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The hairs on the back of my neck stand. “What’s going on?”
He’s stopped fiddling with his pocket and instead stands straight. “You know you mean the world to me, right?” he says quietly.
I blink. “You mean the world to me, too.”
“Well, I don’t want to lose you, Teeny.”
“What?” My brow puckers in a frown. “Why would you lose me?”
“Mom got some news today.” He breathes in, breathes out. “We’re moving.”
“Like across town?”
“No. To Aston Falls. In Montana.”
My heart stops. My arms go limp by my side.
“She got a really good job offer, one she can’t turn down.” He clenches his jaw. “I have to go with her. You understand that, right?”
“Of course I do,” I say quickly. And I mean it, Ethan and his mom are close, they need each other. I’d never expect her to move without him. “So what does this mean?”
Ethan shifts. “I don’t want us to be doomed to fail…”
“What are you talking about?”
A pause. Another shift. When Ethan speaks again, his voice is heavy. “I think we should go back to being friends.”
My breath catches, a sharp inhale. “Why would we do that?”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Val. I can’t lose you. So I think the best decision for us is to take a step back. Go back to how things were.”
A million arguments rush forward on my tongue, fighting to be released, but the expression on Ethan’s face is enough to stop them all. I’ve never seen him like this. His face is grim but resolute. “So you’ve decided,” I whisper.
“I want to do what’s best for you.”
I have a hard time swallowing, a hard time breathing. I’m filled with so much raw emotion, my heart hurts. “What was all this about, then?” I ask, gesturing around the yard. “Your way of letting me down easy?”
Ethan’s face cracks, and for a moment, he looks so heartbroken. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “It wasn’t like that.”
I think I’m nodding. I have no idea how I’m still standing given that my legs are numb. The world is crashing around me, and I don’t know what to feel, or how to act. I have whiplash from the entire evening—the sweet, meaningful treasure hunt that felt to be leading somewhere that I really, really didn’t expect would be here.
“So this is it?” I ask, my voice robotic.
He nods, his face pinched and pale.
I open my mouth, but no words come out. I feel powerless. Nothing I can say, nothing I can do will change what Ethan wants. He’s made his decision. When one person stops fighting in a relationship, there’s no going forward from there. And Ethan’s telling me that he’s stopped fighting.
I clear my throat, wrench my mouth shut. After a moment, I force myself to say, “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
28
Val
“Val, do me a favor and review today’s check-ins to make sure we’re ready?”
Ivy’s voice interrupts my thoughts as she blows into reception like a whirlwind. She skitters next to me behind the front desk, slightly out of breath.
“Sure thing,” I say brightly, as though I haven’t spent the past ten minutes staring blankly at the reservation book while actually thinking about Ethan. “We’ve got the first guests scheduled to come in at 2pm. I’ve got the keys and welcome packets ready to go, and I added a kids’ coloring book as the guest mentioned that their kids love to draw. Easy-erase markers this time, so we don’t have a repeat of what happened in Room 3.”
