Chapter Fourteen #2
The woman huffed and stormed off.
‘What are you doing in London?’ she asked.
‘I need to speak to you,’ he said.
‘I was on my way to see you,’ she admitted at the same time.
Speaking over each other in a rush, they finally processed each other’s words.
‘You were?’ he asked, afraid he was hearing things.
‘Yes.’ She put her bag under her arm and clasped her hands together.
‘What about the premiere?’ He clenched his hands to hide their tremor.
‘I’m not going.’ She raised her chin.
She wasn’t? Had something happened? Something to do with Ben?
Her rigid pose gave no clue. The magnitude of the moment hit, and all the things he wanted to say, that he’d spent the last four and a half hours rehearsing, stuck in his throat, and it wasn’t only due to being in the opulent lobby with a rapt audience.
‘I’ll book a room,’ he said.
‘What?’ she squeaked, and just like she’d telegraphed her thoughts, images of them in bed danced through his memory.
‘Not for that.’ He pulled at the collar of his shirt. ‘So we can talk privately.’
‘Right. Of course. Talk.’ Annie nodded repeatedly, grimaced, then stopped. ‘We can go to my suite. I need to talk to you, too.’
She did? The scene in her bedroom three nights ago flashed into his mind, when she’d stormed past him and told him she was leaving.
Fear squeezed his chest, and he pressed a fist against it. He would tell her how he felt even if it killed him.
Clearing his throat, he signalled for her to proceed him to the lift. ‘After you.’
Silence descended between them until Annie pushed open her suite door, flicked on the lights and kicked aside a pair of red high heels.
‘Excuse the mess.’
Clothes and make-up were strewn over the table, and a red dress was crumpled on the floor in the middle of the room, just like the mess she’d left in her room at WillowGlen. The complete opposite to her usual tidiness.
‘Would you like a seat, a drink?’ Her voice, breathless and high, didn’t sound like hers as she waved him towards a chair.
‘Neither, thanks.’ He winced. Did she think he needed a drink and to sit down? Not wanting to stall the inevitable, he straightened his spine and turned towards where she’d positioned herself by the windows, but she spoke first.
‘There’s something important I need to tell you, Ethan.’
* * *
Annie stared at Ethan, hardly believing he was here in London.
She’d been in the lift coming down to the foyer, wasting precious time arguing with Kirsten, who’d refused to believe Ivy wasn’t attending the premiere and was letting go of all her team, when all Annie had wanted to do was race to Cornwall.
Suddenly, on exiting the lift, her spine had prickled, and she’d clocked Ethan crossing the foyer, his every focus on her, making for her like she was the only thing that existed.
She’d thought her heart would explode at the rush of love, hope and terror.
But now, alone with him, all the things she’d wanted to say were trapped in her throat as the magnitude of the moment hit, all the while Ethan, his posture rigid, remained exactly where he was, on the opposite side of the suite, his eyes locked on hers.
Wiping sweaty palms over her dress, she gathered the tattered remnants of her courage. She reminded herself that he deserved the whole truth and she could no longer delay telling him.
She sucked in a breath. ‘I caused my parents’ deaths,’ she whispered brokenly.
Through the pounding in her ears, she heard his sharp inhale. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I was invited to a bonfire by a boy from school. My parents weren’t fans of him, or of me going that night, and they refused to let me go.
So, I pretended to go to bed but snuck out of the window instead.
’ Her voice wobbled. How many times over the years had she wished she could rewrite history, so she’d stayed at home, gone to bed?
And they all woke up, safe and happy, the next morning?
His forehead creased. ‘You were sixteen, th—’
She shrugged hopelessly and rushed on while she still had the nerve.
‘I should have known better. Mum found out and came to get me.’ She steeled herself to say the words.
‘And she got killed on the way by a drunk driver.’ No matter how much she willed otherwise, she couldn’t change the ending of this story.
She forced herself to look at Ethan’s horrified face.
‘I met Dad at the hospital, where they told us she couldn’t be saved.
He looked at me like I was a total stranger.
Yelled at me that it was all my fault.’ The sound of his voice and the accusations he’d hurled at her still haunted her nightmares.
She bit her lip and hoped for the fortitude to get through this confession.
‘Annie.’ Ethan’s anguish clear, he headed towards her. ‘Annie, you—’
‘Stop, please.’ She held up a hand to halt him. ‘I haven’t finished,’ she explained shakily.
‘Okay,’ he said, so tenderly that she thought the dam of tears she struggled to hold would suddenly break.
‘And then my dad had a heart attack, right there in front of me. There was nothing I could do. Or anyone else could do. He was gone. Both of them were just gone.’ She sobbed, the dam finally giving way to floods of tears.
She hadn’t finished speaking when Ethan rushed across the room and wrapped her in his arms, rocking her back and forth as her tears continued to stream as though they’d never end.
‘You know it wasn’t your fault,’ he said gently, his breath stirring her hair.
‘Did you hear me?’ she wailed.
‘You were only sixteen. You snuck out to a party, like millions of teenagers around the world have done. Like I’ve done, and a whole lot worse.
It was a horrific accident. But the drunk driver killed your mother and your father, not you.
Never you. Your father was shocked and grief-stricken, but he loved you deeply.
Whatever he said to you, he didn’t mean. ’
His lips brushed her hair, his empathetic words a balm to her battered, aching heart.
He wasn’t running from the room, treating her like she’d grown horns. Instead, he tended to her with such heartfelt kindness and concern, it dislodged something burrowed deep inside and she drew in her first real breath in years.
‘Please tell me you get that?’ he asked softly.
Like a glimmer of light breaking through the darkness, she thought she did. A little.
‘Yes,’ she sniffed. Exhaustion hit, and she wanted to burrow against Ethan, have him hold her forever.
‘You’ve carried this guilt around, all these years?’
She nodded. ‘And I’ve never told anyone. Only you.’
‘Oh, sweetheart. Thank you for telling me. For trusting me enough to tell me.’ His deep voice cracked, and he squeezed her, transferring some of his strength into her.
‘I wanted to tell you, but I was scared you’d judge me.’
‘Annie! Never.’
His lips brushed against her hair again and she felt safe for the first time in years. He wasn’t judging her, he understood.
She leant back to look up at him, her eyes watery and he gently brushed away the tears on her cheeks.
‘There’s more,’ she said.
He shifted slightly but didn’t let go of her, or even loosen his hold. ‘Okay.’ He nodded, his mouth pinched.
‘The day I buried my parents…’ She swallowed painfully and forced herself to go on. ‘I made a pact promising I’d never allow myself to fall in love, to have what they had, because I didn’t deserve it. That was my way of honouring them after what I’d done.’
‘Please tell me you no longer believe that?’ His words were choked with dismay, a muscle jerking in his cheek, his face grey.
‘I did. It’s why I left, no ran, from WillowGlen three nights ago. I knew I could never truly be a part of your life because of what I’d done. I’d never deserve you. I ran for my life, because that was the night I realised—’ she took a deep breath ‘—that I love you, Ethan. So very much.’
* * *
Ethan stared at Annie, suddenly terrified he was hallucinating. ‘You love me?’
‘Yes,’ she said, terror etched on her face. ‘I know it was only meant to be friends with benefits. And I definitely don’t want your pity after what I just told you. But you deserve the truth, all of it, even if it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done.’
‘I’m speechless,’ he said, reeling.
Her face crumpled, and she frantically tried to wriggle out of his hold.
‘No. No. I love you, too!’ He finally said the words he’d never said before, never even thought he’d ever say.
It wasn’t the way he’d rehearsed them on the long drive.
But he hadn’t imagined Annie in his arms telling him she loved him, revealing her guilt about her parents and all the pain she’d been in.
‘What! Since when?’
‘Approximately seventy-two hours ago, when I came to your bedroom and you were packing. Leaving. That’s how long since I knew that it wasn’t only lust, friendship and respect I felt for you; it was love. And I haven’t had a second’s peace since.’
‘You really love me?’ Colour raced into her ashen face and her trembling began in earnest again.
‘I do.’ She had to know the truth, all of it, even if it felt like he was ripping himself open and exposing every vulnerable part of himself.
‘Watching you leave was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced.
And it triggered each and every one of my defence mechanisms because I’ve spent my whole life determined, no, petrified, of not being loved by those I love, of not being enough. Of being betrayed. Abandoned.’
‘Oh, Ethan.’ She caressed his cheek, and he thought he could cry at the tenderness and love radiating from her.
‘I’ve let fear run my whole life. But I’m not my parents.
I’m me. And you’ve made me see that. Only you.
And as much as I tried to pigeonhole you to protect myself, you’re nothing like my parents, or anyone who’s ever hurt me.
You’re kind and courageous and loving. And I love you so much,’ he confessed, his voice deepening.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said, wonder suffusing her face.