Page 33 of On Thin Ice

Because of what I’d encouraged him to do.

I bent at the waist, anchoring my palms just above my knees to keep myself from reaching for him as I spoke, making sure to keep my voice steady. “This wasn’t a mistake. You didn’t do anything wrong.Wedidn’t do anything wrong.”

He finally dragged his gaze to mine, his expression tortured. “You don’t get it. You don’t fucking get it, Bell. I can’t—” He broke off, his throat working.

“You can’t what?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle.

He needed me to be steady. He needed to feel safe.

And I’d try to be that for him, even if it broke me.

He shook his head hard. “I can’t be this,” he rasped as he flung his hand between us. “Not with you.”

“Ethan, I hate to break it to you, but you already are.”

The second the words slipped out, I wanted to snatch them back. Wanted to soften them, make them easier to digest. There was no easy version of this truth. Not for someone who was fighting with every fiber of his being to deny the truth about who he was.

Maybe it was selfish, but fuck, I wanted him to look at me and know this thing between us wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

For once in my wretched life, I wanted to be the thing someone reached for, not the thing they pushed away. It was so fucking exhausting. He growled in frustration. “You don’t know the terror I live with every moment of every day that someone is going to find out what a fucking fraud I am.”

He thought I didn’t know fear? I’d been so goddamn terrified when my dad dropped me off at that camp that I’d literally pissed myself as I watched his car drive away. But I wasn’t that scared little kid anymore, and I wasn’t a fraud. I wasn’t lying to the world about who I was.

I cleared my throat, forcing the words out. “I’m not saying I get exactly what you’re going through, but don’t you dare say that I don’t know what it’s like to be afraid, Ethan. Not when youknowwhat my parents did to me.”

I pulled a deep breath into my lungs to try and calm my racing heart. Held it for three seconds and pushed it out slowly before speaking again, my voice less harsh now that I’d regained some of my composure. “Maybe it’s worse for you because you’ve been hiding for so fucking long. But if you think I don’t understand what it’s like to hate yourself for something you can’t change …” I shook my head, the words scraping me raw. “Well, you’re wrong.”

Ethan’s breath hitched like he’d just been slammed into the boards. His hands fisted in the comforter beneath him, the tension rolling off him in thick waves.

I watched him struggle, saw the way he blinked hard like he could shove everything he was feeling back down if he just tried hard enough.

Ever since I’d met this man, I’d seen the way he exerted that tight, almost brutal control over himself. It was there in the way he carried himself, the way he played the game, and the way he spoke. He always appeared calculating … measured.

“You don’t understand what this could cost me,” he replied, his tone flat. “You don’t get what it’s like to have to pretend to be something you’re not.”

I flexed my feet into the carpet like I was physically anchoring myself to the spot. “Then tell me.”

I held my breath, waiting, hoping. Begging him with my whole damn body to trust me.

And for a second, I thought maybe he would. That perhaps I’d somehow broken through his panic.

But then he shoved to his feet and started pacing again, a rough, agitated line back and forth at the foot of his bed.

“I was fine until you showed up,” he snarled, his hands raking through his hair again until it stuck up in wild tufts. A hollow, bitter laugh tore from his throat. “I had my life under control. I knew what the fuck I was doing. And then you—” He flung a hand out toward me, his voice cracking. “You came and messed it all up!”

He grabbed the nearest thing he could find—a throw pillow—and hurled it across the room. It smacked the wall with a dullthudand flopped to the floor.

Another choked sound broke free as he spun, kicking his duffel bag hard enough to send it skidding across the carpet.

“You made me want things I can’t fucking have!” His voice was raw and vicious, like he hated me for his desires. Like he hated himself even more. “You made me need things I’m not supposed to need!”

He was shaking, fists clenched, chest heaving, like he was a second away from shattering.

Any minute now, I expected him to storm from the room, but he never even came close to moving toward the door.

And that was the thing that wrecked me most of all.

He could have bolted. Could have been halfway across the city by now.

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