Page 60 of Out of Bounds
Chapter20
Bree
“So, when do you think Ethan will be joining us for dinner?” Papa asks adjusting his cigar.
Mama looks at me from across the dinner table and gives me a warm smile.
“Yes dear, we’d love to see him.”
I smile back and spear the last piece of chicken on my plate with my fork. The poor chicken would be dead all over again if it was alive because my hand came down too heavy and the sound of metal screeching against the ceramic plate has my teeth on edge.
Thankfully, that’s all I did. I almost thought I was going to break it.
“Maybe next week,” I answer.Next week when our marriage is over.
Today is Tuesday. I barely managed yesterday with the constant well wishes from relatives and wedding presents which I didn’t want but had to accept.
Mama set up this lunch between the three of us so I could go out with the girls later to celebrate. More celebrations I don’t want, but this is meriding it out.
Maybe I’ll feel a little more at ease tomorrow when Ethan and I sign the papers.
Damn him. And damn me too for the matter. I fell right into his trap.
I knew what he was up to when he challenged me to break my silence and tell him I remembered but I chose the more stressful road instead of the one that could get me closer to my dream.
I had my reasons though and they were good. At the time they even seemed almost more important than the dream.
My reasons were plain and simply that I didn’t know what admitting something like that would do to the already weird relationship we have. And the second is a little more worrying. I’m attracted to him, and every second he spent in that kitchen with me was nerve wrecking.
I don’t know if this enhanced attraction is because of what happened—and hello I saw him naked—or if it’s because I’ve always been and what happened just fanned the flames.
Maybe it’s both.
“I just can’t believe I’m going to have Ethan Carson sitting at my table.” Papa says with narrowed eyes.
Neither of my parents suspected anything other than what I told them because they would never imagine me going to Vegas to do what I actually did.
“Me too,” Mama concedes. “I had to speak to that boy’s mother more times than I wanted too, and she was just like the others who live on the south side. All distant and bougie, like she thought she was better than everybody else.”
Ethan’s mother is not like that at all, but of course Mama thinks so.
“Oh Sally, she was always nice to me,” Papa states with a nod.
Me too, but I dare not say it. The look my mother gives my father would probably kill him if looks were so powerful.
“That’s because she was probably after you. We came to Wilmington poorer than church mice and built ourselves from the ground up with that bakery. Samuel, you’re a respectable family man and she was jealous because her no good husband was running around town chasing skirts.”
It’s the first I’m hearing this and it’s making me feel uncomfortable. I remember what Ethan said about his mother and father.
I’d heard his father was a cheater. In fact, I heard that was how he died, cheating on Ethan’s mother with her best friend’s daughter.
But I didn’t know he beat her and Ethan too. It probably explains why he was the way he was in school.
“Sally please, she’s family now.”
“I’m aware of that.” Mama turns back to me. “I do wish you could have given me a heads-up Bree. The whole family is talking about how you were with Liev one week then you’re married to another man come weekend. It’s not natural.”
As if I don’t know that.
