Addicted (Ethan Frost 2)

It’s a long afternoon, and an even more interminable evening as I wait for Ethan to get home from a business dinner that is running late. This morning he’d asked me if I wanted to go with him and I’d declined because I don’t have anything to wear. I didn’t tell him that because he would run out and buy me a whole closet full of expensive clothes, which is the last thing I want when I’m still trying to get over the cost of my belly chain.

Now I’m even more grateful that I turned him down, since the idea of sitting in a restaurant and making small talk with his business associates is the absolute last thing I want to be doing. Not when it’s taking every ounce of self-control I have not to freak out, not to violate Ethan’s trust and search the house for proof of his duplicity. Not to walk away and never look back.

Part of me wonders if I even could. I thought about doing it this afternoon, right after I saw the broadcast, and I?

??m thinking about doing it now, as I sit here on Ethan’s patio, nursing a glass of wine and staring up at the midnight sky. The wind is blowing pretty hard and I can smell just a hint of smoke in the air gusting by. It’s a by-product of the forest fire that’s raging about fifteen miles away from here and I can’t help wondering how much worse the fire is going to get before it gets better.

Can’t help wondering how much worse the mess I’ve made of my life is going to get before it gets better.

It would be easier—infinitely easier—to cut my losses. To pack up my shit and walk away from Ethan once and for all. I’ve worked so hard to be strong, so hard to get my life together, that watching it fall apart all over again is the worst kind of torture.

And yet what can I do to stop it? What can I do to make it feel like everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve tried to be, isn’t crumbling down around me?

Just pretend he doesn’t matter?

Just walk away and hope for the best?

I don’t know that walking away from Ethan is even an option at this point. How can it be when he’s a part of me? When I would just carry him with me wherever I tried to run?

The time I’ve known Ethan can be measured in mere days and weeks, and yet, in that time, he’s somehow become so much more than I ever planned on.

He’s the first thing my sluggish mind thinks of in the morning, when the early morning tide rolls across the cold and lonely beach.

He’s the last thing I dream of in the dark when the sky is still and starshot.

He’s everything in between. The secret that wraps itself around me like a whisper. The promise that burrows its hooks deep inside of me.

He’s my obsession. My addiction.

It’s a truth I couldn’t begin to fight. A truth I’m paying for now as I wait and watch and count the seconds as the clock rolls itself around to another day.

It’s after midnight when I hear the gate rolling open at the end of the driveway, followed by the sound of Ethan’s BMW making its way up the drive. By the time I hear the garage open and close, I’m up and standing at the railing, looking out over the dark and endless ocean.

I go over and over the discussion I want to have with Ethan as I wait for him to find me. It’s probably stupid, but I can’t bring myself to have this fight in the house, surrounded by his things and the awkward memories of my humiliation. Better, if we need to hash things out, to do it in the open air. At least out here, the pain and anger will have someplace to go.

Except it takes longer than I thought for him to find me. By the time he does, I’ve already given up and started walking back toward the house, wondering what is taking so long.

I’m already to the closest patio door when it flies open, Ethan slamming out of it at close to a dead run. “Chloe! Chloe, where—”

He stops dead when he sees me in the shadows, his voice choking off, and it registers just how frantic he is. “I’m right here,” I tell him. “I was looking at the ocean.”

He nods jerkily, blows out a long, unsteady breath. Then braces his hands on his knees and just concentrates on breathing for long seconds.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was afraid I had left him. Except my car is out front in the driveway, my shoes near the garage door into the house—the same door he had to have taken to get inside. He couldn’t have missed them if he was looking.

“You okay?” I ask him huskily, hating myself for how much it matters. I’m the one who’s shattered, the one holding on by a damn thread here, and yet I can’t stop worrying about him. Can’t stop wanting to take care of him.

“Yeah, of course. Sorry. I just freaked out when I couldn’t find you.”

I nod. “I can see that. The question is why?”

He studies me for long seconds and I get the impression that he is trying to decide what to say. Not that he doesn’t have an answer for my question, only that he’s trying to decide how much he wants to tell me. I don’t know why I feel that way, except that he’s got that face on. The one he wears when he’s trying to lie to me—in reality or by omission.

The knowledge breaks something else inside of me, something tenuous and uncertain and afraid. I bite my lip to keep from screaming and this time I’m the one concentrating on my breathing.

“I was afraid you’d left,” he finally says.

“Without my car? Without my shoes?”