Heartbreaker, a Heartstopper Story - Ch. 18

Gay Cuckold, Gay Eroica, +18, Cheating, Voyeur

Nick was sitting on the sand at El Porto Beach, shoes off, watching the last traces of sunset bleed out of the sky.

He’d driven here straight from Beto’s, just got in the bus and twenty minutes later he was here, on a stretch of sand south of Manhattan Beach, because when Nick Nelson needed to think, he went to the water.

Back home, the seafront at Whitstable was a grey, windswept stretch of shingle where the Thames Estuary met the North Sea and the sky was so enormous it made your problems feel smaller just by standing under it. He used to go there after fights with his dad, after the cancelled plans, the broken promises and the silence that followed. He’d sit on the pebbles with his hood up and his hands in his pockets and watch the container ships inch across the horizon and let the cold wind scour everything clean. He’d gone there the afternoon Ben Hope had cornered Charlie in the stairwell and Nick had found out about it two hours later and spent the walk to the seafront shaking with a rage so total he’d been afraid of what he’d do if he didn’t put some distance between himself and a building that contained Ben Hope. He’d gone there the night Charlie had been discharged from hospital the first time, after the eating had got so bad that Jane had found him passed out on the bathroom floor, and Nick had sat on the wet stones in the dark and cried until his chest hurt and then stayed another hour because he wasn’t ready to be strong for anyone yet.

California had given him new water. The cove behind Westbridge, where he and Charlie had claimed a patch of sand as their own and built a small world out of take-out food, blankets and murmured conversations. Venice Beach on early mornings, running along the boardwalk before the tourists arrived, the Pacific vast and indifferent and exactly what he needed. And this place, El Porto, which Nick had never visited before tonight but which had called to him the way any beach did, the surfers still out catching the last waves, the sand wide and open, the water rolling in with a steadiness that didn’t care who he was or what he’d done.

He’d been here for a while, long enough that the sky had shifted from copper to violet to a deep navy, the first stars appearing over the ocean. The beach was still alive around him, a group playing volleyball under floodlights, their shouts carrying across the sand. A couple strolling barefoot along the waterline. A kid on a skateboard weaving through the pedestrians on the boardwalk. Further down, a group of lads not much younger than Nick were building a fire pit in the sand, stacking driftwood and crumpled newspaper, one of them crouching with a lighter while the others offered conflicting advice.

It was warm, one of those California evenings that held its heat long after the sun disappeared. A beautiful night by any measure. The kind of night you were supposed to share with someone. Nick shared only with his guilt.

And it wasn’t even the old guilt, that faithful companion from the past weeks, the one about cheating and lying and Houston and the months Beto had spend coming on to him and Nick never mentioned a word to Charlie. That guilt had been heavy but simple, a clean wound with a clear cause. This was something murkier, something that sat closer to the bone and hurt in a different way.

Beto was right.

The words kept turning in Nick’s head, rotating slowly, examined from every angle, and every angle confirmed the same thing. Beto was right, and Nick had known it the moment he’d said it, had felt the truth of it land in his chest before his pride could mount a defence. He’d sat in judgement of Charlie for weeks. Had nursed his fury like a fire he was afraid to let die, feeding it with righteous indignation, stoking it with every replayed memory of manipulation and deceit. He’d cast himself as the innocent party, the good boyfriend, the faithful one, the man who’d been played like a puppet by the person he trusted most, and from that position of wounded virtue he’d delivered his verdict on Charlie without once turning the lens on himself.

The lens was turning now, and what it showed him was ugly.

Because what had Charlie actually done? He’d wanted something he was afraid to ask for, and instead of being honest, he’d gone behind Nick’s back to get it. He’d manipulated the situation. He’d prioritised his own desire over Nick’s right to choose. And what had Nick done in Houston? He’d wanted Beto. He’d wanted him for months, and instead of being honest with Charlie, instead of saying I’m attracted to someone else and I don’t know what to do about it, he’d buried it. Denied it. Let it fester until it found its own way out. Nick hadn’t considered Charlie’s feelings when he’d knocked on Beto’s door. Hadn’t paused to think about what it would do to the person he loved if he crossed that line. He’d been consumed by his own need, his own grief, his own desire, and he’d acted on it with the same selfish single-mindedness he’d been crucifying Charlie for.

The hypocrisy was breathtaking. Nick could see it now, sitting on this beach with the firelight flickering in his peripheral vision, and he couldn’t unsee it. He and Charlie had committed the same sin from opposite directions, both of them wanting something they were too afraid to name, both of them choosing deception over honesty, both of them prioritising their own hunger over the person they claimed to love most. The methods were different, but the selfishness was identical. Charlie had built an elaborate scheme to make it happen. Nick had simply waited for the right combination of grief and alcohol and proximity to give himself permission.

Which of those was worse? The person who planned the betrayal, or the person who’d been carrying the capacity for it all along and just needed an excuse?

Nick didn’t have an answer, he wasn’t even sure there was one. But the question itself had shattered the simple story he’d been telling himself for days and what was left in its place was something messier, more honest, and infinitely harder to live with. They were both guilty. They were both broken in their own specific ways. And the bridge back to each other, if there was one, couldn’t be built by one person apologising and the other forgiving. It had to be built by both of them, from both sides, meeting somewhere in the middle of the wreckage they’d made together.

Nick’s phone had been in his hand. The screen was dark, his thumb resting against the edge, and the option was right there, one tap, one swipe, one moment of courage, and he’d hear Charlie’s voice again. He could do it right now. Call him, talk to him.

He kept telling himself it was too soon. That he needed more time to think, more distance, more clarity. That he wasn’t ready. That it was the middle of the bloody night in Kent and Charlie would be asleep and waking him up would be selfish. He knew those were excuses. He could spend the rest of the month waiting. The rest of the summer. The rest of the year, if he let himself, searching for the perfect moment to admit his own failings to the person he loved most in the world. But there was no perfect moment for something like that.

Nick clicked the screen on. The photo on the background glowed up at him, and something in his chest clenched so hard he nearly dropped the phone. It was him and Charlie, of course it was. It had been taken by Luna on that night a million years ago, after the Sharks had won the semifinal. Nick was still in his navy kit, sweaty and muddied and gross, grass stains up one arm, a cut on his cheekbone he didn’t remember getting. But he had Charlie in his arms, hoisted up off the ground, the only trophy that had ever actually mattered, and they were both beaming at each other. Foreheads almost touching. Eyes bright. Grinning so wide it looked like their faces might split.

They were happy. They were in love. And looking at that photo, Nick couldn’t remember why he’d ever thought the answer to Charlie’s question on the beach might be anything other than no, we’re not breaking up, not now, not ever, because I’d rather fight with you for the rest of my life than be at peace with anyone else.

Nick dialed Charlie’s number. He hesitated for just a second before he hit call.

Charlie picked up on the third ring.

“Hi,” he whispered.

The sound of his voice detonated something in Nick’s chest. Just two letters, barely audible, thin and careful and carrying the weight of days of silence, and Nick felt the missing he’d been denying, drowning in anger and deadlifts and Diane’s pancakes, rush up through him so fast his eyes blurred. He missed Charlie, God, Nick missed Charlie. He missed him so much it was a physical thing, a pressure behind his ribs, and hearing Charlie’s voice after all this time was like pressing on a bruise he’d been pretending wasn’t there. Tears appeared before he could stop them, sliding down his cheeks into the dark. He wiped them with the back of his hand and swallowed hard, twice, until he was sure his voice wouldn’t crack.

“Hi,” Nick said. “It’s me. I’m sorry for calling so late. Were you asleep?”

“No. I just got home. Went to the pub with Tao.”

Charlie’s voice sounded small, as if the distance between them wasn’t merely an ocean but the space between galaxies, vast and dark, full of things neither of them knew how to cross.

“How’s Tao?” Nick asked. But before Charlie could answer, Nick kept going, because Nick loved Tao but he didn’t really care about him right now. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” Charlie said. “Just… you know.”

Nick did know. He knew exactly.

“You been eating alright?”

“Yes, I swear,” Charlie said quickly. “I’m eating. I promise, Nicky.”

The name slipped out — Nicky — and Nick heard Charlie catch it a second too late, a little intake of breath, as if the familiarity had escaped without permission and Charlie wasn’t sure he still had the right to use it.

He did. He always would.

“And you?” Charlie asked.

“I’m on the beach,” said Nick, looking out at the dark water. “Been here for almost an hour. Thinking.”

“You always liked the beach,” said Charlie.

Nick gave a small laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

The waves filled the silence.

“I was with Beto today,” Nick said. “You should call him. He’s missing you.”

“I know. I miss him too. I’m just...” Charlie trailed off. “Sort of embarrassed right now. I pulled him into my mess and I don’t know how to face him.”

Nick shook his head slowly, slightly amazed that Beto had got that right too. The lad seemed to know Nick and Charlie better than they knew themselves.

“I kissed him today,” Nick said.

Charlie said nothing for a long time, long enough that Nick pulled the phone away from his ear to check the call was still connected. The seconds were still counting.

“Oh,”, Charlie finally said. His voice was steady, carefully steady, as if he was choosing his next words the like you chose footholds on a cliff face. “Did you want to?”

Nick closed his eyes. The question was so simple, so precisely aimed. He could lie, soften it, wrap it in qualifications — I was confused, it just happened, I wasn’t thinking straight. The old Nick, the one who’d spent months constructing walls between himself and the truth, would have done exactly that.

“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

The admission hung in the dark air and Nick felt something shift inside him as he said it, a weight moving from one place to another. The truth had a texture the lies didn’t.

“Thank you for telling me,” Charlie said quietly.

“He stopped it,” Nick added. “Beto. He stopped it before it went further. Said he wouldn’t be used to hurt you.”

A short exhale on Charlie’s end, not quite a laugh. “That sounds like Beto.”

“He said some other things too,” Nick said. He dug his toes into the cooling sand. “Things I didn’t want to hear. About me. About how I’ve been handling all of this.”

“Like what?”

“Like that I’ve been acting like I’m the only one who got hurt. Like I’ve been sitting on some moral high ground pretending I didn’t choose to do what I did. That nobody forced me into that hotel room, and nobody forced me onto his roof today, and blaming you for all of it is just —” His voice caught. He swallowed. “It’s just easier than looking at my own shit.”

Charlie was quiet again, not with the heavy silence from before, but something softer, more open as he listened with his whole body.

“I should have told you about Beto,” Nick said. “Months ago. All those times he came on to me — I never said a word to you. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to jusrt you, but that’s bollocks. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want it to stop.” His throat was tight. “I kept it secret for the same reason you kept your thing secret. Because saying it out loud would have made it real.”

“Nick —”

“Let me finish. Please.” He pressed his free hand against his eyes. The tears were back, quieter this time, leaking steadily rather than falling. “I’ve been so angry at you, Char. So fucking angry. And you deserved some of it, you did. The lies, the manipulation, the — the schedule swap, all of it. That was fucked up and it hurt and I’m not going to pretend it didn’t.”

“I know,” Charlie whispered.

“But I’ve been using that anger to hide from the fact that I fucked up too. That I wanted Beto before you ever said a word to him. That Houston was my choice. That I —” He stopped. Breathed. “That I liked it. And that scares the shit out of me, Charlie, because I don’t know what that makes me.”

“It doesn’t make you anything, Nicky,” said Charlie, and his voice was so gentle it hurt. “Just... human. It’s not a bad thing to love someone and be attracted to someone else.”

“But it’s bad to act on it,” Nick said.

“No. Not acting on it. The bad part is doing it behind the other person’s back.”

“And I did that,” Nick’s voice broke, clean through, like a branch that had been bending too long. “And I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m really fucking sorry. I’m sorry I cheated on you. I’m sorry I lied. Regardless of what you did, I fucked up, and I hate myself for it. I should never—”

The rest of the sentence dissolved. Nick pulled the phone away from his mouth and pressed it against his chest, muffling the sound that came out of him, a raw, shuddering sob that he couldn’t hold back, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t do a damn thing about. He bent forward, forehead almost touching his knees, and let it come. The guilt and the grief and the relief of finally saying it out loud, of finally stopping the performance of righteous anger and just being a man who had hurt the person he loved and was sorry, truly sorry, all the way down to the foundations of who he was.

The phone buzzed faintly against his chest. Charlie’s voice, tinny and distant, saying his name.

Nick sat there for a while, the fire pit down the beach crackling, the volleyball players laughing, the world carrying on around him with its usual indifference to private devastation. When the worst of it had passed and his breathing had steadied into something that would hold a sentence, he lifted the phone back to his ear.

“Sorry,” he said, hoarsely. “I’m here.”

“I forgive you, okay?” Charlie said, and his voice was thick but certain. “Don’t spend another second feeling bad about that. It’s over. It’s in the past now.”

“I’m not sure I deserve that,” Nick said.

“It’s not up to you. It’s up to me, and I — I —” Charlie’s voice splintered. “Shit, Nicky, I’m the one who should be apologising. I’m the one who’s wrong here. You fucked up once. I did it again and again and again, for months.”

He took a breath. Nick could hear it shaking.

“I’m so sorry, Nick,” Charlie said. “And I don’t mean the kind of sorry where I say it and then explain why I did what I did until it doesn’t sound so bad anymore. I mean I’m sorry. Full stop. No excuses.”

Nick said nothing. He knew what it was like to be so riddled with guilt that it wouldn’t let you breathe. He knew Charlie needed to say the words, to purge the poison, to seek his absolution, just like Nick had.

“I manipulated you. I went behind your back. I used Beto. I lied to you about the match. I sat there for a whole weekend knowing what you’d done and knowing why and I didn’t say a word because I was —” His voice faltered, then steadied. “Because I was enjoying it. I got off on it, and that’s — that’s the part I’m most ashamed of, Nick. The fact that I watched you suffer and I liked what it did to our sex life. That’s unforgivable.”

“Charlie —”

“You trusted me more than anyone. You gave me everything, and I took that trust and I used it against you. I treated you like a — like a project. Like something I could engineer instead of someone I should have talked to. And I know I can’t undo that. I know that saying sorry doesn’t erase any of it. But I need you to know that I see it now, ok, how wrong I was. How— how selfish. And I’m not going to make excuses, and I’m not going to try to explain it away. I just — I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Nicky.”

The silence that followed was long, but it didn’t have teeth. It was the silence of something settling, finding its level,like water finding its level after being disturbed. Nick sat on the sand and let Charlie’s words sink through him, layer by layer, and felt each one land in the place it was supposed to. He thought about the beach. About the night he’d walked away without kissing Charlie goodbye. About the look on Charlie’s face when Nick had said I can’t fucking look at you right now, that expression of total, devastating understanding, of a person who knew they deserved every word and was choosing to stand there and take them anyway.

Charlie had done a terrible thing. He’d done it for complicated reasons, and some of those reasons were tangled up with genuine desire and genuine love in ways that Nick was only beginning to understand. But the apology was real. Nick could hear it in the rawness of Charlie’s voice, in the absence of justification, in the way Charlie had named the worst of what he’d done without flinching. That took courage. The kind of courage Nick hadn’t been able to find until Beto had shoved him toward it on a rooftop two hours ago.

“I forgive you,” Nick said.

Three words, simple and unadorned, because they didn’t need anything else.

“You —” Charlie’s voice cracked. “You do?”

“Yeah, Char. I do.” Nick wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I’m not saying it’s all sorted. I’m not saying I understand everything yet, or that it’s not going to be hard. But I forgive you. And I want us to figure the rest of it out together.”

He heard Charlie crying on the other end, quietly, almost silently, just the faint hitch of breath and the occasional wet swallow of someone trying not to be heard. It sounded like relief. Like something that had been held under pressure for too long finally being allowed to escape.

“Thank you,” Charlie whispered. “Thank you, Nicky.”

The fire pit down the beach had caught properly now, the flames licking upward, orange light dancing across the sand. The group of kids had settled around it in a loose circle, someone strumming a guitar, the chords drifting toward Nick on the warm breeze. The volleyball game had ended and the players were packing up, their voices fading as they climbed the steps to the boardwalk. Above the ocean, the sky had gone fully dark, thick with stars, the Milky Way faintly visible in the gap between the city lights and the horizon. A plane blinked silently overhead, heading west, carrying people to places Nick would never know about.

“Tell me about it,” Nick said. “This — this kink. I want to understand.”

The words felt strange in his mouth, unfamiliar, like speaking a language he’d only ever heard other people use. Two weeks ago he couldn’t have said them. A week ago, even. But something had changed on that rooftop in Palms, and the person sitting on this beach wasn’t the same person who’d stood on a different beach.

Charlie didn’t answer immediately. Nick could hear him recalibrating, the slight shift in his breathing that meant he was choosing his words with the care of someone handling something fragile.

“It’s hard to explain,” said Charlie.

“You don’t need to, if you’re not ready,” Nick said, gently. “Maybe we should have this talk in person, anyway.”

Charlie groaned.

“God, no,” he said. “I can’t talk about this looking into your eyes.”

He said it lightly, almost like a joke, but Nick heard what was underneath, the shame, the fear of being seen, the instinctive flinch of someone who had spent years hiding this part of himself because he was terrified of exactly the reaction Nick had given him on that beach. He began turning over the years behind them. All the small moments, the throwaway comments, the tiny signals he’d sent without meaning to that had told Charlie, over and over, that there were parts of himself he’d better keep hidden.

The night on their cove when Charlie had cautiously brought up open relationships, casually, hypothetically, and Nick had shut it down so fast and so completely that the conversation had been over before it started. The way Nick stiffened whenever Beto’s name came up, the visible discomfort that Charlie must have read as a warning — don’t go there, that topic is off-limits, I can’t handle it. The time Charlie had started to say something in bed, late at night, something hesitant and half-formed about wanting to try something different, and Nick had kissed him before he’d finished the sentence because he’d assumed Charlie was just being playful and hadn’t thought to ask what he actually meant.

If Nick had been different, more open, less reflexively threatened by anything that challenged the monogamous framework he’d built around their relationship, would Charlie have told him? Would they have sat down years ago and had the conversation they were stumbling through now, before the lies and the scheming and the damage? Nick couldn’t know for certain, but he suspected the answer was yes. Charlie had been desperate to tell someone. He’d told Beto within months of meeting him. The difference was that Beto had made it safe, and Nick, without ever meaning to, had made it dangerous.

“You don’t have to be ashamed of it,” said Nick.

“I’m not,” Charlie answered. “I was, for a long time. But I’m not anymore. It’s just — it’s difficult trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t feel the same.”

Nick chewed his lip. The guitar down the beach had gone quiet. The fire crackled.

“If I, uh — talked about this kink I have,” he said slowly. “Would that make it easier?”

He blushed just saying the words, his cheeks burning in the dark where nobody could see them, but he was glad he’d said it. It was a way of levelling the ground, right? Making himself vulnerable so that Charlie would feel safe enough to be vulnerable too.

“You have one?” Charlie asked, very quietly.

“I like showing off,” Nick said.

A beat of silence.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean —” Nick laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “I know I act like I’m oblivious to how I look. Like I don’t notice people staring. But I — I kind of like it. The way people look at me. I always have.”

“That’s — is that why you work at Roosters?” Charlie asked. His voice had shifted. Something had changed in it, something subtle, a new frequency underneath the words. Almost... excited.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Nick laughed again, lighter this time. “And the freeballing thing. And why I take my time in the locker room. I see the way people look at me and I — I like it. It does something to me. Makes me feel —” He searched for the word. “Powerful, I suppose. Like I have something everyone wants and I get to decide who sees it.”

“Oh, that’s... that’s kind of hot, actually,” said Charlie.

Nick laughed, a real laugh, that came from somewhere genuine, and Charlie laughed too, and then they were both laughing, properly laughing, the sound of it spilling through the phone and across the ocean, filling the space between them with something that wasn’t pain for the first time in days. Nick pressed the phone harder against his ear because he wanted to hear every note of it, wanted to hold it, this proof that they could still do this, that the distance and the hurt and the mess hadn’t killed the thing that had always come most naturally to them. They’d been making each other laugh since they were sixteen years old, and the fact that they could still do it now, after everything, felt like finding a heartbeat in something you’d been afraid was dead.

“God, I missed that,” Nick said, still grinning, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

“Missed what?”

“Your laugh. Missed your stupid bloody laugh.”

“My laugh is not stupid.”

“It’s a bit stupid, Char.”

“Well, yours sounds like a golden retriever sneezing, so I wouldn’t talk.”

Nick laughed again, and it ached in the best possible way.

“My turn?” Charlie asked, when the laughter had settled into something softer.

“Only if you want to.”

Charlie sighed.

“It’s hard to explain,” Charlie said again. “Because it doesn’t make sense the way normal things make sense. It’s not logical. I can’t give you a reason that would hold up in an argument.”

“Try.”

“Okay.” He exhaled. “It’s — do you know that feeling when you love someone so much it frightens you? When you look at them and the intensity of it is so overwhelming that it tips over into something that almost hurts?”

“Yeah,” Nick said quietly. “I know that feeling.”

“That’s where it starts for me. This — this terror of how much you mean to me. How much I need you. And somewhere along the way, that terror and the desire got tangled together, and I couldn’t separate them anymore. The thought of someone else wanting you, someone else seeing what I see, wanting what I have, it should make me angry, right? It should feel like a threat. And it does, Nick, it does. But the threat is —” He struggled. “The threat is what makes it electric. The jealousy isn’t the opposite of the desire. It’s the fuel for it. They feed each other.”

Nick listened. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t react, just let Charlie get it out of his chest.

“It’s not that I want to lose you,” Charlie said, and his voice had gone very quiet. “It’s that the fear of losing you is so intense that it crosses a wire somewhere inside me and becomes something else. Something I can’t control. And I know how that sounds, Nick. I know it sounds broken, or sick, or —”

“It doesn’t sound broken,” Nick said.

Charlie stopped.

“I don’t —” Nick rubbed his face with his free hand. “I’m not going to lie to you and say I get it, because I don’t. But it doesn’t sound broken to me, Charlie. It sounds like something that matters to you, something that’s part of who you are, and I —” He exhaled. “I want to understand it. I’m not there yet, but I want to be.”

The guitar down the beach had shifted to something slower, something soft and aimless that drifted across the sand like smoke. Nick pressed the phone closer to his ear, as if proximity could bridge the distance.

“Would you like to watch?” Nick asked. “Me and some other bloke?”

“Y-yeah,” Charlie said.

“What else?”

The question came out gentler than Nick expected. He wasn’t pushing. He was opening a door and standing beside it, letting Charlie decide how far through to walk.

“I think... telling me how it was. How it felt,” Charlie said. His voice was trembling. “And comaparing too, the other bloke to me. It doesn’t even have to be true. You could just make it up in the moment. That — that would be hot.”

“Would you want to know beforehand? Choose the guy?”

“I — I — Fuck, I don’t think my brain is working right now, Nick.” Charlie gave out a a laugh that was mostly air. “Both sound hot to me. Knowing in advance and being surprised by it. I don’t — I haven’t figured out all the details. I just know what the feeling is.”

“Okay,” Nick said.

The waves rolled in and pulled back. Charlie’s breathing was audible on the line, fast and shallow.

“You — you think you could do it?” Charlie asked, and his voice was so small, so loaded with the terror of asking for something he’d been punished for wanting, that Nick felt something in his chest crack along an old fault line.

Nick thought about it. Him, with someone else. A faceless bloke, fit, willing. Nick’s hands on his hips, Nick’s body driving forward. And Charlie… not gone, not betrayed,… but there. In the corner of the room, maybe. Sitting in a chair, eyes dark, watching every movement with that burning intensity that Nick had always loved about him. Watching Nick’s back flex, watching his arse clench with each thrust, watching the way Nick’s arms tensed when he gripped the other bloke’s waist. And the look on Charlie’s face wouldn’t be hurt or horror. It would be hunger. That hunger Nick had seen flashes of without ever understanding what he was looking at — in the way Charlie watched the punters at Roosters feel him up, in the way Charlie’s eyes had gone dark when Nick told him about some customer who’d got too handsy. All those moments Nick had filed away as Charlie being unusually relaxed about his boyfriend’s job suddenly rearranged themselves into a pattern that made a different kind of sense.

He imagined pausing mid-thrust. Looking over his shoulder at Charlie. Their eyes locking across the dim room, and the connection between them, even with someone else in the bed, even in the middle of the act, being the strongest thing in it. Not broken by the third person. Amplified by them.

Nick shifted on the sand. His cock had thickened against his thigh and he was grateful for the darkness.

“You don’t have to —” Charlie began, mistaking his silence for hesitation.

“Yeah,” Nick said, and his voice had dropped into something lower without his permission. “Yeah, Char. I think I could do that.”

—

Deep breath, everyone. We made it. I know the last few chapters have been rough. I know some of you have been reading through your fingers, waiting for the axe to fall, convinced I was going to do something unforgivable to these two idiots. So here’s your reward for sticking with me through the wreckage: the worst is over. The dark part of this story is behind us. From here, we rebuild. And I promise you, what’s coming is worth everything you just went through.

If you’ve been reading Heartstealer for free and you’re still here after all that, you’re clearly invested enough to consider becoming a paid subscriber. Hit subscribe. You’ve earned the good part.