Page 87 of Captivating Mr. Second Chance

Her eyes shifted to where his cell phone lay on the counter. “I don’t know what to think.”

He nodded, exhaling slowly. Ethan had a lot of patience and was pretty laid-back, but the fact that she didn’t believe him was testing his usual unflappability. “I’ve got to be honest, it stings that you don’t trust me.”

She backed away, out of his grasp, and folded her arms over her chest. Giving her the space she needed, he grabbed two plates and put an omelet on each one then set them on the kitchen table. He snagged two forks and two napkins before sitting down, gesturing to the chair opposite him. “Please sit?”

With her jaw set, she dropped her chin to her chest, her bare feet wiggling as if she needed to think about it.

“Please, Laney. Let’s talk about this. Let me explain.”

“So there is something to explain,” she said after a while, her voice flat and cold.

“Yeah, so can you sit and eat? It’s kind of a long story.”

She guffawed. It was an annoyed puff of sound, nothing like the laugh he loved so much. Although she sat, she didn’t pick up her fork, so he didn’t either.

“First off, I want to say that I know you’re still carrying around baggage from your last relationship,” he said. “I get it. I understand it, but I don’t know how to help you.”

She rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to help me. This isn’t like a broken leg. I don’t need rehab. I need the truth. I need honesty.”

“I’ve always been honest with you, Lane. Always.”

She pursed her lips while raising her eyes in apparent dissent. Then she pointed to his cell phone.

He sat back in his chair and set his hands on the table, raising his fingers. “I can see why you made an assumption, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Marcela before, but…” He combed one hand through his hair a few times as he tried to find his words. “I haven’t told anyone yet except Justin.”

“Told Justin what?” she snapped, and he rubbed his fingers across his forehead.

“Told him that I got into contact with my birth mother.”

Her breath left her with an audible exhale, and she deflated, propping her elbows on the table.

He took her silence as a sign to keep going. “I don’t know if I ever told you this, but when Justin turned eighteen, he decided he wanted to find his birth parents, and it was a wild-goose chase that he went on for years, only to come up empty-handed. It was really upsetting to me, to see my big brother go through all that for nothing. I didn’t want to go through that either, so I decided that I wouldn’t ever try to look for or contact mine. Until he was diagnosed.”

Across from him, Laney scratched at a chip on the corner of the table.

“It made me realize that it might be a good thing to do. I’m older and…” He shrugged, chewing on the inside of his cheek for a moment. “I can handle it now, so I talked to my mom about it.”

“I thought you said you only talked to your brother about it,” she said, lifting her gaze from the table to him.

“Well, I had to ask my mom’s opinion about it, and she gave me the starting point to contact the adoption agency. My adoption was semi-open, so she’d sent pictures to the agency to forward on for a few years.”

Laney brought one foot up on her chair, leaning her chin on her knee. “So, Marcela is your birth mother?”

Ethan nodded. “At first, we were only emailing each other, and then yesterday, we talked for a bit on the phone.” He tried for a smile. “I heard her voice for the first time.”

She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes going teary again.

“I didn’t tell you about it before because I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of the outcome. Of everything falling through, like it did for Justin. Of what I might find or who they might be. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, you know?”

She dropped her forehead to her knee, so he couldn’t see her but still heard her sniffling. A few seconds later, she said, “I don’t know because you didn’t tell me.”

He sat on the edge of his seat, troubled that Laney was upset but also a little offended that she wasn’t excited or happy about him finding Marcela. It was a pretty big deal.

“I’m sorry, Laney,” he said, and she finally raised her face to him.

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