36. Evie
Evie
UNKNOWN
Caleb gave me your new phone number
why aren’t any of my calls going through? I’ve had to use your fathers phone
I’m devastated you didn’t tell me you got a new one
can we please talk?
Blood pours from Matteo’s nose as he falls to the ground, unconscious.
I scream before dropping to my knees, my hands shaking as I reach for Matteo’s beautiful face. For once in my life, hatred fills my heart for my brother.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I roar at him.
Caleb’s wild eyes flit from Matteo to me, his chest still heaving like a bull’s. “With me? With me?” he repeats. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you kissing my best friend?”
“You don’t own him, you moron!”
He points an incredulous finger my way. “Don’t get fucking smart with me.”
“Clearly someone has to, because the tiny shred of logic that was left in your brain just flew out the window.”
And that’s when I see it.
I’m not the only Ellington in this elevator running on hatred.
The rage seems to leak out of my brother in one breath. “How long has this been going on?”
The kiss? “It only just happened, Caleb.” The feelings? Two decades.
His eyes, so similar to mine, narrow as he shakes his head. “I don’t believe you. You two were kissing like you’ve done this before.”
My face scrunches up in distaste. “How long were you watching?”
“Long enough to be disgusted.”
His words are like a physical blow, for all the reasons he will never understand.
I’ve despised being touched, have hated the sheer idea of a man coming close to me for months. Years, if I’m honest with myself.
I never did anything for myself.
Yet this moment with Matteo was the most beautiful, precious experience for me, and to have my brother stand here and say that the only touch that has ever made me feel safe disgusts him shatters something within me.
“How could you?” he asks.
“I didn’t do this with the intention to hurt you, Caleb. Not everything is about you.”
His head rears back. “You’re making out with my best friend and you don’t think it involves me?” Running his hands through his hair, he yells, “It involves me when my sister has been fucking lying to me for months! You know how that shit makes me feel, Evie?”
“It doesn’t involve you and it wasn’t months, Caleb. That was our first kiss.”
“You’re fucking na?ve if you think it doesn’t involve me. He’s my best friend!”
“And you’re being selfish.”
Caleb shakes his head like he didn’t just throw the most catastrophic bomb in my lap and mutters, “Don’t fucking talk to me until you can tell me the truth. And when the traitor wakes up, tell him to go fuck himself.”
Blinking in shock, I barely have enough time to find my voice before Caleb turns, leaving the lobby of his own apartment building, and the elevator doors close again.
Maybe Matteo was right to be concerned. My brother has never spoken to me like that before. We’ve fought, of course, but never with such malice in our hearts.
And he doesn’t even realize the damage his words have caused.
Ten minutes after waking him and meticulously checking for a concussion—the irony of me having learned the signs from my brother not being lost on me—Matteo and I are quiet as we enter the apartment.
The sexual tension is replaced by the heaviness my brother caused, and Matteo doesn’t even know the half of it.
Doesn’t even know the words my brother threw in my face.
And he never will.
Matteo would never forgive Caleb for demeaning me like he did.
I’m silent, waiting for him to say he didn’t mean what he said and go after my brother.
After all, that is his best friend of twenty years.
And I’m just a girl he kissed in the elevator.
Instead, he leans against the kitchen countertop while I lean against the island, both of us watching each other like a hawk, both of us waiting for the other to run.
“I don’t regret it,” he says eventually. “I regret the way he found out, but I don’t regret it.”
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until it leaves me in one fell swoop.
My body all but slumps into the island. Matteo moves forward, not even hesitating for a second before he wraps me in his arms and kisses the top of my head.
“I’ll always choose you,” he whispers.
“But Caleb—”
“Will cool down eventually,” he cuts in. “The way he found out isn’t ideal. He may give me the cold shoulder for a while, but he will come around.”
“You sound so sure of yourself.” Shaking my head, I whisper, “You didn’t hear him after he hit you. He was beyond hurt. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me.”
The warmth of his arms, the way our height difference makes me feel cocooned and safe, eases my heart back into a comfortable beat, while his scent—cedar and something distinctly him—works to settle my frayed nervous system.
“Once he realizes how much I care about you, I can’t see him holding a grudge against either of us. He just needs a minute to process it. I know him, Evie. He’ll forgive you. He adores you.”
You didn’t hear what he said, I want to whisper, but stop myself. Instead, I lift my head and place my chin on his chest. “We’re really doing this, aren’t we?”
The smile that lights up Matteo’s face makes butterflies swarm my stomach. “No getting rid of me now, Dove.”
“It’s going to be weird dating while in the same apartment though,” I confess. “How do we do this? And with Caleb back?”
“I think you’ll find it will come a lot more natural than you think. I’ve been waiting years to treat you how you deserve to be,” he whispers as he lowers his head, his lips hovering above mine. “But for the meantime, maybe we do something tomorrow, get out of the apartment.”
“Paddleboarding?” I suggest.
His lips lift into another smile. “Paddleboarding it is.”
His smiles are always rare but here he is, handing them out to me like it isn’t the most precious gift in the world.
Lifting onto my toes to meet Matteo halfway, our lips have barely touched when there's a knock at the door.
Groaning, Matteo mutters under his breath, “Every damn time.”
“Are you expecting anyone?” I ask, frowning at the door.
He shakes his head. “Maybe they’ll go away if—”
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
His forehead drops to my shoulder. “When the fuck is everyone going to stop interrupting and let me kiss you?”
Ripping himself away, Matteo flings open the door.
“Oh, Matteo! Nice to see you. It’s been far too long.”
My mother stands on the other side, her hand raised to knock once more.
My feet root to the kitchen floor like a deer caught in headlights.
Panic encases my body, my hands shake at my sides, and my heart no longer feels the peace and serenity it had moments before when wrapped in Matteo’s arms.
I can see his confusion, clock the way he catches my panic, but my mother bulldozes her way in before he can protect me.
This is the first time I’m seeing her since I told her. Every other conversation was on the phone, every moment I begged her to believe me was through a device that heard my deepest secrets.
I could have gone my entire life without hearing her say she doesn’t believe me.
And yet here I am.
Afraid of my own mother, and more so, afraid whether she brought someone else with her or not. Matteo closes the door, leaving only us three, and a small part of me is relieved, but I’m not done yet.
“What are you doing here?”
I sound cold, so incredibly cold Matteo’s back stiffens. He isn’t the only one. My mother halts as if she hit an invisible wall.
“Caleb called me on the way back from the airport and told me how he was going to surprise everyone. Figured I could come and see my daughter.”
Arching a brow, I cross my arms over my chest. “What’s the reason you’re here, Mother?”
She swallows, her brown hair swishing over her shoulders. Caleb and I got our blonde hair from our father, but my eyes, they’re all hers. The crystal blue of them pierce my soul as she says softly, “I just want to talk.”
My gaze flicks to Matteo then back to her perfectly done makeup and hair.
“In private,” she adds.
Of course in private.
She’d be very pleased to know that I haven’t told anyone else. She all but begged me that day not to speak a word of it again.
I take it back.
Matteo didn’t break my heart when I was sixteen. That was my mother’s doing all those months ago when she took the side of my abuser and asked me not to tell anyone. When she did exactly what he did and tried to silence me.
And then again two weeks ago when she said she believed him over me.
I’d try and describe the visceral pain of that moment, but nothing is capable of conveying the sheer destruction of her words. The utter heartache of my own mother telling me that I wasn’t raped. That it never happened, that I must have made it up, that my imagination ran rampant.
And that’s not the worst part.
She still speaks to him.
She still speaks to the man that pinned me to my mattress when I was three years old and forced himself on me.
She still speaks to the man that placed his head beside my ear and grunted in pleasure as he kept his hand over my mouth to quiet my screams of agony.
She still speaks to the man that makes me hate being touched, that took every shred of innocence from me.
She still speaks to the man that made me think it would be easier if I were dead.
And it’s a choice that she does so. It’s not naivety.
I think about my future kids, my little girl coming to me, her body quaking, voice broken and raw as she lays her soul bare for me.
I would go postal.
I would be put behind bars.
I wouldn’t stop until I was in handcuffs.
And yet she looked at me as her mind made a choice.
And that choice was not me.
I could never do what she has done and that’s why I will never forgive her.
“Perhaps this conversation can be had another time? Evie has had quite the eventful evening already.”
I’m thankful for Matteo trying to stop this collision from occurring but I can see my mother straightening her shoulders and pursing her lips and I know—it’s her way or the highway. It’s always been like this, and I just never realized it until I finally went against what she wanted.
Placing her purse on the kitchen countertop, she pats Matteo’s arm. “So sweet of you, still protecting my little Evie, but this conversation is between my daughter and me, Matteo.”
Even still, Matteo moves until he’s standing slightly in front of me, as if trying to physically block me from whatever my mother wants to spew at my feet.
It never used to be like this.
We used to have such a tender, loving relationship.
Until she chose him.
The reminder of all she said to me hits me like a freight train.
“You know what?” I suddenly say, pushing myself off the kitchen island, my feet now unstuck.
“Matteo’s right, it’s been a night.” And I no longer have to listen to your bullshit.
I pick up her bag, shoving it against her chest and using it to physically turn her and push her toward the front door.
“We can talk another time. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Evie, stop this nonsense,” she says, low enough so Matteo doesn’t hear. “You’re breaking his heart—”
Anger, hot and venomous, bubbles within me.
Breaking his heart?
Is she fucking serious?
Opening the door, I push her through it, not feeling a lick of guilt as I hiss under my breath, “Go to fucking hell.”
“I beg your pardon?” With wide eyes, she gasps, laying her black manicured nails against her chest. “Whether you like me right now or not, Evie, I’m still your mother.”
“Exactly!” I scream, my temper erupting. “You’re my mother and you chose him!”
“Stop acting like a child. There are no sides when the truth—”
“Get out of my fucking face,” I spit.
She blinks at me in shock. “How dare you speak to me in such a manner.”
“How dare you,” I correct. “How dare you stand there and ask me to forgive him. How dare you have the fucking nerve to say I’m the one breaking his heart when he broke me.”
Before she can open her mouth again, I slam the door in her face and turn the lock.
I quickly rush past Matteo, running up the stairs so he can’t see the tears in my eyes and the way panic consumes my body. I can’t help but hate how my family has taken the happiest night of my life and turned it into something I now despise.