Chapter 17 #2
“No, you didn’t.” I shake my head. “You noticed when dinner wasn’t ready, when your suit wasn’t pressed, when I didn’t answer the phone fast enough, when I wasn’t smiling at the right event, or I cried too much, when I asked too many questions, when I wanted something that didn’t make your life easier. But you didn’t notice me.”
His eyes shine, and once upon a time that would have wrecked me. It doesn’t now. “I loved you,” he says, and his voice cracks around the words.
“I know you think you did.”
Pain flashes across his face. “That’s cruel.”
“No, Ethan. Cruel is making someone feel selfish for wanting a life of their own.” I take a breath, and it hurts in a way I didn’t expect, not because I want him back, but because I finally understand how long I spent asking for scraps and calling it love.
“Cruel is letting me build everything around you, then acting like I failed you because I couldn’t be everywhere at once.
Cruel is sleeping with someone else and blaming me because I wasn’t around enough when the only reason I wasn’t around was because I was running the life you couldn’t be bothered to manage. ”
He presses his fingers to his mouth and looks down at the floor.
I wait. For once, I want him to be the one who has to sit with the weight of everything.
When he finally looks up, he looks smaller than I remember.
Just a man who got everything he wanted and still managed to convince himself he was the victim when the woman carrying it all finally put it down.
“I was under a lot of pressure,” he says quietly.
I nod slowly. “Thank you.”
His brow furrows. “For what?”
“For reminding me I made the right choice.”
He stands so fast the chair legs scrape against the floor. “That’s not what I meant. Just listen to me, I’m trying to explain.”
I stand too, because I’m done looking up at him from behind this desk. “I don’t care about your reasons anymore, Ethan.”
His chest rises and falls faster now, and there’s panic in his eyes, but anger sits right under it.
Ethan hates losing control. He hates it when the conversation doesn’t bend his way, and for years I mistook that for passion because it was easier than admitting the man I loved only knew how to love me when I was easy. “Is there someone else?” he asks.
I blink at the sharp turn. “What?”
“Is that what this is?” His mouth twists, and there he is. The real Ethan. The one who thinks the only reason I would stop choosing him is because someone else must have taken his place. “Did you come back here and find someone? One of them?”
One of them. My spine stiffens. “Careful.”
He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Come on, Scarlett. I saw the pictures online. I saw the biker standing near you at that party. Dark hair, tattoos, looks like he’s waiting for a reason to hit someone. Is that what you want now?”
“This has nothing to do with anyone else.”
“Bullshit.”
“It has everything to do with me finally choosing myself.”
He stares at me like the words are in a language he doesn’t understand. And maybe they are. Maybe Ethan never learned how to hear me when I wasn’t talking about him.
“I’m not coming back,” I say.
His jaw flexes. “You’re throwing away eight years.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m done letting eight years be the reason I throw away the rest of my life.”
That shuts him up. For a second, neither of us moves. Then he nods once, but it isn’t acceptance. I can see that. It’s pride. It’s humiliation. It’s the kind of wounded ego that looks too much like heartbreak if you don’t know what you’re looking at. “I really did love you,” he says.
“I know,” I say softly. “But you loved me best when I was useful.”
His face crumples. I walk to the door and open it.
Sophie is standing at the front desk pretending not to listen, which would be more believable if her whole body wasn’t angled toward my office like she’s ready to sprint.
Ethan looks at me one last time. “You’ll regret this.”
“No,” I say. “I already did my regretting. I’m done now.”
He looks like he wants to say something else, but then his eyes cut toward Sophie, and maybe he finally remembers he has an image to protect because he straightens his shirt and walks past me without another word.
I follow him only far enough to watch him leave the clinic.
The bell above the door jingles as he steps outside, and through the front windows, I see him pause beside his car with both hands on the roof like he’s trying to hold himself together. Then he gets in and drives away.
Sophie waits until his car disappears from the lot before she turns to me. “You okay?”
“I’m okay,” I say.
Sophie studies me for a second, then walks around the desk and pulls me into a hug before I can brace myself for it.
The second her arms wrap around me, my throat tightens, and I let myself lean into her because I don’t have to be embarrassed here.
I don’t have to be polished or perfect or useful.
I can just be a woman who had a bad morning and needed someone to hold her for a second.
“He didn’t deserve you,” she murmurs.
I close my eyes. “No,” I whisper. “He didn’t.”