“He was good to me. Kind, protective, everything I thought I should want after…” She looks away. “He proposed.”
“Fuck.” The word explodes from me, and I scoot back abruptly, running my hands through my hair. “You were engaged?”
“I said no.”
I stop breathing. “What?”
“I couldn’t say yes. Not when I didn’t love him the way I loved—” She cuts herself off, but we both know what she was about to say.
“That poor bastard.”
“I ended things right after. It wasn’t fair to either of us.” She meets my eyes. “What about you? Anyone serious?”
I chuckle, mindful of the sleeping child nearby. “The opposite. I perfected the art of meaningless relationships. Never more than a few weeks, never anything real. My aunt is worried I’ll end up alone.”
“Ethan…” Her voice is soft, almost broken.
I can’t stand the distance between us anymore. When my lips touch hers, it’s like coming home after years of being lost. She tastes like the cookies we made and everything I’ve been missing.
For a moment, we’re twenty-two and in love and the world makes sense. My hands tangle in her hair, and she makes the little sound in the back of her throat, which always drove me crazy.
“Let me make you feel better,” I say.
“We are strangers now,” she says quietly. “Eight years changes people.”
“Does it?” I challenge, moving closer. “Because being here right now feels like no time has passed at all.”
Her breath catches, and I see something flicker in her eyes before she looks away. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t acknowledge that there’s still something between us?”
“There’s nothing else between us except a child. Your child with my sister.”
“Cassidy, Britney—”
“You were everything to me,” she says, her voice breaking. “And you threw it all away for one night with my sister.”
“I didn’t throw anything away,” I fire back. “You gave up on us. You never gave me a chance to explain myself or to prove my innocence.”
“I saw you!” she shouts back, and Axel stirs on the mattress. We both freeze, waiting, but he settles back into sleep. When she speaks again, her voice is a harsh whisper. “You were in bed with my sister. She gave birth to your first child! What was there to prove?”
“Your sister drugged me, then raped me, Cassidy. There’s no way in hell I would have touched her, would have hurt you like that.”
Her face goes completely white, she opens her mouth, then closes it, before shaking her head violently. “You’re really going to sit here and lie to me? After everything?”
“I’m not lying—”
“Drugged you?” The words come out strangled. “That’s... that’s insane. Britney wouldn’t—she was barely eighteen, Ethan. She was just a kid who had a crush—” She breathes in deeply. “You’re pathetic.” She stands, wrapping her arms around herself. “Just admit what you did instead of making up some ridiculous story to get yourself off the hook.”
“You know what? Believe whatever the hell you want. Keep playing the victim if it makes you feel better about walking away without a fight.”
“I walked away? You’re the one who—”
“Who what? Who got set up by your manipulative sister? Who tried to call you a hundred times to explain? You changed your number, Cassidy. You disappeared.”
“Because I saw you with her! I saw—”
“You saw what she wanted you to see.”
