Welcome to Pembrooke: the complete Pembrooke series

by Prince, Jessica

  I felt relatively confident, by the smile on her face, that she hadn’t really kicked me. But I couldn’t be positive.

  “What time is it?” I asked, reaching into my pocket for my cell. When I came up empty, Lilly spoke again and pointed the tongs in my direction.

  “It’s on the coffee table. Don’t worry. I didn’t feel you up when I pulled it out of your pocket. But that damn thing has been ringing off the hook since seven this morning. It was either put it on silent or tap dance on it.”

  I grabbed it off the table and hit the button at the bottom to turn it on. Sure enough, my phone was on vibrate and there were a ton of missed calls and text messages. All from Harlow worrying about where I was.

  “Shit.” I fell back on the couch and rubbed my face with my free hand. I shot Harlow a quick text to tell her I was alive and that I’d slept on Eliza’s couch the night before. Then it hit me. “Where’s Eliza?” I asked as I looked around the room, a sudden sense of dread twisting my stomach into knots at the fact I went to sleep with her and woke up alone.

  “Lilly studied me for a while before finally responding. “How much do you remember from last night?”

  I dropped my phone back on the table and used both hands to scrub my face. “All of it,” I answered honestly. After my performance the night before, honesty was the only option I had. With how I’d acted in The Moose and after when I followed her home, I knew I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if I claimed memory loss. Especially after everything I’d said. I needed to talk to her. Finally admit the truth and hope she didn’t kick me out on my ass.

  “Relax, she’s at the café. Her mornings usually start early. She had to escape your clutches to get her butt down there on time.”

  Relief slammed into me like a battering ram, and without thought, I was on my feet. “Hey!” Lilly called as I headed for the front door. “You forgot your phone!”

  I instantly backtracked and snatched it up from where I’d left it seconds before. “Good luck,” she called. “You’re seriously going to need it, buddy. But if it’s any consolation, I’m rooting for you. Oh! And take the interior stairs! They’ll get you right to the kitchen.” She pointed in the direction I needed to go.

  “Thanks!” I called back just before the door closed behind me. Surprisingly, the pain in my knee wasn’t all that bad as I made my way down the stairs. I counted that as a blessing seeing as I could have done irreparable damage last night, had Eliza not been there to help me.

  I’d just made it to the base of the stairs when I heard the faint sound of music coming from down the hall. I followed the sound until I came to a swinging door on my right. I pushed in and the sound of Hozier became clearer, along with Eliza humming along with the song. She was all alone in the large kitchen, lost in whatever she was doing and hadn’t heard me enter. I caught her in profile and her beauty hit me full force, even standing there in nothing but a pair of jeans and a plain white t-shirt covered in an apron, her hair in a ratty bun and the top of her head and her face clean of all makeup, she was more beautiful than any woman I’d ever seen.

  “Hey.”

  At the sound of my voice, the spoon she was using to stir something in a pot on the stove shot up, slinging something red everywhere as she jumped around on a sharp, startled inhale. “God, Ethan!” she breathed, putting her hand to her chest. “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing here?”

  I didn’t hesitate in diving right in. We’d been dancing around each other since the moment I saw her standing in the chip aisle of Mabel’s Corner Market. “We need to talk.”

  “About what?” she asked, feigning ignorance as she turned back to the stove and continued stirring, like she wasn’t well aware that I was talking about everything I’d said to her the night before.

  “You know damn good and well what we need to talk about,” I ground out, my irritation rising with every second that she refused to meet my eyes.

  She shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to talk about. I’m busy right now, so you can let yourself out.”

  “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

  She never stopped stirring. “It’s not. You were drunk out of your mind and were rambling incoherently. Let’s just pretend last night never happened.”

  Wrong thing to say. “Goddamn it,” I seethed. Storming over to the stove, I threw the dial to kill the flame beneath the pot and yanked the spoon out of her hand, throwing it clear across the room.

  “What is your problem?!” she shouted, spinning around so we were face to face.

  “My problem is that you’re full of shit!” I shouted back, finally getting a reaction other than indifference from her. And seeing that reaction fed a hunger inside me to push her for more.

  “I’m full of shit? Are you fucking kidding me?! You’re such an asshole, Ethan! Not that I should be surprised,” she laughed bitterly. “You seem to be making a habit out of that.”

  I took a step back and pulled in a breath in an attempt to calm down. “Look. We need to talk about what I said last night.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. You were drunk and talking out of your ass. It didn’t mean anything.” she declared with finality.

  Oh fuck that. All calm flew out the window. Moving back in, I pinned her hips to the counter and rested my hands on either side of her. “Oh, baby. That’s where you’re wrong. I might have been drunk, but what I said meant fucking everything.”

  Her chest rose and fell in what most people would have thought was rage. But I knew that pink currently darkening her cheeks was from something else altogether. “Step back.”

  “Not until you stop with this bullshit and listen to me,” I hissed. I watched as her hazel eyes flashed with fear coupled with a longing so extreme I felt it in every fiber of my body before it traveled down to my dick, causing it to twitch. I fed off that look like a man trapped in the desert who’d stumbled onto an oasis.

  “Ethan. Step. Back.”

  “Eliza—”

  “No!” She shoved at my chest so hard I had no choice but to step back on one foot to stay upright. “No! You don’t get to come in here and demand I listen to what you have to say! You don’t get to come back into my life after six fucking years and turn everything upside down! I was doing fine without you. You do not get to do this!”

  “I told you why I left!” I fought back, desperation churning my blood.

  “And your reasoning was the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard!” she fired back. “No one, not a single fucking one of us would have asked you to give up your dream to stay here! That was all in your head. Everything that happened was your choice. You chose to bail instead of talking to your sister about what was bothering you. You chose to push everyone who cared about you away. And you chose to treat me like I meant nothing to you so you didn’t have any strings left tying you back to this place. That was all on you, Ethan, not me! You can’t just come back and force yourself back into my life after how your treated me. Things have changed. You can’t act like the past six years never happened. You threw me away!”

  “Because I was in love with you!” I roared, the words bubbling to the surface before I even had a chance to think.

  She blinked up at me for several seconds before whispering in a pained voice, “What?”

  “Jesus Christ!” I stepped away from her and began pacing the length of the kitchen, my hands pulling at my hair. I’d come this far already, there really was no going back. I was the one that wanted everything out in the open. That meant no more lies. “I was in love with you. You were sixteen fucking years old, Eliza! Do you have any clue how that fucks with a guy’s head? I loved you, but I couldn’t have you.”

  “Stop.”

  I didn’t stop. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I’d started considering giving it all up to stay here with you. But it wasn’t because you were my best friend.”

  “Stop.”

  “You were just a kid, for Christ’s sake! I was twenty-two. I c
ouldn’t have you no matter how badly I wanted you, and I knew, I fucking knew in my bones that if I didn’t let you go, I’d lose everything I’d worked my ass off for.” I moved back to her so fast it caught her off guard. “But don’t think for one goddamned second that it didn’t kill me to do what I did to you. It ripped my fucking heart out when you told me you hated me.”

  “Stop.” Her voice grew stronger, but I was lost in my own memory. Remembering that day was like picking at a scab that hadn’t quite healed over.

  “I made a mistake. I hurt you because I thought I had no other choice, and I’ll regret that every day for the rest of my life. But not one day has passed where my feelings for you changed. I loved you back then, and I still love you now.”

  “Stop!” she shrieked, pushing at my chest. “Stop! Stopstopstop!” Each word was punctuated by a slap or a hit. “You don’t get to say that to me! You threw me away. You threw me away!”

  “Eliza,” I spoke softly, grabbing her wrists as she continued to struggle. “Baby, shh. Calm down.” The tears streaming down her cheeks gutted me. I would have given my life to take her pain away.

  “You’re worse than my mother! You don’t know what love is.” She continued to fight my hold, getting in any hit she could. Restraining her wasn’t helping so I did the only thing I could think to calm her down. The one thing I’d wanted to do for the past six years. The instant my lips hit hers, the fight drained from her. Her body locked up tight for just a second before it melted against me. As soon as I knew she was done fighting, my hands released her wrists and moved to tangle in her hair, tilting her head so I could get deeper. Her soft lips, smooth tongue, that intoxicating smell of vanilla and almond coupled with her exquisite taste, a taste I never thought I’d have, was too much. I let go of her head with one hand and wrapped it around her waist, pinning her body against mine so close not even light could get through as I devoured her mouth.

  Her moan slid down my throat, and I was completely lost. I never wanted to be found. I never wanted to stop kissing Eliza. And I was never letting her go again.

  Or at least that’s what I told myself.

  Because the second someone coughed from behind us, she jumped out of my arms like I’d just burned her.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.” We both turned to look at the man who’d just interrupted, the very same man I was seconds away from murdering.

  Eliza cleared her throat and gave the remorseful looking guy a shaky smile as she reached up to fix the ponytail I’d destroyed. “It’s fine, Gary. You weren’t interrupting.”

  “The fuck he wasn’t,” I growled, causing Gary to pale. He should have been scared.

  Eliza skewered me with a look before saying, very pointedly “Ethan was just leaving.”

  “Holy shit,” Gary said on an exhale. “You’re Ethan Prewitt.”

  “I am,”

  “Dude! I’m a huge fan! Huge! Do you think I could get your autograph?”

  “Sure.” I offered him a grin, my homicidal tendencies lessening at the realization he was a fan. Reaching out to take the crumpled receipt and pen he’d just pulled from his pocket, I scribbled my name down and handed it back.

  “So cool,” he breathed.

  I looked back at Eliza and saw she looked like her head was only seconds away from exploding. Knowing that getting into another shouting match in front of one of her employees wouldn’t win me any brownie points, I decided it was best to leave the remainder of our conversation for another time in the not too distant future.

  “We’ll finish this later,” I mumbled under my breath as I walked past her.

  Her next words made me jerk to a stop. “There’s nothing to finish.”

  I somehow kept my body firmly in place as I turned my head, pinning her in place with just a look. “That’s where you’re wrong, baby. You don’t kiss someone like that if there’s nothing to finish. And don’t bother denying it. I might have initiated the kiss, but you sure as fuck participated.”

  “Get out,” she replied between clenched teeth.

  I leaned in just a bit, placing a quick, unexpected kiss on her forehead. “I’ll see you later, sweetheart.”

  Then I left before she could say anything else.

  22

  Eliza

  Lilly stood at the living room window, staring down at the paved ground below. “You know,” she called to me, “you can’t avoid him forever by locking yourself in your apartment every day.”

  “It’s not every day,” I argued as I poured myself another glass of wine. “It’s only been the past three days. And in my defense, I totally felt a little flu-y when I called off work that one day.”

  My phone started ringing from its place in the kitchen counter for the fifth time in the past hour. The number was listed as unavailable so I hit the button on the side to silence it again. Whoever it was, I was sure they had the wrong number, but if they didn’t quit calling me soon, I was two steps away from losing my shit completely.

  The sound of Lilly’s snort pulled my attention back to the window. “Flu-y my ass.”

  “Shut up,” I grumbled as I grabbed my wine glass and headed to the living room. “Is he still out there?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at me and the smile on her face said it all. “See for yourself.”

  I joined her on the other side of the window and pulled the curtains back just a bit. “Good Lord.” I refused to admit to Lilly that just the sight of him sitting on the stairs outside out apartment was enough to make my belly flutter. “He’s been out there all day. Why won’t he just get a clue and go home already?”

  “Call me crazy, but maybe because he confessed he’s been in love with you for, like, ever, in return, you’ve kept yourself locked up here so you could avoid seeing him.”

  Ethan’s head came up to the window and he lifted his hand in a wave, a small, tired smile on his face. “I wish I’d never told you about that,” I muttered, dropping the curtain and stepping away. Looking at him sitting out there just hurt too much. I was living by the creed out of sight out of mind for as long as I could get away with it.

  After Ethan left the other morning, I’d put Gary in charge while I ran back upstairs and freaked the ever-loving hell out. I’d told Lilly everything, and she’d spent the next three days holding it over my head.

  “You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were taking his side,” I pouted as I threw myself back on the couch and chugged more wine.

  Turning from the window, she rested her back against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest. “Good thing you know better, huh?” I rolled my eyes and took another glug as Lilly sighed and moved toward the couch. Picking my legs up, she sat on one of the cushions and rested my feet in her lap. Then she hit me with the cold, hard truth, like any best friend should, whether it was wanted or not. “Eliza, you’re going to have to talk to him eventually. You know that.”

  “Says who?” I scoffed. “He can’t stay here forever. Way I look at it, I’ve got a few more weeks, two months tops, before he bails back to Denver. If I can just avoid him for that time, then I’m good.”

  She gave me a look that said just how full of it she thought I was. “The man told you he’s been in love with you since you were sixteen. He’s sat outside our door the past three days when you refused to open it. You really think he’s just going to give up and go home?”

  “It’s his usual M.O.” I snapped, taking my growing anxiety out on my blameless friend.

  “That’s not true, and you know it. Now that the truth’s out, everything’s changed. You can’t possibly look at him in the same light now that you know exactly what pushed him away. You’ve had a wall around you since you were little. The only ones you let in were your family and the few of us lucky enough to be considered a friend.” I opened my mouth to argue, but she raised her hand to cut me off. “I’m not saying I blame you, babe. God, I get it. After everything your mother put you through, I get it. But you’re an ad
ult now. You’ve changed. Whether you see it in yourself or not, you’re stronger now. There’s no reason to keep that wall up anymore. People are going to hurt you, it’s how you move past it that’s going to define the type of person you are. And you aren’t the type of person who doesn’t forgive.”

  She was right. I knew she was right. However, holding on to that pain to keep people back was just so much easier than risking being hurt again. But it was also cowardly. And the last thing I wanted to be was a coward. I pulled in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Okay,” I said quietly, sitting up and putting my wine glass down on the coffee table.

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah. I’ll go talk to him.”

  “That’s my girl!” she cheered as I stood from the couch. “And FYI, once you two finally hook up, I want to know all about it. I’ve always been curious what he was packing in those football pants.”

  “Lilly!” I let out a startled laugh.

  She picked up my wine glass and took a sip, “Oh, don’t act all affronted, you know you’ve been thinking about it too.”

  There was no point in denying that. Just as I turned for the door, my cell began ringing again. I switched directions and moved to pick it up, groaning, “Oh my God. It’s that same stupid unknown number.”

  “Just answer the thing and tell whoever it is they have the wrong damn number.”

  Finally having had enough, I slid my thumb across the screen and put it to my ear. “Look buddy. Whoever you’re trying to reach isn’t at this number so stop calling.”

  I was just about to hang up when a female voice spoke through the line. “Ms. Anderson? Eliza Anderson?”

  My forehead wrinkled as I brought the phone back. “Yes? Who’s this?”