Chapter 13
ETHAN
After the Fourth, everything snapped back into place.
At least on the surface.
Sage went back to being night Sage—cooking, doting, folding herself neatly into my routines like nothing had happened. She made dinners. Asked about my day. Left clothes in my dresser without comment, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
No yelling.
No accusations.
No explosions.
It was almost worse.
Because while she reset, I didn’t.
I didn’t tell her about the guy at the club. The one who’d said they were engaged. I told myself it was self-preservation. That the weekend had already been too much—our fight, Beth’s breakdown, Sean disappearing in a cloud of guilt and smoke.
Everything felt volatile. One wrong sentence away from another implosion.
So I stayed quiet.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
About the way the man hadn’t sounded bitter. Or angry. Or jealous.
He’d sounded… relieved.
That thought followed me through the week. Through conference calls and late nights and the steady hum of work that usually calmed me.
It didn’t this time.
By Thursday afternoon, the office had gone oddly still. Half the floor was out. The other half buried in meetings. The kind of lull where you could hear the HVAC kick on and off.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at my screen.
Then, without really deciding to, I minimized my work and opened the browser.
I glanced over my shoulder first.
No one watching.
The internet loaded slowly, the familiar whine and click of the modem faint in the background. I didn’t even know what I was looking for yet—just a shape of a question I couldn’t shake.
I typed her name.
Then deleted it.
Typed it again.
Sage Collette Comeaux
I added: New York
Then: Hamptons
Then, after a beat: engagement
I hit enter.
The results came back uneven, half-broken. Old links. Cached pages. Things that looked like they hadn’t been touched in years.
I clicked one.
Bed Bath & Beyond.
A registry.
My pulse ticked up.
I scrolled.
China patterns. Flatware. Towels. The kind of things you only register for when you think you’re building something permanent.
Her name was there.
So was his.
Montgomery Miller III.
I swallowed.
I clicked back, hands slightly unsteady now, and refined the search.
Her name again.
The Knot.
The page loaded slowly.
And there it was.
A photo.
Sage—younger, but unmistakably her. Same smile. Same poise. Standing beside a tall man in a suit, his arm easy around her waist.
They looked… polished. Certain.
Below it: details.
Wedding Location: The Hamptons
Date: Three years ago
Status: Cancelled
I stared at the screen longer than I meant to.
Scrolled further.
Venue booked. Invitations sent. Registry still live, frozen in time like a ghost house no one ever moved into.
A dead wedding.
My chest felt tight, like I’d missed a step on the stairs and my body hadn’t caught up yet.
She’d told me she’d been engaged once. That it ended. That they wanted different things.
She hadn’t lied.
But she hadn’t told me this either.
I closed the browser quickly when I heard footsteps down the hall, heart thudding harder than it should’ve.
I didn’t know what to do with what I’d just seen.
Only that I couldn’t unsee it.
That weekend in the Hamptons—the fight, the jealousy, the way everything had gone off the rails—it hadn’t come out of nowhere.
It had history.
And now I had to decide what to do with it.
Because staying meant accepting that there were parts of Sage’s life I might never fully understand.
And leaving meant detonating something that had already wrapped itself around my daily life.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling.
Two options.
Neither of them clean.
A few more week spent by and yet my shoulders never really unfurled. I still felt like I was walking on eggshells waiting for Sage’s next melt down but instead I got—domestic mode like it was muscle memory.
She cooked.
She folded my laundry.
Left little Post-its on the fridge.
Don’t forget lunch.
Call me later.
Miss you already.
Soft Sage.
The version everyone loved.
And it messed with my head more than the fights.
Because while she reset like nothing had happened…
I couldn’t.
I still saw the beach.
Her hands hitting my chest.
The way people looked away.
I still heard that guy at the club.
We were engaged.
I still hadn’t told her.
Didn’t want to.
Didn’t want to light another match.
So I carried it around quietly like a stone in my pocket.
That night, she opened a bottle of wine without asking.
Didn’t turn on the TV.
Didn’t reach for her phone.
Just came and sat next to me on the couch and tucked one leg under herself like she used to when we first started dating.
“Scoot,” she said softly.
I did.
She slid closer until our knees touched.
For a minute, she just stared at her glass.
Then—
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Simple.
No theatrics. No tears.
Just… sorry.
I looked at her.
“For what?” I asked, even though I knew.
She exhaled through her nose.
“New York messes with me,” she said. “The Hamptons mess with me more.”
Her voice was quieter than usual. Stripped down.
“I know I told you I was engaged once,” she continued. “But I didn’t really explain.”
I stayed still.
“We used to go out there all the time,” she said. “Summers. Weekends. It was… our place.”
She swallowed.
“And when everything blew up between us, it wasn’t clean. It wasn’t mutual. It was ugly and humiliating and I didn’t handle it well.”
Her fingers tightened around the stem of the glass.
“I drink too much when I’m there,” she admitted. “And the memories get loud. And then my brain starts telling me everyone leaves.”
She looked at me then. Not angry. Not sharp.
Just scared.
“The thought of you leaving too…” she said quietly, “it did something to me. I panicked. And I turn mean when I panic.”
It wasn’t an excuse.
It sounded like a confession.
“I don’t want to be that girl,” she said. “Not with you.”
Something in my chest softened against my will.
I reached over and covered her hand with mine.
“It’s okay,” I said.
And I meant it.
Which scared me more than anything.
She smiled—small, grateful.
“Will you get the guitar?” she asked.
I shrugged not really feeling it. I still played in secret. For tips and and extra paycheck and still couldn’t tell her.
“Please,” she said. “Let’s just… sit outside. Be boring. Drink wine like we’re eighty.”
I huffed a laugh. Felt guilty.
“Sure.”
We took the bottle out back.
The deck boards still held the day’s heat under my bare feet, warm and forgiving. Sage lit one of those dollar-store candles—vanilla tangled with citronella—and set it between us on the rickety table. The little flame danced, throwing soft gold across her collarbone.
I pulled the old acoustic from the corner, settled it across my knee, and tuned by ear.
My fingers felt clumsy at first, joints stiff from too many nights clenched into fists.
Then muscle memory took over. Soft chords rolled out—nothing flashy.
Just old covers I used to play in shitty bars, half-finished melodies I’d never had the courage to finish. They felt honest tonight.
Sage didn’t speak.
She curled into my side instead, head resting on my shoulder, hair spilling cool against my neck.
Every note seemed to matter to her. Every breath I took seemed to matter.
She hummed low when she recognized a song, refilled my glass without asking, pressed absent kisses along my jaw like small, wordless promises.
Quiet. Easy. No landmines.
The city murmured far off—tires on wet asphalt, a dog barking three streets over, someone’s screen door slapping shut. Normal life. The kind I’d spent years running from.
And it crashed into me all at once.
This.
This was the thing I’d been chasing without knowing its name.
Not the screaming matches.
Not the wreckage.
Not the frenzied, bruising, world-ending fucks we used to drown in after every fight.
Just this: her warmth seeping into me, the low thrum of strings under my fingers, the candle flickering like it was breathing with us. Nothing left to prove.
I stared into the dark yard and felt the old metaphor rise again, heavier this time.
Magnets. Always pulling, always fighting the pull.
Or the tide—she the water, me the moon. Inevitable. Helpless. When we lined up right, it was fucking magic. When we didn’t, everything drowned.
I didn’t know how to stop the tide.
Didn’t know if you even could.
Later, inside, the bedroom was dim, lit only by the hallway light we never bothered to turn off. No clawing rush tonight. No teeth marks. Just heat—thick, syrupy, pooling low in my gut the second she looked at me like I was already hers.
I kissed her slow, filthy-slow, tongue sliding deep into her mouth like I was claiming every secret she’d ever kept.
She met me with a soft, greedy whimper, her tongue curling around mine in long, wet drags until her toes curled hard against my calf and a shiver ripped down her spine.
I tasted wine on her, salt, the faint sweetness of her lip balm, and something darker—need that had been simmering all night.
Her hands roamed my chest, palms hot, nails scraping just enough to make my cock twitch against her thigh. I buried my face in her hair, inhaled deep—jasmine, smoke, the musky scent of her arousal already blooming between her legs—and our breaths synced into something primal, slow and ragged.
I eased her back onto the sheets. She parted her thighs for me without a word, knees falling open, pussy already glistening in the low light, swollen and pink and begging.
I settled between her legs, the head of my cock nudging her slick folds, teasing her entrance until she arched, hips lifting in silent plea.
Then the slide.
Slow. Torturously slow.