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“I didn’t—I didn’t see your shoes. And your car could have broken down again.”
“Not after you had it fixed. The thing runs like it’s brand new.”
He smiles then. “I’m glad.”
“Yeah.”
He reaches for me, wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against his body. I go, but I don’t relax into him like I normally would. I can’t. There’s too much inside of me right now and none of it is good.
Ethan knows right away—of course he knows. He’s so in tune with me, with my body, to every little nuance of how I hold myself that he can’t help but notice something is wrong now that he’s calming down.
“Baby?” He pulls back a little, brushes my hair out of my face so he can get a better look in the warm glow of the patio lights. “You okay?”
“I don’t know.” It might be the most honest thing I’ve said all afternoon.
“Okay.” He tugs me closer, rubs a soothing hand up and down my back like he’s trying to comfort me. Like he isn’t the reason that I’m like this. “What can I do?”
It’s a great opening, one I wouldn’t pass up even if I could. And I can’t, the words tumbling out of my mouth and over themselves in my desperation to get them out of me. To get the ugly, disgusting, painful accusations out of me.
“Brandon is running for Congress.”
Ethan freezes like a deer in the headlights, sensing danger for the first time but unable to move out of the way of the oncoming disaster. “Yes.”
“In Boston.”
He nods, his arms tightening around me even more. I can’t breathe, but I think that has more to do with the anxiety inside of me than Ethan’s grip. “Yes.”
“Where he raped me.”
“Yes. Baby—”
“Let me finish,” I snap, my voice colder than it’s ever been before—at least when I’m talking to Ethan.
“Of course.” Now he’s rubbing circles on my back, trying to soothe me when I don’t want to be soothed.
“That wasn’t me asking for your permission. I’m just trying to clarify the facts. Brandon is running for the U.S. House of Representatives for the Seventh Congressional District, the same district where he committed a violent felony. Against me.”
Ethan swallows tightly, his jaw working back and forth. But I’ll give him credit. He doesn’t look away from me, doesn’t so much as drop his eyes. “Yes.”
“And you’re supporting him.”
“What? No!” His hand clamps down on my shoulder. “Are you kidding me?”
“Don’t lie to me! Not again! I can’t take it. We can’t take it.”
“I’m not. Jesus, Chloe, I would never. You have to know that.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Fuck!” Ethan lets me go to thrust a frustrated hand through his hair. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t fucking happening. Chloe, I have spent the last three weeks doing everything in my power to keep him from being elected.”
His words sweep over me and I expect to be swamped with relief. But it doesn’t quite happen like that. Instead, all I can think about is the fact that he didn’t tell me. Even if he is telling the truth now, which I’m not sure he is, he never told me this was happening. That this was coming. He let me be blindsided, just as I was blindsided the moment I opened that damn door and found Brandon standing on the other side of it.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Fuck.” He closes his eyes, rubs a tired hand over them, and I realize that outside of the night he tried to dump me, this is the most I’ve ever heard Ethan swear at one time.
At least when he’s talking to me.
