Chapter 26 The Break
T he very next day was unexpected in every way and it started off with a phone call from Monica.
“I just wanted to thank you again for coming over last night. Having you and Peter there made it a significantly less awful night.”
Drying my hands off on a kitchen towel, I chuckled.
“Glad I could do my part. Were things better between you guys after we left?”
“Worse, actually.”
“ How is that even possible ?”
“Well, we cleaned up together and then when I suggested we go to bed, I went to our bedroom and he went to your old room.”
“What? ”
“Yup. We officially slept in separate beds last night. We’re really crushing this whole ‘No sex before marriage’ thing.”
He slept in my old room, in my old bed, instead of next to his soon-to-be-wife?
Images I didn’t want of him lying in my bed, feet close to hanging off the edge poured behind my eyes.
I even squeezed them shut to stop it, but he was there anyway, in the darkly lit room, trying to find my face in the designs of the ceiling like I had tried to find his on too many sleepless night.
“Mon, that’s not okay.”
“Eh, it is what it is. We’ll figure it out before the wedding. I’m not that worried.” Though, she did sound worried, even as best as she tried to disguise it with indifference.
“Enough about me. I wanna hear about you and Peter! You guys looked awfully comfy last night.”
“Oh.” I let an awkward laugh tumble from my lips and wandered into my living room. “That’s not a big deal or anything.”
“What? Why ? He’s cute in the nerdy sort of way.”
“Yeah, I know. He’s definitely cute and he’s so nice—”
Monica interrupted. “Uh oh.”
“Why’d you say uh oh?”
“ Because , no great love story starts with either party saying the other is ‘nice.’”
“But nice is good . Nice is…” I paused, looking out over my lonesome new home with a growing gloom. “Safe.”
“Maybe. But safe isn’t always what’s best.”
“And sometimes it is.”
“Sure, yeah.” A knot twisted together in my chest as Monica took on the tender, maternal voice she rarely let show.
“Just… I don’t want you to try and force something that isn’t there, okay?
If it is, great. If it’s not, why settle?
You’re young and beautiful and you can have any man you look at with those big blue eyes of yours that I’m still pissed Dad didn’t pass on to me.
Don’t settle for the first guy who isn’t an asshole to you after having your heart broken. ”
The knot in my chest cinched itself tighter, constricting air flow to nothing but a few strangled sputters. Monica’s kindness was overpowering. She thought so much more of me than I deserved from her.
“Um,” I tried, blanking hard on the right thing to say. I searched the walls of the apartment like the answers were written on them. “I—”
An abrupt pounding shot my head toward my front door. The pounding was aggressive and confusing but a godsend from this conversation.
“Mon, I have to go. There’s someone at my door.”
“Oh, okay. Call me back.”
She hung up right after, and I placed my phone down on the arm of the only piece of furniture I had in the entire living room.
Was the knocking Maintenance finally returning my request?
It was Monday, so it was a likely possibility.
That or Peter had sent me flowers for last night. Or a box of strawberries.
I was going to be really pissed if it was a box of strawberries.
Hand on the doorknob, it wobbled in my grip as I turned it, opening the door just a crack. Whoever had been knocking pushed their weight against the door, forcing a rattled gasp of panic as I stumbled back.
“Hey!” A surge of adrenaline shot straight through my veins as I righted myself up, preparing for either the fight of my life or to run really, really fast.
The person behind my front door busted through, right into my apartment and the second they did, all of that fight-or-flight adrenaline I felt sucked to the sides of my veins to make a clear pathway for the raw, unfiltered rage that tore its way through.
“Ethan?”
He ignored me, of course, barreling his way through my apartment with a large tool bag in hand.
“Excuse me!” I called after him, running towards him before I really knew what I was doing. My anger was in the driver’s seat and there was no telling how many casualties may be the result.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!”
My hand was around his arm in a flash, tugging him back around to face me with as much might as I could muster. Ethan spun to face me, though in his muscles I could feel he could have shaken me off if he wanted to.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
His lips were a thin line as straight across as his thick eyebrows at that moment. His eyes refused to duck down to meet mine, and that infuriated my rage even more so. “Can you—”
“I’m fixing your faucet for you,” he cut me off, his voice deep and clipped.
“I said I didn’t need you to fix it—hey!” Ethan ripped himself out of my grip like it was nothing. He walked right past me and into my bedroom, turning in the direction of my small bathroom.
“Maintenance is coming by later to fix it!” I lied, following behind him.
“Yeah, well when they get here you can tell them it’s already done.”
“Ethan, I don’t need your help.”
His tool bag hit the bathroom floor with a thunk. “According to that leaking faucet, you do.”
My eyes glued to the bag on the floor, only one solution came to mind. Propelling myself forward, I wrapped my fingers around the course handle of his tool bag and dragged it towards myself. Diving my hands in, I looped my hands around as many unfamiliar tools as I could hold.
Ethan snapped his head around to me, furious eyes fixing on the tools I had safeguarded in my hands. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m asking you as politely as I can—considering the fact that you just barged into my house completely unwelcomed—to leave. I don’t want you to fix my shower.”
Ethan cocked his head to the side, intimidating energy radiating around him.
“You want me to leave?”
“Yes.”
Though his face didn’t move, the blacks of his eyes hardened, and I realized a second of a breath later that I knew this look on him. I knew it, and I knew what usually followed it. I needed to get him out of here now .
“I’ll leave… as soon as I fix your shower.”
“Well, that’s going to be pretty hard to do without all of your tools,” I shot back.
His mouth twisted together, a fire sparking in his stare that sent a blip of fear through my belly. Pulling his lips back over his teeth, he grit out, “Fine. Have it your way.”
And then he lunged.
A shriek I didn’t know came from me broke out of my mouth as Ethan came at me. Holding his tools in my arms like they were a newborn baby, I picked up my foot and I ran.
With my heart in my throat, my legs brought me out into the living room first, zooming around the lonely couch in the middle of the room. A brush of wind caught my back as I made the turn around the edge of the couch, telling me Ethan was close behind.
I beelined it back into the bedroom and went around to the farthest side of the bed. Whipping back around, Ethan jogged into the room, his eyes immediately gripping mine.
God, he looked pissed. Was this a bad idea? Should I have just let him help me fix my stupid shower?
Ethan stood there for only a moment, watching me like a predator watches their prey before taking one calculated step into the bedroom…
And then closed the bedroom door behind him.
Shit. Oh shit.
“Are you going to give me my tools back?”
“Are you going to leave?”
Shadowed determination casting down his face, he shook his head.
“Not until I fix that goddamn sink of yours.”
“Shower,” I breathed. “It’s my shower that’s broken.”
“ Whatever .”
A gasp of terror sucked into my lungs as again, Ethan lunged at me. Without thinking it through, I abandoned half of his tools on the floor before pressing all of my weight onto my back foot and stepping up on top of my bed.
I had only three tools left in my hands, none of which I could identify, but could they really be that important?
“There. You have half of them back.” As slow as he walked to one side of the mattress, Ethan shook his head.
“Not the ones I need.”
What are the odds of that?
“Fine! I’ll give you your tools back, but you have to promise to leave right after I do, okay?”
“Why are you so against me fixing your shower, huh? What’s so awful about me that you can’t even stand the thought of me helping you?”
“Nothing is awful about you, I just don’t want you here!”
Hurt clouded Ethan’s stare over in the time it took for me to realize what I’d said.
To me, I said it because being alone with him was a tornado of disaster, chasing me down and trying to suck me up, but I was still running.
Still trying to survive him. Though to Ethan, I plainly said that I didn’t want him, and unless I explained myself, he’d continue to think that, and I couldn’t explain myself.
Though, maybe that was a good thing? If he thought I hated him, there was no chance of us falling into the trap of each other again.
If he thought I wanted him nowhere near me, he’d stay as far away as I said to.
Yet the cost of him believing such a thing was knowing I was the one to put the anguish in his eyes that was there now, and I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to live with that.
Hurting Ethan willingly felt like the cruelest thing I had ever considered inflicting on another person in my entire life.
“I—” My heart was telling my tongue to say one thing, but my mind was telling it another.
The longer I didn’t speak, the louder the agony became coming from Ethan’s suffering gaze.
And the longer still that I didn’t utter one word, the agony rolled over into fury that screamed so loud I wanted to cover my ears.
“Fine,” Ethan spat. “I’ll fix it without the fucking tools.”