Addicted (Ethan Frost 2)

Shit.

I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s not like any other part of the last twelve hours has been easy. Why should this one be?

Head up, shoulders back, I ignore them as I march straight toward my car. I can feel Ethan’s eyes on me, can feel the concern and the worry radiating from him. For a moment, it threatens to melt my resolve, but then I remember that he could have told me this last night. He could have spared me—could have spared the both of us—from this.

My anger roars back to life.

I yank open my car door. Climb in. Put the key in the ignition. And then curse like a sailor inside my head when the car refuses to start.

Not now, damn it. Not now. Please. Any other time. In rush hour traffic. After a long day at work. In the morning when I’m running late for work. Any time other than right here, right now.

The car gods obviously don’t hear my plea, though—of course, they don’t—because the damn thing won’t turn over. I try a third time, a fourth time, but nothing happens.

By the fifth time I crank the starter, Ethan is opening the door. He doesn’t crowd me, doesn’t press against me in any way, but his presence is enough to make me feel hunted.

“Let me give you a ride home, Chloe.”

“I don’t need a ride home.” I try the ignition again. Nothing but the sick buzzing sound of a starter gone bad.

“Please, baby.” He still isn’t touching me, but he might as well be. Though I will it not to, my entire body responds to the dark hoarseness of his voice—which only upsets me more. My hands start to tremble despite my best intentions.

“I’m fine,” I tell him, grabbing my purse off the seat and ducking past him as I climb out of the car. It’s less than two miles to the condo I share with my best friend, Tori. I can be home in twenty minutes if I walk fast.

“Wow, times certainly have changed,” Brandon comments from where he’s lounging indolently against the side of his car. “It used to be a lot easier to talk her into a car. Then again, maybe you’re not the brother she wants.”

The words slam into me like bullets. My stomach revolts and for a second—just a second—the control I’ve wrapped around myself like a shield threatens to shatter.

Ethan whirls around, his hand clamping on to Brandon’s throat and squeezing until the younger man’s eyes practically bug out of his head and his air supply is obviously cut off.

“Since you weren’t listening the first time, I’m going to tell you this one more time,” Ethan growls, refusing to relinquish his hold even as Brandon’s fingers tug desperately at his hands. “You don’t look at her, you don’t talk to her, you don’t get near her. In fact—”

I don’t wait around to hear the rest, or to see what happens next. Instead, I take advantage of Ethan’s distraction to duck around him and start marching down the driveway.

I don’t even make it to the gate that borders the street before he’s beside me. “Chloe, baby, you’re barefoot. You can’t go home like that.”

I keep walking, refusing to even look at him. The driveway is hot beneath my bare feet and I know it won’t be long before I start to feel the burn. But I don’t care. The pain of hot cement is nothing compared to the emotions raging inside of me. In fact, I welcome the distraction of it. Welcome the way it gives me something to focus on besides the rage and sorrow and crushing betrayal.

I’m close to breaking and I don’t want to do that here. Don’t want to do that now. Not when I’m so angry at Ethan. And not when Brandon is at the top of the driveway, watching me like the predator he is. I can feel his eyes on me, his malicious delight staining the air around me a dark and heavy gray. It’s hard to breathe through it, hard to think through it, but I’m determined.

“Just wait here,” Ethan says desperately, and I’ve never seen him like this. So shaky, so distressed, so obviously not in control. “You don’t have to go back up and face him. Just stay here and I’ll bring the car—”

His hand closes on my arm again and this time I reach out with my other hand and shove him as hard as I can.

It doesn’t budge him, doesn’t make him stumble back as I’d been hoping it would. But it does freeze him in his tracks, his eyes wide and tortured and blue. So fucking blue that it takes every inch of spine that I have not to tumble straight into them.

He lets go instantly, his hand dropping from my arm liked I’d burned him. I don’t feel any remorse. How can I when he’s torn me open, my whole being one raw, seething wound that makes it impossible to breathe without bleeding.

“I won?

?t hurt you, Chloe,” he tells me, voice soft and hands raised in a soothing gesture.

He already has. But I’ve never been one to point out the obvious, so I just turn and start walking again. This time, he lets me go.

Relief sweeps through me as I make it to the end of the driveway. The ocean is stretched out in front of me, blue and wild and infinite. A storm is brewing and waves are tossing against the shore, slamming into early morning surfers and slapping them hard into the water. One by one they stand. One by one they get swamped, slammed, devoured by the ravenous pull of the ocean.

I pause for a moment, just a moment, and watch because I can’t not watch. I’m on land but I know exactly how the surfers feel out there. I’m drowning in pain, drowning in shame, being tugged under with no surface in sight.

The muted roar of an engine sounds behind me, and then Ethan’s voice—low, demanding, pleading. “Please, Chloe, get in. Just let me take you home and then I’ll leave.”