Chapter 48 Endgame
I didn’t remember how I got to the hospital.
One moment I was on the phone with Monica in my apartment and the very next, the smell of bleach was burning my nose as the lines of fluorescent lights hanging above gave the same treatment to my eyes.
I didn’t even realize I was running down the rows of stark, white hallways until I almost toppled over a nurse turning the same corner I was. Her scolding blew away with the wind I created as I picked up my speed again, searching for the room number Monica told me over the phone.
That was pretty much all she’d told me over the phone. After she dropped the bomb about Ethan being in an accident, I asked if he was okay and all she said was ‘ He will be. Just tell him to take me off of his fucking emergency contact when you see him’.
She rattled off his room number and hung up before I could ask anything more.
I had no idea if he was seriously injured or how it happened or why it happened at all.
I ran with what little information I had—literally—down the hospital halls until I found the number of the room Ethan was supposedly in. A doctor was exiting the room just as I was running up to it, closing the door to Ethan’s room behind her quietly.
“Excuse me!” The doctor’s eyes jumped wide as I approached. “Hi. Is, um, Ethan Black in there?”
She gave me a once over, a faint worry glossing her dainty features.
“He is. Are you a family member?”
“I’m his girlfriend.” I breathed hard through the lie, ignoring the quickness at which the false label came out of my mouth.
The doctor bought it without fail, nodding while looking down at her clipboard. “Well, your boyfriend’s had a pretty rough night, but I’d say he’s lucky all things considered.”
“Can you tell me what happened? Please?”
“From what I understand, he hit a pole with his car while he was driving under the influence. He’s got a broken arm, a couple bruised ribs, and a concussion.”
Horror drained all warmth from my face. “He was driving drunk?”
A tint of judgement covered her stare, but she blinked it away before it could be considered unprofessional.
“He was. He’s lucky it wasn’t worse and that he’s got such a fantastic lawyer on his side. The woman who was here earlier must have pulled some pretty hefty strings to get him out of any criminal charges like she did.”
Monica.
“He’s just resting if you want to go in and see him. I wouldn’t recommend staying too long though. With his concussion, the pain medication we gave him, and still being mildly intoxicated, he’s not making a lot of sense and needs his rest.”
I nodded, digesting the information with a heavy sadness unfolding through me. Then a question occurred to me.
“Will he remember much of anything I say to him tonight or what he says to me?”
The doctor scrunched her mouth together, shaking her head. “It’s not likely that he’ll remember any specifics. He’ll probably remember seeing you and anything past that is undeterminable.”
With that, she walked away and left me with only the door in front of me and the drunken man behind it.
There was a nagging voice chirping in the back of my head that told me to leave.
It told me I didn’t need to see him, only that I wanted to, and that I had decided earlier that all my focus should be on what I needed instead of what I wanted .
But this was a rare exception where what I wanted and what I needed were emphatically synonymous.
I pushed the door open and peeked my head slowly inside. The room was dimly lit by lamps on the bedside tables and monitor lights blinking in time with the rhythmic beats they admitted. The room was divided in two by a flimsy curtain, and right next to that curtain was a bed.
Laying in that bed was the other half of my heart.
He was broken inside and out now. His arm was curled up in a sling that looked as uncomfortable as the bandages wrapped around his bare waist. Ethan’s head was tilted off to the side, his eyes closed as he slept peacefully.
Thoughtlessly, my feet brought me closer to his bed and to him. Cuts along his face came into focus, one under his purplish bruising eye and another one slicing a crimson line above his eyebrow. Each cut and bruise that marred his handsome face pulled tears closer to the surface.
“How did you let this happen?”
The ache of my whisper permeated the sullen air between us, making it so even breathing hurt. I could never remember a time in my life where I felt this wholeheartedly sad.
And deservedly so.
Slight groaning from Ethan caught my heart in my chest. His head lulled to the side, eyes still closed and his face bunched in pain.
I held my breath back, struggling not to make a sound as Ethan shifted himself in his hospital bed.
Yet, it didn’t matter how soundless I was.
Ethan’s eyes fluttered open and landed right on me.
Whatever pain he was feeling seconds before dropped from his face to make room for his dashing smile. “Slim.”
“Hi,” I spoke softly. I wanted to smile back at him, I really did. But this wasn’t a moment for smiling, and even if it was, I couldn’t seem to find the strength enough to lift the heavy lie onto my lips.
“How are you feeling?”
Ethan let a wince show across his face as he tried to sit up. “Like shit.”
He tried to laugh it off, but I didn’t. The room fell silent between us as the gravity of what he’d done tonight settled in.
I clamped my teeth over my bottom lip to keep it from trembling as flashes of the accident created a miserable movie in my head.
No matter how hard I tried to divert my mind, the images of his car smashing headfirst into a pole, crunching and condensing like a soda can were there.
His body inside the car lurching forward, tumbling around inside and the fear in his eyes in that split second before the crash.
“You could have killed yourself…”
Ethan’s lips flattened. “I know.”
“You could have killed somebody else just like what happened with your dad,” I said, sounding more accusing than I intended, but couldn’t stop the surging anger within me.
At that, Ethan’s eyes cut up to mine.
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“No, I don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have driven drunk in the first place.”
“I think it’s pretty fucking obvious I wasn’t thinking straight.” Ethan’s head was ducked just so, but his eyes remained on mine, stiff and crowded by an unusual irritability.
“That’s not an excuse, Ethan! What if you had died?”
Fire sparked to life in his stare, and he hit back. “Then I would have died.”
“That’s not an option!” My outburst exploded from inside of me, laying waste to anything else Ethan had to say.
“That’s just not an option for you. And you can’t say things like that because-because you just can’t, okay?
Imagine it was me in this bed right now.
How would that make you feel?” I pressed, my voice cracking.
I tried to hold the tears back, to swallow them, or blink them away, but it was futile.
“Don’t ever do anything this stupid again…” The proof of one slid wet down my cheek and Ethan’s eyes watched it go. “Okay?”
His stare reached back up to mine, all his defenses collapsed. Understanding creased his dark eyebrows together, a sad awe passing through his eyes.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I agreed, sniffling.
Ethan wouldn’t take his eyes off of me. Even a bit glazed over, they were still overpowering in ways unsafe for both of us. He settled his head back against his pillow, observing me quietly. I pivoted my attention down to my hands as they fiddled with the edge of his bedding.
“Were you coming from somewhere when you got into the accident?”
A slow sigh expelled from him. “I was at your bar. Waiting to see if you were working tonight.”
My head snapped back up. “Patrick let you drive like this?”
“Pat had the night off.”
“Oh…” I’d have to give Patrick the cold shoulder for months if he allowed Ethan to do this to himself.
“When I realized you probably weren’t comin’ in, I left and… here we are.”
So this was my fault. Every scrape on his body and broken bone he had was mine to own. He was waiting for me, drinking because of me, and drove drunk because I wasn’t there to stop him. It was his choice to get behind the wheel, but it was what I’d said to him yesterday that put him there.
“I tried calling you.”
“I blocked your number.”
“ What? ”
He went to sit up, but pain fanned out across his face and stopped him halfway. Panic shot my hand out to rest on his arm as he eased himself back down slowly. A bead of sweat sprouted across his hairline, and I ignored the tick in my fingers to swipe it away.
“Why would you do that?” he asked through a shaking exhale.
“Because,” I stopped, swallowing hard. “Because being able to talk to you would just make it harder to let you go.”
“That’s why I tried to call you. So we could talk about all of this.” He dropped his head back onto the pillow, directing his gaze up at the ceiling. “You ran away so fast yesterday, I didn’t even get a chance to fight for you. You told me to stay away from you.”
“Ethan…”
“You said loving me was a mistake.” There was no volume left to his voice. The pain I had inflicted on him with my words drained it all away, and now here we were.
Two lovers whispering through the pain of their heartbreak.
“I didn’t mean that,” I started, moving closer to him.
Ethan’s eyes caught mine as I came closer, openly pleading for me to mend the weeping gash I’d left on his heart yesterday.
God, I was sorry. I was so sorry for so many things; I could be buried alive beneath my regrets. “I never should have said that.”
“Loving you was…” I stopped, searching through my brain for the perfect words to sum up our love. In the end, there were no words, and in the absence of words, I had my answer.
“Loving you, Ethan, is indefinable. It is easily the most beautiful thing I’ve ever been a part of.
Even in its ending, I still feel it so completely, and that’s how I know it’s real and that it’s never going away.
” Our love grieved inside of me, wailing so loudly, more tears stirred at the sound.
“You will always be the great love of my life.”
“It doesn’t have to end,” he begged, shaking his head.
“It does.” Another water petal slipped down my cheek as the warmth of Ethan’s hand clamped around mine, squeezing hard. “We can’t keep doing this back and forth, Ethan. It’s just not meant to be.”
Whatever Ethan was going to say next fell away. He stopped and he stared at me with a look as wounded as the rest of his body.
“Do I get any say in this at all?”
Swiping away a rolling tear, I said, “Not really.”
He appeared hard-bitten, clenching his jaw.
“Well, I’m gonna talk anyway.”
Ethan used his good hand to turn my hand palm up, and with his eyes hooked on mine, he folded our fingers together. Immediately, I hated how much I knew I was going to miss this feeling.
“Neither of us is going to find this again. We’re it for each other. We’re the endgame. Anyone else would be settling, right?”
“Ethan—”
“Right?” he persisted.
I gave an unwilling nod.
“So if we both know that what we have is it , why should we give that up? Why should everyone else’s happiness matter more than ours? Alice, you are my happiness.”
I let out a hollow cry. There just wasn’t anything left to cry out.
“I shouldn’t be the only thing in your life that makes you happy.”
Without missing a beat, he cracked a soft smile.
“You aren’t. You’re just my favorite thing.”
My shoulders caved down in a sigh as Ethan’s words and smile shot right through my heart. Again, why lie?
“You’re my favorite, too.”
Ethan’s small smile widened to a sappy grin that stretched up into his eyes.
“Then I think you should marry me.”
I gasped without meaning to, my heart sticking in place. “You don’t mean that. You’re high and concussed.”
“Maybe,” he replied, surprisingly cheeky. “But I do mean it. I’m always going to want to marry you whether I ask now or years from now.”
“You won’t remember you said any of this tomorrow.”
“So you’ll have to remind me, Mrs. Black,” he quipped with a wink.
“Ethan,” I sighed, squeezing my eyes shut. He wasn’t making this easy. “We’re a mess right now. Together and separately. I derailed your entire life. I hurt you badly enough for you to end up here.”
“ You didn’t do those things. I made those choices, and I make all of my choices from now on, and I choose you. I will always choose you, Slim.”
God, he was so passionate and such a hopeless romantic that anyone he directed those words at should have been putty in his hands. With those stunning eyes ripping your defenses to shreds while he handed you his heart on his sleeve should have been it.
His heart deserved to be loved as wholly as it would love back.
And I did love Ethan Black with everything I was made up of, and it was why I couldn’t fall into his arms like I had before.
There was no promise I could make that I wouldn’t send him right back here again or worse.
Loving me blinded his idea of wrong or right and broke his heart too many times to remember.
Now, it had broken his body, and that is the final wake up call I needed.
If I wanted Ethan’s life to go back to normal, then I couldn’t be in it.
Even accidentally.
Our love inside of me sobbed, beside itself to know what I was about to do.
To know that this was the last time I’d ever look at him or talk to him.
We should have had a thousand more shared glances.
A thousand more memories to make together, but fate had tricked us and all we were left with was this.
This one last glance. One last memory to keep of how he was—even now—so handsome it caught my heart by surprise.
One last memory of how he looked at me like no one else ever would—like I was Heaven and Earth combined.
I’d hold on to that feeling for the rest of my lonely life.
“I love you.”
He smiled, resting his head back against his pillow. And then I broke that smile.
“Goodbye, Ethan.”
I caught a glimpse of his face falling as I split our hands apart and went for the door.
Behind me followed desperate shouts of my name and my loving nickname, each one falling on closed ears.
I raced out of there as fast as my feet would take me and grabbed my phone in my purse before my heart could talk me out of it.
I found the number in my phone, and two rings later, she answered.
“This is Amy with American Ballet Theatre.”
“Hi Amy.” My voice was shaking and obvious in its emotion as I cleared the broken pieces of my heart lodged in my throat. “This is Alice Monroe.”
“Alice! So nice to hear from you! Does this mean we have a decision?”
“Yeah,” I breathed, saying it before I could chicken out. “I’m in.”