by J. Haymore
“I know you’re pissed. But you need to let me explain.”
“Explain what? You fucked my sister, then you stalked me. You used me as some kind of a stand-in for Emily. You lied to me and made me think you wanted me for me, when you just—”
“I did want you for you!” he roars.
I want to believe that. I want to believe it so bad.
“Right.” I wrap my arms around my torso and gaze down at the ratty carpet. “Just go away. I can’t do this.”
He takes another step toward me. “Yes. You can. You need to. I need to.”
“Why? Do you think spilling your guts out to me is going to ease your conscience?”
“My conscience doesn’t need easing,” he growls. “The only thing I regret is not telling you the truth about Emily sooner. I intended to do it, but I was trying to find the right time. The last few days on the Temptation were…” He shakes his head. “I was going to tell you. I screwed up by waiting as long as I did. I screwed up by telling you when I was half-delirious and fucking exhausted and not sure if either of us was going to make it through the day.”
“Yes, that was great timing. Thank you for that.”
“That’s what I’m sorry about, what I wish I’d handled differently. The rest of it?” He shakes his head. “It is what it is. I have no regrets.”
“Well, I do,” I shoot back at him.
We glare at each other. He’s a contained mass of energy, with waves of some intense emotion I cannot begin to understand flowing through him. I have this strange sense that if I were to touch him, an electric shock would burst through me, lighting me up from the inside out.
He rips his gaze away from me, turns, and stalks to the door. He puts his palm flat on the door and then just stands there.
“Fine,” he says roughly. “I wanted you to set the pace. I wanted you to have control of this conversation.”
“Good. Then this conversation is over.”
He turns, leans his back against the door, and crosses his arms over his chest. “We are going to have this conversation, Tara. I am going to make you understand. If you think I’m just going to walk away from you, you’re wrong.”
“Isn’t that what you planned to do? What you told me you were going to do after Hawaii?” I spit out. “I’m just giving you a head start.”
He shakes his head. “No. Not anymore. Things have changed.”
“Like what?”
“We almost fucking died on that boat.”
“So?”
“So that kind of shit makes a person reevaluate what’s important.”
I don’t have a comeback for that. He’s right. I’ve been through that kind of shit, more than once. But Ethan probably hasn’t.
Not that I know very much about his personal past.
My God. After all we went through in the past few days, it’s amazing that we’re standing here having this conversation that has nothing to do with Nalani or Mick or the Temptation. Or even Kyle.
“The plan has changed.” His words are quiet but strong, and so compelling I almost cave.
“Oh, has it?” I ask bitterly. “Please fill me in, then. What’s the new plan?”
“I’m not sure,” he says. “But us separating isn’t part of it.”
So many emotions collide inside me, pulling me in so many different directions, I don’t know which way is up anymore. I sink back down into the chair, staring at him across the room where he stands, still bristling.
He has no regrets except the way he told me. He doesn’t regret the truth of what he told me. How can I accept that?
Maybe…maybe he’s right. If he revealed more about himself. About his motivations, and about his relationship with Emily… Maybe.
Ethan is fascinating. He has piqued my curiosity since the moment we met. He’s standing here offering to tell me everything, and it’d be stupid to refuse him.
He gazes at me, raw and open. He’ll tell me the truth. I’ll regret it if I don’t learn as much as I can about him right now.
“Will you still answer my questions?” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
That doesn’t make those questions easier to voice. The first one is obvious, and it catches in my throat, but I push it out, slowly and painfully.
I stare down at my knees, still encased in the Coast Guard sweats. They’re not as fresh as they were yesterday, but I’m not ready to wear the clothes Ethan bought for me.
“Where did you meet her?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ethan’s quiet for a long moment, but then he seems to force the answer out. “We met at a cocktail party. I was there for business; she was there to make contacts in the industry.”
I expect more, but he stops there. So that’s how this is going to go. He’s going to give me concise, basic answers to my questions. He’s not going to elaborate or give details. I want to know everything about that cocktail party—especially about Emily that night. How was she dressed? How did she look? What did she say? Who was she with?
“What was she wearing?”
“A blue dress. Sleeveless.”
“So you started dating after that?” It hurts to speak.
He pushes himself off the door and sits in the chair across from me again. “She gave me her number, and I called her the next day.”
“Why?” I ask shakily. This question is the hardest for me to ask so far.
He gives me a small smile. “She was attractive. She made me laugh. She was…exuberant. Full of life.”
“And you wanted that? You were looking for it?”
“No, I wasn’t looking. I was trying to avoid relationships. Since…” His words trail off.
“Why, then? Why did you ask her out if you didn’t want to get involved?”
He thinks about this for a minute. “She had a way about her that made me want to see her again, because…she was so light, I think she made everyone around her feel lighter. She made me feel lighter. Does that make sense?”
It did make sense. “My dad used to call us the sun and the moon,” I whisper. “Emily was the sun…bright and warm and happy. She was full of light.”
But Ethan’s not thinking about the sun, or about Emily. He’s thinking about me. I can see it in his expression when he looks at me. “You were the moon.”
My dad used to say it was because I would disappear within myself, grow dark and distant in increments, but when I showed my full self, it was perfect and whole, splashing more beautiful, silver brightness onto the world than all the stars combined.
Emily never lost her light. I’ve always been darker. That was why she was an actress and I went to college to major in finance. I can deal with people in a professional capacity, if necessary. But I’ll never be charming or gregarious like Emily was.
I don’t want to share that with Ethan, so I evade his question.
“Emily was so...bright. Everyone felt lighter around her.” I shrug. “She and I were opposites.”
“No, that’s not true.”
“So, you’re saying we’re alike? That I remind you of her?” I knew it.
“No. I’m not going to compare the two of you.”
“Why not?” I challenge. “Are you afraid you might hurt my feelings? I’d say it’s a little late for that.”
His growl is one of frustration. “You remind me of her in subtle ways. But you’re your own person.”
Right. Eclipsed by my sister’s light. Like always—in her life and now, evidently, in her death. “So since you can’t have her, you chose me. Second best.”
He stares at me, his jaw working, his hands flexing over the arms of the chair. “You know that’s not true.”
I make a scoffing noise. Because I know it is true.
Ethan rises again, in a fluid motion. He paces the short length of the room, taking long, stalking steps to the door and back. He stands in front of me. “Look. At first, I couldn’t stop thinking o
f you as her sister. That was why I went onto the Temptation to begin with, to protect you. I had no other expectation, no other goal than to keep you safe.
“When I saw you slip on the ramp and I came to help you—God, all I wanted to do was make sure you were okay. I tried to convince myself it was only because of the promise I made to Emily. But then you got up on your own even though your leg must’ve hurt like hell, and when you shook my hand—” Breaking off, he swivels again and heads to the door. The sun has set, and the room is growing dimmer, so I can’t see the details of his expression anymore.
“There was something between us, Tara. A spark of something. Electricity, attraction, chemistry. Something I tried to deny, but something that had nothing to do with Emily.”
I know he’s telling the truth because I felt it too.
“I kept trying to see you only as someone I needed to watch over, nothing more,” he says. “I tried, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. You were so sexy and gorgeous. You had me all tied up in knots. So smart, but so sweet…so innocent…so fiercely loyal… I have never wanted anything in the way I wanted—still want—you.”
It’s happening. He’s melting the ice that formed in my chest when he told me about his relationship with Emily. It’s inevitable. It’s stupid, but denying my heart is going to take more strength than I possess.
“And then I would remember you were her sister, and I’d feel disgusted with myself and force myself to back off.”
That explains all the hot and cold of his behavior on the Temptation. My fingernails dig into my palms.
“I needed to ignore what I was starting to feel for you. I needed to force myself, remind myself constantly, that you were Emily’s sister. Because whenever I interacted with you, your sister was the last thing on my mind. But soon I couldn’t even do that. Your identity as Emily’s sister felt so damned irrelevant in the face of all that was happening between us.”
I shake my head in denial, but a part of me is starting to agree. What happened between us—that was real. It couldn’t have been playacting on his part. When he looked at me, it was me he saw. Not Emily.
“I know that you don’t agree. But, to me, it felt completely separate. Like she was my past and you—you’re my present.” His expression softens. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you. You, not anyone else, not your relationships, or people who came before you. Only you. I still can’t stop thinking about you.”
“What about before?” I demand.
He frowns. “Before?”
“Before you technically knew me. How you stalked me like that—violated my privacy.”
“I don’t think of it that way.”
“But that’s what it was. You say you wanted to protect me, but that was way over the top, Ethan. Way over.”
He gazes at the far wall, his lips tight. “You’ve got to understand. I’m incredibly protective of people I care about—”
“You didn’t even know me! How could you care about me?”
“I cared about Emily,” he says quietly. “Tara, please. I might be over the top…but there’s a reason…” He swallows hard. Everything in me leaps to attention. “I…have… I’ve gone through some bad shit. When I was younger. People got hurt. Bad. Someone died.”
Whoa…what? My heart feels like it’s stopped, come to a dead halt. This raises a whole slew of new questions.
“I just can’t let it happen again. Not on my watch. Okay? I can’t.” He presses his lips together and tears his gaze away from mine, his eyes shining. “Don’t ask me more about that, okay? I— I can’t talk about that right now.”
His voice is shaking. This was something in his past that affected him deeply and tragically. I’m not going to push it, but Maybe he’ll tell me someday. God. There I go again, thinking we might have a future.
We might.
“I’m not your responsibility,” I whisper. “I never was.” Still, it’s coming together for me. What he’s saying makes sense in a weird, warped way, and all that remains of the ice inside me is the tiniest kernel.
“Emily asked me to protect you. It was her final wish. I couldn’t ignore that.”
“Why not? How long were you with her, anyway? A couple of weeks?”
“Ten. Ten weeks.”
That’s longer than he and I have known each other. I think of how fast and hard I fell for Ethan and can’t even imagine what ten weeks with him would be like.
And ten weeks was definitely a record dating length for Emily.
“She was filming at the time, and I was working,” he says quietly, as if reading my thoughts. “We didn’t see each other every day.”
Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better, and my masochism rears its ugly head. “Was it intense between you? Like…like it was between us?”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “Don’t do this.”
“I want to know.” I need to know. It’s some kind of sick compulsion I can’t control.
“No, you don’t.”
“I do!”
He blows out a harsh breath. “Yes, damn it. It was intense. But in a different way. It wasn’t as…”
“As what?” I demand.
“Hell, I don’t know. Gut-wrenching? Powerful? I don’t know.” He groans softly. “I can’t explain it.”
This is so confusing. Emily wrapped men around her finger daily with her sexual allure. When she was in high school, throngs of boys used to follow her around.
“You had sex with her,” I whisper. He’s never had sex with me. We were planning on it...anticipating it...
“Yes, we had sex,” he says quietly. “But—”
“Was it good?” Of course it was. But I want to hear him say it.
“Jesus Christ, Tara.”
“Tell me.”
“It wasn’t like being with you, okay?” He rubs the back of his head furiously, leaving a lock of it tweaking out the side. Even in the life raft, he never looked this unkempt.
This conversation is throwing him off-balance. A small, bitter part of me is glad.
“How was it different from being with me?” I demand.
“Being with you… It’s hard to explain. I feel…connected with you. Being with you feels so right. I—” He shakes his head as if he’s as confused by all this as I am. “Every part of you is so fucking gorgeous… Everything I see—every word you say, every inch of skin you reveal—all of it, it makes me want you more. You’re like a drug for me. I haven’t gotten anywhere near enough. I’m pretty sure I never will.”
Oh God. My entire body lights up at his words.
Trying to ignore the way my skin aches for him, I say, “You were with her for ten weeks, then spent the next eighteen months protecting her sister, whom you didn’t know. You take your promises very seriously.”
“Always,” he says. Oh my… All the sweet promises he made back on the Temptation rush through my mind, and a shudder ripples over my skin.
“Why did you make such a promise anyway? You could have told my Aunt Jo, and she would have taken care of it. Even Kyle would have—”
“I didn’t trust any of those people. In this world, you can only trust yourself, and if you’re very, very lucky, one or two other people. That’s it.”
“Do you trust anyone now?” I ask him.
He nods. “My mom. You.”
“I don’t trust you,” I murmur. “I can’t. Once you break a person’s trust, it takes a long time to rebuild.”
“I know.”
“What about Emily? Did you trust her? Did you…love her?” A great lump forms in my throat when I say this.
He hesitates. “I think…I was starting to trust her. And…love? I don’t know. When she died, I was messed up. I didn’t take it well.”
“Because you loved her?” I press.
He shakes his head. “I know that it was one of the most difficult things I’ve had to go through. And we’d only been together for ten weeks. I thought about you, and how she’d told me how close she was to
her little sister, and how devastated you must have been. And I had this feeling that car accident might have been…” He hesitates. “I wanted to watch over you—protect you. For you, and for Emily.”
“But why not just introduce yourself to me? Why not tell me what she asked you to do?”
He groans. “So many reasons. First of all, you didn’t know me at all. There was no reason you’d trust me with your safety. Then...well, I knew you were struggling with Emily’s death.”
I tense. Of course he knew, because he was spying on me. He probably knew about the rehab for my leg. About the anxiety and phobias and depression and my medications and… Ugh. All of it.
I press my hand to my stomach, even as I plan to ask even more questions I’m not going to like the answers to. More answers that are going to hurt me in the end.
“And whenever I considered knocking on your door and telling you,” he continues flatly, “I couldn’t do it. How would I introduce myself to you? How would I explain what Emily had asked of me and how I intended to fulfill my promise?”
“You could have tried.”
“You would have thought I was insane.”
“What you’ve done is pretty insane.”
He crosses his arms over his chest, and for the first time, I see a hint of the obstinate little boy he must once have been. “I was protecting you. It wasn’t about invading your privacy. Not ever.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I might not need all this protection?”
That muscle works in his jaw again. It’s almost full dark now, but I don’t have the energy to make the effort to turn on a light. But he reaches over and flicks on the desk lamp beside him.
“What about the convenience store? You needed the protection there.”
The shock of it washes over me again. The man who jumped in front of me in the convenience store three months after Emily died—that had been Ethan. He took a bullet for me. I could have died. He could have died. But I got off with a concussion and he made a full recovery.
“If that bullet went lower, it might have been fatal,” I say. “That’s what the cops told me.”
I think about this compulsion he has to protect me. Me. Because of a promise he made to my dead sister. Is that kind of thing even healthy? I’m sure it isn’t.
