Chapter Text
I.
Of all the things Nelson could be doing with his weekend, a destination wedding in wine country in which he is directly related to the groom is at the absolute bottom of his list. Even below getting kicked in the balls, and thumbscrews. Yeah, thumbscrews would be a lot more fun than this. And that was before he saw you.
At first he couldn't fucking believe it. It was like seeing a ghost. Inconceivable, and yet, right there before his fucking eyes.
Because there is no mistaking you for someone else. It's been ten years, but the memory of you is still burned behind his eyelids. A beloved collection of shapes he could never forget. He loved you with his whole heart once, broken as it was…and maybe he never got over that.
Buried it, yes. That was just a matter of survival. But when his aunt introduces Dr. Julian Mercer, and the lovely woman on his arm, y/n– that name that he has engraved on his soul rings down the empty halls of his heart…he can't say a fucking thing.
All he can do is stare, and wait for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. For surely this must be hell? Bring in the flames and pitchforks. They can't hurt any worse than the sight of your precious face does now, looking at him like you don't have a goddamn clue how you ripped out his heart when you left him on the bridge that day.
He thought you were dead.
That was the whole thing.
He’d begged you to let him stay by your side, but you'd insisted you didn't want to be remembered as a husk of the girl you were, a sickly bedridden wraith. You'd promised to go home to your family. To die.
Mourning you almost killed him.
For months on end he wanted to die, would have welcomed it, anything to not have to feel that grinding, soul-crushing pain–and the person that came out the other side of that was a changed man. Worse than the one you’d fixed one sweet November, so long ago it feels like an opium dream.
You would not like the man he’s become.
He knows it in his gut, and he is both ashamed and infuriated by the thought of coming up short in a judgement from you. Who do you think you are, anyway?
Your answer to that, had he asked rather than snorting like an angry bull and charging away, would be that you don’t really know.
There are holes in your memory. Big ones. Things that were wiped from your mind forever after the risky brain surgery that ultimately saved your life.
Don’t get you wrong, you are grateful to be alive. But ever since the moment you woke up in your hospital bed, hooked to tubes and monitors and bandaged like a mummy, you have had the feeling that something crucial was missing and you just didn’t know what. That feeling has persisted for the rest of your life. You’ve never been able to shake it, and here on this beautiful sun-drenched day in Napa with this surly, [ridiculously handsome] grouch of a man, you feel like you’ve just plunged down the fifty-foot drop of a rollercoaster with no seatbelt.
“Maybe it was the shrimp canapés?” Julian quips as the three of you watch Nelson storm off, mystified by his obvious anger.
“I apologize,” sniffs aunt June, dismayed by her nephew’s horrendous behavior. “He's…had some disappointments in his life the past few years.”
Julian squeezes you around the waist and laughs it off politely, moving on to a different topic with a social deftness you have never managed to master. But you cannot take your eyes off him, your eyes tracking his progress across the patio where everyone is mingling and drinking. He snags a glass of wine and sits on the sidelines, alone, glaring at the flagstones.
As though they know his tendencies all too well, no one tries to approach him. So why do you feel as though your heart is being squeezed in a merciless fist?
You don't even know him, but you can tell that Nelson Moss is a miserable man.
Why do you even care?
If only you knew…
🍇🍇🍇
He avoids you like the plague for the rest of the weekend. You can tell he actively keeps his distance amongst the wedding guests, and you don't know why that bugs the ever loving shit out of you.
Here you are in this gorgeous place, some of the most beautiful vineyards in the world, eating amazing food with excellent wine, surrounded by friends and friendly acquaintances and not to mention your hot as fuck fiancé Doctor Julian Mercer…and you just. Can’t. Stop. Looking at him.
He's so handsome it hurts. Even while he's scowling like everyone here personally made a point to piss in his Cheerios. But that's not even it. There is something about this man that just makes you feel like there is a rope around your heart pulling mercilessly.
Something is terribly wrong.
You just know it in your bones.
Because you're tracking him like a hawk during the rehearsal dinner, watching him engage in bouts of small talk with family members that he seems to enjoy about as much as having teeth pulled, you are aware of the second he slips away from the throng to one of the side patios for a quiet moment alone.
You know you shouldn't do what you're about to do. You have a fiancé who loves you, who is good to you. You have a life that is filled with everything a person should need to be happy. You are extremely lucky. Since your illness things have been touch and go for you. You fatigue easily, but Julian understands. He takes care of you with the attentiveness of a physician who is madly in love with his patient– which is exactly what happened for the two of you. His was the first face you saw when you woke up after your surgery. You were scared, and weak, and amazed to be alive.
Who wouldn't fall in love?
You have a good thing with Julian, you remind yourself for the umpteenth time.
But as you look through the trees to the shadows where Nelson retreated, there is a part of you…that just has to know, no matter what the consequences.
🌟🌙🌟
He couldn't take it anymore.
He's been watching you this whole time, out the corner of his eye. Somehow, you haven't changed a bit, but everything is different. After watching that asshole doctor kiss your cheek for the umpteenth time…he had to go, or he was going to commit a murder.
It wouldn't be the first time he spoiled a family event with his temper, but it would probably be the last.
Nelson seats himself wearily upon a stone wall, well away from the festivities. Hiding in the shadows like the sad sap he is.
How could he have been so stupid?
Because by now, he's convinced himself that you exaggerated your illness to break up with him. He knew he wasn't good at accepting refusal back then, but faking your imminent death seemed like a bit much.
You’re so bright. So vibrant, so full of life. There's no way death came close to touching you.
Is there?
“Excuse me?”
And now, he misses you so much that he is hallucinating the sound of your voice.
“Um, hello?”
Or not. His head whips to the side to find you, standing just inside the lights of the little side patio, the glow of a lantern shining behind your head like a halo.
“You've got to be kidding me,” he snarls.
You flinch at the venom in his tone, and he gets a single moment of satisfaction from landing this blow before he feels terrible.
“Can I talk to you for a second?”
“I would prefer that you didn't.”
You could weep for the anguish shining in his dark eyes, a crippling resentment plain for anyone to see. Living with such a poison seething inside must be hell.
“Look. I’m sorry if I injured you–”
“Injured me? It’s not like you pushed me off a bike here, you deceptive, lying little–”
“I don't–”
“You manipulated me–”
“I DON’T REMEMBER!” you shout, desperate to be heard over this man’s wrath.
“What?”
“I had a brain tumor,” you say more quietly, daring to step closer, holding out your hands like he is a wild animal you hope to tame.
“I know!” he snarls. “Or at least, that's what you told me! Did you say it just to get rid of me?”
“What?”
He approaches you because he simply can’t help it, drawn like a moth to the flame. But you might be like two atoms on a collision course–if he touches you he just might explode.
“Did you pretend you were dying to break up with me? Because clearly…” He sharply gestures at the whole scope of you as though to say here you are, not dead–and you are ridiculously distracted by his big, beautiful hands. You don't know this man from Job, but there is an energy about him that stirs something inside you wild and long forgotten. Who is he??
Was this man really your boyfriend?
“So where did the good doctor fit in?” he needles you, unable to stop himself now that he's careening down this treacherous slope. “If I was November, was he December? Or did you have the decency to wait until January?”
“You asshole!” you snap back, poking him in his chest. Wow that’s solid muscle. “After my operation I couldn't remember anything! I swear to god, I don’t know who you are, but there’s no way I would have dated a jerk like you!”
“Oh yeah? See if this jogs your memory, sweetheart.” Before you even know what's happening he's grabbed you up with an arm around your waist and slanted his mouth over yours. And as much as you hate to admit it…you utterly melt under his lips claiming yours, everything else in the world melted away by this pure heat between you, this feeling of belonging singing through your bones while he devours you with lips and teeth and tongue.
You are so fucked.
He is the first to tear away, because you certainly don't have the strength to. Your legs have practically turned to jelly, and even through the tremors running through his arms he supports you while searching your face with a frantic panic in his eyes. Suddenly he releases you like a hot coal, shaking his head in denial, that soft hair swinging to obscure his handsome face in shadow.
He says nothing more, just turns on his heel to flee on those gorgeous long legs. He throws one last haunted look over his shoulder before disappearing around the side of the building.
Shaking like a leaf, you collapse to sit on the low stone wall, hugging yourself against the sudden night’s chill that has settled in your bones.
You don’t know why, exactly…but you start to cry. You cry for something that you know you must have lost, and you have no idea how to put it back right again.
🍇🍇🍇
He should not be here.
It is the resounding thought that runs on repeat through Nelson’s brain.
He cannot do this. He cannot be near you and pretend that he is a normal, well-adjusted human being. Okay, maybe he’s failed at that ruse for a while now…but seeing you like this makes him insane.
He takes the shuttle from the winery back to the hotel where the wedding guests are staying, where he makes a B-line for his room and collapses on the bed, not even bothering to take off his shoes.
He lays like that for hours, staring at a spot on the wall, though not really seeing it. All he sees is an ongoing reel of his memories of you, long buried as a matter of survival, all bubbling up to the surface with the fury of an erupting volcano. He’d never been happier, than that one blissful month he spent with you. He’d never loved anyone more, and he’s never loved anyone since. You were everything, and he knows he should be happy that you’re alive, but in some fucked up way he’s not because it means you could have been together all this time, but he was too much a coward and too big a fool to go looking for you.
And he hates himself for that too.
You opened a world of joy to him that he never even knew existed, then you took it all away in the blink of an eye. There's a part of him that wishes he never knew. Never met you. Never let you enthrall him under the spell of your manic pixie dreamgirl insanity.
If he hadn’t been such a fucking ass, the two of you could have been married now. Settled down together somewhere, maybe with a couple of kids, or maybe just enjoying your lives together in that happy little apartment in Potrero Hill. Morning coffee and sweet kisses and going to sleep every night with your head on his chest... That would have been enough.
The two of you could have had it all.
Nelson has not cried since the day you left him on the bridge a decade ago, but tonight he finally breaks, weeping into his pillow until he is nothing but a wretched wrung-out husk of a man once more. He remembers this feeling…and he wishes he could just close his eyes and die all over again.
Living just hurts too much.
TBC...