Chapter Thirty
“Ethan”
When a guy looks at a girl he’s crazy for, it can go either way: Cary Grant suave or broken-tongued fool. I’m the latter. Oh, I always know what I want to say. It’s right there, clear as day in my head: great gems, the kind girls love. But it never takes a smooth trek to my mouth and usually ends with my foot there instead.
My nervousness isn’t helped that Avery’s eyes don’t lift when I stop beside her chair. Worse, the taut set of her shoulders and tight posture of her body—legs tucked under her and body curled into the armrest away from me—looks so unnatural for her that it brings home how shabby I’ve treated her.
I point at the recliner vacated by Khloe. “Do you mind if I sit there?”
She shrugs. “It’s your theater. I’m confident that means you can sit anywhere you want without asking me.”
Clipped, sharp-edged voice. Yes, she’s fed up with me, rightly so. “That doesn’t matter. Not if you don’t want me here. But I’m hoping you do.”
Her mouth puckers and I can see her swallow before those gorgeous brown eyes lift to mine, their expression unrevealing. “You can sit. If you want to.”
Three quietly spoken words.
You can sit.
And everything inside me soars like it’s Christmas morning. I ease down on the edge of the seat, my elbows resting on my knees. “Can we talk while I sit?”
Her features remain grudging and ungiving. “I wish we would. Maybe you can explain how one second we’re wonderful together and then you’re acting like you hate me. I thought we were getting closer, turning into something, but you’ve been behaving like we’re not even friends. Worse, like you don’t even know me. It’s been awful, Ethan. Humiliating in front of your family. I don’t like it. I want it to stop.”
It feels like a bomb’s gone off and everything I’d harnessed into control is now twirling inside me. Her assessment, straight to the point as always, just like Avery, is probably a fair place to start from her perspective, but not for me.
“I’m in love with you, Avery. How did you expect me to act after what went down? To find you living here with my family and having to live with you every day after you hurt me in the worst way any girl could. The entire day before the concert at the Bowl you strung me along, yanking the chain, then drop-kicked me away. It hurt, Avery.”
Her flashing gaze searches my face, and I immediately want to take back those words. That wasn’t how I intended to launch into this. I’ve thrown all my chips in the pot the first hand, and Christ, it didn’t soothe things with her. It’s upset her more.
Her brows turn into a deep furrow of disbelief. “I hurt you? That’s what this is? Why you’ve been behaving like an asshole to me. You think I’ve done something to hurt you?”
She’s nearly out of her chair before I recover from what I hear in her voice to snap back, “Well, haven’t you?”
Her eyes go wide as she turns back toward me. “No. I haven’t. I didn’t and I couldn’t. All I know is I thought things were good between us after the gig. It seemed good. Better than good. Wonderful. And I don’t even know what you’re suggesting you think I’ve done.”
Some of the urgency of the moment prompts me that I need to dial this down, listen more, and not run headfirst into accusation tossing. Explain, not hurt. Try to understand, not react. Try to get through this to the other side and have her with me.
“I’ve wanted you in the worst way for years, Avery.” The second I start to talk, I can feel this isn’t going to go smoothly because the shit I’ve bottled up inside me is bubbling, refusing to be contained. “Don’t stare at me like you don’t get it. The night of the gig at the Bowl. Remember? You’d have hated it if some guy did you wrong the way you did me. One second we’re into each other and I believe we’re finally starting to be something, and the next you take off with my brother and leave me hanging. No explanation. Nothing. Off with him like I didn’t matter. Eric first. Ethan second. Like always. Even with you. That’s what’s been going on with me since we’ve been here. Trying to figure out why you could kick me that way and how not to hurt so much because I love you.”
“Oh…” she says as if stunned, her mouth staying in a round shape as she sinks down on her recliner again. Then her brows crinkle again. “But I didn’t leave you hanging. I called and called you that night. Left messages. Sent texts. I…”
Her words are lost in the memory of the voice mail I listened to at my house, and out of nowhere I recall how panicked she’d sounded. I’d forgotten that in everything that’d gone down the night at the Bowl, and failed to connect the dots.
“I tried to reach you, Ethan. I really needed to talk to you about a lot of things. I wasn’t leaving you hanging or kicking you or whatever you rudely think I did deliberately. God, I can’t believe you’d think I’d treat you that way. I don’t play games with guys. You should know that without me telling you.”
I tip her chin, needing to see her face. When our eyes meet, I know she’s telling me the truth. Whatever happened, that’s not what that night was to her. And all my messed-up junk in me because of my brother kept me from wondering if she might have been with him for another reason.
My heart pounding, I ask, “What happened that night, Avery?”
Her body does a small shudder, like the memory is horrible, and she brushes back the hair from her face. “Eric showed up at my sister’s house. He was acting and talking crazy, E. To the point I was almost afraid of him. He kept saying people were after him and he needed me with him, but I didn’t want to go. I was scared. Then I thought what kind of friend would let him take off alone the way he was, and worse, what would you think of me if I let your brother down that way and something terrible happened. I tried to call you, to have you help me figure out the right thing to do, but I couldn’t reach you. And Eric was beyond listening to anyone. He was going whether I went with him or not. But someone had to have his back. And I couldn’t let him leave Emmy’s alone because I couldn’t let you down that way. I was trying to be a good friend, but more important, the person you’d want me to be. I left with him because I care about you.”
Oh fuck. “That’s why you were with him the last night he was home?”
She nods. “We drove around in your car, Ethan. I don’t even know how he got it. For hours. Then he got a call from some men and we went to a pickup spot. They put him into a car. And that’s the last time I’ve seen Eric. Then the next thing I know Alan’s bringing me home to tell your mother Eric’s OK. And everything snowballed from there. I didn’t know your parents were going to expect me to stay until Eric’s problems are resolved. I’ve just been trying to be a good friend to your family. Your family, Ethan. That’s why they matter to me, that’s why I do what they ask me, and that’s all I’ve tried to do since Eric showed up at Emmy’s—the right thing because I care about you.”
Whoa. I lean back in my seat, needing support, feeling like I’ve been crushed by that cement truck on my chest again. “I’m sorry. I hate the thought of you going through Eric shit and being afraid. And I feel like the worst kind of asshole not being there for you when you needed me.”
Her misty eyes fill with a look that floods me with sensation. “You made up for it after. That’s why I don’t understand this. If you were upset about me going off with Eric that night, why didn’t you tell me? Why haven’t we talked about this sooner?”
I close my hand over hers, hardly able to take in air through my gushing emotions. “I’m telling you now. That it took so long and me being a jerk to you, you didn’t deserve that. It’s my issue. That I jumped to the wrong conclusions about everything is my issue. No one else’s. The last couple of months have made me realize I’ve got some things I’ve got to work through if I want to have the life I want.”
When her eyes fix on me this time, they’re different, like melting pools of chocolate. “And what do you want, Ethan?”
My heart jumps into my throat. “You, Avery. Right now, that’s all I’m certain of. I want you. If you can give me another chance after being so awful to you. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for a very long time.”
She sniffs and it’s then I realize she’s been crying softly through our entire exchange. Waiting for her answer doesn’t work for me. I grab her in my arms and hold her tight against me. “I’m sorry.”
“Is there anything else you might have gotten wrong we should clear up today?”
An errant part of me even knowing the truth—because Avery would have told me if that had happened that night—wants to hear her say she didn’t get with my brother during that insane Eric drama, but no fucking way am I doing that to her. Asking her something awful just to hear her say it didn’t happen because I need her to because of the fucking demons in my head that are not fully contained yet.
I also wrestle into never to be spoken of land those blog posts that appeared out of nowhere about the gig at the Bowl. How she got them. Why she posted them. What that was about, because I’m sure Eric’s in the mix of that one, the answer’s going to be fucked up like everything involving my brother, and I don’t want anything else about him mucking up my feelings for her.
Like I said, I’m a work in progress.
Like I said, the only thing I want is her.
I bury my lips in her hair. “Yeah, there’s one last thing on my side of the table we need to talk about.”
She peeks up at me and it’s almost like she tenses in anticipation of what I’m going to say. “I’m listening.”
“Are we good yet? Do you still kinda like me enough to go back in time and finish our first date the way I’ve longed to and then start being who I want us to be?”
Her face brightens.
I’ve surprised her.
She’s sparkly Avery from head to toe.
Torture for me, but, fuck, do I want it.
Fuck, I want her.
“Hmm…” She pretends to give that serious thought, and even knowing she’s teasing, it’s agony waiting for her to finish. “Intrigued is a better word. I’m intrigued enough to go back in time with you and see what we can be.”