“Don’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t deflect. Don’t make it about that. This, right now, is about you and me. Our relationship. Right now, there really isn’t one, and I need to know once and for all if you want that to change. If you want to try to work this out, if you want to try to move past all that’s happened… I need you to make that decision now.”
Shaking her head as if a bit dazed, Amanda said, “I was not prepared for this today, Ethan.”
“I know. I’m still not sure I’m prepared for it, but I also can’t live the rest of my life on pause, and obviously neither can you. This is only getting messier and… I think we need to just figure out what we want to do and do it.”
“What are you saying?”
Ethan shook his head slightly. “Right now I’m just asking where you’re at. Clearly nothing is going anywhere without you on board, so…” When a moment passed and she didn’t speak, just staring at his thigh, he prompted gently, “I know how angry you’ve been at me, but I assume you’ve thought about it.”
A humorless smile dragged at the corner of her mouth. “Of course I have,” she said quietly. “Every time Jackson asks for you to come along on some everyday errand, every time Alison wants you to read her bedtime story but you’re not here, every time it occurs to me that only two of our three children will ever remember you being here all the time, every time I lie in our bed alone and try to sleep…”
Pain, pushed back and put on hold so many times, bloomed in Ethan’s chest. He reached out, wanting to hold her, to offer her comfort, but she flinched away before his fingers made contact.
Sniffling and blinking back tears, she shook her head. “And I’ve—” She stopped, her face crumpling, looking down at her lap. “I’ve tried to look at you and still see the man who used to read Alison those bedtime stories, and go on those errands with us, and sleep in that bed with me every night.” Her voice broke, tears falling freely from her face and dropping on her legs like acid, the pain behind each tear drop dissolving any secret hope Ethan had been keeping. “But you know what I see instead? I see a fucked up man who is capable of things that… that man could have never done. I see a stranger. I see a darkness, a depravity in you that I never saw a hint of in all of our years together. I’m not trying to be mean, I’m not trying to hurt you or punish you when I say these things, but… you asked if I’ve thought about it. And I have. I’ve thought about it until my head was so full with it that I wanted to climb out of my own body. But I can’t forgive you. Not for the cheating, that… that maybe I could have gotten past with… work and counseling, I don’t know. But the other part… the part where the man I created a family with raped an 18-year-old girl—”
Ethan reared back as if she’d dealt him a physical blow. He looked down, away, and then inched back on the couch, putting a little more space between them.
Quietly, sadly, brokenly, she told him, “That part… I’m never getting past.”
Somewhere in the sea of shame Ethan was drowning in just then, beyond anger and sadness and grief, beyond the island of regret he’d felt stranded on for so long, a new feeling surfaced.
Acceptance.
He’d changed somewhere along the line. Become another person. Amanda was right. He wasn’t the man she’d shared her life with anymore. More than that, she didn’t love him, not in his entirety, maybe not at all anymore.
Willow did.
She loved every damned, dirty corner of him.
Willow, whom he’d wronged maybe as much as he’d wronged Amanda, probably more. Whom he’d certainly given far less, despite knowing how much she’d wanted him. Whose heart he’d broken in so many ways, time and again, yet she kept offering it to him like he deserved it.
God, he hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve her.
For a moment, Ethan closed his eyes. Amanda sighed, clearly misinterpreting his reaction, but after wanting to hang on for so long, all he wanted to do right then was go.
“All right,” he said, opening his eyes.
Vague surprise passed across her face, tentative. “Yeah?”
Ethan nodded, but couldn’t quite manage to meet her gaze. “Okay. That’s fair. I did an unforgivable thing.”
She was watching him like he was a little unhinged, but his thoughts were splintering and all he could think about was making right his latest wrong.
Finally meeting her gaze, he added, “I need you to understand I’m not dangerous. Whatever you think of me, of what I’ve done… our children mean the world to me. I’m not… some fucking…”
She didn’t make him finish, nodding her head and looking down. “I know.”
“We need to figure something out. Not now, but…”
Still nodding, she glanced up at him. “We will.” Then, sighing, she said, “I don’t know exactly how to do this. I don’t want to be enemies.”
“Neither do I,” he agreed.
“I think we just need a little time.”
Ethan nodded his agreement, catching her gaze. For a moment, they just looked at each other, peered into the eyes of their former partner, understanding that nothing would ever be the way it had been between them. For the first time, that was okay.
Half cringing, Ethan said, “Can I hug you?”