The Complete Irreparable Boxed Set: Irreparable #1-2

by Sam Mariano

  Alison smiled and rolled her eyes, then she hauled her stuffed animal over to the couch and plopped down on it. Jackson was his sister’s shadow so he followed her over with his own bear and also climbed up on the couch.

  Amanda put Caleb down on the ground, helping him get his footing, then he barreled over to join his siblings at the couch. He didn’t have his own bear, so he immediately went for Jackson’s, causing Jackson to squeal, “Baby, no! That’s mine!”

  “Let him have it,” ordered Alison. “He’s not going to hurt it, he just wants to see.”

  Jackson gave up the bear, but then huffed and crossed his arms over his chest with a very dramatic pout.

  Ethan and Amanda glanced at each other, each smiling a little uneasily. “I figured it wouldn’t make much sense to get him his own since he’s too little to help build it.”

  “Nah. He has plenty of stuffed animals at home, he’ll be fine.”

  “What’s this?” Alison asked loudly, talking over the baby’s rambling.

  “Um… I’m not sure,” Amanda said, as Ethan turned to see.

  His heart accelerated when he saw Alison holding up the hippo he had created at the sculpting class with Willow.

  “Is it a toy?” she asked, poking it in the stomach.

  “Sort of.”

  “Is it an animal?”

  Glancing back at Amanda, he said the first thing he thought of: “Are you guys thirsty or anything?”

  “Yeah,” Jackson said, hopping off the couch. “I want chocolate milk!”

  “Do you have a juice box?” Alison asked.

  “No juice boxes this late,” Amanda stated, raising an eyebrow at Alison.

  Alison merely shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”

  Caleb went barreling across the floor again and slipped, falling on his stomach. He immediately burst into the loudest, fakest cry ever, and Amanda rushed over to pick him up and make sure he was okay.

  Jackson greedily retrieved his stolen bear and hid it behind him on the couch.

  “You’re tired,” Amanda murmured, kissing Caleb on the forehead even as he tried to burrow deeper into her shoulder.

  “You wanna come say hi to me?” Ethan asked, holding his arms out to Caleb.

  He had to consider for a minute, but then Caleb swung his body in Ethan’s direction and held his chubby arms out.

  As soon as he had switched parents, he rested his head on Ethan’s shoulder, his little body lax. “He is tired,” Ethan agreed.

  Amanda nodded while Jackson reminded them that he wanted chocolate milk. “I’ll get it,” she said, hoisting the diaper bag on her shoulder and heading into the kitchen.

  It made him feel paranoid and guilty, like there would be some kind of detectable residue of the moment he had just shared with Willow lingering in that room.

  He heard her open up the refrigerator, heard the sound of a drawer opening, the jingle of utensils hitting each other. A moment later, Amanda said, “Mm, wow, this is really good. You did a great job on this macaroni salad.”

  Stealing a glance down his hallway, he hoped that didn’t carry to Willow.

  “Is it a hippo?” Alison finally guessed.

  “Yes, it’s a hippo.”

  “He’s weird looking,” she stated.

  “I agree.”

  “Why’d you buy this?” she asked, tilting it sideways. “Was it on sale?”

  To change the course of the conversation, Ethan suddenly said, “Guess what I did today?”

  “What?” she asked, glancing up at him.

  “I ordered you a present,” he told her with a smile.

  Her whole face brightened. “You did? You mean like a Christmas present, or the kind I can have now?”

  “You can have it as soon as it gets here.”

  “What did you get me?” Jackson asked, eyes wide.

  “I… got you a present too, but you’ll have to wait until it gets here to find out what it is.”

  “No fair!”

  Alison ran over to him and hugged his leg. “Thanks, Daddy.”

  “You’re welcome, honey,” he said, reaching down to pat her on the head since he was still holding Caleb. Judging by his lack of movement, he was also guessing Caleb had fallen asleep.

  Amanda came back in and handed Jackson a cup half full of milk. “Don’t forget you’re picking up the cake and the balloons,” Amanda reminded Ethan.

  He promised he wouldn’t forget and Alison began enthusing about how excited she was for cake, and how she was going to eat all of the frosting. Jackson, who didn’t even like frosting, argued that he was going to eat it all, then Alison retired to the couch again. After a moment, she grabbed a phone off the edge of the couch and began flipping through it.

  He frowned slightly; Alison didn’t have a phone, and his was in his pocket. Was that Amanda’s phone?

  “Who are these people?” she asked, frowning at the screen.

  Holy shit, she had to be looking through Willow’s phone.

  “Put that down please,” he said, shifting and asking Amanda to see if Caleb was awake, more to distract her from looking at what Alison had than anything.

  “I want a turtle necklace!” she said, eyes lighting up as she looked at the screen. When she looked at him, his expression was less than enthused, so she pulled a long face but slammed the phone down on the end table.

  Thank God Willow’s phone case was a simple black one that could pass for his.

  “What are you talking about?” Amanda asked, frowning.

  “My arm is falling asleep,” Ethan lied, shifting again. “Would you mind taking him?”

  Turtle necklace momentarily forgotten, Amanda picked Caleb up. He popped his head up for a moment, sleepy-eyed, his hair sticking up where it had been pressed against Ethan’s shoulder. Then his head drifted back to her shoulder and he was asleep.

  Amanda shifted and heaved a tired sigh. “All right, we need to get out of here. Say goodbye to Dad, we need to get you little monsters to bed.”

  Alison came running over first, trailed by Jackson, once he put his cup down on the coffee table. Ethan knelt down and said his goodbyes, giving hugs and kisses, promising not to forget the birthday cake when Alison reminded him again.

  Just as quickly as they barged in, they were gone.

  The kids waved from the backseat, telling him they’d see him tomorrow, and even Amanda offered a tiny smile and a little wave before backing out.

  He waited a minute, then turned and headed back into the house, half-afraid of what might greet him on the other side of his bedroom door.

  Walking down the hall to retrieve her from the bedroom, he had a weird moment of déjà vu, remembering walking down the hallway nearly a year ago, peeking into the room full of girls, seeing Willow lying curled on her side, staring daggers at him.

  Before he could bring himself to open his own bedroom door, he swallowed, hesitated, then finally pushed it open.

  Willow was no longer on his bed, but sitting on the floor in front of it, her knees pulled up against her chest as she glared at him.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said immediately, trying to hold eye contact as she pushed up off the floor and stood. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  Without a word, she brushed past him and made her way down the hall and into the living room. He followed her, trying to think of some way to disarm her since she was clearly pissed.

  “She wouldn’t have understood if you were here—they wouldn’t have come in, they wouldn’t have come back.”

  Willow bent and grabbed her purse, which he just realized had been sitting by the end of the couch the whole time. Then she picked up her phone and held it up questioningly. “Were your kids going through my phone?”

  He was helpless to really explain that, so he stood there and floundered.

  “There are pictures in my phone—they could’ve recognized me. There are text messages from you in my phone—they could have read those.”

  “She didn’t, she was
looking at some turtle picture… I didn’t know your phone was sitting out.”

  “Yeah, well, if you wouldn’t have removed me to your bedroom, I could’ve told you that. My purse is over here, too; unless you secretly carry a Coach bag, I’m fairly certain that’s a dead giveaway that you have a girl over.”

  “I don’t think anyone saw the purse,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have time to react….”

  Willow just shook her head. “I understand why you had to hide me, but it still pisses me off.”

  “That’s completely understandable.” He watched her like a bomb that might detonate at any second.

  “At least your wife liked my macaroni salad,” she said, flashing him a razor-sharp smile.

  “Thin walls.” He grimaced.

  Willow shook her head, looking off to the side instead of at him. “I almost broke my own rule for you.”

  “Willow…”

  She held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t bother. I’m an idiot. I’ve had a sample of dating a married man, and it wasn’t a great taste, so I’m not ordering the entrée.”

  He sighed, letting his head fall back in exasperation.

  “Have fun at your kid’s party tomorrow,” she said, dropping her phone into her purse and extracting her keys instead.

  Ethan followed her to the door, but wasn’t sure what to say that he hadn’t already.

  “What was I supposed to do?” he finally came up with, catching her arm before she made it out the door. “What would you have done?”

  “I don’t know,” she snapped. Then, meeting his gaze, she said, “Tell me something. If I wasn’t dating Brian, if I would have been single that first night I came over here, how would things be different?”

  He opened his mouth, but no response came. He wanted to tell her it would be different because he could be with her then, they could be just like any other couple.

  But that would be a lie. If Amanda and the kids would have shown up unexpectedly on his doorstep, he would have still hid her in his bedroom. He doubted he would want to tell Amanda they were together, because he knew it would start a war.

  After a minute, she nodded, looking disappointed. “That’s what I thought.”

  “I told you it’s still complicated. I told you that,” he implored.

  “Everything between us has always been complicated, Ethan. It’s whatever. Not like we’re dating anyway, so….”

  “It’s not that I don’t… want to. With our past, Willow… and you’re 18.”

  Bestowing a more withering glare on him than the one she gave him in the bedroom, she said, “Don’t you bring my fucking age into this. I’m almost 19, but I’m pretty sure I’m being remarkably understandable for my age—or any age. You go find a fucking 30-year-old who’s willing to hide in your bedroom while you visit with your wife and kids in the other room. Don’t be an asshole.” Jerking her arm free from his grasp, she exited his apartment and rushed out to her car, make it perfectly clear that she didn’t want him to follow her.

  ---

  Knowing how Willow tended to check out when she was pissed off at him, Ethan did not wait for her to text him.

  Ethan thought about it after she left; he knew their situation wasn’t fair to Willow, and even though they weren’t together, he knew there was an asterisk attached. There always would be with them, even if they were never more than friends again.

  When the thought occurred to him, he was also honest enough with himself to admit he couldn’t see that happening. He couldn’t even imagine never being with her again in some way. As odd as it was, since she reappeared in his life so recently, he had a hard time seeing his future without Willow attached, even if it was just hanging out on his couch watching bad movies and pretending they didn’t want to be more than platonic friends.

  Normally he didn’t mind Willow’s little games—they were harmless enough—but he didn’t want to go another week or two without speaking to her if it could be helped.

  He was fucking sick of missing her.

  "I'm sorry for being an asshole. You have been remarkably patient with me. My life is a mess right now. I'm sorry that any kind of relationship with me is so complicated. You're very important to me and I'm sorry if I made you feel like you aren't."

  He typed and retyped the message several times before sending it. It seemed like a message she would respond to, but it had been nearly an hour and he hadn't heard back.

  The wife of some douchebag he was supposed to be catching in the act had just alerted him that her husband was going to meet the other woman. Putting on his detective hat, Ethan gathered up his supplies and headed out to distract himself with someone else's fuck-ups for a little while.

  Since he had to wait, he took the opportunity to check Willow’s profiles online. It had been ages since he’d done that, and the old familiar feeling of her special brand of torture came back when he saw the picture she’d posted twenty minutes earlier: Willow with some guy, his arm draped casually over her shoulder on a brown couch, both of them smiling brightly at the camera. Brian McAvoy was tagged in the picture, but a click to check out his profile was pointless, since he was apparently smart enough to make it private.

  Oh well, he could always check into him when he got home.

  Bastard.

  Closing out the window, he opened up the text messages—she had read the first one a few minutes ago, but no response.

  “I hope you’re only ignoring me because you’re sitting next to your boyfriend right now. (I hate that, by the way.)”

  He debated not sending another one just yet, but he also assumed that picture had been posted for his benefit, and he wasn’t in the mood to waste time; he wanted her to know she had gotten her point across.

  His phone vibrated, and the new message read simply, “Good” and was accompanied by a smiley face.

  Smiling a little reluctantly, he shook his head. At least when Willow struck out in spite, it was always brief and a direct reaction to some fuck-up of his. He wondered if she toyed with other guys the same way—punished them when they pissed her off. It was strange—and unpleasant—to think of Willow acting the same way with someone else, but he wasn’t naïve enough to assume he was special.

  He wondered how many of her male friends disliked the picture of the happy couple as much as he did.

  He wondered if she would still do things like that if they were together.

  More than that, he wondered how the hell he could ever be in an actual relationship with Willow long enough to find out. Her parents wanted his head on a spike, and Amanda would want his balls on a platter.

  Sighing as he raked a hand across his face, he told himself to stop thinking about it. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t be with Willow, because she was already with someone else. Not that the messy-haired frat boy in the picture was likely to hold onto Willow, but there would be someone else who could offer her an actual relationship and who would never dream of making her hide in his bedroom.

  Willow deserved a whole relationship, not a half-assed attempt at one.

  Another text from Willow pulled him from his thoughts, but that one was a picture message. The crotch of his pants suddenly grew tighter as he looked down at a picture of Willow in a mirror, playfully throwing a kiss at the camera—stripped down to a black lace bra with a matching black lace thong.

  “Have a good night,” her accompanying message read, with a winking face.

  Without bothering to think it through, he typed, “Come back over.”

  Several seconds passed before she sent back, “Sorry, can’t.”

  Pushing his head back against the headrest on his seat and closing his eyes, Ethan smiled helplessly. Damn her and her games. Damn him for falling right into them.

  He was amused, until he considered that Willow’s boyfriend would likely see her in that ensemble very shortly, and unlike Ethan, he would be able to properly enjoy it.

  Touching his phone to stop it from dimming, he told her, “I�
��m not even going to be able to sleep tonight.”

  She sent back another smiley, with another, “good.”

  He wanted to keep texting the little vixen, even if—or maybe especially because—she was right there with her boyfriend. It was almost like he wanted her to get caught—which was kind of mean, but would significantly increase his chances of convincing her to come back over. Unfortunately, the cheater he was being paid to spy on required his attention, so he had to set Willow aside and focus on that.

  “So, have you thought about filing for divorce?”

  Ethan’s strained, polite smile thinned before disappearing altogether, and he suddenly remembered exactly how much he had never liked Tucker Mercado.

  The man had a suave but smarmy look about him—slicked back chestnut hair, muddy brown eyes that Ethan had never fully trusted, and one of those dimpled chins that passed from generation to generation. Back in college, when he’d first met Tucker (and the woman who went on to become Tucker’s wife) Ethan had been certain Tucker had a crush on Amanda, but she’d always laughingly denied it.

  He’d gone on to become a lawyer, and eventually married Angela, a sweet but unremarkable young woman who seemed to blend into the background wherever she went.

  When Ethan and Amanda attended their wedding, he’d been stuck standing off to the side with Angela, watching Tucker haul Amanda out onto the dance floor. Even on her wedding day she had looked a little gloomy.

  Probably because her brand new husband gazed at Amanda in a way he never gazed at her… despite the fact that Amanda was four months pregnant and married to Ethan.

  He had never wondered before, but after everything that happened, part of him wondered if Amanda ever regretted picking him with so many other options on the table. Certainly Tucker, but she never struggled to attract male suitors. In college, before motherhood, Amanda had been intensely interesting—not that she wasn’t anymore, but she was older, more mature, and softened by motherhood. Back then she had been unapologetically compelling, and independent almost to a fault.

  He hated to consider the toll he’d taken on her.

  “We don’t know what’s happening yet,” Ethan said shortly. “I don’t really think this is the time or place to discuss that, do you?”