The Complete Irreparable Boxed Set: Irreparable #1-2

by Sam Mariano

“Free to talk?”

  She sent back an affirmative, so he decided to go ahead and call her. Almost as soon as he pressed the last button, he realized he was still in public and close to home, so that was probably a mistake, but she answered before he could hang up.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, in lieu of another greeting.

  “Uh, shopping. Grocery shopping,” he replied, grimacing at yet another reminder of his normal life. “What about you?”

  “Facebook stalking you—your new baby is adorable.”

  An eyebrow shot up at her frank response. “I don’t have a Facebook.”

  “Amanda does.”

  “Right.” He couldn’t really say much about that, seeing as he stalked her on a semi-regular basis. “Well…”

  “Not that the other two aren’t,” she added. “They’re all pretty adorable, but where did your daughter’s brown hair come from? You and Amanda both have super black hair.”

  “This is not the conversation I expected to have,” he stated.

  Willow laughed. “Well, I haven’t posted any new pictures on my profile. Wait, is it weird when I check you out, but not weird when you check me out?”

  “No…it’s plenty weird when I check you out,” he replied, dryly. “You’re the weird one for not being worried about that.”

  “Eh, if you wanted to murder me, you would have by now. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to go all Fatal Attraction on your little family, I was just curious.”

  Since she so brashly introduced the topic, he decided to dive right in. “I’m sorry about the other night.”

  “It’s fine,” she assured him. “Not like I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah… but knowing is one thing…. Anyway, I wanted to apologize if that made you uncomfortable. I thought I turned my phone off.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I would’ve messaged you before, but… I wasn’t sure.”

  He nodded, even though he knew she couldn’t see him, but he couldn’t seem to manufacture a response.

  After several seconds of silence, she said, “Uh oh. Is that what this is?”

  Was it? He hadn’t really had a plan when he called, but if she was giving him the perfect opening…

  Yet, when he opened his mouth, the words got stuck in his throat, and what ended up falling out instead was, “No. I just wanted to see… how you were doing. I felt bad.”

  “Oh. Well, good. I mean, not good that you felt bad—you don’t have to feel bad.”

  “I kind of abandoned you,” he pointed out. “And… right after…”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  Frowning at her flippancy, he said, “Yes, it is. You deserved better than that.”

  Willow sighed, but didn’t immediately respond. Finally, she said, “Ethan, I appreciate that, I do, but…I knew what I was getting into. You didn’t invite me over and seduce me, remember? I’m the one who started it.”

  “You’re… 18,” he said on a sigh.

  “I’m a mature 18,” she said, her tone intentionally condescending. Then she laughed.

  It made him strangely sad. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up,” he admitted.

  Her laughter ebbed and the line fell silent.

  “I don’t…want to be that guy,” he added. “I love my…family.”

  The silence stretched on as a woman reached across him to grab a crate of raspberries, her kid pestering her about ice cream. Ethan took a step back, glanced at his half empty cart, and then realized how ridiculous it was to be having this conversation in the middle of the produce section.

  Abandoning his cart, he reached into his pocket and extracted his keys, heading for the privacy of his car.

  He hit the parking lot before Willow drawled, “Okay. So, what does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his frustration with the whole situation evident in his voice. “I don’t… I don’t want to give you the wrong idea.”

  “I’m not fragile, Ethan. Just say what you mean.”

  It made him feel like such a prick, and he did wait until he slid into his driver’s seat and shut the door before heaving a sigh and attempting a response. “I’m not…I don’t want to lead you on. I like you—I care about you, and I want you to be happy.”

  “Ugh, if you’re dumping me, don’t be that guy, either, okay? Don’t dump me for me. I can handle the truth.”

  “I’m not… dumping you, I just…” He sighed, leaning back against the headrest. “I’m not leaving my wife. I’m not… in a position to offer you anything more, and I don’t ever intend to be.” He paused, letting that sink in. “This isn’t a temporary situation—if I could, if I didn’t have a wife and kids, I would love to be with you. If I could split myself in two… like I have been, but now that line’s been crossed, and I don’t know how to…”

  She gave him a few seconds to finish his thought, but when he didn’t, she said, “Well, okay. So, what is it you want? Do you just want to go back to how it was before?”

  “I don’t know what that looks like now,” he said honestly. “I didn’t expect things to get this complicated.”

  “I didn’t expect you to leave your wife, Ethan. I mean, I feel like you’re making this more complicated than it needs to be. I enjoyed the other night, I won’t lie, I wouldn’t object to possibly revisiting, but if you can’t, that’s fine. I didn’t expect to become your girlfriend or anything, I had mentally prepared myself for that, I just… I don’t know, I thought we were friends.”

  “You have no more feelings for me than you have for any of your… male friends?”

  “I didn’t say that,” she replied, a smile in her voice. “I just don’t want you to be worried that I’m trying to start any drama in your life. I’m not. I have no agenda here, I’m no more interested than you are in hurting your pretty wife or tearing apart your family. I mean, let’s be honest, you don’t really fit into my life, either. It’s not like I can bring you home to meet the parents. I’ll make it simple—I’m down for whatever. I would prefer that we at least stay friends like we were before, but if you can’t, I understand.”

  Closing his eyes, Ethan sighed. “You’re insane, you know that.”

  “I prefer eccentric,” she returned lightly. “I told you, I’m kind of a strange girl when it comes to relationships.”

  “I feel like I should have realized that already.”

  “Right? You’re a terrible detective,” she teased.

  Ethan grinned helplessly. “Friends, then?”

  “Friends,” she agreed.

  “Did it help?” he blurted.

  “It gave me a nicer memory, so yes.”

  “You don’t regret not making a nicer memory with someone else?”

  Willow stifled a little chuckle. “It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

  “Are you still going to make me jealous with your parade of boytoys?” he asked, smiling vaguely.

  “Oh, without a doubt, friend. I mean, if you’re going to keep stalking me.”

  “I probably will,” he admitted. “It’s a habit at this point.”

  “I don’t mind. I’ll be sure to post a few pictures you’ll like. I’ve noticed you seem to like my legs.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t torment me, I’m only human.”

  She chuckled. “Well, if you’re ever in the mood for Chinese food, you know my number.”

  “Temptress,” he accused, but smiled anyway.

  “Mm. Well, this feels too much like a break-up, and I don’t like to linger with those, so I’m going to let you get back to your grocery shopping.”

  For some reason, he didn’t want to hang up the phone. He didn’t really have anything else to say either, but… he just didn’t want to hang up.

  Since he couldn’t think of a good enough reason not to, he replied, “Okay.”

  Willow hesitated. “In case I don’t hear from you for a while, try not to be too hard on yourself, okay? We both had some demons to deal with
and...maybe we needed that separate life to work through it. If no one ever knows, what was the harm, right?”

  “You and I know,” he countered.

  “It can be our little secret. I think telling her would have been a mistake—your family is obviously important to you, and I obviously don’t know her at all, but… I think she’s better off not knowing what happened.”

  “You mean about the other night…?”

  “No,” she said, simply. “Take care, Ethan.”

  It felt like goodbye—and he liked it even less than he expected to. He watched the numbers blink, letting him know that their conversation hadn’t even lasted six whole minutes.

  He had expected to feel better after having “the talk” with Willow, not…bereft. Sure, she had left a sort of open invitation, but it felt like they both knew he couldn’t take her up on it. If he did, he would feel even worse.

  What a shitty hole he found himself in.

  After a moment, he collected his thoughts and headed back into the grocery store. Before he grabbed a new cart, he figured he would go back to the produce section to see if the other one was gone.

  It wasn’t.

  There, parked crookedly next to the display of raspberries and blueberries, his cart waited for him as if he had never been gone, each item just as he had left it.

  Of course, it hadn’t even been six minutes.

  It felt like much longer than that.

  ---

  Pulling into his driveway, Ethan turned off the car and turned to the passenger seat, quickly searching for the bag with the eggs. Locating them, he placed the eggs on the dash board while he loaded his arms up with bags, satisfied that he would only have to make one trip. He managed to grab the bag of eggs last, but then he realized he wasn’t going to be able to unlock the door, so he hoped Amanda hadn’t locked it behind him.

  By the time he made it to the door, his fingers were freezing from the wind chill and he didn’t want to crouch and risk dropping the groceries, so instead, he lightly kicked the door a few times, hoping it would catch Amanda’s attention.

  A moment passed—nothing.

  Sighing heavily, he crouched down, shifting the bags of groceries in his arms and managing to turn the knob until, thankfully, the door cracked open.

  The house was quiet, so he figured the baby must be sleeping, but he was surprised Alison didn’t immediately come rushing in to greet him. Maybe she was upstairs.

  He was just about to turn toward the kitchen when he heard a muffled sound from the living room.

  Turning toward the noise, Ethan was startled to see not his wife, but a heavy man in a black jacket and jeans.

  His first thought was his gun—he didn’t have his gun, but then he looked beyond that man—and the four other dubious looking men—and saw Amanda, tied to a chair with duct tape over her mouth, and beside her, in another wooden chair, also bound with rope and duct tape, Alison.

  All the bags crashed to the ground at once.

  The color drained out of Ethan’s face.

  On the couch, watching Ethan with a vague expression of boredom, was an older man with salt and pepper hair, nearly as dark as Ethan’s at one time. His nose was long and sloped over a mouth that seemed to be set in a permanent snarl. Bushy eyebrows furrowed above his steely gray eyes as he met Ethan’s gaze.

  Antonio Castellanos.

  Willow’s father.

  Adrenaline surged through Ethan’s body—useless fucking adrenaline.

  His stomach pitched and the bones in his legs seemed to melt, but he somehow managed to carry himself mechanically into the living room, his gaze jumping away from the other man’s, back to his wife, his daughter.

  Where were his sons?

  He couldn’t breathe.

  He tried to open his mouth, but it was like he was having a stroke—his body wouldn’t listen to his brain.

  “Ethan Wilde,” the older man said idly, the menace in his tone quite deliberate. “Do you know who I am?”

  His tongue was trapped in his mouth and Ethan could only manage a nod.

  The other man’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “Good, good. Did you know who I was before you raped my daughter?”

  A noise escaped Amanda, sort of a gasp tinged with horror that made Ethan flinch. He couldn’t look at her—didn’t know how to respond.

  Legs finally giving out, Ethan fell to his knees. The older man watched, his expression unreadable.

  Ethan knew he was as good as dead.

  His incredible luck had run out.

  “Please… leave my family out of this,” he managed, meeting Antonio’s gaze.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  A lump rose in his throat, shame washing over him at the thought of having to admit to such a heinous act with his wife and daughter watching.

  “Where are my sons?”

  Antonio glanced at a spot above and behind Ethan, but before he had a chance to wonder what the man was looking at, he heard almost a whistling sound—and then burning pain on his right side that literally knocked him over.

  He grabbed his right arm as he heard Amanda and Alison cry out behind him, and it took him a moment to connect the pain on his right side to the thug holding a baseball bat, staring down at him.

  “Let’s try that again,” Antonio said. “Did you know—?”

  “Yes,” Ethan said, briefly closing his eyes, wishing he was just having a really fucking terrible dream.

  “Yes, you knew that Willow was my daughter?”

  He stomach roiled and it took real effort not to vomit all over the carpet. “Yes, I knew that she was your daughter.”

  “Huh,” the older man murmured. “That’s a brave thing to admit.”

  “Can we please… I have a study, can we please discuss this in my study, away from my family? They have nothing to do with this. Please.”

  “Why? Your wife doesn’t know?” The older man feigned surprise.

  “My daughter is eight years old,” Ethan stated.

  “Mine’s 18,” Antonio responded, his tone hard and cold.

  “Please.”

  “You’re not budgeting your time very wisely, Ethan,” the older man informed him. “If I were in your place right now, I’m pretty sure location is the last thing I would be worried about.”

  The old man pulled out a cell phone and began fidgeting with it. Ethan took advantage of the momentary distraction to steal a glimpse of Amanda—and then he wished he hadn’t. He couldn’t even hold her gaze as she stared at him, her blue eyes round with horror. Beside her, Alison was so terrified she was bawling.

  What have I done?

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, barely able to find his voice.

  Antonio flicked a glance in Ethan’s direction, but saw that he was staring at Amanda.

  Then there was noise—static, like a microphone brushing against fabric, and then he heard a voice that he recognized—then another.

  On the cell phone, which Antonio held facing them, was a video.

  Willow was on her knees in that dingy, piece of shit hellhole, her back to the camera, but Ethan was facing the camera, his eyes closed as her head moved back and forth in front of his crotch.

  The blood in his veins turned to ice.

  It must have been the tail end, because then Willow was getting to her feet and Ethan wanted to die as he listened to himself say he needed a condom.

  “Turn it off,” he said, covering his mouth as bile rose up in his throat. Tears burned behind his eyes and he jerked in Alison’s direction, but she was still crying and hadn’t seemed to notice the phone.

  “Imagine how I felt the first time I saw this.”

  Still fighting back nausea, Ethan pushed himself up off the ground and forced himself to stand, even as the man with the baseball bat shifted his weight, caressing the wood deliberately.

  On the video, Ethan was already pumping into Willow for all the living room to see, but the bastard finally pushed a button on the top of
the phone and the screen went black, the sound cutting off.

  “I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “We always have choices, Ethan,” Antonio stated, abruptly coming to his feet.

  “They would have killed me if they knew—I was there to save her, I never wanted to hurt her. I tried to talk them out of it, I tried to convince them to just—just ransom her if they needed—”

  “You chose your life over my daughter’s,” Antonio state, raising his voice. “Makes sense, anyone would have done the same. Too bad for you, Willow isn’t just anyone, and as it happens, her life is worth much more than yours.”

  “Please, Mr. Castellanos, I swear to God, I didn’t want to hurt your daughter. For what it’s worth, I protected her afterward. I didn’t let anyone else hurt her and I made sure she was returned home safely—”

  The man cut him off. “Now, the most appropriate payback, obviously, would be to steal your daughter’s innocence like you stole mine.”

  Ethan’s whole body went rigid, his blood running cold.

  Antonio’s lips tilted up just slightly. “However, I don’t make a habit of keeping pedophiles on my payroll. So tell me how this sounds. Instead of your daughter, one of the guys here will rape your wife—I’d do it myself, but I prefer blondes. While that’s going on, you can have a front row seat as they ransack your house to make it look like a break in, and then put a bullet in each one of their pretty little heads. But don’t worry, you won’t be suffering long—I have a third bullet with your name on it.”

  Behind him, Amanda moaned—a gut-wrenching sound of grief, emanating from her and attacking him more effectively than a physical blow.

  As his world crumbled around him, Ethan said the worst and only thing he could possibly think to say.

  “Your daughter’s in love with me.”

  That wiped the smirk right off of Antonio’s face, and gave Ethan a shred of hope.

  “Excuse me?” Antonio replied, bushy brows shooting halfway up his forehead.

  “Call Willow—please, she wouldn’t want this. She’ll never forgive you if you do this. I understand why you feel this way, I would, too, but I’m telling you, if you do this, Willow will never have anything to do with you again. She may not be returning your phone calls right now, but she still cares, she still… loves you, but if you do this, if you hurt my family, if you kill me—she’ll never forgive you for that.”