Addicted (Ethan Frost #2)(9)

She does the same thing and he calls back a third time. Then a fourth time. And a fifth.

Each time he calls sobers me up a little more, makes me feel a little worse.

The sixth time the phone rings, I reach for it. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him, but this can’t go on. I won’t make it if he keeps calling like this, keeps making me think about him when all I want to do is forget. Forget Brandon and my parents, forget the rape and everything that came after it. Forget Ethan and everything he’s meant to me. Everything he’s done for me.

But Tori shakes her head, refuses to give me the phone. Instead, she answers herself. Without giving Ethan a chance to so much as say hello, she launches into him.

“Hey, dickhead, since it’s obvious you can’t take a hint, let me spell it out for you. Chloe doesn’t want to talk to you right now and she sure as shit doesn’t want to listen to whatever you have to say. If that changes, I promise you’ll be the first to know. But until it does, stop f*cking calling!”

She hangs up with a flourish, then turns the phone off so that I don’t have to worry about him calling back—or about him not calling back, however this thing is going to play out.

“Have another drink,” Tori says, forcing one into my hand.

“No—”

“Just one more,” she orders. “Trust me, after all that, you look like you need it.”

I feel like I need it, too. So I take it. And one more after that.

The room starts spinning and I close my eyes, falling headlong into the darkness.



I wake up hours later with my head in a vise and a desert in my mouth. It takes a few moments for me to figure out where I am and what’s going on. Only moments, but those tiny spaces in time are the best ones of my whole day. Because for those moments, I don’t remember. Anything. For those moments, everything is all right.

Sure, my head hurts and my stomach is churning, but everything else is okay. There’s no pain, no rage, no fear. Nothing but my love for Ethan and the knowledge that my world is as it should be. As I’ve always wanted it to be.

And then it all comes flooding back. Not in a trickle, with little drops of information registering on me slowly. No, it comes back in a flood, in a hurricane of regret that whips me into a frenzy and has me clenching my fists and curling into myself in an effort to keep myself in one piece.

“Tori?” I manage to croak out as I shove myself into a sitting position. My hair is in my eyes and I push the long, random curls out of my face before climbing shakily to my feet. I need Tylenol. I need to vomit. I need … something.

I need something I can’t have.

“Tori?” I call again, but she still doesn’t answer.

My mouth is so dry that just saying her name hurts, so I drag myself up and across the room to the kitchen. I pour myself a glass of water, and drink it in three thirsty gulps. That’s when my eyes fall on the note written in Tori’s elaborate scrawl.

Out of tequila. Gone to get some more.

Yeah, because that’s definitely what we need right now. More tequila.

Then again, blacking out was nice. It’s the waking up that hurts like a bitch.

Very deliberately, I walk to the refrigerator and pull the door open. I study the contents carefully, as if my life depends on it. I examine each apple, each carton of yogurt, each stalk of celery as if it’s the most important thing in the world. Because if I’m thinking about the tiny bruise on the side of one of the apples, then I’m not thinking about my own bruises. I’m not thinking about Ethan or Brandon or how the hell I’m supposed to get myself out of the mess my oh-so-carefully plotted life has so quickly become.

It works, too. When I close the fridge, I’m thinking of nothing more serious than the grapes in my right hand and the piece of string cheese in my left. At least until I catch sight of the blender sitting on the counter next to the sink.
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The blender.

Ethan’s blender.

The blender that started this whole goddamned thing.

The grapes fall uselessly to the floor as I launch myself across the kitchen. Before I can even form the thought, I’m ripping the blender carafe out of its stand and slamming it, side first, into the granite countertop as hard as I can.

It doesn’t break so I slam it again. And again. And again. Against the counter, the sink, even the floor, but the damn thing is indestructible.

Somehow that knowledge only makes me angrier. My relationship is broken, my heart is broken, I’m broken, and this goddamned blender is still in one piece. I can’t stand it. I can’t f*cking stand it.

Desperate now, and more than a little crazed, I reach into the junk drawer where Tori keeps a bunch of stuff she doesn’t know what else to do with. There’s a hammer in there, just like I remember, and I grab it. I barely remember to shut the drawer before I’m whacking away at the damn blender, determined to break it into as many pieces as I can.

It’s the fourth blow that does it, the claw of the hammer finally cracking the Plexiglas of the carafe and spreading out in a spiderweb design. I watch the crack spread for a second, fascinated by the macabre beauty of the thing, though I don’t know why. And then I’m slamming the hammer into the weakened spot as hard as I can, smashing the carafe into a thousand inconsequential bits.

It’s not enough. Not nearly enough to combat the rage inside of me. I grab the base next, start pounding away at the actual machinery of the blender. It’s not as sturdy as the carafe—less likely to be dropped, I suppose—so it only takes a minute or two for me to break through the casing to the guts of the machine. I yank at the electronics with the hammer’s claw, then get in there with my bare hands and rip the thing to pieces.