Page 116 of House of Lies

“I asked her to marry me before I left Glenmont. She said yes. Everything was fine. At least, that’s what I thought.” He cuts off again, his Adam’s apple moving as he swallows. “But when I came back a few days later, she was gone.”

“That’s it?”

He slowly turns to look at me. “Yeah, Cassidy. That’s it. What more do you want?” He advances on me, and it’s all I can do to stand my ground.

“Do you want to know if she packed her bags? Because she did. She had enough time. She took everything, left only junk behind. Or do you want to know if she left a note? Because she did that too. A short fuck you of a note that made no fucking sense!”

The last is a bellow that reverberates in the bathroom like an underground charge going off.

“How can you be in love with someone one day, and then decide you’ve had enough a day later? How, Cassidy?”

He’s looming over me again, breathing hard, his entire body shivering.

I should be terrified. But I’m just pissed off. Because it sounds exactly like what happened with my mother and now I know his pain is just as deep, just as fierce as mine.

But, somehow, he’s put it aside and moved on with his life.

How truly blessed he is.

“I know my mom didn’t run away,” I say. “She wouldn’t do that to me. I know she wouldn’t. But no one listens. No one fucking cares.”

Tears are welling up in my eyes, but I blink them back furiously.

Ethan watches me, shaking his head. “Becks wouldn’t do that to me, either. But here we are.” He spreads his arms. “So what the fuck do we do now, Cassidy?”

My heart beats hard and fast inside my chest. I look away, huddling against my towel.

“I want to speak to him.”

Ethan frowns. “Myles?”

I nod, pushing out my chin. “I want to hear it from him.”

“You think I’m lying?”

I try to choose my words carefully, but my brain feels like mush. “I want to make sure that Myles’s turned over every rock, and looked behind every tree, and done everything in whatever power he has to find her.”

Ethan’s eyes lose focus for a moment, then sharpen, pinning me where I stand. “Fine. We’ll go see Myles. But at some stage, you’ll have to accept the truth.”

My lip quivers until I bite down on it. “Maybe. But I’m not there yet.”

He shakes his head and heads for the door.

“When will you take me?” I call after him.

“Tomorrow,” comes his gruff reply.

“Why not now?”

He doesn’t answer. I sink down on the stool near the bath, holding back more tears.

How can he expect me to accept the truth, when that means that my mother abandoned me? That she tossed me aside like a piece of trash because she’d taken a lover? It would mean everything about our relationship was a lie.

That might be easy for Ethan to accept about his fiancé, but I’m sorry, it’s not the same for my mom.

We’re family.

At least…we were.

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