16. Ethan #2
“Hi.” I didn’t move from my workbench, didn’t offer more.
She took a few steps into the shop, glancing at the half-finished projects scattered around. Her eyes landed on the folder Carol had left for me earlier. Recognition flickered across her face.
“You’ve seen it, then,” she said.
“The summary. Not the full report.”
She nodded, setting her portfolio down. There was relief in her shoulders.
“How long?” I asked the question I’d been turning over all day. “How long have you known about the hidden development agenda?”
The relief vanished. Her posture stiffened almost imperceptibly, but I knew her body language well enough now to see it. The slight straightening of her spine. The way her chin lifted a fraction of an inch. Preparing for battle.
“A while,” she said finally.
“That’s not an answer.”
She met my eyes directly. “Ten days.”
Ten days. The timeline clicked into place. The night she’d pulled away during dinner. The sudden distance. The long hours alone with her papers. All while sleeping in my bed, accepting my trust, letting me believe she was just focused on road safety.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice came out surprisingly steady.
She looked away briefly. “I couldn’t discuss it while the assessment was ongoing. It would have been unprofessional.”
“Unprofessional.” The word sat bitter on my tongue. “That’s what this comes down to? Professional boundaries?”
“Ethan–”
“I’m not talking about official announcements, Lena.
I’m talking about you and me. In private.
When it was just us.” I stepped closer, feeling heat rise in my chest. “You knew they were planning to fundamentally change Cedar Hills. You knew this wasn’t just about a dangerous curve or safety improvements.
You knew it would impact everything about this town, my town, and you said nothing.
All while lying next to me, letting me think that you cared for me. ”
Her fingers pressed against the edge of the workbench. “What would telling you have accomplished? Besides compromising my position and the integrity of the assessment?”
“It would have been honest.” The words came out harder than I’d intended. “It would have meant you trusted me enough to share something that mattered. It would have told me that I mattered to you.”
“I made the right decision in the end,” she said, a defensive edge creeping into her voice. “I protected Cedar Hills. I put my entire career on the line to do it. I thought you’d be happy.”
“And I’m proud of you for that.” I meant it, despite everything. “But that’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about?” There was a challenge in her eyes now.
“It’s about you being in my bed while keeping secrets that affected my life. My home.” I gestured around the shop. “You compartmentalized me, Lena. Put me in a box labeled ‘personal,’ and left me there until you felt like it suited you.”
Her jaw tightened. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” I took another step closer. “You were making decisions that would change the future of Cedar Hills, and you didn’t think the person you were sleeping with deserved to know?
The person who’s lived here his whole life?
The person who–” I stopped, catching myself before saying something I couldn’t take back.
“The person who what?” she asked quietly.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
The silence stretched between us, filled with all the things we weren’t saying. Outside, a car passed on the main road. Inside, we stood frozen in our separate corners.
“I had obligations,” she said finally. “Professional ethics. Confidentiality requirements. I put my job at risk making this decision. I couldn’t just–”
“Spare me the corporate language.” I cut her off, suddenly tired of the excuses. “This wasn’t about ethics. This was about walls. The ones you build to keep parts of your life separate. To keep yourself protected.”
Her eyes flashed. “That’s not–”
“It is.” I stepped closer again, close enough now to see the small pulse jumping in her neck.
“You’ve spent your whole life keeping things temporary.
Keeping people at a distance. Never letting anyone all the way in.
” The anger drained from me suddenly, leaving only hurt in its wake.
“And I let myself believe I might be different.”
She reached for me then, fingers barely brushing my arm before I stepped back. The touch burned even through my shirt.
“You are different,” she said, voice softening. “What happened between us was... It was separate from my work. I didn’t expect things to happen with you the way they did, and I just… I didn’t know how to handle it, and I hurt you, and I’m sorry.”
“But that’s just it.” I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated.
“Nothing here is separate. Not really. Not the town, not the people, not the work, not us. It’s all connected.
That’s what makes Cedar Hills what it is.
What makes any place worth staying for. You kept things from me because you hadn’t decided if this place was worth it.
If I was worth it. Admit it. You were weighing your options. ”
Her expression shifted, something like pain crossing her features. “I did what I thought was right.”
“For you, yes.” I echoed Carol’s words from earlier. “But what about for us? Did you think about what keeping that secret would mean if I found out? Did you think about what happens to trust when you hide things that matter?”
She didn’t answer immediately, and in that hesitation, I saw everything I needed to know.
She hadn’t thought about it, not really. Because in her world, compartments didn’t leak. Boxes didn’t overflow. Things stayed where you put them.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I should have told you.”
The words should have felt like victory, but they didn’t. They just felt late.
“Was any of it real?” The question that had been gnawing at me all day finally broke free. “Or was I just part of your Cedar Hills experience? Something temporary before you move on?”
Her eyes widened with genuine hurt. “How can you ask me that?”
“How can I not? You kept something huge from me for ten days.” My voice rose despite my efforts to control it. “You made a unilateral decision about what I deserved to know about my own home. Because when it came down to it, your job came first.”
Honestly, I didn’t know why I was surprised.
“That’s not fair,” she repeated, but there was less conviction in her voice now.
“You keep saying that, and maybe it’s not.” I stepped back, needing distance. “But it’s how it feels.”
We stood there, the workshop suddenly too small to contain the space growing between us. I could see her struggling to find words that would bridge the gap, but some chasms were too wide for language alone.
“I need some air,” I said finally, reaching for my keys. “I need to think.”
“Ethan.” She reached for me again, but stopped short of touching me. “Please. Can we talk about this?”
“We just did.” I moved past her toward the door. “And I think we both said exactly what we needed to.”
Outside, the air had cooled as sunset approached. I didn’t look back as I walked to my truck, didn’t check if she was watching from the doorway. The engine turned over on the first try, a small mercy on a day that had offered few.
I drove without conscious decision, but I wasn’t surprised when I found myself on the winding road up to the overlook.
Where else would I end up?
As the town fell away below me, I felt the knot in my chest loosen just slightly. Up here, perspective shifted. Problems looked smaller. At least, they usually did, but not this one.
The overlook was empty when I arrived. I sat on my father’s bench, running my fingers over the worn wood where generations had sat before me, working through their own impossible questions. The bench had no answers, but it offered something else.
Connection to something larger than my own pain.
I watched the sun sink toward the horizon and wondered if caring for someone meant accepting the walls they built or asking them to tear them down. If there was a middle ground between her boxes and my connected world.
I wondered how I let myself get so tangled in all of this, wondered when she’d crept so far into me that the idea of her silence felt so much like betrayal.
The answer didn’t come before darkness fell. Maybe there wasn’t one.