“Oh.”
“What?”
He rubbed the back of his neck “Well, I feel stupid now.”
“Why?”
“Austin’s getting married.”
Austin was Ethan’s younger brother, and just as charming as Ethan. I smiled at the thought of him making it up the aisle.
“Congratulations to him.”
“Yeah, it’s great news. But it got me thinking.”
“About?”
“Come on, Q. We’d have been married for a few years by now. I fucked up. I shouldn’t have left you like that. We could’ve been happy together. We were for a long time before I messed it up. I know I did, and I’m sorry. Lately, I’ve been thinking maybe we could talk and try to fix things between us. I miss you.”
My insides twisted as I looked at him. Ethan was once my entire world. I was ready to marry him. ‘Til death do us part, I’d have been his partner in everything. When he left, my world shattered. Even though the last few months showed me we were incompatible, losing him had broken me. I didn’t think I’d love anyone like that again.
Until Gray. I thought of every night we’d spent together. I thought of every fight we had. I thought of how I caught him looking at me sometimes. He was impulsive and chaotic and would always put his foot in his mouth, but he was supportive and dealt with everything I threw at him. I never thought I’d want someone in my life so badly. I didn’t even want Ethan as badly as I did Gray.
Fuck.
Why was I sitting here with Ethan? Why did I agree to talk to him?
I didn’t want Ethan. I wanted Gray. I wanted something with Grayson, which meant we needed to sit and talk about this properly and decide what to do. I’d lay it on the line for him so that one way or another, we could figure it out.
“Q? What do you think? I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”
I focused on Ethan again. He rubbed his hand over the stubble on his jaw. When he first left me, for a short while, I used to dream of him turning up and saying he’d made a mistake, asking for me to take him back. But the reality was that I didn’t want him. Not anymore.
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“No, Ethan. I don’t want to try again,” I told him, getting up from the booth. “You said you didn’t love me anymore when you left.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“I don’t care. You can’t flip a switch like that. I don’t know if it’s because you’re lonely or what, but I don’t want this conversation with you. I have no interest in trying to reconcile with someone who couldn’t even talk to me about how he felt.”
He stood up. “I —”
“I loved you once. But I’m not what you need and you’re not what I need.”
“But you came here.”
“I know, and I think I just realised that this was a mistake.”
“Q!”
But I was already walking through the diner and out into the car park. The rain was falling heavily in massive drops, and I heard the thunder before there was a flash of lightning.
Gray rarely said the right things, but what was I meant to expect? He was the God of chaos. Things would never be straight with him. Maybe it was foolish to hope that things could work out between us, but I knew that if I didn’t ask him, then I’d regret it for the rest of my life.
I was soaked through by the time I got into the car. I put the key in the ignition and went straight home, but he wasn’t there.
