Countdown: Ethan

by Boniface, Allie

  “You haven’t been with anyone else since?” Her eyes searched his face, knowing the answer before he gave it.

  “No. Not really, not to speak of. That’s why—” he spread his fingers wide, as if to pull in the enormity of it all, her and him and the kiss and all the feelings it stirred up “— why this is hard for me.”

  “How long were you married?”

  He shook his head. “You don’t have to ask me about her. You don’t have to be polite.”

  She pressed her fingertips onto the back of his wrist. “I wasn’t. I want to know. Really. Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”

  I never do. But something about the moment—maybe the darkness, maybe the late hour, maybe the woman standing across from him—made it okay to open his mouth and say things he rarely did.

  “Almost four years. We met right after college.” Ethan smiled. The memories weren’t quite as painful as he thought they might be. “I had just moved here for a job. We moved in together six months after we met, got married three months after that.”

  “Wow.” Her eyes grew round and he felt himself fall inside them. “You were young.”

  “I guess.” We didn’t feel young, though. We just felt...right. “We borrowed some money from her parents and bought a house,” he continued. “God, I hated the place at first. It was run-down, a real mess. Took us over a year to fix it up the way we wanted. Between repainting every room in the house, putting on a new deck, replacing the plumbing...it was a rough first year of marriage.” He paused, remembering. “But we laughed our way through it, sewage leaks and broken windows and all.” And if I’d known then that the sand was falling through the glass, that she had less than four years to live, I don’t think I could have savored it any more than I did.

  “Lydia was like that,” he went on. “Always seeing the promise in things. A few months after we moved in, she picked up a cat with three legs and no tail, a stray hanging around the place.” His shoulders loosened a little. “That cat was so ugly. But Lydia said no one else would take him, so next thing I knew he was eating on the back porch. Three weeks later, I was sharing my bed with him.” Ethan smiled at the memory. “And she was right all along. About the house and about the cat. No one could say no to her.”

  “Do you still have him? The cat?”

  He nodded and realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d let Noah jump on his lap, sleep at the bottom of the bed, finish a cereal bowl of milk. It was as though life had stopped at the Meriweather house, for every creature, thirteen months ago.

  “She was diagnosed with cancer when she was twenty-five. Stage three metastatic breast cancer.”

  Dakota sucked in a breath. A few people pushed by them, but Ethan didn’t even notice. Suddenly, he didn’t care that he was standing on the sidewalk of the busiest street in Memphis. He didn’t care that, after too many months of protecting his secrets and his sadness, he was baring his soul to a person who’d come into town for the weekend. Because the only thing that seemed to matter right that minute was that she was looking up at him with exactly the same wonder and desire he felt in his own gaze. And that was enough to make him stand there and talk to Dakota all night long.

  “She’d just gotten a new job,” he continued. “Promoted to vice-president at the non-profit company she worked for. She was so excited, couldn’t wait to get started.” Ethan swallowed. He tried not to remember the shock playing on her face, the way her mouth twisted when she came out of the shower one morning and said I think I felt a lump...

  “How long did it...was she...” Dakota’s voice drifted off.

  Do you want to know in months? Or days? Or hospital stays? He wiped sweat from his brow and listened to a police siren wail in the distance. “She was sick for a little over two years. The day we buried her, I promised I wouldn’t look at another woman. Wouldn’t touch anyone, wouldn’t leave the house if that’s what it took.” He paused. “And I didn’t.”

  “Until tonight.” Dakota’s voice was quiet.

  Ethan nodded.

  “You haven’t betrayed her.”

  “I know.” But in one way, he felt like that was exactly what he’d done: betrayed the woman he’d vowed to love forever. Forgotten their wedding promise. Turned his back on her laugh. Erased their plans for life and kids and long vacations in the Caribbean.

  “Ethan.” Dakota stepped closer, until only inches separated them. “She will always be your wife. No one can take that away. Kissing me doesn’t change that.”

  His heart skipped. “It’s not just the kissing,” he said, but he couldn’t really explain. He’d kissed Alyssa a few months back, and he hadn’t felt anything. It’s that I think I’m falling harder than I’ve ever fallen before, and I don’t know how that’s possible. What did it mean for his marriage, the things he was thinking about doing with Dakota? Did it erase it? Somehow make what he’d had with Lydia less valuable? He had no idea.

  She laced her fingers through his and Ethan stopped thinking. One hand scrabbled against the rough fabric of his jeans.

  “I wish you’d told me before. It would have explained some things.”

  “Like what?”

  Dakota ran her fingertips along his forehead. “It’s here.”

  Ethan’s skin burned at her touch.

  “Something dark. Sad. I couldn’t figure it out. You said you were trying to get over someone and I thought you meant an ex-girlfriend. I didn’t guess...”

  Ethan nodded when she trailed off. He wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t come, and he wasn’t sure he had any left in him anyway. He wished for just a moment that he could see Lydia again, wrap her hand in his and ask, Is this okay? Above him, stars danced across the sky, a meteor shower that the newspapers had predicted days ago. Guilt lifted from his heart and floated into the brilliant, burning night sky. He let out a long sigh, and with it escaped the ache of too many days alone.

  Then he pulled Dakota close. He wanted to kiss her again, to feel her curves press up against him, to whisper in her ear. Images of taking her back to his place, of crossing his bedroom and landing somewhere in the middle of the sheets before he peeled off that halter-top and miniskirt once and for all, nearly knocked him off his feet. He bent his chin. He tipped up hers. It’s okay, Lydia said to him from somewhere far away. It really is.

  But before Ethan could kiss Dakota, a shadow darkened the pavement beside them. He looked up, distracted, and the first thing he saw was stark fear in her mismatched eyes. The second thing he saw was a fist aimed straight at his jaw.

  1:00 a.m.

  “Fuckin’ A.” Sean swore under his breath as he watched Dakota talk to some guy on the sidewalk outside the club. She stood close to him, too close, and Sean could tell by the looks on both their faces that something besides a friendly hello was unfolding between them. He downed the rest of his beer. She’d been here in Memphis how long? A few hours? And here she was all cuddled up to some guy like she hadn’t been warming Sean’s bed just the other night.

  For a minute, he forgot the reason he’d tailed her in the first place. He forgot about the video and Tommy’s death and the mess that waited for him back north if he didn’t straighten things out. Watching his ex-lover laugh with someone else, watching her link hands with a stranger, set the bile to burning in the back of his throat. He set his mug on the table beside him, too hard and too close to the edge. It tumbled and landed on the floor. Glass shattered and the shards arced through the air like jagged diamonds. They landed on his shoes, his ankles, the feet of the women sitting at the table.

  “Hey!” One of the women looked up. “Watch what you’re doing.”

  Sean flipped her off and hammered his way through the crowd, a battering ram of anger and resentment.

  Enough was enough. Time to get that flash drive and get the hell out of Dodge. A smirk tugged at his lips. While he was at it, he might just let that guy talking to Dakota know she still belonged to him. He pushed his way out onto the sidewalk. There.
Near the corner. Sean stopped for a few seconds to take stock. The guy stood under six feet. Probably weighed one seventy-five at the most. Not much to look at, and with the way he was gazing at Dakota, like she’d set the world on fire, he wouldn’t know what hit him.

  Sean grinned. One hand checked the gun at his waistband, a practiced motion that was there and gone with a smooth twist of the wrist. He walked over. “Took longer to find you than I thought.”

  Dakota looked up, startled, and Sean would have paid good money just to capture the moment where her eyes darkened and fear replaced surprise. He watched her tongue work in the corner of her mouth. She jerked her hand away from the guy’s. She was looking for a word, a sentence, and Sean waited to see what it might be. An apology? A plea? He’d heard it all in his years of police work. Beg. Ask me to take it easy on you. Or ask me to take you back. Desire flicked inside him. He loved holding power over others. It was a high like nothing else.

  “Can I help you?” The guy spoke instead.

  Sean didn’t move his feet or his head. Only his eyes shifted to the right, a quick glance, and then he pulled back his fist and aimed.

  “Sonofa—” He’d missed. Caught off balance, he stumbled on the uneven pavement. How the hell had he missed?

  “Ethan, don’t—”

  Ethan, huh? Sean wiped saliva from the corner of his mouth. Nice name. Nice uptight, conservative, middle-America name. He reached out with one hand and took a fistful of nice Ethan’s shirt. “Get the hell away from my girlfriend.”

  “Your girlfriend? I don’t think so.” Ethan reached up with both hands and shoved Sean away. A button popped off his shirt and rolled into the darkness.

  What the fuck? No one shoved Sean. No one.

  “Sean, stop it.” Dakota stepped between the two men. “You followed me here?” This time she didn’t sound impressed or swept away by love. This time, the look on her face was a cross between disbelief and pity. Her eyes narrowed and he caught the glance she took over his shoulder.

  She’s looking for someone to save her. A local cop or the bouncer. Not this pansy ass standing beside her. “Didn’t really have a choice, did I?” He took her by the wrist. “I tried to be nice the first time.”

  “That was nice?” She yanked her arm away. “We called the police.” A shake in her voice betrayed the lift in her chin. “All I have to do is call them back, let them know that you showed up to harass me again.”

  “Sweetheart, I doubt they’ll come running. These Southern boys don’t give a rat’s ass about a domestic between two people from outta state. They’ve got more to worry about.” Something flickered in her eyes, and he knew he’d regained control. “All I want is two minutes, and then you can go back to whatever one-night stand you’ve got brewing here.”

  “I watched it,” she said after a long pause. “The video. We all did. And I saw what you did. It was horrible. How could—why would you? In a place where people trusted you?” She took in a jagged breath. “How could you do that to me?”

  “Don‘t try and be noble,” he sneered. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  “Are you kidding?” Her eyes widened. “It has everything to do with me. That’s my hometown you came into.” Incredibly, she stared him down. “You don’t belong to Little Lakeside, Sean. Not the way the rest of us do. You’re an outsider. Always were and always will be. You can’t think that some badge on your chest gives you reason to push us around. Yeah, I know Tommy was homeless. And dealing drugs. He still didn’t deserve to be killed by the police chief. No one deserves that.”

  Sean paused. This wasn’t what he’d expected to hear. And the set in her jaw wasn’t what he’d expected to see. Not from the woman who’d swooned at his every word, his every touch, over the last twelve months. “Don’t play the martyr, babe. You’re not that good at it.”

  “Go to hell. Threaten all you want. You might have some pull in New Hampshire, but you’re nothing down here. No one knows your name. They won’t protect you. Not when I tell them what you did.”

  “You little bitch.”

  She pulled back slightly and spit in his face. Before Sean knew what had happened, a glob of saliva landed on his right cheek and slid down toward his neck. “That was a mistake.” He reached up to wipe it off.

  “Dakota?” Ethan’s voice came from behind them.

  “I’m okay.” Her gaze locked on Sean and narrowed.

  “Not much of a fighter, is he?” Sean said. “Your new boyfriend.” He paused. “Can’t imagine he’s much good in bed, either.”

  Fury blackened her face. “Leave me alone, asshole. You’re wasting your time, anyway. I already gave the cops what you’re looking for.”

  He felt the blood drain from his face.

  “Yeah,” she said. “So now they know. They know everything, and they have proof, and they’re calling the New Hampshire state police.” Her voice faltered. “Probably already did.”

  Sean stood there, stunned. She’d betrayed him? She’d turned over the evidence? Rage rushed through him, and the vein in his right temple pulsed.

  “If you thought I would just hand it over to you, just say ‘Okay, you win,’ then you were wrong,” she added. “You were never worth that much.”

  In that moment, it took everything Sean had to keep from wrapping both hands around her throat and throttling her. “You’re lying.”

  She smiled. “You wish.”

  Sean balled up both hands. “In that case, you just made the biggest mistake of your pathetic life.” He took another look at Ethan, who now stood halfway between them and the door to the club, as if he couldn’t make up his mind which side he wanted to take. Sean grabbed Dakota’s wrist and bent close to her ear.

  “You won’t need to worry about the police, sweetheart. Not down here or up north. Go ahead, call ‘em and tell ‘em you found me. So you handed over the video. Big deal. You might as well have wrapped it up in a pretty pink bow and handed it over to the chief. You know where that’ll end up? Bottom of someone’s shit pile to deal with next month. And that isn’t gonna help you tonight.” He pulled her closer, so that his mouth was almost pressed against her cheek. “The next time you see me, and the next time your friend over there steps away for more than a second, it will be the last time you open your mouth for a month. I can promise you that.”

  Sean stepped back so he could see her expression. He released her arm and waited for that look to cross her face again, the one that slid between fear and panic and pain. The one that meant he was back in control. But it didn’t come.

  “I guess I don’t have to worry, then,” Dakota said, and her voice was calm. “‘Cause you were never much for keeping your promises, were you?”

  2:00 a.m.

  Dakota allowed Ethan to lead her back into the club. Hand in hand, unspeaking, they wound their way through the crowd and out onto the patio. “I’ll get you something to drink,” he said.

  She sank into a chair, folded both arms on the table, and buried her face inside them. Her knees wouldn’t stop shaking. Over and over again, the scene replayed inside her head. Sean’s hand on her wrist. His breath in her ear. The threats, the anger, the promise to make her pay. She’d managed to keep her composure standing toe to toe with him, but now she felt like she was going to throw up. It was like some kind of horror movie, and she was trapped inside it without a hint of how she’d gotten there or how she might escape.

  She opened her eyes and stared at the table. Twenty-four hours ago, she’d been madly in love with him, sure that their future together held a happy ending. She’d been dreaming of weddings and rings and telling herself that her patience in waiting would make their lives together that much sweeter.

  Now she felt like the biggest fool in the world. How had she misread him so completely? How could you lie next to someone for so many nights and not hear the tracks that played inside his head?

  A great sadness seeped through her. Endings always tore her apart. Endings of books, ending
s of movies, endings of vacations. Endings of summers. Endings of relationships, most of all. She blew out a long breath. Endings always made Dakota feel like curling up in a tiny ball and hibernating until the sun came out again. She wasn’t any good at them. Period. And the fact that now she had to face one in a foreign city made her feel more wretched than ever. Suddenly, all she wanted was a bed filled with pillows and a night long enough to sleep everything away.

  She waited for the grief. She waited for her cheeks to dampen. But something unexpected happened. A funny feeling eased its way inside her heart. She didn’t recognize it until the tears didn’t come. Instead of heaviness inside her chest, she felt lightness. Relief. She traced the scars of old cigarette burns on the table.

  Relief?

  Maybe. And then she knew why.

  I stood up to him. And I ended it. For the first time she could remember, she’d said the first goodbye. She’d packed up her heart before he had. She hadn’t been the one to hold on, the one to try and make things work, the one to look beyond the knots of the moment and try to smooth out a future. She always tried to hold on too long. She knew that. But throughout her life, people walked away before she wanted them to: her mother, her high school boyfriend, all the men who came after.

  Not this time. I ended it, once and for all. I told Sean to leave me alone. And she’d lobbed a solid goober square in his face. She was pretty proud of that, too.

  “Hey.”

  Dakota looked up as Ethan sat down and handed her a glass of water. “I’m guessing that was your ex-boyfriend.”

  She didn’t answer, just took a long drink of water.

  “What’s he doing in Memphis?”

  She closed her eyes for a brief moment. How could she possibly begin to explain? “Long story. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”