Chapter 20
Twenty
But right now, she just needed to sit.
Lydia’s hands were still shaking on the steering wheel.
Had been shaking since she’d left the farmhouse, since she’d given her final statement to Sheriff Wyatt, since she’d walked out of that barn for what she hoped was the last time, because for certain she was selling the place.
She couldn’t make them stop. Couldn’t make her fingers relax their death grip on the hard plastic.
She couldn’t stop seeing Tom’s finger on that trigger.
Couldn’t stop hearing the rifle’s crack.
That sharp, deafening bark that had echoed through the barn and through her skull and would probably echo through her nightmares for years to come.
Couldn’t stop thinking about Michael. The blood spreading across his white shirt, the impossible recovery, the way he’d stood up and walked away like bullets were nothing more than inconveniences.
An angel. Rosie had asked if he was an angel, and Lydia had brushed it off as childhood imagination. But children saw things adults didn’t. Things adults had trained themselves not to see.
She needed to process. Needed to think. Needed to figure out what came next. Where they’d live, how she’d support the kids, what happened when Tom went to trial, and she had to testify and relive this whole nightmare in front of a courtroom full of strangers.
But first, she needed to see Ethan.
Needed to look him in the eye and tell him she loved him without deputies and crime scene tape and chaos between them. Needed to touch him and prove to herself that he was real, that he was alive, that Tom hadn’t?—
Lydia got out of the car before she could spiral further.
Her legs felt unsteady, like she’d been on a boat for too long and the ground hadn’t quite solidified yet.
She made her way to the front door, fumbled with the key Ethan had given her less than two weeks ago …
has it only been less than two weeks? It feels like years, and stepped inside.
The house was quiet. Almost eerily so after the chaos of the farmhouse. The radios crackling, deputies shouting, Tom sobbing. Here, there was just the hum of the refrigerator and the creak of old floorboards settling and the whisper of wind against the windows.
“Ethan?” Her voice sounded too loud in the silence.
“In here.”
She followed his voice to the living room and found him sitting on the couch, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.
He looked like he’d been sitting there since he got home from the farmhouse.
Still wearing the same jeans and flannel shirt he’d had on that morning.
Exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes and tension still visible in the set of his shoulders, even in this defeated posture.
His hair was disheveled, like he’d been running his hands through it, and there was dirt smudged on his neck.
He looked up when she entered, and the relief that flooded his face made her chest ache.
“Hey,” he said softly, standing. Just looking at her like he was trying to memorize her face, like he was still half-convinced she might disappear. “Kids okay?”
“With Mrs. Figgs.” Lydia wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold despite the warmth of the house. “She insisted on keeping them for dinner too. Said they needed extra TLC today.”
“Good. That’s good.” Ethan took a step toward her, then stopped like he wasn’t sure he was allowed. Like he was waiting for permission. “They’re surprisingly resilient.”
“They shouldn’t have to be.” Lydia’s voice cracked. “They’re six and nine. They should be worried about homework and cartoons and what’s for dinner, not whether their father is going to?—”
“Hey.” Ethan closed the distance between them in two strides, his hands gentle on her shoulders. “It’s over. Tom’s in custody. He’s not going to hurt anyone ever again.”
“I know. I know that logically. But I can’t—” She gestured helplessly at her shaking hands. “I can’t stop shaking. Can’t stop seeing it. Can’t stop thinking about what would have happened if you hadn’t come, if Michael hadn’t?—”
“But I did come. And Michael did whatever the hell Michael did. And you’re all safe.” His thumbs rubbed small circles on her shoulders, grounding her. “That’s what matters.”
Lydia looked up at him and felt something crack open in her chest. “Ethan, I?—”
“I need to tell you something first,” he interrupted, his voice urgent. “Before I lose my nerve. Before you say whatever you’re about to say and I miss my chance again.”
He guided her to the couch with gentle hands. The Christmas tree lights were on, and they cast the room in soft, colorful light. Red and green and gold dancing across the walls, across his face, across the nativity scene still sitting on the mantel.
Ethan stood in front of her. Stood like a man about to face a firing squad, shoulders squared, jaw tight, hands clenched at his sides.
“When Sarah died,” he began, and Lydia’s breath caught because he never talked about Sarah unprompted, never brought her up unless Lydia asked first, “I decided that was it for me. One shot at family, and I’d blown it by not being there when she needed me most.”
“You didn’t blow anything,” Lydia protested. “You couldn’t have known?—”
“Let me finish.” Ethan’s voice was gentle but firm. “Please. I need to say this.”
Lydia nodded, pressing her lips together.
“I closed myself off,” Ethan continued, starting to pace in front of the couch. “Went through the motions. Work, sleep, repeat. Told myself I was fine alone. That I didn’t need anyone. That it was better this way. Safer. Can’t lose someone if you never let them in, right?”
He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing up in spikes. “I bought this house with Sarah. Furnished it the way we’d talked about. Hung the Christmas decorations she’d picked out. Like if I did everything exactly right, maybe she’d somehow know. Maybe it would count for something.”
Lydia’s throat tightened, aching for him. For the man who’d built a shrine to a ghost and called it a life.
“But it was just a house,” Ethan said quietly.
“Beautiful and perfect and completely empty. I’d come home after shifts and sit here—” he gestured at the couch.
“and just stare at the walls. Make dinner for one. Watch TV without really seeing it. Go to bed and wake up and do it all again. For three years.”
He stopped pacing, turned to face her. “Then you showed up.”
Lydia’s breath hitched.
“You and Eli and Rosie,” Ethan continued, his voice rough with emotion.
“Covered in soot and terrified and homeless. And you were everything I’d told myself I didn’t want.
Messy, complicated, chaotic. A woman with an ex-husband who wanted her dead and two traumatized kids and more baggage than anyone should have to carry. ”
“Ethan—” Lydia started, hurt blooming in her chest.
“But you know what?” He crossed to the couch and knelt in front of her, so they were eye to eye.
“You were also everything I’d been missing.
Laughter. Life. Purpose. A reason to come home that wasn’t just another empty house and another frozen dinner and another night of pretending I was okay when I wasn’t. ”
His hands found hers, warm and callused and steady.
“You made this place a home, Lydia. In days you did what I couldn’t do in three years.
You filled it with noise and chaos and children’s laughter.
You put art projects on my refrigerator.
You left books on my coffee table. You wore my shirts and made coffee in my kitchen and argued with me about whether the kids needed jackets when it was fifty degrees outside. ”
Lydia laughed wetly, tears streaming down her face. “They did need jackets.”
“They absolutely did, and you were right.” Ethan’s thumbs brushed across her knuckles. “You’re right about a lot of things. Including the fact that I was being an idiot yesterday.”
“You weren’t?—”
“I was,” he insisted. “I fell in love with you, Lydia. I think I started falling the first morning when you made me terrible coffee and remembered exactly how I take it, even though I’d only mentioned it once.
When you hugged me after I said you could stay, like I’d given you something precious instead of just basic human decency. ”
He shifted closer, his knees pressing against the couch on either side of her legs.
“Every day after that … watching you with your kids, seeing you rebuild your life from literal ashes, being let into your heart piece by piece even though you had every reason not to trust anyone ever again … I fell harder.”
“Ethan—” she began.
“I fell in love with the way you kiss Rosie’s forehead when you think she’s asleep,” Ethan continued, relentless, like he’d been holding this in for weeks and couldn’t stop now that he’d started.
“The way you check on Eli three times before you go to bed because you need to see him breathing. The way you hum when you cook. The way you wear my flannel shirts because they’re comfortable, not because you’re trying to be sexy, but somehow that makes it even more—” He stopped, swallowed hard.
“I fell in love with your strength. Your resilience. The way you kept going even when everything was falling apart. The way you stood between your children and a man with a gun this morning, without hesitation.”
“I was terrified,” Lydia whispered.
“I know. That’s why it was brave.” Ethan’s eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“I fell in love with you, and it scared the hell out of me. Because what if I lost you, too? What if I let myself care and then you left or got hurt or decided I wasn’t worth the trouble?
What if I opened myself up again and got destroyed all over again? ”
“So you pushed me away first,” Lydia said, understanding dawning. “Before I could push you.”