Chapter 22 #2
“You had eight years to talk, Ethan!” She wiped at her face, and he didn’t know if she was swiping at the rain or wiping away tears.
“Eight fucking years, and instead you chose to ignore me completely, to let me do everything”—her voice cracked—“everything on my own. And for what? Was it worth it? Was what I did so terrible that you had to fucking ghost me for almost a decade until you needed me for something?” She shook her head, and now he knew that those were tears running down her face.
“That’s why things will never be the same between us.
We can pretend like we get along, we can reminisce about old times, we can even fucking kiss.
But we’ll never be what we were before.”
Her words cut him in a place so deep, he felt winded.
The worst part was, she wasn’t wrong. Even if he’d pretended otherwise, believing that one day he could reach out and they’d pick up where they left off, some quiet part of him had always known the truth.
Known that he had fucked up irrevocably and that there would be no coming back from it.
“I’m sorry.” It was the only thing he could think to say, as weak and ineffectual as it was. “I’m just so damn sorry.”
And he was, for all of it. Not just for the eight years, but for the very moment when he’d known things were going to change for them and he’d felt powerless to stop it. Like a force out of his control was driving him, pushing him toward making the biggest mistake of his life.
But he’d been stupid. And immature. And he had held a good thing, a perfect thing, in his hands, and then he’d gotten scared that he was going to break it. So he’d let it go.
He stared at her now as she absorbed his apology, probably about to reject it, standing drenched and shivering in the autumn rain.
The trees around them in the forest were a brilliant auburn and orange, slowly starting to fade to brown as the season wore on and the rainy, windy days came more frequently.
The sun was fading quickly, and it cast its rays sporadically through the dark clouds, a single beam here and there, illuminating the golden leaves like spotlights.
One shone directly behind her, and her hair glowed like a halo, frizzy and waterlogged, with a slight wave to it from the rain.
She was so fucking beautiful. He had always known it, just like everything else he’d always known but never acted on.
He’d still screwed up somehow, but seeing her in this moment in the rain, on the verge of losing her for the second time, losing her again even though he’d never really had her—it took his breath away how beautiful she was.
She was everything familiar to him, all the comfort and nostalgia of a home he’d never experienced. Because all his life, it had been her.
She had been home.
He couldn’t stand the thought of being so close to her without touching her for another second. She might reject him, slap him, or shove him away, but he had to try. He had to reach out and hold her and promise that, if she wanted, he wouldn’t let her go again.
In two strides he was there, gathering her in his arms, her body, drenched now and trembling, drawn into his.
To his everlasting relief, she didn’t pull away and instead allowed him to shape her body to his, pressing her into his chest and holding her tightly.
He tilted his head back slightly to look at her, and she did the same.
He would never know who made the first move, but before he realized it, their lips collided and they were kissing.
It was just as good as the one before it, if not better. Gem’s lips on his, Gem’s body in his arms—this was what felt right. This was how it was supposed to be.
The rain had begun in earnest, harder than before, any trace of sun gone as the gray clouds turned darker by the minute. Ethan pulled away reluctantly and looked up, rain pelting his face with stinging drops.
“Should we go back inside?” he said, pressing his lips to her cheekbone, right by her ear.
She shook her ahead against him and nodded to somewhere behind him.
He turned, and there, in his line of sight, was a medium-size shed, blue with white trim.
It must have been another new addition to the landscape, since it didn’t resemble anything similar to the beaten-down wooden shack that had housed Ethan’s father’s tools and lawn equipment.
“There!” she said loudly to be heard over the storm. “Go there!”
He nodded, not interested in questioning her in the heavy downpour, and grabbed her hand before making a run for it across the grass.
She kept up well enough, and soon they were in the dry space, the only evidence of rain the slapping of raindrops on the tin roof.
Once they were inside, she pressed herself against him again, and he didn’t think; he folded her into his arms and kissed her once more, pressing his lips to her warm, soft, plush mouth over and over.
“Why are we here?” he asked between kisses, showering them over her cheeks, her nose, her jaw.
She tilted her head, arms still around his neck, and she murmured, “I can’t go back in there with all of them. Especially not after—”
Ethan pulled back abruptly, and Julia almost gasped at the suddenness, her eyes wrenching open in surprise.
“That thing with Emily,” he started. “She and I never—”
“Ethan,” Julia cut him off. “You don’t have to explain. It’s none of my business—”
“It is,” he said fiercely. “It is. And I want you to know. Nothing happened between her and me. I think she always had a thing for me, but I let it slide. I didn’t think she’d do anything that stupid and crazy, that’s for sure,” he ended on a grumble.
Julia gave him a half smile, and he felt the relief in his chest, the tension releasing like a balloon.
“Same,” she said quietly, tracing her finger over his chest in an absent manner, seeming almost unaware that she was even doing it. “Noah kissed me. I didn’t expect it. Or,” she added, bemused, “really want it, to be honest.”
Ethan could feel his expression darkening. As much as the kiss hadn’t made him happy, he at least would have hoped she’d wanted it. Otherwise, it made him consider other possibilities, more painful ones that would have to be inflicted on Noah Booker in particular for forcing himself on her.
She must have caught his expression, because she shook her head quickly.
“Not like that. I just mean it caught me by surprise, that’s all.
I thought he and Katy were friends, or close enough that he would keep himself contained for the duration of the stay here.
” She shrugged, trailing off. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice it sooner. ”
Ethan didn’t know what she meant exactly, but shrugged it off, bringing his hands up to her face to gently stroke her cheeks with his thumbs. When he kissed her again, it was slower, more intentional, tasting and touching, licking into her mouth and reveling in the moment.
She shivered, and he almost took credit for it as an emotional response to his kiss, when he realized that she was actually cold.
They had taken refuge from the storm by running into the shed, but that didn’t mean that their wet clothes weren’t sticking to their skin.
“We should go in,” Ethan said begrudgingly, unsure where their time in the shed would have gone, but with enough heat coursing through his veins—accumulating in certain areas in particular—that he had hoped it wouldn’t have come to such an abrupt end.
Any thoughts of things ending or where they would go from there, however, were swiftly halted as he watched her pull her shirt up over her head and push him gently back until he stumbled on a wooden bench, inadvertently sitting down.
“Let’s stay here instead.”