“I’d like to, man, but I’ve got a meeting upstairs. Keep an eye on my girl for me, will you?”
“I’m perfectly capable of keeping an eye on myself,” I tell him, a little annoyed at the endemic sexism of his remark.
“Is that one of your party tricks?” he asks, dropping one of the strawberry smoothies he’s carrying next to my plate. “Because I’d like to see it.” He gives me another kiss, this one on my cheek, before he starts backing away. “Don’t forget to drink that. It’s got an immunity boost in it to help with that cough you’ve got going on.”
“I don’t have a cough.”
“You had one for most of the night.” He gestures to the smoothie. “Drink it. An ounce of prevention and all that.”
Then he’s turning and walking away and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to yell “Yes, sir” after him and follow it with a smart-ass salute. But that would only call more attention to me and that’s the last thing I want.
I turn back to the table to find my friends smirking at me. Even Austin has managed to tear his eyes away from the opening kickoff of the World Cup long enough to say, “You better get to drinking that smoothie. I don’t want to have to tattle on you to your boyfriend.”
I flip him off, taking a very deliberate bite of my salad instead. He just laughs, and things quickly go back to normal—or as normal as they can be when Austin is literally spellbound by the action on the television. As for Ro and Zayn, they look pretty interested in the game, too, despite all the shit they’d given Austin.
Which leaves me to amuse myself because while I had been winding Austin up, I’d also been telling the truth when I told him I didn’t understand the point of soccer.
I eat my salad in relative silence, broken only by the curses and cheers that pay proof to the fact that it’s not just my friends—much of the still crowded cafeteria really is watching the World Cup semifinal.
On the plus side, when I start coughing about halfway through lunch, only Ro is paying enough attention to me to notice.
“Not a word!” I snap at him, reaching for the damn smoothie and downing half of it in one long sip.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he answers with a wicked grin that does nothing to set me at ease.
I’m trying to think of a suitable retort when a report on MSNBC catches my eye. It’s footage of Brandon Jacobs—Ethan’s Brandon—standing behind a podium, while being framed by both an American flag and a flag for the state of Massachusetts.
Before I recognize I’m doing it, I fumble my phone and earbuds out of my pocket. It takes me a moment to open the right app and then tune to the frequency listed below the TV, but in under thirty seconds I’m listening to a story about Brandon Jacobs winning the Democratic primary in the fair state of Massachusetts just days after his twenty-fifth birthday. He’ll be running for the seventh district seat in the U.S. House of Representatives this November and he’s doing it with the full support of his old money father, socialite mother and famous, biomedical CEO and philanthropist half-brother. Or at least that’s how the story goes. And judging from how friendly Brandon and Ethan look at the fund-raiser Frost Industries threw for him, I can see where the anchor is getting his story.
Brandon’s victory speech is filled with political rhetoric, very rah-rah Boston and America. He talks about the importance of taking care of our new crop of veterans and the role biomedical companies play in doing that. He even goes so far as to say that funding research at innovative corporations like Frost Industries can make all the difference in saving our soldiers’ lives—on the battlefield and at home.
I don’t hear much more after that. Instead, I’m caught up in the fight I had with my brother the other day, his words playing over and over in my head like a CD that keeps skipping.
He’s not like us, Chloe.
People with that much money don’t think the same way we do.
You’re kidding yourself if you think Ethan Frost won’t sell you out the first time his family needs him to.
I hadn’t believed him, had instead put all my faith in Ethan. And yet it turns out he’s throwing fund-raising events for his brother’s campaign. He is actively helping to get a man elected who he knows is guilty of rape and abusing power.
And for what? Government funding for Frost Industries research? A powerful ally in Congress for biomedical research and veterans’ affairs?
It doesn’t make sense to me. It just doesn’t make sense. Brandon raped me. He raped me and God knows how many other girls he did that to and Ethan is helping him get elected? After their fight? After every terrible thing he said about his brother?
It doesn’t make sense.
The rich are different than us.
Ethan’s different than us.
Suddenly, I can’t breathe. I stumble back from the table, rip my earbuds from my ears. The story is almost over but I can’t stand to hear one more minute—one more second—about Brandon’s run for Congress and the very promising career this young, handsome politician from Boston has in front of him.
“Hey, Chloe! You okay?” Zayn climbs to his feet as well, a concerned look on his face as he rests a supportive hand on my shoulder. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”
I feel like I’m going to pass out. Or, more accurately, like the top of my head is going to blow off right here in the middle of this cafeteria.
Ethan wouldn’t do this, I tell myself. He wouldn’t betray me like that.
But what if he doesn’t consider it betrayal? What if it’s just business to him? Or worse, just family?
On the screen, I watch as Brandon wraps one arm around his mother’s waist and the other around Ethan’s shoulders. He’s beaming at the camera, they all are, and though I can’t read lips, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the joyous words pouring out of Ethan’s mouth are Victory in 2014.
All of a sudden, the strawberry smoothie I just drank isn’t sitting too happily in my stomach. I make a mad dash for the restroom, barely making it into a stall before I end up puking out every last drop of that goddamn smoothie.
Chapter Sixteen
It takes me a while to figure out what I want to do, how I want to handle this.
There’s a part of me that wants nothing more than to storm up to Ethan’s office right now—I know he’ll see me—and demand an explanation for the story I just saw.
Another part is screaming that this is the last straw, that I need to race back to Ethan’s house and strip it of every last trace of my existence.
And still another part wants to call Ethan, to beg him to come to me and hold me and tell me that I’ve misunderstood … everything. That the story isn’t true. That he didn’t raise money for Brandon. That he isn’t backing his brother’s candidacy. That he didn’t sell me out because of his brother’s political aspirations. Because of his father’s terrible death.
In the end, though, I do none of those things. Instead, I go back to work and finish out my day, researching the newest crop of court cases on intellectual property mergers that I’ve been assigned to cull through.
It’s a long afternoon, and an even more interminable evening as I wait for Ethan to get home from a business dinner that is running late. This morning he’d asked me if I wanted to go with him and I’d declined because I don’t have anything to wear. I didn’t tell him that because he would run out and buy me a whole closet full of expensive clothes, which is the last thing I want when I’m still trying to get over the cost of my belly chain.
Now I’m even more grateful that I turned him down, since the idea of sitting in a restaurant and making small talk with his business associates is the absolute last thing I want to be doing. Not when it’s taking every ounce of self-control I have not to freak out, not to violate Ethan’s trust and search the house for proof of his duplicity. Not to walk away and never look back.
Part of me wonders if I even could. I thought about doing it this afternoon, right after I saw the broadcast, and I?
??m thinking about doing it now, as I sit here on Ethan’s patio, nursing a glass of wine and staring up at the midnight sky. The wind is blowing pretty hard and I can smell just a hint of smoke in the air gusting by. It’s a by-product of the forest fire that’s raging about fifteen miles away from here and I can’t help wondering how much worse the fire is going to get before it gets better.
Can’t help wondering how much worse the mess I’ve made of my life is going to get before it gets better.
It would be easier—infinitely easier—to cut my losses. To pack up my shit and walk away from Ethan once and for all. I’ve worked so hard to be strong, so hard to get my life together, that watching it fall apart all over again is the worst kind of torture.
And yet what can I do to stop it? What can I do to make it feel like everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve tried to be, isn’t crumbling down around me?
Just pretend he doesn’t matter?
Just walk away and hope for the best?
I don’t know that walking away from Ethan is even an option at this point. How can it be when he’s a part of me? When I would just carry him with me wherever I tried to run?
The time I’ve known Ethan can be measured in mere days and weeks, and yet, in that time, he’s somehow become so much more than I ever planned on.
He’s the first thing my sluggish mind thinks of in the morning, when the early morning tide rolls across the cold and lonely beach.
He’s the last thing I dream of in the dark when the sky is still and starshot.
He’s everything in between. The secret that wraps itself around me like a whisper. The promise that burrows its hooks deep inside of me.
He’s my obsession. My addiction.
It’s a truth I couldn’t begin to fight. A truth I’m paying for now as I wait and watch and count the seconds as the clock rolls itself around to another day.
It’s after midnight when I hear the gate rolling open at the end of the driveway, followed by the sound of Ethan’s BMW making its way up the drive. By the time I hear the garage open and close, I’m up and standing at the railing, looking out over the dark and endless ocean.
I go over and over the discussion I want to have with Ethan as I wait for him to find me. It’s probably stupid, but I can’t bring myself to have this fight in the house, surrounded by his things and the awkward memories of my humiliation. Better, if we need to hash things out, to do it in the open air. At least out here, the pain and anger will have someplace to go.
Except it takes longer than I thought for him to find me. By the time he does, I’ve already given up and started walking back toward the house, wondering what is taking so long.
I’m already to the closest patio door when it flies open, Ethan slamming out of it at close to a dead run. “Chloe! Chloe, where—”
He stops dead when he sees me in the shadows, his voice choking off, and it registers just how frantic he is. “I’m right here,” I tell him. “I was looking at the ocean.”
He nods jerkily, blows out a long, unsteady breath. Then braces his hands on his knees and just concentrates on breathing for long seconds.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was afraid I had left him. Except my car is out front in the driveway, my shoes near the garage door into the house—the same door he had to have taken to get inside. He couldn’t have missed them if he was looking.
“You okay?” I ask him huskily, hating myself for how much it matters. I’m the one who’s shattered, the one holding on by a damn thread here, and yet I can’t stop worrying about him. Can’t stop wanting to take care of him.
“Yeah, of course. Sorry. I just freaked out when I couldn’t find you.”
I nod. “I can see that. The question is why?”
He studies me for long seconds and I get the impression that he is trying to decide what to say. Not that he doesn’t have an answer for my question, only that he’s trying to decide how much he wants to tell me. I don’t know why I feel that way, except that he’s got that face on. The one he wears when he’s trying to lie to me—in reality or by omission.
The knowledge breaks something else inside of me, something tenuous and uncertain and afraid. I bite my lip to keep from screaming and this time I’m the one concentrating on my breathing.
“I was afraid you’d left,” he finally says.
“Without my car? Without my shoes?”
“I didn’t—I didn’t see your shoes. And your car could have broken down again.”
“Not after you had it fixed. The thing runs like it’s brand new.”
He smiles then. “I’m glad.”
“Yeah.”
He reaches for me, wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against his body. I go, but I don’t relax into him like I normally would. I can’t. There’s too much inside of me right now and none of it is good.
Ethan knows right away—of course he knows. He’s so in tune with me, with my body, to every little nuance of how I hold myself that he can’t help but notice something is wrong now that he’s calming down.
“Baby?” He pulls back a little, brushes my hair out of my face so he can get a better look in the warm glow of the patio lights. “You okay?”
“I don’t know.” It might be the most honest thing I’ve said all afternoon.
“Okay.” He tugs me closer, rubs a soothing hand up and down my back like he’s trying to comfort me. Like he isn’t the reason that I’m like this. “What can I do?”
It’s a great opening, one I wouldn’t pass up even if I could. And I can’t, the words tumbling out of my mouth and over themselves in my desperation to get them out of me. To get the ugly, disgusting, painful accusations out of me.
“Brandon is running for Congress.”
Ethan freezes like a deer in the headlights, sensing danger for the first time but unable to move out of the way of the oncoming disaster. “Yes.”
“In Boston.”
He nods, his arms tightening around me even more. I can’t breathe, but I think that has more to do with the anxiety inside of me than Ethan’s grip. “Yes.”
“Where he raped me.”
“Yes. Baby—”
“Let me finish,” I snap, my voice colder than it’s ever been before—at least when I’m talking to Ethan.
“Of course.” Now he’s rubbing circles on my back, trying to soothe me when I don’t want to be soothed.
“That wasn’t me asking for your permission. I’m just trying to clarify the facts. Brandon is running for the U.S. House of Representatives for the Seventh Congressional District, the same district where he committed a violent felony. Against me.”
Ethan swallows tightly, his jaw working back and forth. But I’ll give him credit. He doesn’t look away from me, doesn’t so much as drop his eyes. “Yes.”
“And you’re supporting him.”
“What? No!” His hand clamps down on my shoulder. “Are you kidding me?”
“Don’t lie to me! Not again! I can’t take it. We can’t take it.”
“I’m not. Jesus, Chloe, I would never. You have to know that.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Fuck!” Ethan lets me go to thrust a frustrated hand through his hair. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t fucking happening. Chloe, I have spent the last three weeks doing everything in my power to keep him from being elected.”
His words sweep over me and I expect to be swamped with relief. But it doesn’t quite happen like that. Instead, all I can think about is the fact that he didn’t tell me. Even if he is telling the truth now, which I’m not sure he is, he never told me this was happening. That this was coming. He let me be blindsided, just as I was blindsided the moment I opened that damn door and found Brandon standing on the other side of it.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Fuck.” He closes his eyes, rubs a tired hand over them, and I realize that outside of the night he tried to dump me, this is the most I’ve ever heard Ethan swear at one time.
At least when he’s talking to me.
It’s a random thought, but right now my whole head seems to be filled with random thoughts. Small puzzle pieces whirling around in my mind without pattern, without reason, while I try to figure out how they fit together.
It seems my whole life these days is one big, unsolvable puzzle. I hate it.
“I didn’t tell you because I figured you had enough to deal with right now without adding more shit about Brandon to the mix.”
“That wasn’t your responsibility. It wasn’t your decision to make.”
“Protecting you is always my responsibility.” He says it flatly, like it’s a foregone conclusion. Not up for discussion. “Just like choosing to take care of you will always be my decision.”
“This isn’t taking care of me.”
He blanches, stumbles back. Looks more vulnerable than I have ever seen him. The knowledge puts a crack in the ice around my heart, starts to melt it just a little even when I want it to stay intact. To keep me safe.
“Please don’t say that,” he whispers.
But how can I not say it when things are so fucked up? “I saw the news report, Ethan. I was in the cafeteria, surrounded by hundreds of people, when I saw the damn news report. How is that taking care of me?”
For the first time, he looks confused. And angry. “What news report?”
“Don’t play stupid with me! You had to know.”
“That him making Democratic candidate for the seventh district would make local Boston news, absolutely. But national news? Already? I’ve called in every favor I have—the story shouldn’t have gone anywhere. It shouldn’t have gained any traction.”
“Because you didn’t want me to see it?”
“Because I didn’t want anybody to see it! It’s a key race in a key city and the more exposure he gets, the better his chances of winning. I wanted to cut that off at the knees. I did cut it off at the knees.” He reaches inside his pants pocket, pulls out his cell phone. “What station did the story run on?”
“MSNBC is where I saw it.”
“Fuck.” He shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. “Chloe, baby, I’m so sorry. You never should have seen that. It never should have happened—”