The Complete Irreparable Boxed Set: Irreparable #1-2

by Sam Mariano

  It wasn’t. Willow knew that, but she figured she would humor her mother—it was only one night, after all. Hopefully it would be a good one.

  As she suspected, that was not to be.

  Yes, she was fine with socializing again, but then a couple of the guys wanted to bring some girl she didn’t know, and then someone else was inviting this other guy she didn’t know, and as soon as there were strangers in her house, Willow was instantly uncomfortable.

  She did not trust strangers. Not even teenage ones.

  It didn’t take long before some guy dressed in a wife-beater, saggy pants, and a backward baseball cap sat on the couch beside her—clearly he was dressed as a douchebag for Halloween—and said, “So, are you like the only single girl here?”

  Giving him her most withering glare, she felt some satisfaction when he held up his hands in surrender, got up, and left her alone.

  Since her party had been overtaken, Willow snuck up to her room as soon as she could and shut herself inside, pulling her witch’s hat off and tossing it on the bed before flopping down beside it.

  Yawning, she wished she could just curl up in bed and take a nap, but she knew her prolonged absence would be noticed.

  She pulled out her phone, checking the time, and wondered if it would be okay to text Ethan. Usually it seemed to be, but she didn’t understand why he never seemed worried about getting text messages at home, especially in the evening.

  Then again, maybe getting calls after nine wasn’t so odd in his line of work.

  “Guess who Justin dressed up as?” she finally sent.

  A moment later, he answered, “I don’t know who Justin is.”

  “The fucking kid.”

  “Oh, him. A bodybuilder.”

  Cracking a smile, she said, “Ethan Wilde, PI!”

  “Oh, but I don’t like look a PI,” he answered.

  “That’s true, you don’t even wear a trench coat.”

  A minute passed with no response, then it showed him typing. “What are you wearing?”

  Her eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  “For a costume!” he added quickly.

  She made a little winking face and sent back, “Nothing.”

  “That’s mean.”

  “JK. I’m a witch.”

  Then, since she had a camera at her disposal, she hopped off the bed and went into the bathroom to take a mirror selfie in her admittedly sexy purple and black witch costume. It did amazing things for her cleavage.

  After he saw it, he replied, “How many guys have asked you if you want a ride on their broomstick?”

  Laughing out loud, she said, “You’re the first, congratulations!” Then she added, “Some strange guy was about to hit on me, but apparently only because I’m the only single girl here.”

  “Excellent strategy,” he replied.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Sure you didn’t.”

  There was a knock at her door and she made her way out of the bathroom just as Ashlynn opened up the door.

  “There you are,” she said. “What are you doing up here?”

  The phone was still in her hand, which made her feel weirdly guilty, but Willow merely shrugged. “I had to go to the bathroom. Someone was in the other one.”

  Grabbing her hat off the bed, she placed it back on her head and followed Ashlynn out of her room, pulling the door closed behind her.

  ---

  “I think we should have a date night.”

  Ethan was in his office, very much not expecting Amanda to appear in the doorway.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “We can do that.”

  “Tonight. Let’s go to dinner—we can go into the city.”

  “We don’t have a sitter,” he said, brow furrowing.

  “I called Brandi, she’s free.” Offering up a smile, she said, “Come on, it’ll be fun and impulsive. We haven’t been out alone since before Caleb was born.”

  “You know I don’t like Brandi.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “Brandi’s fine, you just don’t want to go out. Come on, I’m going to go get dressed while you finish up in here.”

  Even though he didn’t like the babysitter, he agreed. It was probably a good idea, and he was actually a little surprised he hadn’t thought of it himself. Although… she might try to get him to talk at dinner. It could be a trick.

  Oh well, he could evade that, no problem.

  Closing his email, he opened up his desk drawer and pulled out a file, then spun around and grabbed a few papers off the printer tray, stacking them neatly and pushing them inside the folder.

  His cell phone was lying on the desk and it lit up just before he looked at it.

  It was Willow. “I want Chinese food!!”

  Smiling slightly, he grabbed the phone and sent back, “Go get some.”

  “Maybe I should. Are you doing anything?”

  Faltering a little, he stared at the phone for a few seconds, then he impulsively closed the message and put the phone back on the desk.

  A few minutes later, after he had everything filed away, he touched his phone and saw a message, a couple minutes old. “Busy?”

  He sent back simply, “Yeah, sorry.”

  “No problem. Working?”

  Again, he stared at the damn phone. He should just say yes, that would be easiest. The truth couldn’t be a good idea, right?

  Or maybe it was.

  Maybe it was exactly the right answer.

  His Willow problem had evolved; initially it had been so much worse because he had hurt her, but it seemed like more of an affair at that point… and that was a much simpler fix.

  Maybe he could get away with coming halfway clean, after all. Willow had let him off the hook time and again, and he really didn’t think about it a lot anymore since she had proven such an overall distraction… so maybe that was the ticket.

  If he was just honest with Amanda about that, she would be pissed at him, yes, but maybe then he wouldn’t feel so shitty and secretive all the time.

  Maybe it was time to cut Willow loose. He had never intended for that to turn into a relationship to begin with, he’d only wanted to help her.

  Part of him hated that idea—he would miss Willow if he never heard from her again. He would also hate to hurt her feelings again, since it seemed like he had before.

  Before he could talk himself out of it, he quickly typed, “Date night.”

  The phone showed that she read the message, but no matter how many minutes he sat there staring at it, no message was typed back.

  He eventually regretted sending it. If he would have regretted it fast enough, maybe he could have turned it into a joke or something, but… he had not.

  Muttering a curse at himself, he finally gave up waiting for a response—he wasn’t sure why he expected one—and shoved his cell phone in his pocket, going out to spend a little time with the kids before the sitter got there.

  ---

  Ethan was not surprised when, the day after his date text, he checked Willow’s page and saw a picture of her with a new addition to her parade of horny teenage guys. He told himself that was a good sign, she was moving on, he was moving on—although he had not come clean to Amanda, despite the golden opportunity to do so—and the situation was finally resolving itself.

  That seemed to be the case, too. She didn’t text him again after he sent that one, and all night he had checked his phone to make sure.

  Things at home did not magically return to normal. There was no discernible difference, with one exception: his dreams about Willow came back.

  Not the good ones. Not the real memories of the night at the hotel, or the imaginary ones about fucking her in the Jacuzzi, but the vivid, tear-filled, unpleasant ones from that one night in that goddamn house with those assholes crowded around, watching him hurt her.

  When he woke up, he was surly as hell. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had one like that, and when he woke up with a fucking hard-on, i
t soured his mood for the whole day.

  That bullshit was supposed to be over.

  He didn’t even check her accounts that day. He felt too shitty to look at her face, even through a computer screen.

  Finally, right before bed, he decided to try to bait his mind—if he was going to have sex dreams about Willow, he would at least like to remember something consensual, so he went to look for the picture of her in the witch costume.

  Then he noticed something he hadn’t been paying attention to before—game posts. In the middle of the night. That previous night, from around 1:30 to 4:15 she had been awake playing some game, posting requests that were all in a little game box that he hadn’t noticed before because he was so busy watching for pictures like an asshole.

  What a fucking idiot.

  Scrolling back, he saw the posts had been like that several nights—not all in a row, she skipped a day or two now and then, and it would only go back to the most recent 100 requests, so if she had been doing it for longer, there was no record.

  Willow wasn’t sleeping.

  Sinking back into his chair, he felt like all of the progress he thought they made had been wiped away.

  Had she been having the dreams all along? And if she was, frankly, how the hell was she able to talk to him?

  Sitting forward, he went back to the recent pictures she had posted, but none were up close enough so that he could see if she had circles under her eyes.

  Maybe he hadn’t helped her with a damn thing, and he was just kidding himself. Maybe she was just letting him think that because she was the nicest person in the entire world.

  Picking up his phone, he scrolled through his messages before remembering that he had deleted the whole thread. Every trace of her.

  What a dickhead he was. There he was, worrying about an affair, and she was probably still suffering from brutal memories in the middle of the night.

  Opening up a new message, he typed in her phone number and then hovered, trying to figure out what to say. If he asked if she was okay, she would just assure him that she was fine.

  After debating for a few minutes, he finally came up with, “I could sure use some Chinese right now…”

  The message didn’t immediately register as read, so he put it down and waited. A few minutes passed without response, so he opened his computer and decided to check his email one more time, which led to three other things he hadn’t planned on doing.

  Suddenly a half hour had passed and still no response. That was unusual for her, so he checked the message again… and saw that she had read the message twenty minutes earlier.

  No response.

  That surprised him for a minute, but then when he thought about it with his new theories about her sleeping habits, he realized maybe it shouldn’t.

  Why had he stopped checking on her when things had turned sexual? What a stupid thing to do.

  Well, no, actually, she had been the one to dip out, hadn’t she? The morning after the hotel, he had contacted her, but she ignored him. Then he didn’t see or talk to her again until the grocery store, then Halloween, which he assumed was because she saw him at the grocery store.

  He was so confused.

  Figuring he would wait a little while longer just in case she changed her mind, he lost close to an hour doing absolutely nothing on the internet, and would have wasted more time if not for Amanda coming to the door with the cordless phone and telling him he had a call.

  Everything froze for a split second. Willow wouldn’t actually call his house, would she? How would she have even gotten the phone number? But nobody called the house for him, and Amanda sounded vaguely irritated.

  Preparing to open the door to an understandably furious woman, he was surprised when Amanda merely handed him the phone and turned to walk back down the hall.

  His shoulders went slack in relief and he put the phone to his ear. “Hello.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you—did you change your fucking number?”

  Frowning, Ethan asked, “Who is this?”

  “It’s fucking Tito, man, who you think?”

  That was so much worse than what he had prepared for.

  "What the hell are you doing calling my house phone?" Ethan demanded in a furious whisper. "How did you get this fucking number?"

  "I need to talk to you, man. I'm in a real bad scrape."

  Amanda had stopped at the end of the hall and turned around, walking back in his direction. Although she didn’t typically attempt to eavesdrop, that was the time she just stood there watching him.

  "I can't talk right now. Don't call me at this number again, I will call you back on a different line."

  When he hangs up, Amanda frowns. "Who was that?"

  "Nobody," he muttered.

  “Nobody? Do you usually swear at nobody? Who shouldn’t be calling you at home?”

  “Nobody should be calling me at home, that’s why I have three fucking cell phones,” he stated irritably.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, her brow furrowing even more in concern. “Who was that man, Ethan?”

  “I…” He shook his head, then realized he hadn’t taken Tito’s number. The chances of him having the same phone probably weren’t very good. Cursing again, he tried to see if he called from a listed number, but of course he hadn’t.

  Ethan shook his head. “I need to get a new job.”

  She laughed a little. “No kidding.”

  Apparently satisfied that it was a client, Amanda turned and headed back down the hall while Ethan went back to his office, Willow’s problems all but forgotten.

  Caleb was sleeping peacefully on his chest, and as much as Ethan wanted to leave him there, he also needed to pee really badly.

  Eventually, his bladder won out and he got to his feet, shushing and swaying as he walked to put the baby back to sleep when he started to flail.

  By the time he got to the bedroom, Caleb was asleep again, so he put him down in the crib, turned on the monitor, and made for the bathroom.

  As he was washing his hands, he felt his pocket buzzing. Quickly drying them off, he pulled his phone out and saw that Willow was calling him.

  That was unusual—and she had never answered his text about the Chinese food, so he thought she didn’t want to talk to him—so he frowned as he slid his finger across the screen and put the phone to his ear.

  “Hello?” he answered, not bothering to mask his surprise.

  “Hey,” she returned, as casually as if she called him every day.

  Hoping to find out why she called without asking, he asked, “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, everything’s… fine.”

  “Good,” he said inanely, then waited.

  Sighing audibly, she said, “So, I’m just going to throw this out there… I’m home by myself, I will be for several hours, but a girl’s gotta eat, so I’m making dinner. I made way too much, and… I don’t know, I thought I’d see if maybe you want to come over?”

  “To your house?” he reiterated.

  “Yes. My brother’s not home and my parents are in Chicago, nobody will know you were here.”

  The correct response was no. He didn’t know why when he opened his mouth, what spilled out was a teasing, “I don’t think all your boyfriends would like that.”

  She laughed, and he smiled at the sound. “All of my boyfriends? Have you been stalking me, Ethan?”

  “You should expect as much given my line of work,” he returned lightly.

  “That’s adorable,” she stated. “Unfounded, but absolutely adorable. Are you coming over or what?”

  “I… I really shouldn’t.”

  “Okay,” she said brightly. “Well, I just thought I’d ask.”

  He hadn’t expected that—didn’t know why he hadn’t expected that—but her easy acceptance made him realize he wanted to go. Chuckling, he said, “Well, if you’re gonna twist my arm like that…”

  “It’s no big deal,” she informed him, sweet as honey. �
�I can just invite my army of boyfriends over to help me eat it all.”

  A snort escaped before he could catch it. “Your army of boyfriends, huh?”

  “Well, the ones on active duty, of course. Not the reserves.”

  “You have reserves, too?” he asked, playing along.

  “Of course. I’m a girl—we all have reserves.”

  “Well, don’t I feel special. Am I one of your reserves?”

  “Why do you assume I count you among the ranks at all?” she teased.

  “Oh, I see how you are. That’s cold,” he replied, despite his grin.

  “Hey, if you wanna stay in the reserves, you have to at least talk to me once in a while, put in a little effort.”

  He knew that game—she was pretending to be joking, saying it all light and playful, but she was not joking. Not all the way, at least.

  “Hey, I just asked you out for Chinese not that long ago, I never heard back.”

  “Aw, yeah. Sorry. That was a date night.”

  Ethan rolled his eyes, even though it probably wasn’t even a lie—she probably had gone out with someone.

  “What time?”

  “What time… what?”

  “When should I be there?” he specified.

  “Ooh, you changed your mind? Okay, I guess you can still come.”

  “You didn’t make other plans in the last ten seconds?”

  “I know, I’m such a loser,” she joked. “You can come whenever. Dinner will be done in a little over an hour and the house is clear already, so…”

  He told her he would leave in a few minutes, then as he headed into the other room to tell Amanda he was going out, he tried not to feel like a huge asshole.

  Given that her dinner invitation had appeared out of the blue, he wasn’t sure what to expect. He wasn’t exactly sure where they stood, and judging from the way she danced around in front of the door after letting him in, she wasn’t either.

  “I brought wine,” he said, holding up a small paper bag.

  “Good call,” she said with a nod.

  “Just in case. I wasn’t sure….”

  “No, that’ll be good. I made eggplant parmesan and got stuff ready for salads, but I wasn’t sure how you liked yours. We have French, Italian, and ranch dressing, so if you don’t like one of those, you are out of luck.”