Page 58 of Return To You

Like that’s going to calm me down.

“Lemme guess. There’s one under your pillow?”

I gasp. “You did not. You did not look under my pillow.”

He laughs softly. “Just a wild guess.” He rubs his chin over my temple. “And the others? Where are the others, Grace?”

I rotate them. There’s one in the wash and one with my lingerie. Jeez! We’re quite the pair of pervs. “Does it matter?” I whisper.

“No. We’ll get to that later.”

Now he’s sort of freaking me out. “What do you want?”

There’s a little fantasy playing in my head where he answers, you, Grace, I want you and then he kisses me passionately and we make savage love and we walk into the sunset together, happy forever.

Instead, he lowers his knee, his heat ceding place to cold solitude. “I want answers,” he says as he drops his hold on my wrists and steps away from me.

Now he’s going to drop me? “You had no business snooping through my stuff!” I yell as he turns his back on me, leaving the bedroom.

“And you had no business pretending I mean nothing to you,” he answers over his shoulder.

Oh no he didn’t. After what he did to me? I stomp after him and stand in front of him when he reaches the kitchen counter. “There was a time when you meant everything to me.” I poke his chest with my finger. “A long, long time ago. I would have done anything for you!”

He turns his gaze to the side, to my patio and beyond, looking utterly bored.

“Do you hear me?” I continue. “I would have followed you anywhere you were stationed. But that was stupid me. That was before I realized you were just fooling around with me. And with other girls.”

Now his attention is back on me. “What other girls?” he snaps.

“That poor girl who died. She was your college girlfriend, wasn’t she? And I was your hometown side… whatever you guys call that.”

“I wasn’t—” he interrupts himself and frowns. “What did you say earlier about being a military wife?”

Of course! Let’s not talk about the other girls. How convenient. “I never said I’d be your wife.” Liar! Liar liar liar. How many times had I fantasized about being his, entirely his?

Hurt paints his face, and I almost hurl myself at him, kiss him, confess. But he’d only hurt me more. I always saw—projected—more with Ethan than what was really there, as far as he was concerned. “I said I would have followed you anywhere you were stationed.”

Ethan trails his eyes on me, seeming to hesitate. He rakes his hand through his hair. Something seems to be tearing at him, and for the life of me, I don’t get it.

"It’s all in the past, Ethan,” I plead. “So what if my cat threw an old box of forgotten childhood souvenirs on the floor? So what if Emerald Creek had the softest jerseys ever? Can’t you see it doesn’t mean anything now?”

He keeps looking past me, to the garden and beyond. “Hold that thought.” He bends to pick his shoes up, doesn’t even bother putting them on. Before walking out in just his socks, he adds, “This conversation is far from over.”

The way he clicks the door softly behind him is what undoes me.

I know Ethan to the core. No matter how life, especially life in the military, may have toughened him and wizened him, to the core Ethan has passion within him. It may be tamed, but it’s there for the stuff he cares about.

The fact that he can walk away from me so entirely calm?

I can’t stand it.

I whip the front door open. He’s settling in Lucas’s truck, the door wide open, fumbling with his shoes. “Just take another ten years, you… agh!” I don’t even know what to call him. I slam the door and the whole house shakes.

Then I throw myself on the couch and cry like a teenager.

When I’m calmer and Ethan is long gone, I pick up the phone.

“Hey honey.” The deep voice settles me.

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