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“Don’t you see? I can’t make it better for you, Chloe. There’s nothing I can do to undo the terrible, disgusting things that happened to you. But I’ve spent the last three weeks trying to figure out how to get you some kind of justice. I’ve hired private detectives to try and pick up the trail, to see if there was a witness to what happened that night. Or some other night, with some other girl. Someone who hasn’t signed an NDA. Someone whose testimony won’t put her in contempt of court.
“I’ve gone out of my way to sabotage Brandon’s chances of running for office. That’s why my mother showed up. And that’s why you were on the covers of those magazines yesterday. She’s fighting back, fighting dirty—the only way she knows how. She’s bent on destroying you one way or another and it’s my fault. I tried to protect you, tried to make things better for you and all I ended up doing was making them worse.
“I just spent the entire day with a team of private detectives, combing through evidence I can use to make Brandon step down from the race. And I’m still looking. I’m still determined to make him pay for what he did to you. If I could do that, if I could make him suffer as you did, I was hoping you’d be able to forgive my part in what happened to you.”
He stops then, his breathing coming in uneven pants as he waits for me to speak. As he waits for me to tell him that I understand what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. But the truth is, I don’t understand. I never asked him to avenge me, never asked him to do anything but love me. To let me love him.
And yet, here we are. Bruised and bloody and broken, our relationship shot to hell and with no one to blame but ourselves. Me for instituting that ridiculous no talking about the past policy and him for actually listening to it when he had a secret this big, this powerful, this formidable.
Because I can’t not do it, I reach for Ethan’s hand, stroke my thumb over the palm before I start to talk. “I can’t do this anymore.”
For the first time Ethan looks panicked. “Don’t say that.”
“I have to say it.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.” I reach inside me, looking for the rage that was there just a few short minutes ago. I can’t find it. I can’t find anything but the hurt and the sorrow that well up from deep inside me, that fill up every crevice of space inside of me. “I love you. And I know that you love me. But sometimes that isn’t enough. This thing we have between us, this addiction fed by the drama of the past and the need of the present … it’s destroying us.”
“No.” Ethan shakes his head, his hand grasping at mine like it’s a lifeline. Like he’s drowning and it’s the only thing keeping him afloat. “What we have is the only good thing in my life.”
“Then why do you keep screwing it up?” The anger’s back as readily as it had left. “Why do you keep pushing me away? Again and again and again? Why do you keep making me have to leave you?”
“I don’t mean to.”
“That’s not good enough. I trust you. After everything that I’ve found out, after everything that’s happened, I still find a way to trust you. And every time, you betray that trust. Every time you find a way not to trust me.”
“I do trust you! Chloe, I trust you with my life.”
“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. But you sure as hell don’t trust me with your heart.”
“How can you say that? I’d do anything for you. I know I’ve made mistakes. I know I haven’t told you things you needed to know—”
“It’s not that you haven’t told me that bothers me at this point, Ethan. It’s why you haven’t told me. And why we keep doing this same thing again and again and again?
“When you first found out about Brandon and me, your first instinct was to break up with me.”
“You were so vulnerable. I didn’t want to hurt you anymore.”
“And when I told you I couldn’t live with the lies, you let me walk away. You left me to suffer alone for two weeks. And if I hadn’t made a move toward you outside that restaurant, we’d probably be alone still.”
“I’d already hurt you so much. How could I hurt you anymore?”
“And now this. You knew all along that you were the one who paid that money and you didn’t tell me. You let me be blindsided by your mother rather than trust me to understand. Rather than trust me to be able to look beyond what happened five years ago to what we have today.”
“How could I ask that of you? How could I tell you about how I betrayed you and then expect you to just live with it?”
“Because that’s what trust is! Telling the other person the hard shit and knowing that they’ll be there anyway. Knowing that they won’t give up, won’t walk away, no matter what mistake you’ve made.
“You haven’t done that. Not once.” I pause, take a breath. “How do you see that working in the future? You just omit things? You just don’t tell me stuff that might hurt us? You just let me find out in the hardest, most painful ways possible? And then tell me you love me and beg me to stay?”
Ethan starts to say something, to answer that, but in the end there’s nothing for him to say and he knows it. Instead, he just closes his mouth, shakes his head. Looks away.
“How many strikes do you think you deserve? How many chances am I supposed to give you?”
He shakes his head, still refuses to meet my eyes. “I don’t know.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say? After all this? That’s how you want to leave it? With you don’t know?”
