Page 99 of My Vows Are Sealed

I started to head in the direction of the foundation that the first crew had finished last week, but as soon as we were out of my uncle’s earshot, Ethan grabbed my arm. I spun around, ready to dish out the verbal ass-kicking that he’d had coming to him for almost four years, but the look on his face made me stop in my tracks.

What was worse than sadness? Anguish? Despair? Whatever it was, that was what I saw in his eyes, as clear as day.

“Listen, Brendan,” he sighed. “You have every reason to hate me, and I can tell you have something you want to say to me. But will you give me two minutes first?”

I huffed out a breath. “Fine. Two minutes.”

“I need you to know how sorry I am for how I treated you before my parents sent me away,” he said, his voice breaking a little. “You tried to reach out to me, despite what I was doing to the girl you loved. You tried to warn me about the crowd I’d fallen in with, and instead of recognizing that and thanking you for it, I lashed out some more. I know it’s no excuse, but I was going through some things. Things I don’t really want to talk about here. I was in a lot of pain and I was trying to do something, anything, to make it go away, but all I ended up doing was hurting a lot of people I cared about.”

The freight train in my head that had been barreling forward at full speed suddenly skidded to a stop as I processed what he was saying and the genuine anguish in his voice. Even a professional actor couldn’t have faked that much heartache and distress.

Looking back, I realized that even Darla had seen that something was going on with him. I remembered her saying on the day we went to the concert that she could tell he was in a lot of pain and she felt bad for him, despite how horribly he’d treated her. I’d been too preoccupied with my anger and my desire to protect her to see it from that perspective, but now I had to wonder what he’d been going through that had made him lash out at the world like that.

In any case, I wasn’t ready to just accept him with open arms, but maybe I could at least give him a chance. Let him show me that he really had changed.

“Apology accepted,” I told him. “But I think you and I both know that I’m not really the one you should be apologizing to.”

“I know that. And that was actually the other reason I wanted to talk to you,” he mumbled. “Um, I know Darla won’t give me the time of day if I try to reach out to her on my own. I deserve that, but I was wondering if you might be able to convince her to meet up with me. I know you’ll want to be there too, and I don’t have a problem with that, but what I have to say to her shouldn’t be said in a public place.”

“How do you even know if we’re still friends?” I challenged. “It’s been over three years.”

“Because I knowher. She’s shy, but once she chooses to open up to someone, they’ve got a friend for life. And the people she does open up to are the luckiest people on the planet, because they’ll never find anyone more loyal or kind. And I also know you. I knew how you felt about her then, and I can tell just by how protective you’re being right now that that hasn’t changed. She’s lucky to have someone who cares so much about her, because God knows her father doesn’t.”

Wait. What?

How did he knowanythingabout her relationship with her father?

I really,reallywanted to ask him, but at the same time, if he was just making an educated guess based on the interactions he saw at church, I damn well wasn’t about to volunteer any information about my girlfriend’s life. I might have been willing to forgive him, but that didn’t mean I trusted him yet. Trust was earned.

“I’ll talk to her,” I sighed. “But I can’t promise she’ll agree to meet you. I don’t think you get how much you hurt her, Ethan.”

“No, I do,” he insisted. “I’m not really expecting her to say yes, but I have to try. I hurt a lot of people, and if they’ll let me, I want to make it right. As much as I can.”

“Seems like military school actually worked, Smith,” I said with a nod.

He chuckled weakly. “A little bit. Getting out of the bad situation I was in helped me more than the instructors did, though.”

“You realize that if shedoesagree to meet with you, it’s going to be on our turf, right? If you don’t want to talk to her in a public place, we’re not coming to you. You’re coming to us.”

“I know. And that’s okay. I’m not looking to cause trouble, Brendan. I’m just trying to right some wrongs. But anyway, I’m here to work, not talk. Let’s get moving.”

“Okay. You’d better be able to keep up,” I warned. “I don’t have time to be a babysitter.”

With that, I turned and continued toward our job site, trying to figure out how the hell I was going to tell Darla about this. I knew it was the last thing she needed to be worrying about right now, but for some reason I couldn’t explain, I just had the feeling that we needed to make time for it.

* * *

The first thing I noticed when I opened my apartment door was a mouthwatering smell coming from the kitchen. Then I saw Darla curled up on the couch watching TV, dressed in an old pair of yoga pants and the shirt she still hadn’t returned to me – not that I actually wanted it back, because it looked way better on her than it did on me.

My heart skipped a beat as I looked at her lying there, smiling and laughing at something on the screen, just looking like she belonged here.

Because she did belong here. And this was what every day of our lives could be like. What our life togetherwouldbe like one day. If I had to fight for the next twenty years, I would make sure that we found this kind of peace and happiness eventually.

“Hey,” I chuckled, walking over and sitting down next to her as I brushed a kiss on her forehead. “What smells so good?”

“My mom’s baked spaghetti,” she mumbled. “It’s one of the few things I know how to make from memory.”

“Did I forget something important? Our anniversary is in October, your birthday is in two months, and mine is in a month, so I know it’s none of those things.”

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