Ruined (Ethan Frost 1)

A sexy black-and-white vintage-looking postcard. The picture is of a woman with pin-up curves stretched across the bed. She’s on her stomach, her legs kicked up and crossed at the ankles behind her while her chin rests on her hands. She’s dressed in nothing but a corset, panties, stockings, and high heels. Oh, and gloves. Long, black gloves that reach her elbows and somehow manage to be the most elegant—and the naughtiest—thing about the whole picture.

I blush a little because I can’t help wondering if Ethan was thinking of me dressed like this when he selected it. If he imagined me waiting for him as this woman is obviously waiting for her lover. Is it wrong that I want him to have done just that?

Or that, if I close my eyes, I can imagine—just for a moment—that it is me? That I can be like her, smile like her, instead of being the messed-up, terrified control freak that I am?

What would that be like? To just be normal? To be able to accept a guy’s attention? More, to want it? To anticipate it? It’s been so long since I’ve felt that way that I can’t even remember what it was like. Everything is colored by Brandon, by what he did to me and by what came after.

I put the postcard on the table next to the other presents he sent me, and just stare at them for long seconds. I reach for one of the tea bags with its pretty wrapping, bring it to my nose. It smells like strawberries. I smile despite my confusion. And my pain.

I pick up the ribbon next. It’s soft and silky and cool as I run it through my fingers. It’s also long—too long to be worn in my hair or around my neck—and I wonder what it’s meant for. Why Ethan sent it to me, other than the color.

For a moment, just a moment, I have a flash of it wrapped around my wrists, binding them together. Binding me, for Ethan’s pleasure. A stab of desire works through me at the image, followed closely by discomfort. By fear.

I drop the ribbon like it’s burned me. Nearly walk away from the table and everything laid out there. But the shell is calling to me. It’s a brown-and-white torticone, small and tightly furled, with an inside of the softest, palest gold. Sand crumbles onto my fingers as I rub it, and I can’t resist the urge to bring it to my nose. Sure enough, I can smell the wild salt of the ocean on it.

I love that it came right off the beach. That Ethan didn’t bother to wash it or polish it before he sent it to me. That he gave it to me just as he found it. I can almost picture him walking on the beach in those board shorts of his, surfboard under his arm as he heads back to his house.

I don’t know for sure, but something tells me that the man lives in one of those huge houses off Prospect that let out right onto the beach. Did he step on the shell, hurt himself with it? Is that how he found it? Or did he see just a glint of it from where it was buried in the sand? Did he bend down and dig for it, his strong fingers burrowing through the sand in search of a prize?

After I’ve examined all of my treasures—and they are treasures, for all that they cost nearly nothing—I drop down into a kitchen chair and just stare at them.

What am I going to do?

What am I going to do?

I’ll return the blender, of course I will, but these things he gave me—these little pieces of his soul that have somehow become pieces of mine—they aren’t going anywhere. They’re mine now. They’re me, as I think Ethan always knew they would be.

I reach for the envelope, pull out the last thing inside of it. A thick, cream-colored piece of paper that’s been folded in half.

My heart in my throat, I open it. Read the two short lines he has written on it.

Then, as emotion—f

ull-bodied, tempestuous, overwhelming—moves through me, I put my head down on the edge of the table. And try desperately not to cry.

Chapter Nine

By the time morning comes, I’ve recovered my equilibrium, if not my good sense. Once again I skip my morning run—something I know I’m going to pay for later this week when I finally get back to it—in lieu of getting dressed and heading out early.

I choose a yellow sundress today, one that I picked up for twenty bucks at the end of last summer. It’s a little too feminine for work, in my opinion, but I’ve only got two suits and I’ve already worn both of them this week, so this will have to do. The fact that it looks really good with my skin and hair is of no consequence—at least, that’s what I tell myself when I’m getting dressed.

Before I leave the house, I pack the blender back into the box, along with a “thank you, but no thank you” note. And then I do something really stupid, something I’m already regretting even as I do it.

I take an envelope of my own—a plain manila one, as I don’t have any interesting ones lying around—and put inside it a bead of pure lapis lazuli that I bought years ago on a whim. I’ve hung on to it as a kind of good-luck charm all this time, never paying much attention to it but never losing track of it, either.

When I went to put the ribbon in my jewelry box last night, the bead was just there, like it was waiting for me to remember it. To figure out why I’d really bought it. Richly, deeply blue, it matches Ethan’s eyes the way that ribbon matches mine. I can’t not give it to him.

To it, I add a handwritten copy of a Pablo Neruda poem, “Leaning into the Afternoons. ” It’s one of my favorites, and from the moment I met Ethan, the first line has run through my head again and again and again: “Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets / towards your oceanic eyes. ”

And finally I add a vintage Armani silk pocket square that I picked up at one of the used-clothing stores in Hollywood a couple of years ago. At the time, I bought it to go in a jacket I wore regularly. I threw the jacket away a few months ago, after wearing it nearly to death, but kept the handkerchief. It matches perfectly the suit Ethan was wearing yesterday. I can’t resist spritzing it with the strawberry spray I wear on a daily basis—a direct reference to the fact that he keeps sending me strawberries of one sort or another.

And then I sit down on my bed and try desperately not to shake. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m flying blind, by the seat of my pants. Scared to death, yet unable to not answer the tenderness implicit in Ethan’s gift.

It would be smarter, more logical, better for me to just ignore the words he wrote, the lovely things he sent me. But I’m not strong enough to do that. I never was. And so here I am, casting my nets onto a course that will only lead to disaster. To pain. To heartbreak. And I’m doing it with my eyes wide open.

I only hope I don’t drown.

After I finish with my total what-the-fuck moment, I seal up the envelope, drop it into the box with the blender, and then seal the box. I change the recipient information and carry it out to my car. At lunch, if I haven’t lost my nerve, I’ll run to the UPS place on the corner and send it to Ethan overnight.