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And because he’s wearing his very best poker face, I can’t tell if that knowledge makes my husband feel better…or worse.
The condolence phone calls start coming in. From business partners. From acquaintances. And from friends. Most of those calls come on the house phone, so I field them while Ethan threatens and cajoles every contact he can think of on the law enforcement front.
Sebastian calls at one point, after not getting through to him on his cell phone.
“How is he?” he asks me once he identifies himself.
I don’t know how to answer that. I mean, I know how I’ve answered it to everyone else who’s called—he’s dealing with it, trying to make sense of the tragedy, yes, things were awkward between them before Brandon died. No one knows quite what to say, what with the current news cycle being what it is. And so they offer their condolences and accept my platitudes and we both go on our ways.
But this is Sebastian, Ethan’s best friend. One of the very few people on the planet who know—and understand—the man my husband is. And I don’t know what to say to him.
“That good, huh?” he says after a few seconds of silence.
“It’s a clusterfuck, Sebastian.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much an understatement, isn’t it? He’s going to blame himself. Don’t let him.”
“He’s already blaming himself and I don’t know how to change that.”
“I don’t mean just about Brandon’s death—although, there’s that, too. He’s going to blame himself because even though Brandon’s dead, even though he’s paid the ultimate price for the crimes he committed, it won’t feel like enough.”
“I don’t—I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Ethan loves you. He wanted to see Brandon punished for what he did to you more than he wanted to breathe most days. The fact that that didn’t happen—that Brandon ended up never having to pay for what he did—is going to eat at him. Which is only going to make him angrier at himself, because his brother is dead. Which should be enough of a punishment in anyone’s book.”
It’s a relief to have him say it. A relief to have the words—the emotions—that have been tumbling around inside of me for the last few hours out on the table. Because, yes, that’s exactly what Ethan is feeling. Exactly what I’m feeling. Exactly what I’ve worked so hard to ignore from the moment we got the news.
The ugly little voice inside of me that says Brandon got away too easily. That he didn’t have to suffer the way that I suffered. He didn’t have to face the judgment of his peers every day, didn’t have to live with the consequences of what he did. And maybe it’s sick—he’s dead, after all, which is the most dire consequence there is. And still it doesn’t feel like enough. Still it feels like I’ve been cheated out of something. Vindication. Justice. Vengeance.
It makes me feel like a terrible person. Then again, if I am, it’s because Brandon and my family have made me that way.
Sebastian and I talk for a few more minutes before he hangs up with a promise to call back tomorrow to check on Ethan. I promise him that I’ll tell my husband he called.
But when I make my way back to the office to check on Ethan, he’s slumped over the desk, his head buried in his arms.
“You okay, baby?” I ask as I cross to him.
He sits up right away. “Yeah, of course. Just tired.”
It’s well after midnight and besides being a long day, it’s also been an emotionally exhausting one, filled with so many ups and downs that it’s amazing we both don’t have whiplash.
“Come to bed?” I ask him, holding out a hand to him. “It’s three a.m. on the East Coast. I don’t think there’s anything else you can do right now.”
He nods as he allows me to pull him out of his desk chair. And then the two of us walk hand in hand to bed.
We don’t talk while we get undressed—Ethan’s lost in his own world and I don’t know how to reach him right now—so I’m totally unprepared when, after washing my face and changing into a nightgown I almost never wear, I climb into bed and Ethan grabs on to me.
He strips the nightgown off, and then his hands are everywhere. On my breasts, cupping my ass, between my thighs as his mouth crushes down on mine in a kiss so desperate, so brutal, that I can feel my lips bruising beneath his.
And then he’s rolling me over, pressing my front into the mattress as he thrusts into me from behind. Again and again and again, he pounds into me, until I’m arching my back, clawing at the sheets, rocking my head back and forth against the mattress as I search for release. For relief.
And still he keeps at me, taking me right up to the edge again and again and again and then refusing to throw me over. One hand is on my breast, pinching my nipple. The other is on my hip, the only thing holding me in place as his powerful thrusts rock me, and the bed, so hard that the headboard slams against the wall in a fast, continuous rhythm.
It’s only after he’s turned me into an incoherent mess, after I’m begging and pleading, shaking and crying, that Ethan slips a hand beneath my sex and strokes me. Once, twice, he circles my clit and then I’m going off like the finale at a Fourth of July fireworks show, my body exploding in a million shiny sparks that fly off in a million different directions. Seconds later, Ethan stiffens against me and then he’s coming too, emptying himself inside of me with a quiet, vicious kind of power that says everything I need to know about his mental state.
When it’s over, he rolls off me, and instead of getting up to get me a washcloth as he so often does, he just flops down on the bed beside me. Not touching me, just lying there, his big body generating enough heat to light up a small country. But when I move to get up to clean myself, he latches on, pulling me into his body. “Don’t,” he says, his voice low and gravelly and damaged. “I like knowing I’m still inside you.” He cups my sex for emphasis.
Giving in, because there’s something sexy about being needed this much—even in the midst of all this pain—that gets to me on a visceral level. I let him pull me into his chest, let him wrap an arm around my waist and cup my breast as we both drift into fitful but exhausted sleep.
