Page 71 of Return To You

Until it ended brutally, in more than one way.

Ten years later, Grace stating as a cold fact that I wasn’t faithful to her is a load of bullcrap that I’m clearing right now. “How can you say that?” Same for all the other bullshit she just said about girls older than her being more interesting to me. “You were everything to me. You were it, Grace.”

I run my hand in my hair, take a few steps away from her. Yeah, maybe I’ve been dreading this. Dreading knowing what got her to break things off with me, when I thought we were doing so well. I was wrong, clearly. I’m seeing now I’m not really over the breakup. Not over her.

And I can’t say that seeing her now—what she’s become? It hurts even more, knowing she should have been mine. Should have stayed mine. I stand back in front of her, fists on my hips. “We had something real, Grace. I never cheated on you.” Did someone put that in her head? Who? And how could she believe them? How could she not talk to me, at the time?

She shuts her eyes briefly, tears rimming her lashes, but she stays in control of her voice. I’m going to take a wild guess here: she has a long practice of trying to hide her feelings. “Stop doing this. I saw you, Ethan. And I told you, I under—”

I crowd her space. I want to feel her body under mine when she answers me. I want to hear her heartbeat. Feel the breath coming out of her mouth. She and I were as good as one, once. What happened? “What do you think you saw?”

She sighs, acting exasperated, but the pain in her eyes is real. The tremble at the corner of her mouth doesn’t lie like the rest of her tries to.

Finally she sets her gaze on me. “You know,” she starts slowly, “I never told you I was sorry… about Ashley.” She crosses her arms and shakes her head.

Fuck. Is she going where I think she’s going?

She continues. “I was young and stupid, obviously, but also extremely selfish and self-centered. I mean…” She looks at me sheepishly, then turns around, her back to my front, looking at the water flowing past us instead of straight into my eyes. “I actually believed all that stuff about us being together forever.”

My heartbeat picks up.

“So much time has passed, but I’m sure you still miss her. I guess I just wanted to say I was sorry for your loss. And-and-and I should have told you at the time, but, of course, I was too busy being self-center—“

Yep. It’s that boatload of crap again. “What the fuck are you talking about?” The power of my voice, the fact I’m stomping away from her, makes her turn around to face me.

She sighs and crosses her arms. “Ethan, look. I know you always meant more to me than I did to you… I mean, look at me with my box of mementos… how stupid is that?” Her eyes turn liquid. “But it doesn’t mean that I can’t… empathize with…”

Does everyone in this town believe Ashley was my actual girlfriend? And does Grace actually, really think I would be seeing another girl when I had her? Who does she think I am? This is so screwed up.

She narrows her eyes on me. “Ethan? Are you… are you okay?”

“No. No I’m not okay.”

She widens her eyes at me.

“What makes you think she and I had something going on?” And what makes her think I loved her less than she did me?

“Ethan, please. I saw you. I saw you with her.” Her throat bobs as she swallows with difficulty. “It’s okay. I was young and… I mean she had to be more interesting than me, I get it. I totally get it now. I wish, that night, I hadn’t lashed out at you the way I did.” She gives me a small smile. “I mean, what you did wasn’t cool, but hey. I get it.”

My blood turns cold as understanding dawns on me. I remember those last moments with Ashley. Looking back, they’d been blurred by Grace’s brutal breakup minutes after—and now it all makes sense.

After Ashley ran away from the party with Justin, after they were caught in an accident, after Ashley died and Justin almost died, too, trying to save her, I ran that evening through my mind a million times, seeing every little thing I could have done differently, every opportunity I didn’t take to make a difference. I wished I could have been that butterfly wing flap that changed the outcome. That prevents a succession of totally unrelated and seemingly innocuous events from turning into utter tragedy. Turned out, my rejection of Ashley was what had set that chain reaction in motion. “You saw what exactly?”

Grace’s eyes mist again. Ten years. Ten fucking years and now I’m finally going to get the truth. And she’s been hurting all this time. “Ethan…” she pleads.

“Let me guess. You saw her throw herself at me—”

She turns her head away from me and takes a shaky breath.

I take her chin gently in my fingers and force her to look at me. “You saw her throw herself at me—”

“She kissed you.” Her chin wobbles, the pain still fresh after all these years.

“And I told her she couldn’t.”

Grace shakes her head. “You took her hand and walked into the darkness. With her, Ethan. You kissed and…”

We didn’t kiss. “She was a little high and strung out. She came onto me. I didn’t want to make a scene, so yeah, I walked her away from the party and told her… I told her I had someone. That…”

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