Devon, the stuff you’ll see and hear in that box…just remember that he can’t hurt me ever again. And know that I was working to get free…to come home to all of you. To tell you how sorry I was for choosing him over you. I know now that it never should have been a choice. I deserved to be with someone who would have loved my family as much as me.
Tell Mom and Dad that I’ll never forget what they did for me and that I will always be with them. Tell Garrett and Eden I’ll be watching over them as they start their own families. And to you my brother, thank you for taking on this final burden for me…I was the luckiest little boy to have had you for a big brother. I know you’ll be strong for our family as they try to get through this. And know that I’ll be watching over you too…I’m strong enough to do that now.
Take care of Lucy.
I love you all very much.
Ethan.
I watchedas Ethan’s eyes shifted from the letter to me and back again. I’d read the damn thing three times already after I’d managed to coerce Devon into letting me look at it while he called his family. I’d been so disturbed after reading it for the first time that I’d had to find Ethan just to reassure myself he was okay. That had been thirty minutes ago.
It shouldn’t have surprised me that he’d fallen asleep because as far as he’d come in the last two weeks, he was still struggling with his injuries. He moved easier and faster, but he tired easy and I often saw him flinching in pain if he turned or stepped wrong. His bruises had finally started to lighten and fade, but I still didn’t really know what he actually looked like in person. I’d been so desperate to know what his face would look like without all the swelling and bruising that I’d actually gone online after he’d told me, Ronan and Phoenix his story just so I could look at his picture.
I’d already thought him beautiful, but the picture had confirmed it. The fact that I’d even thought of him that way was eating atsomething inside of me. I’d passed off my attraction to him as some strange fluke, but I knew it was bullshit. Iwasattracted to him.
Desperately so.
But it wasn’t just his physical appearance that was drawing me in like a moth to a flame. His strength, his kindness, his ability to trust after everything he’d been through…his ability to trustmedid something to me on a level I couldn’t explain.
It had been brutal to watch him with that little bag of potato chips on the plane. I felt like I’d been given a glimpse of what Ethan was truly running from. The psychological damage Eric had inflicted upon him was so much worse than the bruises that would eventually heal.
I wasn’t sure what had possessed me to tell him the truth about my own parents. Maybe it was because early on when I’d first encountered him in that cabin, Ihadsubconsciously been comparing him to my mother. Like Ethan, my mother had been well-educated with a good paying job when she’d married my father. I had no doubt that my father’s abuse had begun early with my mother, but for whatever reason, she’d never left him. Not even after bringing five children into the world who’d had to helplessly watch their mother endure the most brutal of beatings along with the declarations of love that always followed. But unlike Ethan, my mother hadn’t stood up for her children when the time had come.
“Your family will be here in about twenty minutes,” I said to Ethan as he continued to stare at the letter in my hand.
“Why did you read that?” he whispered.
I debated telling him the truth versus not answering him at all. I knew I was getting in way too deep with this man, but there was something inside of me that just couldn’t disconnect from him.
He was changing me.
I could still feel the proof of that on my skin even hours later.
Where he’d grabbed my arm on the plane to stop me from getting up…where his fingers had pressed against mine downstairs just before he’d gone to get cleaned up.
I wanted to touch him again.
I wantedhimto touchmeagain.
And that made no fucking sense to me whatsoever.
“Because I need to know you, Ethan,” I said softly.
He stood up and walked over to me. It should have bothered me that he was standing above me, putting me in the more vulnerable position. Yes, my gaze went to his hands automatically, reflexively, but it didn’t stay there long before returning to his face, to his pretty green eyes that were even now filled with confusion.
“Why, Cain?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I stood up, causing our bodies to nearly touch since Ethan didn’t step back. I liked that he had to look up at me a little, though I didn’t know why I liked it. He was drawing in deep breaths and I watched as his eyes dropped to my mouth.
I knew what he wanted.
Did I want it too?
Did I want to cross that line?
I’d only ever been with women, though in truth, after the age of fifteen when everything had changed for me, those women had been nothing more than warm bodies to slake a biological need. Something inside of me had ended up broken, because I’d never looked at women the same way again. I’d never looked atpeoplethe same way again.
And I’d never looked at anyone the way I was looking at the man in front of me. I’d never felt this ache to touch, to taste, to feel.
