17. All Of You （Hattie）
ALL OF YOU (HATTIE)
H oly flying shitballs.
I stare at Ethan, thinking my heart just caved in.
For him, for the boy he was—just a clueless, confused kid, faced with one of the harshest realities any young man can deal with.
And the man it made him into now.
No wonder he’s so Ethan.
So closed off with barbed wire and dragons guarding his heart.
And no flipping wonder it feels like he’s bleeding alone, quietly curled up and wounded in a place he won’t let anyone else tread.
“Well?” He looks at me expectantly.
“Um. Ummm, holy crap.” My voice is hoarse with my heart lodged in my throat. I want to reach out to him, but I don’t know if he’d even let me right now. “I had no idea, Ethan. I never would’ve guessed any of that, not in a million years.”
“I hid it well. Looks like it worked.”
“Yeah, wow. Margot never told me.” I grip the counter for support, completely stunned. My knuckles are white, but I can’t bring myself to relax my grip. “Wait, did she even know?”
“Hell no.” There’s a harshness in his voice that isn’t normally aimed at me. “No one did. Not another living soul—no one except Gramps.”
I blink slowly.
“You told Leo?”
“Not with words. I limped home and raided his liquor cabinet the second I noticed Holden was off for the day. Gramps found me on the verge of blackout drunk. Nearly blind and almost dead on the floor.”
Ethan breaks away from my stare, pacing the room like he can’t bear to remain still.
I get it.
Sometimes when you’re hurting this bad, it feels like your skin is too tight. You need to keep moving for the distraction.
“It must’ve been terrible,” I whisper.
“For me?” He scoffs. “No, I got off too lightly, Pages. I deserve every second of grief. I should’ve just told her from the start I’d figure this out.
It wasn’t hard. I never should’ve let her leave the house, not in the state she was in.
What kind of good-for-nothing piece of shit—” He stops, his hands shaking, gnarled into fists.
“She must’ve figured out real fast it was hopeless.
She came to me looking for help, for reassurance, and I spat in her face. ”
I ache for him.
Every breath feels like inhaling saltwater, and I try to hold in my tears as my nose burns.
“Ethan, no. You can’t do that. You can’t beat yourself up over something that happened when you were barely grown, just starting out.”
His eyes are remorseless.
They flick to mine, more bitter and cold than Casco Bay in January.
“Like hell, Hattie. Don’t pretend it isn’t my fault.
I’m the bastard who knocked her up, the asshole who ignored her.
I’m the chickenshit little worm who ran her off.
She left blinded with pain, not in her right mind.
She thought her life was fucked because of me— and she wasn’t paying attention to the road. She lost her life and so did my kid.”
He inhales like he’s breathing needles, each breath tearing him apart.
And he turns away, his huge shoulders slowly rising and falling, sick and battered with the nightmare he’s lived.
I wipe a tear before I come closer, before I gingerly clench his shoulders, one with his pain—and oh my God, it’s overwhelming.
“You didn’t know . You couldn’t,” I whisper, willing him to breathe, to look at me.
Eventually, he turns and his gaze settles on mine, but it cuts straight through me.
I don’t know how to ease heartbreak this savage.
I don’t even know if I can .
But I hate feeling so useless, so lost in the face of something like—
Jesus, like this.
“I was too much of a selfish punk to care. To take this seriously.” There’s so much self-hatred in his voice I flinch. “When she found me on the docks and we had that blowout, you know what I thought about? Me. Number one. I thought about how much having a kid would shit up my life.”
“That makes sense, though,” I venture. “You were scared.”
“Scared or not, it’s a shitty thing to do when you’re talking to the girl you knocked up.
She’d just finished high school and she was looking for a job.
She didn’t have the family or money I do.
Single motherhood would’ve wrecked her future far more than it would have scrambled mine—and I flaked out when it mattered.
Couldn’t even tell her it would be okay. ”
His face screws up, contorted like a man possessed.
He is.
Ethan’s been haunted for years, scorched from the inside out by more than a decade of emotional horror, beating himself up for a tragedy he couldn’t control and can’t take back.
“Ethan, please. That’s not fair.” I can’t bear to see him hurting like this. “You didn’t want to be tied down and you panicked a little. You’re allowed to. What young man wouldn’t? Taking on a baby, a family, that’s heavy stuff.”
“But I wasn’t going to be with Taylor. I could have left whenever I wanted and just paid child support. I could’ve flown in and supported her however I could. There are a thousand things I could have done instead of brushing her off like a goddamned mosquito.”
“But you were so inexperienced. You didn’t know.” My voice breaks as I lay a hand on his arm. He glances down at the contact, muscles flexing. “And it’s a lot to take in. You had no idea until she told you, and you just reacted.”
He shakes his head again.
“It only took you one night to be brave,” I continue. “One night to decide to stand up and be a dad. That’s hardly the worst thing. It’s courageous and mature to admit you made a mistake and—”
“No. No damn excuses, Hattie. The time for that was the second she told me.”
I swallow thickly, stepping closer, pressing my body against his, wishing he could see inside my head just for a second.
It’s not fair.
It’s not right for him to keep immolating himself for years over this, even if dreadful mistakes were made.
“Ethan,” I whisper again. Everything in my body feels like it’s breaking apart, my heart cracking like ceramic. “Ethan, you’re dead set on thinking the worst about yourself.”
“I should be, dammit. I’m a horrible man. Don’t you see it?” he snarls.
“I think you tried to be kind.”
For the longest time, he doesn’t move.
All I can do is bury my face in his chest and be there.
Let him know his darkest secret doesn’t scare me.
I’m here, I’m listening, and I’m not going anywhere.
More importantly, I don’t blame him.
He acts like he killed her with his bare hands, but he didn’t.
Eventually, his arms find their way around me. He sighs, slowly running his hands up my back, my sides, his fingertips brushing under my breasts.
I smile. I can almost feel him thawing.
“You weren’t there,” he mutters, gentler now. His head dips to mine until we’re forehead to forehead. I can taste his ragged breath. “And I love your generosity, Pages, but I was wrong. Absolutely fucking wrong. You can’t escape that. You can’t lie to me.”
“No lie. It’s not your fault she died. It was a freak accident. You didn’t steer her off the road.” I wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him closer. “That’s no burden you should carry around for the rest of your life.”
He says nothing, just breathes.
I can feel the reassuring weight of his embrace.
His palms make gentle, soothing circles like I’m the one who needs to be calmed, and it cuts my heart in two.
“Gramps was the one who told me to leave,” he says into the silence, resting his chin on top of my head.
“When he found me, when I sobered up, I told him everything. He warned me Portland would be poison if I stayed, and the only way I’d ever get the venom out of the wound is with time away. Go, he said. Go and don’t look back.”
And that’s exactly what Ethan did.
He ran, because he was a boy and he was scared, trapped in the kind of trauma no one should have to suffer so young.
Tears sting my eyes again, but I hold them back with sheer will.
I’m not falling apart, no matter how much my heart aches for him.
I need to be strong.
I need to help heal him, even just a little bit.
Until now, no one else knew.
Just finding out, it’s a huge deal and I need to do this right.
Hearing the truth feels like such a precious thing. Even if I don’t know what to do with it except cradle it to my chest.
He told me.
“I’m amazed you ever came back,” I say. “But I’m glad you did.”
“Yeah?” His lips brush my forehead as he turns my face up. “Some days, so am I.”
“I do have a question, though.” I hold him tighter in case he pulls away from me. But I need to know. “Why me? Why now?”
He’s so quiet, and the silence makes me nervous enough to keep speaking.
“You’ve spent over ten years sworn to secrecy, never telling a soul, but now…” And now you’ve told me. After avoiding the subject every time I tried to bring it up . “I didn’t even have to ask.”
His fingers trail my shoulders. “You asked plenty of times, Pages. You wore me down.”
His tired smile says he’s joking.
“Is that a good thing?” I smile back.
His laugh comes slow, like it’s being dragged through him, but there’s a warm, honeyed edge to it. He cradles my head in his hands.
“Maybe you’re just the first woman I trusted.”
“Me?” The word lodges in my throat.
“Yes, you, Hattie Sage.” He bends down so his lips brush mine. “Guess you proved something by taking on this fake marriage fuckery with me despite the risks. For having an open mind and open heart.”
“You’re paying me to do that. Very generously, I might add.”
His eyes unexpectedly soften.
“Perhaps. Or maybe it’s just this fake engagement shit getting to my head. I don’t know. I don’t have a list of reasons mapped out. All I know is I had to tell you. If I ever want to move on and close the chapter like one of your damn books, it had to come out.”
I grab his face softly, just kissing him and kissing him and kissing him forever.
There are times when words can’t compete with warm, charged lips.
His mouth on mine.
My tongue frolicking with his.
Two souls swirled together like paint smears, forming brilliant new colors.