the tension in her jaw eased.
“My issue is that after I learned about everything, she told me we’d work on our relationship. No more lies or secrets, as long as it wasn’t something classified or whatever. But everything else I learn about supernaturals, or the Agency, I still learn by complete accident while everything is already going down the drain, and only cause I remember to ask questions. And even then I am sometimes blown off, like how nobody wanted to tell me what Trappers are.”
A pang of guilt hit Nate squarely in the chest when he remembered Adam’s dismissal of her question. He hadn’t even registered it in the moment.
“And then,” Erin continued, picking up the pace, “I learn, basically in a subclause, that my father knew about all this and was also a human liaison for the Agency.”
Her gaze shot up and fixed him with heated intensity, as though willing him to understand the urgency of that revelation.
“Two months,” she said, voice wavering. “Two months, I barely hear from her, or anyone. Cause you’re all busy, I know. But she couldn’t make time to meet me once and fill me in on things she kept from me as a kid? About our family?
“Do you realize that you’ve probably had more conversations with her in the last ten years than I had with her between the ages of ten and twenty? I spent more time with neighbors that I’d go to after school than my mother, cause she was never home. I had to teach myself how to cook and forge her signature for report cards and other documents cause she was never home. At age 15 I was running around town until after midnight and got picked up by cops, cause all I had at home was silence.
“And I was willing to leave all that behind us, cause now I know the reason and Rebecca said we’d work on it. I’m not just holding a petty grudge for the hell of it, Nate. Nothing’s changed. She’s made no effort to fill the blanks. All she’s done is tell me she doesn’t want me to die. And she does this when all of Unit Bravo is around, too, where I have to choose between pretending everything is fine, or having you guys think I’m being a bitch for no reason. I’m sorry. But I think I deserve better.”
Erin took a deep breath.
“And I didn’t wanna talk about it because I know you guys love her. I didn’t want to put you in this spot where you could feel like you have to pick a side.”
Something in Nate melted, and before he could stop himself he closed the rest of the distance between them. The fingers of his right hand laced in hers, and he gingerly lifted his left to touch her cheek. She leaned into it as if almost by instinct, and he had to remind himself to breathe.
She still felt safe around him. That was all he could ever need.
“It’s kind of you to worry about us,” he said gently, and watched the frown on Erin’s face smoothe over. Grimness gave way to grief. “I didn’t realize the situation was so complicated. And I’m sorry all of us weren’t diligent about keeping you in the loop. Believe me, I wanted to. Very much so, in fact.”
A soft, tired laugh escaped Erin that caused a tug in Nate’s chest. But she tipped her head forward and rested it against him.
“Yeah,” it came muffled from somewhere below Nate’s chin, “would have been nice to not feel like I was dropped off the face of the earth right after being mauled by a vampire.”
Nate frowned.
“That was not the intention. R-”
Erin’s head snapped back up. A chill wound down Nate’s spine when he realized the mistake he had just committed.
“Rebecca said what?” Erin asked sharply.
A little part of Nate had to almost laugh at how quickly she had pieced his choked off sentence together. And he might have. If he didn’t have the distinct feeling that he had just put himself in the exact situation that Erin had not-so-tactfully tried to avoid in the first place.
“Ah… she said… it would be best to give you space to heal after everything that happened,” he admitted after a few seconds. “To adjust.”
Anger flashed over her face, just for the briefest of seconds. Then she let go of Nate’s hand to raise both of hers to palm her face. A mix between a scoff and a bitter laugh came muffled through her fingers before she inhaled deeply and dropped her hands again.
“Do me a favor, please, going forward,” she said with a slightly ironic undertone, “and don’t ever assume that Rebecca knows what’s best for me.”
“Done,” Nate replied.
“She really thought that after everything, I wanted radio silence from you guys?” Incredulousness was poured into every word. “The only people who could understand what-… what happened that night? The absolutely insane few weeks I’ve had? All of it, and I was alone afterwards. Without so much as a phone call from Farah. I thought you guys were busy with cleaning up the mess so I didn’t want to be a nuisance. But the longer I didn’t hear anything, the more I thought you had changed your minds about wanting to work with me, cause I was human and too squishy or something. Rebecca has no idea who I am or what I want. What I wanted was to see you.”
Erin paused, holding her breath again for a long moment. Then she added, voice small and just barely above a whisper: “I-… I wanted to see you, Nate.”