Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 660(@200wpm)___ 528(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Ethan throws open a side door that leads out to the path winding down to the rainy beach.
Pine trees ripple, bending in the wind.
The rain savages on the paved walkway with punishing impacts.
And he just keeps walking into the mess.
Away from me.
Away from us.
Away from giving me a flipping explanation.
“It doesn’t have to be like this!” I yell after him—scream, really, forcing the words out so harshly they scrape my throat raw.
And I can feel the panic hardening.
This was always the ending I feared.
Ethan, flippantly walking away after grinding me into the dust.
“You can be better than this, you big idiot! You don’t have to be an emotionally stunted caveman who shuts down and runs from his problems. If I was actually good enough for you, you’d know that. You’d know!”
The words hang in the air, suspended in the rain.
But I don’t even know if he can hear me.
Then another lightning bolt splits the night and thunder interrupts us.
I gasp when I see him turning around and striding back, his face furious and too close. Water drips from his hair, jet-black and shadowed, and his eyes gleam like volcanic stone.
I want to choke on my words, claw them back.
Instead, they’re out in the open, and I know he heard them.
The rain soaks my hair as I wait helplessly, miserably cold for the summer.
Our wedding was supposed to be a few weeks away.
A stupid thing now, but it’s in my head and I can’t get it out.
This beautiful, complex, infuriating man won’t ever fake marry me.
Not when he’s determined to destroy himself.
“I am not fucking running,” he snaps. “Not anymore. That’s the entire point.”
“Then why are we standing in the rain?”
“Because it’s storming and I need you to go inside and you won’t.”
“How is that not—” I start, but he cuts me off, slashing one hand in front of my face.
“For the first time in my life, I’m living on my terms. Not someone else’s.” His face almost looks like it softens as he looks down at me, though it must be a trick of the light, because there’s nothing soft about him right now.
There’ll be nothing soft again.
“You won’t understand it. Not now. Not tonight. But someday, you’ll know I did this for your own good,” he says.
I want to laugh in his face—or just slap him.
My own good? He thinks any of this is for my own good?
It’s the weakest excuse in the book.
He might think he’s alive, but he’s acting possessed. His demons have taken over.
And he’s reaching deep, finding excuses to run away from me.
I look up at Ethan Blackthorn for what might be the last time.
Strong jaw, bold lips, a hint of dusky stubble, eyes that I know are blue even though they’re nothing but shadows.
He’s more forbidden and unreachable than ever.
Water runs down his temples in rivulets, and the longer I stare, the more his mouth presses together into a hard, bloodless line.
“This isn’t for my good. None of it,” I say softly. The storm eats my words, but I know he hears me.
“I said you wouldn’t understand,” he says. “I’m not standing here all night, trying to pound it through your head.”
What bullshit.
My heart disintegrates.
“But I’m fighting my battle my way,” he says. “And I sure as hell don’t need you in the crossfire.”
That’s it.
He doesn’t say another word as he turns and walks down the winding path to the beach, into the weakening rain.
And I don’t know if he’ll come back tonight.
I wonder if he’ll stay there until I’ve cleared out my stuff and left.
Whatever we had, it’s over as fast as the lightning.
Gone like it never existed.
My tears melt into the rain as they roll down my face.
22
ALL BY MYSELF (ETHAN)
With Hattie gone, the days are an inhuman blur.
One miserable minute stretches into a wretched week.
They drag by, wretched and empty, torturing me with knowing I created this mess.
I lost control.
Even my phone never stops ringing unless I shut the damn thing off.
Blackthorn Holdings in crisis. A legacy that makes me soul sick.
Every executive officer desperately trying to reach their MIA head.
Mom, calling to apologize, trying to talk me down from becoming a different kind of bastard after revealing I basically am one.
Dad, echoing everything she says, and asking if he needs to step in and appoint a stand-in for the company while I’m ghosting it.
I don’t care.
Not my problem.
Not my fucking circus.
It’s hard enough to wake up sober and grind coffee after finding out your entire life’s been a lie.
I’m not here to sort out my parents’ guilty conscience.
Mom never gave me this much attention in her life.
Dad isn’t even my blood father, and I think he knows the company won’t be mine in a few more weeks.
That was only locked in if I married Hattie—if I worked one more fucked up little puzzle crafted by Gramps like a trained monkey—and since I haven’t so much as called the office, I’m expecting my CEO title to be stripped any day now.