He probably wanted to get the awkwardness out of the way so that they could coexist in Silver Point in relative harmony, but did she really want that conversation? She’d thought she did, but now she wasn’t sure.

“You don’t have to feel awkward about me being here, Nate. The thing between us was a long time ago.” They’d promised each other forever, but it turned out that his idea of forever had been a lot shorter than hers.

And now with the benefit of time, age and experience, she saw how naive they’d both been. How different the world looked when you were an adult.

“Mind your step here, the path is uneven.” He held out his hand but she ignored it and stepped carefully over the hole in the ground he’d indicated.

She didn’t want to hold his hand. She’d made herself a few promises when she’d been smoothing color onto her cheeks in her bathroom and trying to create a “knockout effortless” look as Ashley called it. She’d promised herself that she wasn’t going to talk about anything serious, and she definitely wasn’t going to touch him.

It was harder than she’d thought it would be. This new Nate was unfamiliar and yet at the same time achingly familiar. His eyes still crinkled at the corners when he smiled. He had the same way of laughing, the same way of looking at her when she was talking.

Unsettled, she kept her eyes fixed on the long blue horizon.

“Greg and Mel have a beautiful home. And Eden is so like Mel.”

Nate laughed. “Don’t tell either of them that if you want to stay alive.”

“They clash?” She thought about what she knew about Mel, and the limited time she’d been able to observe Eden. “Yes, I can see how they would. They both say what they think.”

“Fortunately they have Greg to step between them when it becomes necessary. Mel has strong views about what she should be doing with her life. She’s raised Eden to think for herself and be independent—”

“And now she’s doing that, and Mel doesn’t like the outcome? It must be hard, worrying about your child who is no longer a child.”

He glanced at her. “That’s the funny thing about being on the edge of adulthood, isn’t it? You think you know everything. You think you’re sure and you have the whole world figured out. No one can tell you anything, and anyway, what do they know? And by the time you realize you didn’t have it all figured out, and there was plenty you didn’t know, it’s too late to fix it and you just have to keep going and make the best of things.”

Was he talking about his own life or hers? Or neither?