Coldhearted Boss(62)
“I don’t have any boots,” Camille protests weakly.
Taylor’s gaze practically flays her. “Well then you can just stay back and sleep in. How’s that?”
“Sounds good!” Isla answers for me.
She’s the only one at the table in good spirits. In fact, she’s smiling like a fool, asking Brody to pass her the potato salad.
It takes the second half of the meal to recover the mood. Even then, I can feel my friends glancing back and forth between Taylor and me, waiting to see when round two will begin.
As soon as we’re done eating, Taylor stands and makes excuses so she can head to bed even though it’s still early.
Everyone protests, Tanner most of all. “C’mon, the night’s young. I promise to protect you if Ethan decides to go all caveman again.”
There are a few quiet laughs as everyone looks to me. It’s clear I should be the one inviting Taylor to stay since I’m the one who made her feel so uncomfortable in the first place.
Instead, I raise my beer. “Good night.”
Taylor’s gaze is full of amber fire when she glares at me before turning and storming out of the room.
“Well good job, big brother, you successfully scared her off. Now what are you going to do? Pick a fight with a baby bunny? Maybe harass a little fawn?”
We stay in the mess hall as night falls, swapping our dinner plates for a deck of cards. The atmosphere isn’t so fraught with tension now that Taylor’s gone, but still, no one tries to drag me out of my surly mood, which is just as well because they wouldn’t succeed. We pair up and play cards well past everyone’s bedtime. Having Camille as a partner is more ideal than I first thought it would be because having to carry the team means I’m distracted for a few hours, which is exactly what I needed. Brody and Liv are the first to peel off. Camille is next. Then Jace and Alice. Tanner volunteers to walk Isla back to the cabin and I’m left there to toss the beer cans in the recycling bin and close up the snacks.
I have no idea what time it is when I’m done. I could collapse on the spot, but then I realize grumpily that everything I need is back in the cabin, a toothbrush being the top priority. I carry a lantern out into the woods and use it to light the path back to the cabin, careful to skip the stair that creaks on my way up to the porch. At the door, I set the lantern down so it casts just enough light into the cabin that I can see where I’m stepping but not so much that I’ll wake anybody up.
Inside, I spot Taylor asleep on the ground and frown as I sweep my gaze up to her bunk, finding Camille dozing peacefully beneath a black silk sleep mask.
If it wouldn’t cause a scene, I’d wake her up and demand she get out of Taylor’s bed. It’s a silly impulse, and yet something in me stirs when I glance back down to Taylor there on the ground. She has a blanket underneath her, but that’s hardly enough to soften the wood floor. She shivers in her sleep and rolls over, tugging up the thin sheet covering her, but then her feet peek out at the bottom.
I know it’s her own damn fault for conceding her bunk to Camille in the first place, but I still yank a sweatshirt out of the dresser drawer and use it to cover the bottom half of her legs.
My feelings toward Taylor are nothing short of a conundrum. Even now, I know if she woke up, she’d fling off my sweatshirt and claim she doesn’t need it, and I wouldn’t blame her. Not after the curt goodbye I offered her at dinner.
I know I’m behaving like an ass, and I wish I could go back to the version of myself I was before Taylor. I can’t remember ever having a difficult time reining in my emotions around a woman. If anything, my issue was having any emotions to rein in.
If you asked any of my past girlfriends if I was coldhearted, they would have laughed and said, Ethan? Ethan was perfectly nice.
And I was.
Our relationships didn’t fizzle because of my inability to treat them well. They fizzled for all the other reasons: lost interest, stagnant feelings, incompatibility.
Taylor and I? We’d have entirely different issues…starting with her smart mouth.
In the beginning, I hated her for what she did to me. I painted her out as a monster and never gave her the chance to prove otherwise. Any time she was vulnerable, I assumed she was pretending, acting like a damsel in distress to serve her own malicious intent. Each time another man fell over himself trying to please her, I figured it was because she craved the attention.
It occurs to me now that painting her in that light was a defense mechanism, my way to heal a bruised ego. I got hurt and wanted to safeguard against it happening again, so I made her small, because otherwise, I’d be a simpering fool, chasing after the woman who lured me into a bathroom so she could steal my wallet. It seemed pathetic to forgive her so easily for her transgressions, and yet now I realize, somewhere along the way, I did forgive her. Deep down, I know she’s just a young woman with few options who was pushed into a corner, one who made a mistake and has more than atoned for it.
In fact, I don’t just forgive her for what she’s done; I trust her. I trust that she’s here for the right reasons, that deep down she’s not malicious or cruel. She’s a fighter. A survivor. Someone I’ve actually come to admire.
Our game of tit for tat these last few weeks was never truly about mutual hatred. We’ve been needling each other because we both secretly like it, because the button-pushing banter and teasing remarks are the only ways we’ve allowed ourselves to reveal our true feelings.