That ground me even as they smash through the walls I’ve tried so painstakingly to build.
Chapter Eleven
“Can we talk?”
It’s hours later and we’re curled up in Ethan’s bed after taking a long bath and raiding his refrigerator for the makings of an omelet. The whole thing is kind of ridiculous, now that I think about it. Ethan spent at least ten grand on dinner tonight at the Marine Room and after all that, we still ended up standing in the middle of his kitchen eating a cheese omelet.
Three months ago I would have been horrified at the thought. Then again, three months ago I never would have imagined being here, with Ethan, like this.
“Do we have to?” I ask, rolling over to my stomach and burying my head in my arms. “It’s late. I’m tired.”
“I know. But I want to get this over with.” He leans over me, presses soft kisses across my shoulders and down my spine.
I shiver at the first brush of his lips, then arch up into him before I can stop myself. I know he wants to be serious, but it feels so good to be back here with him that I just want to relish it for a little while. Not forever—I understand he feels we have a lot to work out—but it can wait until tomorrow. Tonight, I just want this to be about us. About him and me and the feelings stretched taut as a circus wire between us.
I already feel like an acrobat on that wire, precariously balanced for the crowd’s amusement without so much as a net to catch me. Is it so bad that I want to spend one night—just one night—before having to worry about the fall?
But a glance at Ethan’s face shows him looking more serious than I’ve ever seen him and I know that putting this off any longer is just torturing the both of us. Maybe if we get it done tonight, quickly, we can start tomorrow with a clean slate. Or at least as clean a slate as we can manage.
“Fine,” I tell him, rolling over and wrapping my arms around his waist with a gusty sigh and a nervous smile. Though I’ve spent the better part of the last five hours making love to Ethan, it still feels a little strange to be able to touch him again. To be in his arms again. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I figure that’s obvious.”
I shrug carelessly, find myself staring over his shoulder instead of looking him in the eye. Funny, isn’t it, that no matter how there’s five years and a ton of academic success separating me from the scared kid Brandon forced down in the front of his car, I’m still the one who’s terrified of talking about it. I’m still the one punishing herself for being raped.
He catches my chin between his thumb and forefinger and tilts my face down until I have no choice but to meet his eyes. “What’s that shrug for?” he asks me.
“It’s nothing.”
“Chloe, this isn’t going to work if you won’t at least tell me what you’re thinking—”
“I told you what I was thinking. I told you I didn’t want to do this now. You’re the one who’s insisting on it.”
“Because it’s important. Because if we don’t talk about it now, it’s always going to be there, between us. I love you, Chloe. I don’t want anything to come between us again. I thought you’d be able to see that.” He sounds exasperated, like I’m being deliberately obtuse or difficult, and it pushes me right off that high wire I’ve been clinging to with bloody fingertips.
“I do see,” I tell him, scrambling out of bed. I yank the top sheet with me, and wrap it around my nude body. If we really are going to do this, I’m going to do it standing on my own two feet instead of lying in his bed like some kind of concubine. “Believe me, Ethan, I see more clearly than you do.
“How do you think this talk you want to have is going to end up?” I demand.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what do you think the end game looks like? I’m going to tell you about the rape, you’re going to tell me about your brother and how you didn’t know. I’m going to tell you about how freaked out I am that he’s related to you and that if we make a go of this, he will always be on the periphery of my life in some capacity or another. You’ll reassure me that that isn’t the case … Do I really need to go on or have I covered everything?”
Ethan’s standing now, too, though he is beautifully, gloriously naked. “Is that really how you think this discussion is going to go down?” he demands.
“Isn’t it?”
“No. Of course not. It’s—” He breaks off when he sees the expression on my face. “Okay, fine. Maybe it will sound something like that.”
“Of course it will. That’s how discussions like these go. And I don’t want to do that. We just got back together.” I pause, clutching the sheet more tightly around me as a horrifying thought strikes me. “We are back together, aren’t we?”
His face goes from determined to thunderous in a moment. “The fact that you even have to ask that is proof of just how much we have to talk about.”
“But why? If we’re together, let’s just be together for a while. The past doesn’t matter. Let’s just enjoy w
hat we’ve got now.”
“Enjoy what we’ve got? You make it sound like this is a temporary thing for you.”