Chapter 16
ETHAN
By the time I make it home, my body feels wrecked.
Not sick-sick.
Not the flu.
Just… off.
Like everything inside me has been shaken loose and hasn’t settled back into place yet.
I don’t call her.
I open my laptop.
The modem chirps and whines its way online, the sound scraping my nerves raw. I stare at the screen for a full minute before I type anything.
Subject: Tonight
Hey —
I’m not feeling great. Think I might be coming down with something.
I’m going to lay low tonight and try to sleep it off.
I’ll call you in the morning.
—E
I hover over Send.
Then I hit it.
The phone rings less than five minutes later.
Of course it does.
“Baby,” she says, worried already. “I can come over. I’ll bring soup.”
The familiar pull tugs at me immediately.
Come over. Fix it. Make it better.
I close my eyes.
“No,” I say quietly. “I don’t want to get you sick.”
“I don’t care,” she says. “I’ll just sit with you.”
“I really just want to sleep,” I say. And then, softer, “I promise I’ll call you in the morning.”
There’s a pause. I can hear her breathing on the other end.
“…Okay,” she says finally. “But you call me when you wake up. First thing.”
“I will.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
When we hang up, I sit on the edge of my bed fully dressed, staring at the wall like I’ve forgotten how to lie down.
I don’t feel sick.
I feel emptied out.
The morning comes and I don’t move.
The alarm goes off.
I shut it off.
It goes off again.
I shut it off again.
Eventually, I call out sick.
I never do that.
I dial the office, leave a message with reception about not feeling well, my voice steady enough to pass. Then I hang up and let the phone rest on my chest like it weighs a hundred pounds.
She calls an hour later.
“You sound awful,” she says immediately. “Do you have a fever?”
“I don’t think so,” I lie. “Just… drained.”
“I can still come by,” she insists. “I’ll stay on the other side of the couch. I’ll clean.”
“No,” I say, firmer now. “Please. I just need today.”
Silence.
Then softer: “Okay. But I’m worried about you.”
“I know.”
I hang up and roll onto my side, staring at the rain sliding down the window.
I think about changing the locks.
The thought flickers through my head, sharp and fast — then disappears just as quickly.
I’m not ready.
Not because I’m scared.
Because I need to understand how the hell I got here.
Because I’m embarrassed.
Embarrassed that I didn’t see this coming.
Embarrassed that I let something this intense take over my life.
Embarrassed that I’m sitting alone in my apartment pretending to be sick so my girlfriend won’t come over.
How do you explain that to anyone?
You don’t.
You just sit with it.
I buy myself days.
Three.
Maybe four.
I check in with her by phone. Short calls. Reassuring ones. I tell her I’m still run down. Still not quite right.
She fusses. She worries. She backs off — barely.
I go back to work on Friday like nothing’s happened.
The weekend is gray and wet, rain misting the sidewalks, killing any excuse for parties or boats or afternoons on the docks.
We go to a movie.
Dinner after.
Normal. Polite. Almost easy.
I’m quiet. I blame it on still feeling under the weather. She accepts it, though she watches me more closely than usual, like she’s waiting for something to surface.
On Saturday she goes to the gym.
Takes classes.
Gets coffee.
Does her grocery shopping.
She moves through the world like everything’s fine.
And I let her.
I sleep in.
I say I’m tired.
I buy time.
Because somewhere deep down, I already know this isn’t going to end with a happy ending for anyone.
What we have has turned into a dumpster fire — a beautiful one, a warm one, but still a fire that’s jumped the tracks and is burning everything in its path.
And I’m standing too close to it, trying to figure out how to step away without getting burned alive.
So I hide the truth.
Just a little longer.
Just long enough to figure out what comes next.
Today hits like a brick—the kind where summer is technically still alive, but you can feel it slipping. The light’s already different when I pull into the garage. Sharper. Less forgiving. Like the season knows it’s on borrowed time.
I haven’t even set my bag down that Monday before Jim starts pacing.
The conference room door is open, his voice carrying down the hall. Too loud. Too tight.
“—numbers don’t lie,” he snaps. “And right now they’re telling me marketing missed the mark.”
My collar gets hot.
I slide into my chair, open my laptop, pull up the deck like muscle memory. Around me, the team is quiet—no side jokes, no casual coffee sipping. Everyone knows when Jim’s like this, shit rolls downhill fast.
“The quarter projections were aggressive,” Jim continues, hands braced on the table. “But sales didn’t come in. Which means someone sold a vision we couldn’t back up.”
He looks directly at me.
Not accusing.
But not not accusing either.
“We need answers,” he says. “And we need them now.”
I nod. “We’re digging into the data. There were some regional pullbacks we didn’t anticipate—”
“Anticipate better,” he cuts in. “Because right now, the board’s asking if marketing got distracted.”
That lands.
I don’t miss the implication. Neither does anyone else.
The meeting drags. Action items. Emergency reviews. Late nights implied without being said. When it finally breaks, my BlackBerry is vibrating like it’s trying to crawl off the desk.
I don’t look yet.
I know who it is.
I make it halfway back to my office before I check.
Missed call.
Missed call.
Voicemail.
Another missed call.
All from Sage.
My chest tightens.
I don’t call her back.
I tell myself I’ll do it in ten minutes. After I send this email. After I calm down. After I figure out how to explain a day that already feels like it’s unraveling.
The truth is—I don’t have the bandwidth.
Work is on fire. My boss is hunting for a scapegoat. And the thing with Sage… it’s been escalating in ways I don’t quite have words for yet.
She can be incredible. Warm. Sensual. Fun. Everything I’ve ever wanted wrapped in sunlight and confidence.
And then—without warning—it’s like a pin in a grenade gets pulled.
Something tiny sets her off. A tone. A look. A delay. And suddenly I’m standing in the blast radius, wondering how we got there so fast.
I think about the run-in with her ex-fiancé.
The one I didn’t tell her about.
The one that still sits wrong in my gut.
I push the thought away and focus on my screen.
Another vibration.
This time I pick it up—just long enough to read the preview.
Why aren’t you answering me?
Are you mad at me?
Please call me.
I close my eyes.
This is the part that scares me.
Not the passion.
Not the intensity.
The way my space feels… monitored.
I set the BlackBerry face-down and force myself back into work. Numbers. Slides. Calm. Control.
By noon, I’ve ignored six calls and three voicemails.
By one, my jaw hurts from clenching.
By two, Jim swings by my office again.
“We’re meeting again at five,” he says. “Bring options.”
“I will,” I say.
He leaves.
My phone vibrates again.
I don’t answer.
Not because I don’t care.
Because if I do, I’m not sure I’ll be able to put the pieces back where they belong.
And sitting there, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, tie loosened, summer draining out of the day—I have the unsettling thought that the pressure I’m feeling isn’t coming from one place.
It’s coming from everywhere.
And something—someone—is about to push too hard.
My phone buzzed.
Sage.
I let it go to voicemail.
Another buzz.
An email.
I silenced the phone and told myself I’d call her back when my head stopped pounding.
It didn’t.
The desk phone rang instead.
“Ethan,” her voice said, clipped and bright in that way that meant she wasn’t actually calm. “Why haven’t you returned any of my texts or emails?”
I rubbed my face. “Baby, I don’t know. It’s been a real shit day. The bosses are pissed. Everyone’s pissed.”
She scoffed softly. “I work with highly litigious lawyers, Ethan. This is nothing.”
I winced.
“I guess you can’t meet for lunch then,” she continued. “I’ll just work through it.”
Relief slipped out before I could stop it. “Thanks, baby.”
A beat.
“See you tonight,” she said.
I hesitated.
“I actually, uh… I have plans.”
It landed between us like a dropped plate.
“Oh,” she said. Flat. “Fine. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“I’m gonna be out late,” I added, too quickly. “Maybe you should stay at your place tonight.”
Silence.
I heard voices near my desk—Jordan laughing about something, Beth murmuring a response—and suddenly I wanted to rewind the last ten seconds of my life.
“Baby,” I said, lowering my voice. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t want you alone in my place all night.”
“It’s fine,” she said.
But it wasn’t.
I could hear it in the way she said it—tight, controlled, like a door closing carefully instead of slamming.
We hung up.
I stared at my monitor, heart thudding.
Shit, I thought. You fucked that up.
I loved her. I did. I didn’t want to push her away. I didn’t want to hurt her. But somewhere along the line, things had shifted—from wanting to be together to needing to be together.
And I wasn’t sure when that had happened.
The five o’clock meeting is worse than the first.
Jim doesn’t pace this time. He sits. Hands folded. Jaw tight. That’s how I know.
The room feels smaller. The air stale. Nobody’s joking now. Nobody’s pretending this is just another bad Monday.
“We’ve been escalated,” Jim says flatly.
No one speaks.
“Sales is pushing back. Hard. Finance is circling. And corporate… corporate wants eyes on this.”
My stomach sinks.
“Meaning?” someone asks.
Jim looks directly at me. “Meaning New York.”
The word lands heavy.
“Manhattan,” he adds. “Global headquarters.”
The room goes dead silent.
“When?” I ask.
“Next Thursday,” he says. “We’ll stay over Thursday and Friday. Head back over the weekend. I don’t know yet.”