Page 94 of Crushed By Love

No. He doesn’t deserve to talk to me. I release my held breath, keeping my vocals steady. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“That’s a lie and we both know it.” He chuckles, low and torturous. I’m reminded of the old Ethan, of things better left to the past, of the desperate girl I used to be that would’ve done anything for his attention.

I whip around, my shoulders back and my chin high. “So you’re calling me the liar?”

His eyes are hooded in shadow. The sun has set and there’s not as much light out here, but I can still see the stormy blues I used to get lost in. My heart lurches and I shift back. He inches forward. A game of push and pull. How far will he follow? How much dare I retreat?

“You’re lying about this,” he says. “You’re bursting with things you want to say to me.” I shake my head and he tuts. “You want to yell at me, to tell me what an asshole I’ve been. You want?—”

“Stop,” my voice cracks, giving me away. “I have nothing to say. What’s done is done.”

“And what was done?” His eyes travel up and down my face, lingering over my lips before jumping back to my gaze. “Are you one of them now? Are you a Laurence?”

Are we enemies?

“They’re good to me.” It’s my only defense but it’s enough.

“The family you always wanted.” He says it blankly, like it means nothing to him either way, but how can that be true? The woman he once loved is a Laurence girl. Whatever he thinks of them now, Sybil cannot be erased.

“That’s right.” I stand up a little taller even though he towers over me. I have to crane my neck up. “They’re wonderful people.”

“Gregory isn’t.” He says it like it’s a fact, like I already know and would obviously agree with him. Well, I don’t.

“Gregory is great,” I snide. “You don’t know him like I know him.”

And okay, I don’t know his history all that well, but I do know his heart. He took me in and treated me like his own since day one. A bad man wouldn’t do that and I don’t care what Ethan has to say on the matter.

Ethan laughs at that though, laughs like it’s all a big joke. “Gregory is a liar, a cheater, and an all-around piece of shit.”

I slap him. Hard.

Right across the face.

And then I gasp, stumbling back. My hand is red, fingers stinging. I don’t know what just came over me except that Ethan deserved it. I should’ve slapped him ten times over the course of our summer together.

He cups his face, expression emboldened like he’s finally seeing the new me. Good, he should get used to it. I’ve changed and I’m not going back.

“You really don’t know,” he sighs. The tone is not what I expected. There’s no anger there, only regret.

“Stop.” There’s nothing more to know, I already have enough information.

But he doesn’t stop. Not even a little bit. He stalks in close and I shift back until my spine is flat up against a dock post. He’s cornered me. We’re only an inch apart. Less than that. He’s the predator. I’m the prey. But remember, I have a snake coiled inside me.

And snakes have fangs.

Forty

“Your uncle had an affair with my mother.” His words are brutalizing. Startling. Like a knife held to a neck. There’s no going back after that statement.

“W–what?”

“And when she died, he didn’t let their secret die with her. Instead, the bastard flaunted like it was some kind of badge of honor, like he had a fucking right to mourn her deeper than her own husband and children.”

Sinking. I’m sinking into the deck, down into the water, to the ocean floor. Either that or it’s coming up to swallow me whole.

I don’t want to believe what I’m hearing but his words click puzzle pieces into place, confirming little things I’ve picked up on. The therapy that the family is in, how Amelia said they’ve been doing it for years, that it saved their marriage. The random comments about mistakes made in the past. The way Amelia got teary and Gregory got defensive the few times the Kings have been brought into conversation. The fact that I sensed there was something they weren’t telling me.

I thought the families had split up over business disagreements and that the breakup between Sybil and Ethan was part of that. I never knew it was something more.

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