“I want to,” I say, surprising even myself. “I never got to be around a family. Not really. So they might have their faults, but…” I smile. “I like them. Although your dad’s accent? I swear he wasn’t speaking English.”
Ethan actually laughs. A real one. “He’s from Newcastle. Geordie accent.”
“What is aGeordie? It sounds like a type of pastry.”
He laughs harder. I like that sound more than I should.
We reach my porch and stop. Porch light humming. Night stretching around us. He leans on the railing, waiting.
“So,” he says gently. “Your family?”
My stomach tightens. But I started this. And something about him—how he listens, how he doesn’t push, how hewaits—makes me want to follow through.
“My mom died,” I say quietly. “When I was a kid.”
His face softens. “Lucky—”
“No, don’t—” I shake my head. “She wasn’t… there. For anything. Not when she got pregnant, not when I was born. She died of an overdose.”
His shoulders go tense.
“I was born addicted,” I continue, tone flat. “Social services had me for the first two years. Then she supposedly ‘cleaned up,’ but she never did. Different men, different drugs. I was fortunate her boyfriends never…” I wave a hand. “I know other girls who weren’t so lucky.”
His jaw locks. Hard.
“Honestly?” I laugh, but it’s sharp. Bitter. “I’m glad she died. Because if she’d lived, who the hell knows where I’d be? Inner city slum kid with a mom shooting up in the bathroom, selling myself not for food but for—”
“Lucky.” His voice cuts in—low, steady, commanding.
I freeze. I realize what I’m saying. What I’m dumping on him. And the look in his eyes—God, he looks devastated.For me.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “I shouldn’t have said all that. You probably think I’m—trash. Trailer park disaster meets—fuck. I should go.” I turn to leave.
He grabs my arm.
Not hard. Not painful. Just firm enough that I stop spiraling.
His eyes burn. “Don’t ever say that about yourself.”
I swallow. Hard.
“You don’t get to feel ashamed for surviving,” he says. “You crawled out of something most people don’t. That’s not shame. That’s strength.”
I snort, but it’s weak. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know enough to form an opinion,” he says quietly. “And it’s not a bad one.”
Something tightens in my chest. Something unfamiliar and dangerous.
“Really?” I whisper, trying to sound flippant and failing.
“Really.” His thumb brushes my arm before he realizes it.
“So you don’t—hate me? Even though I annoy the hell out of you?”
“Oh, you absolutely annoy me,” he says.
I laugh. “Wow. Honest.”
