Broken Juliet(21)

“Yeah, but you could have gotten therapy when we were together, couldn’t you?”

“Technically, yes. But the thought of it scared the crap out of me, and we both know that back then, I was ruled by fear.”

“Then how did you decide you weren’t scared anymore?”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell you this story, but I guess you deserve to know.”

“What story?” I break out in goose bumps, certain I’m not going to like what I hear.

He grabs my hand and pushes it under his shirt. On the left side of his rib cage, my fingers graze a clump of scar tissue. I’d noticed it when we ran our love scenes, but I was always too distracted by his kisses to find out more.

I lift his shirt and lean over to get a better look. “What is that?”

He strokes my forearm as I continue to graze the rough skin. “That’s where a tube was shoved into my lung to drain out the blood that was drowning me.”

I look up at him and frown.

“And there’s this…” He takes my hand and lifts it to his head. At the back, there’s another patch of raised skin. “That was where my head smashed into a tree. Fourteen stitches.”

Bile rises in my throat. “Ethan, what the hell…?”

He takes my hand and plays with my fingers. “After I left you in senior year, I hit my low point in France. The show was a hit, and I was getting great reviews, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I felt so goddamn guilty about failing you. Again. I already told you I was drinking a lot. Getting into fights.”

I nod.

“Well, after our season, we had a week off before we moved on to Italy. The rest of the cast was going to do a tour of the wineries, but I couldn’t cope with being a miserable bastard around them, so I hired a motorbike and just … left. Traveled aimlessly around southern France, thinking I had the world monopoly on self-loathing. Driving drunk, driving too fast, taking crazy risks. I was a f*cking mess. I don’t think I had a death wish, but deep down…” He looks at me. “I guess I wanted to hurt myself more than I’d hurt you.”

“Ethan…”

He shakes his head. “Pathetic, right? Well, one night, after hitting a French pub, I decided to make a play for the Italian border. It had been raining. Too much alcohol, too much speed, zero self-esteem. I took a curve too fast and slammed into the guardrail. My bike went cartwheeling across the road as I flew over the rail and crashed down a steep embankment. Pretty sure I hit every damn tree on the way down. By the time I’d reached the bottom, my helmet was cracked, my leather jacket was shredded, and it felt like someone had shoved a dagger into my ribs.”

“Oh, God…”

“I lay there for a while, just trying to breathe. When I moved, I was hit with so much pain, I almost passed out. I managed to pull off my helmet, but that was it. There was pain in my shoulder, my wrist, my chest. I could feel blood running down my leg.”

“What did you do?”

He shrugs. “I tried to figure out if I was dying. And when I seriously thought I was, I took a moment to try and figure out if that was a bad thing.”

“Ethan…”

I take his hand and he lets out a shaky breath. “It’s weird, you know, facing your own mortality. People talk about their life flashing in front of their eyes, but I didn’t get that. All I got were flashes of you. They were so vivid, it was like I could reach out and touch you. I wondered how you’d react if I died. Would you mourn me? Or would you be happy I’d never hurt you again?”

As I listen, anxiety begins to coil in my chest. Thinking about him dying makes my throat close up.

He strokes my face. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“How could you think I wouldn’t mourn you?”

“I was in a dark place. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“God, Ethan, if you’d died…” I can’t finish the thought, let alone the sentence. Even at the height of my enmity, I couldn’t imagine living in a world without Ethan. The mere concept was distressing beyond words. “Okay, tell me what happened next before I freak out about the death thing.”

He wraps his arm around me and pulls me in to his side. “I don’t know how long I was lying at the bottom of that hill. Most of the night, at least. I slipped in and out of consciousness, and as time passed, I realized no one was going to find me down there. Unless I did something, I was going to die. I had to get back to the road.”

“But your injuries…”

“Yeah, I found out later that I had a dislocated shoulder, a fractured wrist, three broken ribs, and a punctured lung, as well as a concussion and multiple lacerations.”

“Oh my God! How did you even move?”

“Willpower. Stubborness. The thing is, I knew that climbing up that hill was going to be the most painful thing I’d ever done, but it was necessary. I had to survive, because if I didn’t, I could never get you to forgive me, and that was not f*cking acceptable.”

He touches my face, soft and reverent. “So, I climbed. Every step made me scream in agony, but I kept moving, one foot in front of the other. By the time I reached the top, I was sure I’d died and gone to hell. The pain was blinding. I managed to crawl over the guardrail before collapsing on the road.”