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“I am. I took the red-eye in, came straight from the airport.”
I nod as I pop the bagels out of the toaster and spread cream cheese on them. “Why are you really here?”
“I told you. I’m here because you wouldn’t answer my phone calls.” He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I’ve been trying for weeks to get ahold of you, ever since I got the Google alert that said you were one of Frost Industries’ new interns. You never returned my calls or my texts or my emails. What was I supposed to do?”
“Figure out that I didn’t want to talk to you, maybe?”
“Believe me, I figured that out. But you used to at least return my calls.” He slumps down into one of the chairs in the breakfast nook, looking utterly defeated. “How did things go so wrong, Chloe? We used to be so close.”
That was before you made a career for yourself out of the ashes of my suffering. It’s what I want to say. What I’m so close to saying, but it sounds ridiculous. Totally dramatic. Besides, I’ve never blamed him. Not really. He was as much a pawn in the whole disaster as I was. Or at least, that’s what I’ve always told myself. I always thought I believed it, too. Right up until this moment.
“Can we talk about something else for a while?” I ask him, taking a bite of my bagel and pretending it doesn’t taste like cardboard in my mouth.
At first it looks like Miles is going to argue—he probably doesn’t want to waste one minute more than necessary away from his lab—but in the end he just nods. “So, tell me about school. How’s it going?”
As far as topics go, it’s a pretty generic one. And a pretty innocuous one, too. Which is why I do exactly as he asks and tell him all about my junior year, which I just finished at UCSD. Miles asks a bunch of questions, laughs at the funny stories I tell, and even reciprocates with a few stories of his own from his lab back home. I work hard at not thinking about what money built that lab and I almost succeed.
But small talk only gets us so far and eventually he steers the conversation back around to Ethan.
“He’s not like us, Chloe. People with that much money don’t think the same way we do.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure you have a lot of money these days, too.”
“A few million is a far cry from Frost Industries. Not to mention the kind of family wealth he comes from.”
“That’s his stepfather’s money. Ethan’s dad was a soldier. You know that.”
“Everybody knows that. Congressional Medal of Honor winner. Killed in battle. War hero. That kind of notoriety comes with its own issues. Besides, he obviously aligns himself with his mother’s new family. Even I’ve seen pictures of the two of them at various New York and Washington social functions.”
“So he loves his mother. So what?” I try to act nonchalant, but I can tell Miles sees through me. Ethan’s mother—Brandon’s mother—was horrible to me after the rape. Utterly despicable. And yes, when I think about that fact it makes me wonder how things are ever going to work out between Ethan and me. That’s why I made such a point of making sure he knows that I’m not interested in talking about the past. At all. That it’s a sticking point in our relationship.
I can love Ethan for the wonderful man he is, can accept that he had nothing to do with what happened to me when I was a freshman in high school. But I can’t deal with all the reminders of the rape that his family brings with them. So, that’s how things have to be. Our relationship has to stay firmly grounded in the present.
“So she’s a psychotic bitch who would throw you into traffic if she found even half a chance.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not planning on giving her that chance.”
Miles smiles sadly. “That’s what they all say.”
“I know you don’t trust Ethan, but I do. He won’t let anything happen to me.”
“Are you kidding me with
this? He’s with you now, but what happens when his family needs him? His mother, or his baby brother? Don’t think he won’t go running the first opportunity he gets.”
“He says he’s done with Brandon. That he wants to kill him. Ethan doesn’t want anything to do with that bastard.”
Miles tilts his head back and forth in a maybe, maybe not motion. “You think he feels the same way about his mother?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. We’re talking really rich, really powerful people here, Chloe. Nothing is quite what it seems in their boardrooms and their politics and their lives. And you are kidding yourself if you think Ethan Frost won’t sell you out the first time his family needs him to.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. Oh, he may be in love with you. He may even think he can stand up to his family for you—”
“He has stood up to them for me!”
