Addicted (Ethan Frost #2)(16)

“Thank you for getting my car fixed.”

He nods, his face pained, but he still doesn’t say anything, which only makes my anxiety worse.

“Look, I need to go,” I tell him. “It’s been a long day and I’m hungry and exhausted—”

“Let me take you to dinner.”

“No.” The word is ripped from me before I even know I’m going to say it. No softness to cushion the blow, no polite excuses. Just the loud, irrevocable negative that can’t be mistaken for anything but the denial it is.

“Let me take you home, then. We can stop and get takeout—”

“No!” Again the denial is instinctive.

“Chloe, please—”

He reaches for me and I flinch back instinctively. He freezes, arms outstretched and face tormented. I know I’ve hurt him and I want to apologize, but I can’t bring myself to say the words. Not this time.

“Okay,” he says, dropping his hands to his sides. “We’ll talk here, then.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Ethan.”

“There’s everything to talk about! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Brandon. I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did. I’m sorry that he hurt you. I’m sorry, Chloe. About everything. I’m just so goddamned sorry.”

“I know,” I say, because I do. I was there two nights ago when he tried to end it between us and I was there yesterday morning when he nearly tore Brandon to shreds. “I’m not angry at you.”

“You should be. God knows I’m furious at myself.”

“You shouldn’t be. None of this is your fault.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do mean it. Absolutely.”

And I do. I’ve had over thirty-six hours to think about things, to try to figure out how it’s even possible that the only man I’ve ever trusted, the only man I’ve ever opened up to, is actually the brother of the man who nearly destroyed me all those years ago. I don’t have an answer as to how it happened, as to how fate could be so cruel. But I do know that it’s no one’s fault. That there were no warning signs or coincidences that Ethan and I turned a blind eye to.

In an effort to shed every trace of my old identity, I legally changed my last name as soon as I turned eighteen. There was no way for Ethan to know who I was when he first met me, any more than there was a way for me to know who he was. Brandon is his half-brother on his mother’s side. They might share the same colored eyes, but they don’t share much more than that. They definitely don’t share a last name.
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Should he have told me about Brandon as soon as he found out? Absolutely.

Should he have slept with me two nights ago, knowing that our pasts were forever intertwined in the worst possible way? Absolutely not.

But he did try to break up with me when I went to see him that night. He did try to end it as painlessly as possible. I’m the one who went off the rails, the one who lost it because I couldn’t understand how the man I loved could have done such an abrupt about-face.

No, this mess we are in is no more Ethan’s fault than mine. He didn’t rape me and he didn’t try to cover it up afterward. Holding him responsible for that would make me no better than all those people who blamed me for speaking up about what Brandon did to me.

“Jesus, Chloe, how do you even exist?”

I go for humor, but it falls flat. “Just unlucky, I guess.”

“No.” He reaches for me then, and this time I don’t have the strength to push him away, not even when he lowers his head and rests his forehead against my own. “There’s nothing unlucky about you.”

I’m the one who laughs then, a harsh sound that comes from deep inside me. That’s much more of a sob than it is an expression of amusement.

“Let me take you home,” he whispers, his breath hot against my cheek. “I’ll run you a bath, cook you dinner. Then we can talk—”

“I already told you.” From somewhere I find the strength to push him away. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

“We have everything to talk about.” His fingers tighten on my arms, not enough to cause pain but definitely enough for me to sense his desperation. The same desperation that I spent most of yesterday trying to come to terms with myself.

“No. We really don’t.” From somewhere I find the strength to step back, to shake him off. “It’s never going to work between us. It can’t. We’re over before we ever really had a chance to begin.”

“Don’t say that, Chloe. It isn’t true. I won’t let it be true.”

“Even your formidable will can’t change what is, Ethan. No matter how much you want to.”

“That’s bullshit!” The words explode from him, loud and harsh and vicious in their intensity.

“It isn’t.”

“It is!” He grabs me again, pulls me close, and though there’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to melt against him, I can’t. Because he feels different now that I know. We feel different and I’m smart enough to figure out that I’m never going to get past that.

“I know that you still love me. I can see it in your face. I can hear it in the way your breathing stutters when I touch you.” He brings a hand between us, rests it on my chest. “I can feel it in the way your heart is beating way too fast, even now. I won’t let you walk away from that.”