Addicted(62)

He’s not like us, Chloe.

People with that much money don’t think the same way we do.

You’re kidding yourself if you think Ethan Frost won’t sell you out the first time his family needs him to.

I hadn’t believed him, had instead put all my faith in Ethan. And yet it turns out he’s throwing fund-raising events for his brother’s campaign. He is actively helping to get a man elected who he knows is guilty of rape and abusing power.

And for what? Government funding for Frost Industries research? A powerful ally in Congress for biomedical research and veterans’ affairs?

It doesn’t make sense to me. It just doesn’t make sense. Brandon raped me. He raped me and God knows how many other girls he did that to and Ethan is helping him get elected? After their fight? After every terrible thing he said about his brother?

It doesn’t make sense.

The rich are different than us.

Ethan’s different than us.

Suddenly, I can’t breathe. I stumble back from the table, rip my earbuds from my ears. The story is almost over but I can’t stand to hear one more minute—one more second—about Brandon’s run for Congress and the very promising career this young, handsome politician from Boston has in front of him.

“Hey, Chloe! You okay?” Zayn climbs to his feet as well, a concerned look on his face as he rests a supportive hand on my shoulder. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”

I feel like I’m going to pass out. Or, more accurately, like the top of my head is going to blow off right here in the middle of this cafeteria.

Ethan wouldn’t do this, I tell myself. He wouldn’t betray me like that.

But what if he doesn’t consider it betrayal? What if it’s just business to him? Or worse, just family?

On the screen, I watch as Brandon wraps one arm around his mother’s waist and the other around Ethan’s shoulders. He’s beaming at the camera, they all are, and though I can’t read lips, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the joyous words pouring out of Ethan’s mouth are Victory in 2014.

All of a sudden, the strawberry smoothie I just drank isn’t sitting too happily in my stomach. I make a mad dash for the restroom, barely making it into a stall before I end up puking out every last drop of that goddamn smoothie.





Chapter Sixteen


It takes me a while to figure out what I want to do, how I want to handle this.

There’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to storm up to Ethan’s office right now—I know he’ll see me—and demand an explanation for the story I just saw.




Another part is screaming that this is the last straw, that I need to race back to Ethan’s house and strip it of every last trace of my existence.

And still another part wants to call Ethan, to beg him to come to me and hold me and tell me that I’ve misunderstood … everything. That the story isn’t true. That he didn’t raise money for Brandon. That he isn’t backing his brother’s candidacy. That he didn’t sell me out because of his brother’s political aspirations. Because of his father’s terrible death.

In the end, though, I do none of those things. Instead, I go back to work and finish out my day, researching the newest crop of court cases on intellectual property mergers that I’ve been assigned to cull through.

It’s a long afternoon, and an even more interminable evening as I wait for Ethan to get home from a business dinner that is running late. This morning he’d asked me if I wanted to go with him and I’d declined because I don’t have anything to wear. I didn’t tell him that because he would run out and buy me a whole closet full of expensive clothes, which is the last thing I want when I’m still trying to get over the cost of my belly chain.

Now I’m even more grateful that I turned him down, since the idea of sitting in a restaurant and making small talk with his business associates is the absolute last thing I want to be doing. Not when it’s taking every ounce of self-control I have not to freak out, not to violate Ethan’s trust and search the house for proof of his duplicity. Not to walk away and never look back.

Part of me wonders if I even could. I thought about doing it this afternoon, right after I saw the broadcast, and I’m thinking about doing it now, as I sit here on Ethan’s patio, nursing a glass of wine and staring up at the midnight sky. The wind is blowing pretty hard and I can smell just a hint of smoke in the air gusting by. It’s a by-product of the forest fire that’s raging about fifteen miles away from here and I can’t help wondering how much worse the fire is going to get before it gets better.