Page 64 of Seven Lost Summers (Broken Oasis #3)

The second they step into the room, Alex’s face lights up. “Uncle Theo!”

He comes at me like a heat-seeking missile, water dripping from his hair. His grin is pure chaos and sunshine, and he launches himself with zero concern for human safety.

I catch him mid-air, saving Poppy’s ankles. “Jesus, kid. Warn a man before you go full cannonball.”

Alex wriggles out of my grip, suddenly remembering his mom exists. He backs up, still grinning at me as if I’m the main character in his favorite bedtime story.

Xander’s gaze finds Poppy instantly. Her legs are still sprawled across my lap, my thumbs pressing into that sweet spot on her arch.

“Hey, Princess,” he says, crossing the room. He leans over and drops a kiss on her lips. “You good?”

She hums without opening her eyes. “Better now. Theo’s finally proving he has a purpose beyond being a shit-stirrer.”

Xander laughs, then smooths a strand of hair away from Poppy’s face.

“He lives to stir shit,” he says, eyes cutting to me with that smug shine. “But we love him anyway.”

“Finally,” I say. “Some recognition.”

Xander tips his head toward the kitchen. “You wanna beer?”

I shake my head. “Nah. I’ve got to talk to Nate.”

I need answers to the questions that have been running through my head about what we are now. The kind I am not sure I want to hear.

I ease Poppy’s feet from my lap and stand, setting them down with all the care of someone handling live explosives.

She blinks up at me.

I lean in, press a quick kiss to her cheek, and murmur, “Thank you. For giving me the kick up the ass I didn’t know I needed.”

Her fingers curl around my wrist before I can pull away.

“Call her, Theo,” she says, no hesitation.

That pull in my chest hits hard. I hold her gaze. “Yeah, I will.”

She lets me go, and I turn to Alex, holding out my hand. “Later, little man.”

He grins wide, slapping my palm before we launch into our secret handshake—three quick claps, a finger gun, and the ridiculous hip bump he insists is essential.

I catch Xander’s eye. He is still holding that lazy grin.

“Don’t worry, pretty boy,” I say, moving towards the front door, saying it loud enough that my voice carries. “She turned me down earlier. You get to keep your crown for another day.”

Xander’s snorts. “Pretty sure she turned you down because she’s got standards, not because I’m in the way.”

I can’t help the laugh that slips out. I fucking love it. Nothing better than watching a man defend his girl with a grin sharp enough to draw blood.

Now it’s time to track down Nate and have the hardest fucking heart-to-heart of my life.

Part of me hopes we can claw our way back to what we were.

The other part knows I might be walking straight into the truth that there’s no going back.

I have no idea what the fuck I’m going to say to Nate.

Only that if I don’t do it now, I never will.

I shove the front door open and step inside.

The air carries the faint smell of burnt toast, which is nothing at all like Nate. He never burns anything.

I find him in the living room, sitting on the couch, TV muted, eyes pinned to the floor. His head lifts when he hears me, but there is no shift in his face.

I stop in the doorway, hands jammed deep in my pockets. My shoulders feel wired tight enough to snap. My hair is a wreck from dragging my hands through it the whole walk over, trying to rip the thoughts out of my head. It didn’t fucking work.

He leans forward, elbows leaning on his knees. “You good?”

A sound escapes that’s supposed to be a laugh, but it’s hollow. Fragile like something broken trying to pass for fine.

I take a few steps in, the air heavy enough to slow me down. My feet plant halfway across the room, as though the next move could set off a chain reaction. My hands stay buried, because if I let them loose, I’m not sure if I’ll start talking or start tearing the place apart.

“Can I ask you something?”

He nods. “Yeah, what’s up?”

My jaw flexes, teeth grinding until bone threatens to crack.

The words scrape their way out, sharp enough to bleed on.

“What am I to you?”

The air goes heavy, pressing in on my ribs until breathing feels optional. I ask it the way you ask a question you already know could shatter you, but you need the answer anyway.

He stands up slowly. The kind of slowness that says he knows I am seconds from falling apart.

“Theo—”

“No.” My voice rips through the space, raw and shaking. “Don’t feed me any of that vague bullshit, Nate.”

I’m coming apart under his stare, threads snapping one by one. I have never been this exposed, not even when Bianca died and he was the only thing keeping me from drowning. He has been my fucking rock since we were kids, and the thought of losing him now terrifies me.

“Because we kissed, Nate,” I say, stepping back to get oxygen I cannot seem to pull in. “And it wasn’t nothing. Don’t you fucking dare tell me it was comfort, or some other fucking excuse where we pretend it didn’t happen. It was real. And I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.”

Nate closes the distance until his breath brushes my cheek. Heat radiates off him, thick with the tension that’s been clawing at both of us. The weight settles in my chest, the fucking ache that’s been building for weeks.

“I know things have changed,” he says, his voice threaded with something I can’t name.

My jaw locks. My throat strains around a swallow that lodges halfway down.

“Yeah,” I mutter. “They’ve fucking changed.”

“Quinn changed everything for both of us.”

The words land hard, a clean shot to the ribs that knocks the breath out of me. My lungs seize, desperate for air that refuses to come. I hold his stare.

“But not everything was because of her.”

That one cuts deeper, tearing through something I have been holding together for too long.

My jaw twitches.

My chest locks so tight it’s as if I am holding back a scream that would strip my throat raw. I do not blink.

I do not breathe.

He keeps going.

“I haven’t said this before, Theo, but I think you see it. You fucking feel the same way I do. Quinn’s the one I want. I didn’t know how to say it without tearing everything apart. I haven’t been the same since she left, and she might be the one I see a future with…”

He stops.

The pause stretches, until his next words hit like a wrecking ball.

“But you…” His voice splinters. “You’ve always been mine. Even before I knew what that fucking meant and I didn’t have the guts to admit it.”

I exhale hard, as if he has torn open something I have been holding together with duct tape and silence for years. The kind of break that lets the cold rush in.

“I didn’t plan this,” he says, his voice steady.

“But the second I kissed you, everything shifted. And fuck, I felt it. That thing I have been burying so deep I thought it would rot before I ever touched it. I was scared, Theo. I thought if I said anything, if I let myself go there with you, I’d destroy what we had.

So I stayed silent. But that kiss… it ripped the fucking silence to pieces. ”

My eyes close for a heartbeat. He is not wrong. That same fear has been living in me, coiled, waiting for the moment it could break us.

“This is new ground,” he continues, his voice softer now. “It’s not about the band anymore. It’s us. You and me. We’ve been moving around this for so fucking long without naming it.”

The words I want to say reach my throat but die there.

He steps in, his palm pressing flat to my chest, heat searing through the fabric of my shirt. My heart pounds hard against his hand.

“I want whatever the fuck this is,” he says.

“I want you. But I also need the softness of a woman between us. I need Quinn too. I’m done standing on the sidelines while life belongs to everyone else.

Xander and Poppy have something real. Ace and Scarlet are heading toward it too.

I fucking want that. I want what they have.

And I’m done pretending my life is enough when it isn’t.

You have been the one constant in my fucked-up world. ”

I swallow hard. The burn catches in my throat, refusing to let go.

“I’m not doing this halfway anymore, Theo.” His voice drops. “No more hiding. I want you. I fucking love you. And I love Quinn too.”

My vision stings, my eyes turning glassy with something I have no chance of hiding.

“I’m scared, Nate,” I admit, my voice breaking low. “What if I break what we have?”

“You won’t.”

“What if I can’t be what you need?”

“You already fucking are.”

My mouth trembles.

His forehead comes to rest against mine, anchoring me to something solid when the ground beneath me threatens to give way. He has always done this. Always known when the tide in my chest is about to pull me under.

“I think I have always loved you, Theo.” His voice carries no hesitation, only truth. “You are carved into my world. You will never lose me. Because I would not fucking survive if I had to breathe in a world without you in it. You think you need me, but I fucking need you too.”

The words land heavy, filling every hollow place I have kept hidden. His breath brushes my lips, and the space between us hums with something dangerous and alive. My hand curls into his shirt, not to pull him closer, but because I am afraid of what will happen if I let go.

He exhales, the kind of breath that scrapes out of his chest as if it’s been trapped there for years.

“We should never have let Quinn go. I should’ve told her I loved her.

I didn’t get to say it to Bianca, and that’s a weight I’ll carry until my dying fucking day.

And now I’ve done the same thing with Quinn and I hate myself for doing it. ”

“I love her, too,” I say, the words sound almost strangled.