by J. Haymore
I close my eyes and grind out, “If he wanted to protect me from this, he shouldn’t have invaded my privacy.”
Kyle sits on his bed, watching me. His stare is unnerving. “I think you’re lying.”
I choke on a fake laugh.
“I think this is about Emily.”
“It’s not.”
“It is.” I turn away from him, and he continues. “It goes back to your relationship with her, how you always felt around her.”
“Stop it.” Leave it to Kyle to choose this time, of all times, to start being insightful.
“You always thought you were in her shadow. Like a smaller, dimmer version of her.”
“I said, stop it, Kyle,” I warn.
“No, I’m not stopping it, because you need to hear this. You believed you weren’t as pretty or as funny and sunny and outgoing as she was. And it wasn’t only her personality that made you feel that way. You were shorter than her. Your hair and eyes were a shade darker. Your boobs are smaller. She was always supermodel thin, and you always had a few pounds on her. You just…honestly believed you weren’t as good as her.”
“Stop,” I whisper. I remember telling him all these things, in little self-deprecating snippets of conversations through the years. It’s like he’s collected them all and stuffed them into a brimming box of my insecurities.
“You always defined yourself by the standard that Emily set. Emily was the best, an idol you strove to imitate. But you were wrong to do that, T. Sometimes…being petite or having sexy curves or being book smart instead of people smart… How can you not see that what you are is better than what she was? She was plastic. You’ve always been so real. I love that about you. You’re like an open book. What you see is what you get, and that’s something to be proud of, because most people are so guarded. So fake.”
I grind my teeth, not really even hearing the last part of his speech. “Don’t call Emily plastic.”
“She was. She portrayed the image she thought people wanted to see. She was right in some cases, and that’s why she kicked butt at auditions. But at other times, she had no idea how she came off. She was judgmental and off-putting and self-important. She was the most narcissistic person I’ve ever known.”
I begin to shake with rage. “Don’t you dare talk about Emily that way. I’m warning you.”
“You need to hear this. You’ve been putting her on a pedestal your whole life. You need to stop, because it’s feeding your insecurities. It’s killing you slowly.”
“You’re the one who needs to stop!”
“No.”
“Why are you talking about this anyway?”
“Because, I know that all this has something to do with Ethan.”
I snort in disbelief.
“You think you’re not good enough for him.”
I look away.
“And especially now that you know he was with Emily, you feel inferior. Like you’ll never be enough for him.”
He’s right. Goddammit, he’s right. Because I’m not good enough for Ethan. From the beginning, he’s been way out of my league. But now that I know he’s had Emily… The two of them together, both so gorgeous and confident and self-composed—they would have made the perfect couple.
There’s no way I could ever live up to that.
I gaze longingly at the covers spread over my lap. I want to curl up into a ball, bury myself under them, and never reemerge.
Kyle is quiet for a long minute. “But what you’re not seeing—what you’re completely blind to—is that he’s not good enough for you.”
Yeah, right.
Kyle leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees, a frown furrowing his brow as he stares at me. “Even though I think he’s a total asshole, I can’t blame him for falling for you. Any man would be a fucking idiot not to see how amazing you are.”
I trace my fingertip over the ugly tropical flower on the bedspread. A tiny bud of hope struggles to take root inside me. The truth of Ethan’s betrayal isn’t going to go away. I’m not going to wake up one morning and find out it was all a big misunderstanding.
The question is…if he does, if he really does have feelings for me, can I forgive him?
“Stop comparing yourself to Emily. Emily was good enough for him. But you’re better than him.”
“None of this matters,” I say dully. “He betrayed me, and he lied to me. He’s a liar. He’s a deceptive liar, and I never want to see him again.”
Kyle’s silent for a beat, then he sighs and murmurs, “You know what, T? I don’t believe you.”
* * * * *
The next day, the FBI takes us to their offices, where we’re questioned yet again. Afterward, they put us in a car, and we’re taken back to the hotel in the early afternoon. Kyle is getting antsy. He needs fresh air. If he’s not outside for a couple of hours every day, he goes stir-crazy.
So it’s not surprising when we’re back in our room and he asks me to take a walk to the beach with him. Evidently, the beach is only a couple of blocks away. I haven’t been paying much attention.
“No thanks,” I say, trying to make my voice light.
His lips press together. “You can’t let this happen again.” He’s referring to the time right after Emily died, when I didn’t leave the apartment for three months.
“I can’t go out there. Not yet.” I give him a pleading look. “I don’t think it’s like last time. I just need some time. A couple of days. Please, Kyle.”
He stares at me for a long minute, then jerks a nod.
“You go,” I say. “You need to get out of here—I can tell.”
He rolls his shoulders, shifts from one foot to the other, and his gaze keeps darting toward the window. “You sure?”
“You should go surfing. I know how much you wanted to surf in Hawaii.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I’ll be fine. You’ll find me right here”—I pat the bed beside me—“when you get back. Promise.”
He hesitates a moment longer, then decides to go. He heads into the bathroom, changes his clothes, and within the space of about two minutes, he’s gone.
A relieved sigh whispers out of my chest. Licking your wounds in private is so much better than having an audience.
Or maybe I do have an audience. My eyes scan the ceiling. Maybe Ethan’s watching me right now.
A sick feeling twists in my gut, and I crawl under the covers with the remote control and flip through the TV channels. They pass by in a blur as my thumb systematically depresses the button on the remote. Thoughts of Ethan swirl in my brain. Thoughts of Mick. Of Nalani. Of Kyle.
All of them have different emotions attached to them. From anger and pain to fear to grief. And so much confusion. I curl up and the covers swallow me as everything presses in, overwhelming. The remote slips from my fingers, the TV blaring on some unknown show, and I wrap my arms around my knees, pressing them into my chest. I just lie there, hiding under the covers, paralyzed by emotion.
A while later—it seems like hours, but who knows?—a series of sharp raps hammer on the door. They jerk me out of this frozen state.
“Yes?” I ask hoarsely.
“It’s me.”
Ethan.
I hug my knees tighter to my chest.
“I need to talk to you.”
No. No, no, no. This is a bad—a very bad—idea. But I’m clearly an idiot, because some incomprehensible compulsion makes me sit up, turn off the TV, get out of bed, then walk toward the door and open it.
He’s standing there, gorgeous as usual. Having him so close today on the ride to and from the FBI offices was painful. It literally hurt to look at him.
He’s wearing jeans—which he rarely wore on the Temptation, as jeans generally aren’t the most appropriate sailing attire due to the way they absorb water—and a light-blue faded T-shirt that pulls tight at his shoulders. The shirt brings out the piercing blue of his eyes, and as they lock on me, something inside me rips open.
&nbs
p; I miss him. And I want him so bad.
But…I shouldn’t.
“What do you want?” I ask him tersely.
“Inside.”
I grip the edge of the door. “What do you want?”
Why won’t he look away? The blue of his gaze scours me. My skin prickles, my heart starts beating fast, my stomach tightens.
Stop it. Stop! But my admonishments to my own body don’t matter. He affects me to my core, no matter how much I try to fight it.
“I want to talk to you about what’s going on.”
What does he mean? What’s going on with the FBI, or what’s going on with the two of us? My gaze narrows suspiciously.
“Let me in, Tara. Let me say my piece, then you can kick me out if you still want to.”
My lips twist. “If I still want to?” I scoff. “You have a pretty high opinion of yourself, because there’s no way I’d ever want you to stay.”
God, I’m lying. Spouting lies because I’m so damn angry I can’t even see straight, but Ethan clearly doesn’t know that what just came out of my mouth was total BS. His fingers curl around the doorframe.
We stare at each other. My fury is dimmed by the vulnerability seeping into the edges of his expression, but I clench my jaw and hold firm.
He presses the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “No. I really don’t have a high opinion of myself,” he says. “Not right now.” Quietly, he adds, “Please.”
His eyes are brimming with some emotion, and I realize it’s fear. Fear that I’m going to turn him away. And if I do, he’s going to break.
I step back and open the door wider, soundlessly inviting him in.
Justine
October 6, 2012
Four years. It took four years after he left me for Ethan to hook up with a girl. For more than one night, that is. Yes, I understand the primal needs of men. I let him have his one-nighters. I’m nice that way.
But now he’s starting to piss me off. I thought he knew better. I thought he was smart. I thought he knew he was mine, and mine alone.
I gave him too much credit. He’s as big a dumbass as everyone else.
This chick he’s dating is an actress, a skinny blonde with big tits and humongous blue eyes that make her appear perpetually surprised. Such a bimbo.
Ethan has seen her four times after their first meeting at a cocktail party put on by some hotshot Hollywood producer who has his hand in the entertainment technology field as well.
Ethan must think he’s being careful by not taking Big-Boobed Bimbo anywhere public, by avoiding photographers and paying off those who’ve managed to snap pictures of them together. But he’s underestimated me. Ethan and B.B.B. have had two dinners at his condo, one at hers, and she spent one night at the Malibu house, which pisses me off the most. He built that Malibu house for me. He’s never told me that, of course, but it has a big bay window that looks out over the Pacific. I always told him I wanted one of those.
It’s mine, and I can’t believe he’s cheating on me in it.
Still, this could just be a fling. A passing thing. It took some time for me to come to terms with it, but if he has merely strayed from the path of the straight and narrow, I’ll allow it.
But if it turns into more…I’m afraid I’ll have to do something.
I love Ethan so much, Diary. Just when I think everything’s settled down, he has a way of keeping me on my toes.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ethan enters and stands in the middle of the room. In the strained, uncomfortable silence that follows, I gesture to the chair at the desk. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks.” He pulls it out and sits.
I fold my arms over my chest. “Well?”
“Sit down, Tara.”
I’d rather stand there with my arms crossed, staring down my nose at him. However, as usual, my body doesn’t seem to want to follow the commands I’m trying to issue to it—it would much rather listen to Ethan’s directions.
I head to the beige armchair near the window, noticing only vaguely that it’s already twilight, and sink into it.
The room isn’t very big, and only a few feet separate us. He’s close enough I can feel his warmth, that magnetic pull his body seems to have over mine.
He sits there, his gaze raking over me, taking me in, from my stiff, straight posture to my rumpled and baggy Coast Guard clothes to my bare toes. My skin heats wherever he looks at it.
The muscle in his jaw twitches. “Ask me a question.”
“I don’t have any questions for you.”
“I know that’s not true.”
I shrug.
He holds out his hands as if in supplication. “I need to explain, but I don’t know how to start. I don’t know how to tell you what you need to hear. Help me out here.”
I consider this—think about all the questions swirling in my head. He’s right. There are about a billion questions fighting for attention in there…but they’re all going to hurt to ask¸ and his answers are probably going to hurt even more.
The real question is, how big a masochist am I?
Apparently, a big one, because the one query that pops to the forefront is Where did you meet Emily?
I want to know everything about Emily. Part of it is my need to “know” Emily in her last few months. I was in college on the East Coast—the transfer to the California school came only after Emily died, and we’d hardly talked since the previous summer. I’d just flown home for winter break when the accident happened.
But another part of me wants to know how Ethan felt about Emily. About what they did together. About their chemistry and their conversations.
Why would I do that to myself? Because, clearly, I am a masochist.
Yet…I’m not as disgusted by the whole thing as I was a couple of days ago. Ethan said his relationship with Emily was completely separate from his relationship with me, and part of me is starting to believe that. Or maybe that’s just what I want to believe.
Pushing away the Emily questions, I grapple for something safe. Something unrelated to all this confusion.
Then, I remember. Earlier today, Ethan took Mitsumoto, the FBI agent, aside when we were in the FBI offices, and the two men had an animated but quiet conversation while Kyle and I waited across the room.
“What were you talking to Mitsumoto about earlier?”
The question seems to jolt him, and he straightens in the chair. “Oh. Ah, that.” He nods as if to tell himself, okay, this is one I can handle, and says, “I’ve kept the PI, Garcia, on the payroll. I was sharing information he’s collected with Mitsumoto.”
“Right.” Feeling lightheaded, I rub distractedly at my temple. “Does Garcia have any idea where Mick could be?”
“Neither he nor the FBI have any leads. Yet.”
“What about his real identity?”
“Still a mystery. All the evidence—his fingerprints, etcetera—went down with the Temptation.”
“What about his motive? Has anyone figured that out?”
“The FBI doesn’t believe he was specifically targeting you. The slick on the deck could have been anything. The peanuts in the coffee—that’s just too off-the-wall for them to attach significance to.”
“But you think he was targeting me, don’t you?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Then, “You know I do.”
“But why?” That’s the question that’s been dogging me. Why, why, why?
He doesn’t meet my gaze, instead staring down at his clenched fist on the armrest. “I told you I’d get to the bottom of it,” he says tightly. “And I will. I just need time. In the meantime, I’m going to make sure you’re safe.”
“Oh, right. Of course you are.” I press myself back into the chair. “Because you vowed to my dead sister you would.”
He freezes, his facial expression still locked on the promise to get to the bottom of Mick’s motives. Then his eyes narrow, and his jaw works before he grinds out, “No. That’s not why.” Hi
s words are low and calm, but there’s steel underlying them, and if I were a business associate of his, I’d be quaking in my boots.
But I’m not an associate of his. In fact, I’m not required to have any association with him at all. And though I know I need to cut him off, my body and heart both rebel at the idea.
“Well, I’m letting you off the hook, Ethan.”
I force my hands to remain loose on my thighs. This is my interview mode—the one that got me the job I’m going to start in LA in a few weeks. The professional tone I always use with strangers. “I know my sister’s request has been a huge inconvenience to you for the past couple of years. But I’m going to be taking care of myself from now on, so thanks for your efforts, but they’re no longer necessary.”
“Is that so?”
“It is. Thank you for all you’ve done.”
He studies me, then slowly shakes his head. “No. Mick is still out there.”
“That’s what the FBI is for. That’s what the cops are for.”
“They don’t believe he was after you.” Now his expression sparks with challenge.
My stubbornness overwhelms all reason. Having Ethan this close hurts like hell. It confuses me and makes me want him desperately, even though I know I shouldn’t.
Anyway, why should I depend on him to protect me? I can find a way to protect my own damn self.
“I’ll get a gun, then,” I grit out. “I’m not kidding. This is it. You need to get out of my life.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
He’s going to undo me. Every cell in my body aches to be with him. Yearns for him.
He slept with my sister. He had a relationship with my sister, then lied to me about it. He’s been stalking me. Have I lost my freaking mind?
I rise and jerk my arm toward the door, even as a protest screams through me. “Leave. Get out of my room.”
He stands, but he doesn’t turn away. Instead, he takes a step toward me, forcing me to move back until my calves press against the upholstery of the lower part of the armchair I was just sitting in.
“Tara.”
“What?” My tone is so harsh, it doesn’t sound like my own.
