Addicted (Ethan Frost #2)(13)

“So, I guess I’m heading back upstairs,” Tori says after a minute. “Unless you need me for something?”

“No. I’m good. Thanks, Tor.”

“No problem. Knock him dead, Chlo.”

“I’m not even going to see him today,” I protest.
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She smiles wryly. “Of course you’re not.”

“I’m not.” I can’t. Just the thought of seeing Ethan makes me shaky. I may not be angry at him, but that’s a far cry from wanting to see him. And I don’t. I really don’t. Not now, when all I can see is Brandon’s mocking grin. When all I can hear is him calling Ethan his brother. His brother.

Maybe it’s cowardly, maybe it’s self-preservation. To be honest, I don’t really care. All I want to do is get through the day without any more casualties.

Surely that’s not too much to ask.

Except obviously, it is. Because as I move to set my briefcase on the passenger seat, I see a thick, cream envelope on the passenger side floorboard. It’s facedown, but I don’t need to see the Frost Industries return address to recognize Ethan’s stationery. He’s sent me so many letters and packages over the last few weeks—all on or accompanied by official company letterhead—that I’m pretty sure I’d recognize it in my sleep.

For a second, I’m tempted to take the coward’s way out. To leave the envelope where it lies and pretend I never saw it.

Except I’ve never been a coward. And though there’s a part of me that thinks there’s no excuse Ethan can make, no story he can tell, that will make what happened yesterday okay, there’s another part of me that wants him to try. That wants to see what he has to say.

It’s a double-edged sword, one I’m afraid I don’t have the skill—or the heart—to keep balanced on. And yet, even knowing how dangerous it is to my own mental health, I reach for the envelope.

For long seconds, I just hold it in my hands, watching it like I expect it to spontaneously combust. When it doesn’t, I eventually lift it to my nose and breathe in the elusive, barely there scent of it.

Like rain on a sunny, summer day.

Like blueberries and warm, sweet maple syrup.

It smells like Ethan and the truth of that nearly brings me to my knees.

Again, I almost set the envelope aside unopened. Again, I think about shredding it, burning it, throwing it away whole. About doing anything and everything to it but the one thing Ethan intended—opening it.

And yet, knowing Ethan wrote whatever is in there exclusively for me, makes it impossible for me to do anything but run my fingertips along the envelope seams in an effort to pry it open.

Eventually I get it open and the first thing that falls out is a picture of the two of us.

Just looking at it gets the tears burning behind my eyes all over again, but I clear my throat, blink several times. I’ve cried too much in the last twenty-four hours and I’m not going to do it anymore. Not now. Not today.

It’s hard though, very hard, because I remember the day this picture was taken. It was right at the beginning, right after Ethan and I first met. It was a charity event on the beach benefiting the environment and I’d been trying, hopelessly I might add, to build a sand castle. Ethan had come around and—much to my chagrin—sat down next to me. Within half an hour, we’d built one of the most impressive sand castles on the beach. When one of the judges came by, she’d given us a perfect score and that’s the moment this picture had been taken, Ethan’s head and mine tilted backward with laughter as we stand over our sand castle and the tide slowly rolls in.

It had been a good night, one of the first nights we spent time together. I had tried so hard to keep Ethan at arm’s length, but I know that this is one of those times that I can point to and say that this place, this moment, is when I began to really fall for Ethan.

Though I know I should probably throw the picture away, I shove it in my purse instead. Then I pull out the only other thing in the envelope, a folded letter that seems to actually be burning my fingertips.

For long seconds, I just sit there with the letter in my hands, eyes squeezed shut and body shaking. Part of me is dying to open it, dying to know what Ethan has to say. But another part of me is terrified of what I’ll find, terrified of what his words will do to me. I’m barely hanging on as it is. The slightest thing—good or bad—might very well send me over the edge.

In the end, though, I don’t have a choice. Knowing what Ethan wrote is a compulsion within me, one I have no shot at not obeying. With a deep breath, I unfold the paper, smooth my fingers over the creases. And then I start to read.

Dear Chloe,

After everything that has happened, I know I don’t deserve the chance to speak to you, let alone the chance to try to talk to you about the past—and the present. And yet I’m asking you for just that, for the opportunity to show you how much I love you and how sorry I am that I didn’t tell you about Brandon the second I found out about him and how I’d do everything differently if I could just turn back the clock.

But I can’t turn back time, can’t change all the mistakes that I’ve made. All I can do is move on from here, loving you. And I do, Chloe, more than I ever dreamed it was possible to love another person. This picture is one of the few we’ve taken together, and it’s my favorite, because we took it at the very beginning of our relationship when almost everything between us was just a possibility, just a maybe. I knew even then that I wanted you, that I would do anything to have you, but I also knew that you didn’t feel the same. Not then. Not yet.