Chapter 53 Second Chances
I thought I’d had my Great Something moment already.
In fact, I was certain of it. At the time, nothing seemed more life-altering than not spending the rest of mine with Jonah like I had planned.
My life was made up of what Jonah allowed me to build it with, and when he left, it crumbled around me, and I realized Jonah was the sole brick holding my world together.
The derailment of my entire life at the heartbreak of one man felt like my life’s pivotal moment.
But I had been wrong.
As I passed through the doors in front of me, I thought about how miniscule Jonah was to me now. How little impact he had over me once I took his control away. Losing Jonah felt big but had actually been only one small domino in the effect of my life.
It led me to the here and now, to the moment of moments. This was my final hour. This was what I’d always look back on as the talk that changed everything in my life for better or worse.
The door sealed us in behind me and I tried to be the first one to speak, but what I saw cut my words off at the legs.
Crystal. It was everywhere and so was my gobsmacked expression looking back at me through their clear cut beauty.
The room was lined with crystal from front to back in the form of sculptures, both small and large.
All were stunning. The room shimmered without even trying.
Every color of the rainbow was awake in this room and winking at me on the walls in support.
“It’s for a show tomorrow.”
Ethan’s voice pulled my stare across every unintended mirror until it reached his back facing me.
“It’s beautiful.”
All Ethan gave to show that he’d heard me was a nod before his focus went right back down to his shoes. I swallowed, stealing myself to his silence and knowing it was for a reason. He’d done most of the talking, professing, and pursuing when we found ourselves in love with each other.
Now it was my turn.
“Ethan—” He sucked in a breath heard across the room with the sound of his name off of my lips.
“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry,” I started, my pulse thumping harder against my neck. “I never should have left without telling you. I never should have left you like that.”
A strangled breath came from his side of the room, and his head dropped even lower.
My heart had the urge to drop along with it, but I held it up, refusing to give in so early in the fight.
Of course he was hurting. Of course this was hard to hear.
We were in the trenches of his pain right now, and the only way to get to the other side was straight through.
No more detours. No more excuses or escapes.
“I don’t know what you’ve been going through or what you’ve been up to this last year, but I think about you all the time, and I always hope that you’re doing well and that you’re happy and safe. Apparently I even talk about you in my sleep.”
The honesty poured out of me with such ease, I even surprised myself.
I really did think about Ethan every day but never admitted it to anyone because I thought it made me weak to still love him so much.
All this time, I had convinced myself that love made me weak, but love had nothing to do with it.
My soul was what was weak and when Ethan found me, I used his love like a bandaid over the scars I didn’t want to see anymore, because when shit hit the fan, it was easy to convince myself that his love was the problem.
Lying was something I always looked down on until I realized I was a hypocrite in my own judgement.
I had been lying to myself in subtle ways for years before all of the knowing lies I created for Monica.
I was a liar before I owned the title, and today, all the lying stopped.
“Besides dance, you’re pretty much all I think about. Even as pathetic as that might make me sound, I don’t care because—” I stopped, gulping down a breath to help me keep going. “Because you never cared about being judged or sounding any certain way. You were always just honest with me.”
My stomach cramped up and tried to buckle me over at my knees with every second Ethan stayed facing away, not reacting even a flinch, but I wouldn’t let it stop me. For every second he ignored me, I’d think about a second where he loved me and push on.
“I had convinced myself pretty much the entire time we knew each other that you were the problem. That, if I’d never met you, everything would have been fine but…
that’s not true, and I never should have put that on you.
I was a mess when we met, and I just never sorted myself out before I fell in love with you. ”
Movement stole my focus down to Ethan’s sides to his hands, and I watched as they rolled into fists that shook he held them so tightly. Steering my gaze back up from Ethan’s hands, I kept talking despite the notable tremble of desperation laboring my voice.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me. I know that’s why you never responded to any of my calls or messages, and I get that, and I don’t blame you at all . You have every right to never want to talk to me again after how I treated you, and if you tell me to leave right now, I will.”
My heart waited, stringing itself up still and readying to soar or crash with his answer.
If he told me to leave, that was it. There was no more fighting left to do if he asked me to go.
His mind and heart were made up, and I would have no other choice but to drag my heavy heart out of here knowing I was too late.
Too much time had passed by, layering thicker barriers over his love for me every day I didn’t fight for him.
If he asked me to leave, I knew in my heart I would never see Ethan again after this, and that would be an affliction worse than death.
From across the room came an indefinable groan that pumped fresh terror through my veins.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to you,” Ethan sighed.
My ears perked up at the sound of his deep voice after such a maddening silence. Hope straightened my neck, and I let out a quiet exhale that the words out of his mouth were not my exit music.
Butterflies tried to dance throughout my chest, but I shut off their celebratory song before it could really get started.
Just because he didn’t want me to leave didn’t mean he wouldn’t change his mind any minute.
I still had to be as careful as ever with him and his heart that were both one misstep away from slipping out of my life for good.
“Can I ask why you didn’t answer then?”
Standing behind him, his head shook back and forth until it slumped down, an unmistakable laugh pushing through him.
“Still as polite as ever. Not much has changed, has it?”
“That’s not true.” I stepped forward with tenacity in my blood. “A lot has changed. I’ve changed.”
Ethan bowed his head again, a sadness sinking his shoulders. “I never asked you to change.”
The truth of his words hit like a gong, ringing the veracity of his love for me at the time through my ears until they wanted to bleed with tears.
“That’s true,” I breathed. “You never asked me to change, but I needed to grow up. How I handled everything with us was bad. It was just—” I paused, taking a moment to feel the reminder of how na?ve I was.
“Really bad. I’ve been trying to fix all of my mistakes over this last year, which is again why I tried to reach out to you. ”
“I wasn’t ready to talk to you yet.” He shoved his hands in his pants pockets, tilting his head up to the ceiling. “I’m still not ready.”
“Oh…”
Breathe .
Breathe. In and out.
It wasn’t happening though. No matter how hard or how much I thought it, air wouldn’t find its way back into my lungs. Cold crept in instead, the chill of it coiling around my brain until it strangled all the oxygen out of it and I felt like I might fall over.
I should have expected this. I should have known this could be coming. He wasn’t ready for me. He wasn’t ready for us. Maybe I was still that same girl I was last year who would be ignorant enough to believe that someone as exceptional as Ethan would take me back.
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I wanted to scream it. I wanted to shout it.
I wanted to cry the word he’d first pulled from my lips.
He wasn’t ready. Plain and simple. Nothing more to fight for with a few easy words and not even a reflection of a glance to remember them by.
Just the words and the crushing pointlessness they left me with.
A future with Ethan was dead in the ditch with our past as the murderous culprit.
Inside I still felt that fight though, burrowing through and enjoying its freedom.
I’d said what I wanted to say, but I’d yet to get any of the answers I came for.
Maybe the answers would spark something in Ethan?
Something, anything, nothing. I didn’t care at this point.
I was furiously, hopelessly, selfishly still in love with the man standing right in front of me and even if he’d laid my heart to rest, I wasn’t done with his and he had to know.
“Well, okay. There’s still just one question I need to ask and then I’ll get out of your hair, I swear.
” I paused, readying myself for any answer he might give.
“Why didn’t you ever come to see me? I know Monica gave you my address and I-I guess I sort of expected you to come by but… you never did.”
Every day I opened the door to an unexpected knock was another day my halfway whole heart was crushed to pieces. So many knocks and so many disappointments.
To this day, I never went without a swell of hope every time I answered the door.
Every shimmer in the room caught my eye as Ethan turned around, his breath-taking beauty captured in each glint.
His gaze landed on me, immediately evaporating every speck of cold in my system with the warmth of his stare.
Ethan’s eyes on mine felt like a lover’s embrace, and my legs wobbled with the need to fall into him.