Now, it was time to work through them. It was why he’d left him a very heartfelt note telling him exactly how he felt about him.
“I don’t hate you.”
Callen sighed.
“Okay, EJ,” he said.
Ethan was honest.
“I really don’t. I hate this place,” he said. “I hate being around you because you’re here.”
That made Callen pause.
“What does that mean?”
Ethan sighed and shared what he could.
“I feel like a failure here. I feel like having to come home means I failed at being…someone. But when I fell, this was the first place I thought to come to. Not my home in DC, not our home inPhilly. Here. There are horrible strings here, and they keep pulling me back. I feel like I need to come here. I just don’t know why. I think I keep coming back because of you, CJ.”
Oh, shit.
That was bad.
Callen didn’t want him here.
This place wasn’t good for him, and honestly, it wasn’t big enough for the two of them. They couldn’t both be here when there was the war of the roses going on between them.
They were both angry, clearly, and how Callen felt about him only added to that.
They weren’t to the place of forgiveness quite yet. In the back of his mind was what Ethan had told him. It was to never ask him to stay because there was only one person who could make him come back permanently.
HIM.
Oh, and Callen wanted to ask him more than his brother would ever know.
What he felt for Ethan…
It was more than Callen should feel.
“You should go.”
Ethan just stared at him.
“I mean it, EJ. You should leave this place and never come back. You have no place here,” he said.
And those words hurt Callen.
Why?
He wanted his brother back, and for a laundry list of reasons. None of them were good.
None of them would keep them from destroying each other, and Callen knew it.
What he felt for him was taboo and a problem in itself. There would never be the Blackhawk boys again. He was the bastard child, and Ethan was the half-breed. Together, they had more hate than anyone should.
As those words landed, they broke something in Ethan. Oh, and they hurt in ways he couldn’t explain. His brother, the only person he loved other than Gene, didn’t want him there.
“Please, EJ. You don’t belong here.”
