Exposed (Ethan Frost 3)

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” I tell him primly, as I walk to the refrigerator and pull out the chicken I put in there to marinate before leaving for work this morning.

“I’m aware of that.” He’s behind me now, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing hot, openmouthed kisses against my neck. Stress or not, disaster looming or not, he makes me weak. Makes my knees tremble and my heart skip a beat, just like the fairy tales always promised.

My own Prince Charming, I think whimsically as he heads toward the bar to get our drinks. Riding a Tesla instead of a horse, but that’s exactly the way I like him.

I’m chopping potatoes into chunks when he returns a couple minutes later with a big glass of tea for me, as requested, and a Corona with lime for himself.

Though I never say a word about it, Ethan must sense that I’m near my breaking point. So instead of talking about Brandon or his mother or the plan Stu is putting together even as we speak, we talk about anything and everything else as we cook dinner together.

Ethan uses the indoor grill to cook the chicken and warm up the pita bread, while I season the potatoes with olive oil and a variety of Greek spices before putting them in the oven to roast. While they’re cooking, I clean some asparagus for Ethan to grill and make a quick Greek salad. Less than half an hour after he brought me my tea, we’re sitting down to dinner and a ridiculous Seth Rogen comedy that makes me laugh so hard I nearly cry. Ethan picked it out, and by this point, it’s no surprise at all that he knows exactly what I need.

But then, he almost always does.

As Seth Rogen starts a feud with Zac Efron and a bunch of frat guys, I cuddle into Ethan and put my head on his shoulder. There’s an easiness to us tonight that was lacking when we first got together, a feeling of rightness that doesn’t take away from the sexual tension humming in the air but only adds to it even as we laugh and laugh and laugh. It’s an easiness I love, and one I pray desperately that we’ll have a chance to keep.

But, for all the relaxed conversation and cuddling, the later it gets the harder it is to ignore the specter of tomorrow that’s floating around the edges of my mind. I make a conscious decision not to let it in, can see Ethan doing the same thing several times throughout the evening. But it’s still there, just waiting for us to drop our guard. Just waiting to drag us down.

I promise myself I won’t let it.

When the movie is over, when the dishes are done and the kitchen cleaned up, Ethan keeps his promise. He takes me out to the hot tub and makes l

ove to me under the stars. And as he wraps himself around me, as he takes me right to the edge of the universe and then flings me over, I think that this is it. This is what I’ve been looking for all along. Is it selfish to hope, to wish, to pray, that it will last?

—

All hell breaks loose in the morning. Boston and New York are three hours ahead of us and Ethan’s mother had the early morning news shows in both cities leading with the story.

We find out when the phone rings at six a.m. Stu’s on the line to break the bad news and to discuss damage control. He’s already started the spin engine, of course, but it’s going to be a long ugly day. The first in a series of progressively longer, uglier days.

I’m in bed, listening to Ethan yelling through the phone at poor Stu, demanding to know how the fuck this had happened, how the fuck he hadn’t had a heads-up this was going to go down this morning, when my stomach revolts. I make a mad dash for the bathroom, hand over my mouth, and end up on my knees, dry-heaving into the toilet.

It only takes a second before Ethan’s there, too, holding me as my body betrays me yet again. Rubbing my back, murmuring soothing sounds as I face the fact that I’m still nowhere near as strong as I’d like to be. Not when it comes to this.

“I’m sorry,” Ethan says over and over again. “I’m so sorry, Chloe. I never wanted this for you.”

“Stop it!” I tell him, after I brush my teeth and rinse my mouth out with mouthwash. I’m still queasy, but I do my best to ignore it. “This isn’t your fault and you need to stop taking the blame for it.”

“It’s completely my fault. I should have known she wouldn’t wait the forty-eight hours. Sneak attacks are always her style.”

“And that’s why you didn’t know,” I tell him, brushing a kiss to his bare shoulder on my way out of the bathroom. “You don’t have a sneaky bone in your body.”

“Maybe not, but I’ve got a few vengeful ones. She’s going to pay for this. She and Brandon both.”

I don’t bother arguing with him, partly because I know it won’t make a difference and partly because I want vengeance, too. She called me a whore on national television, produced witnesses from that godforsaken school saying I’d chased Brandon for weeks and then called rape when he’d taken what I had so freely offered. Or at least, that’s what I’d managed to glean from Ethan’s half of the conversation with Stu. It’s more than enough to bring back all the hatred and rage and fear I felt when I was a freshman in high school, being bullied almost to the point of giving up. Giving in.

And the fact that there are now dozens of reporters camped at the bottom of our driveway only makes the situation a million times worse.

“Why don’t you go back to bed?” Ethan suggests gently. “I need to call Stu back and figure out how we’re going to counter this.”

“I don’t think you can counter it, can you? Weren’t you just telling me that the person who releases the story is the one who controls the narrative?”

“Yeah, well, not this time. Not this narrative.” He pull the covers back, tries to coax me back into bed.

“I’m not a child,” I snap at him. “I’m not going to go back to sleep and leave you to handle everything.”

I snatch my robe, start to put it on, but before I even slide my arms into the sleeves, I realize it’s not enough coverage for me. These accusations—no matter how untrue they are—have torn me open, left me feeling exposed and unprotected.

Dropping the robe on the bed, I detour to the closet. It’s the middle of summer and toasty warm outside, but still I grab a pair of jeans and a high necked sweatshirt. I know the press is down at the end of the driveway, know that we have covers on all the windows they’re facing. But still, there’s an entire side of our house that faces the ocean—an ocean that anyone can hang out in or over. And the paparazzi have really powerful camera lenses.