“I want to explain all of it. Just give me a chance.”
“Nothing you say is going to change the past.”
“It could change the future, though.”
My chest tightens, so many possibilities unfolding with that one truth.
“One minute we were making plans for our future and the next you were out of my life completely,” I say softly.
“I’m sorry for a lot of things, Lilah, but I’m the most sorry about how things ended.”
“So am I.” I pull out a storage bin and sit down, my legs still shaky.
He pulls one out too and settles beside me, close but not touching. “Remember how hard it was that first semester I was in college? How tough it was to get used to only seeing each other a couple of times a month instead of every day?”
His absence left a hole in my world. I’d been so bereft at first, missing the person who’d been my constant since I was in kindergarten. “We managed.” Barely.
“I almost dropped out after the first semester.”
“What? Why?” This is new information. We’d had nightly phone calls back then. Sometimes we fell asleep talking, and I’d wake up in the morning to the sound of his breathing, or his alarm through the phone, and vice versa.
“Because I hated being away from you. Between studying and hockey, I had no time. There weren’t enough hours. I had trouble keeping up with classes. You weren’t there to keep me on track. But more than that, I just missed you. I thought about you all the time, the way you used to tap your lip with your pen when you were annoyed, how you used to get all grossed out when I’d try to kiss you after practice and I hadn’t showered yet, the way you’d unwrap the entire package of Life Savers so you could pick out the green-apple ones and save them for last. I missed being part of your life every day. I didn’t feel like I could do it without you, and I didn’t want to. I thought maybe I should put the scholarship on hold and take a year off, wait for you to graduate so we could do college together.”
“But then you were drafted to the farm team.”
“Yeah.” His head is bowed, shoulders curved forward, elbows resting on his knees.
“So you broke up with me instead.”
“I was fucking miserable, DJ.”
“Why break up, then? And why eradicate yourself from my life?” It’s a strange feeling, being here with him, but not really knowing him anymore—not the way I used to. All of our history still exists but with a wall built between then and now. I don’t know if it’s possible to break it down, or if I want to.
“It was only going to get harder. The being apart from you. Minnesota State was only a couple hours away and it was barely tolerable. I was going to move to the other end of the country. I didn’t want to put that much pressure on you.”
“What kind of pressure would you have put on me?” I don’t understand his logic. He’s also had eight years to rationalize this. Enough time to frame it in a way that makes sense to him.
“To make it work. To make us work. You can’t tell me the long distance wasn’t hard for you. I know it was. I heard the ache in your voice, Lilah, and I shared it. I kept watching all these relationships fail in my first year of college, and I kept thinking as long as we could get through the year we’d be fine, because then you’d be with me. But being drafted changed everything. Nothing about my career was certain, and I didn’t want to drag you along for that fucked-up ride.”
“You didn’t even give me a choice, though. I had no voice.” And maybe that’s the part that had eaten at me the most. We’d planned our paths together. We’d depended on each other for years. We’d made decisions based on a future that contained each other, and then all of a sudden I had no say.
He shifts until his knee touches mine. I want to sever the contact, but it’s as comforting as it is painful. “Would you have been okay with breaking up?”
“I didn’t have an opportunity to be okay with it.”
“I know you, Lilah. Or at least I did back then. You wouldn’t have given up on us like that if I’d presented you with a choice. You would’ve been determined to make it work. To prove all the statistics wrong, because that’s who you are—or were—and it’s one of many reasons why I loved you so fucking much.”
He runs his fingers over the back of my hand. Reflexively I flip it over and he twines them together, squeezing. “Training was intense. Far beyond anything else I’d ever experienced. Hours of practice almost every day, not a lot of downtime. And that was just the farm team. NHL training is even more consuming. Off-season is a few short months, and the rest of the time I would’ve been away. I didn’t want your focus split, or mine. You were in your last semester of high school, and I was being moved out to LA. It wasn’t logical to stay together, and I was trying to be logical, because God knows, nothing about the way I loved you was rational.”
The emotions that swirl and swell between us are so much different from the ones I experienced when he broke my heart all those years ago. He’d been so assured, so calm in his ending of things, so certain it was the right thing to do. Or at least that’s how I had perceived it. Now his voice is full of sharp regret. It’s in this picture he paints for me, in his broken expression and the waver in his voice, that my hurt over this is echoed in him.
“The worst part was that you did it over the phone,” I say.
He nods and lifts our clasped hands, brushing his lips over my knuckle. I shiver at the affection, at the shadow of memories. “I never could’ve followed through in person. I wouldn’t have been able to see the hurt I heard in your voice and stay away from you. That was really selfish of me. I was selfish about you. I always have been.”
“That doesn’t explain eight years of nothing.”
“I don’t think there’s a simple explanation that doesn’t make me look like an asshole.”
“Well, give it a try, and really, I don’t think you could elevate your asshole status by much, all considering.”
He laughs at this sliver of levity. “I tried after that to reach out. I called you, remember?”
“Yes.” Of course I did. He’d called a couple of times late at night, when I was on the verge of sleep—the conversations had been brief, painful. In the mornings I’d wondered if they had been a bad dream.
“I didn’t know how to be friends.”
“It felt like you were calling out of obligation and you couldn’t wait to get off the phone with me.”
“That’s because I couldn’t.”
When I try to yank my hand away, he holds it tighter. “I didn’t want you to be fine without me. I didn’t want to hear that you were moving on. I didn’t want you to be okay, because I wasn’t. I was a mess, and every time I called I made it worse for myself. I was playing like shit. It felt like I’d done it all for nothing, but as much as I didn’t want to stay away from you, I knew it was the right thing to do. It was painful, the not having any ties to you. I missed knowing what was going on in your life, if you found a better part-time job, one you actually liked, if you bought a car, if you’d moved into an apartment like you wanted to, like we’d planned to, or if all of that had changed.”
“If it was so hard, why stay out of my life altogether?”
He sighs. “For me it was all or nothing with you. I knew if I saw you, I’d want to get back together. Then I found out you were with Avery—I think it was a few months before you got engaged.”
“Wouldn’t that have been a safe time to make contact? When I was already with someone?”
Ethan’s laugh is almost bitter. “My dad told me not to.”
I’m shocked by this. Martin knew how hard losing Ethan had been for me. He’d been a huge source of support the entire time. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he knew I would fuck it up for you.”
“How?”
“Your happiness made me miserable, which is a horrible thing to say. I should’ve been glad that you’d found someone, but I wasn’t. Not even a little bit. That it
was Avery didn’t help. He was always such a douche in high school, always talking about how awesome his car was and how awesome he was. He just seemed so shallow. And you had such light and so many dreams. You were going to get a full scholarship and go into medicine and be amazing. I just couldn’t understand how someone like him could make you happy. Seeing you together, knowing I’d let you go…I couldn’t be your friend.”
I think about how I would’ve felt had it been me in his shoes. Would I have been able to handle seeing him happy with someone else? I don’t know.
“I wanted you to live your life, go to school like you planned to, and become a doctor, and that would’ve been impossible if we’d stayed together. I didn’t want you to have to give up your dream so I could have mine.”
“Just so we’re clear, I love my job, and I made a choice not to be a doctor because I realized nursing was a better fit for me. But you never even asked me what I wanted. Why didn’t that matter?” This time Ethan lets me have my hand when I pull away.
He rubs the back of his neck. “I would’ve been all you had in LA. At least with you here I knew you had my family. I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“Who were you protecting, me or you?”
“Both of us? I convinced myself that as long as you were managing, it was better that I stay out of your life. I thought it was better for me to be the asshole who wasn’t in your life than one who would keep fucking things up.”
Chapter Eight
Setup
Lilah
Perception is such a strange, illusive concept. Especially when perception is steeped in youth, inexperience, and heartache. So learning the reasons behind Ethan’s actions all those years ago creates a new ache in my chest.
In his own screwed-up way, he’d always been protecting me, even if it caused us both unnecessary pain.
“I’m so sorry I hurt you the way I did. I’m even more sorry that you felt abandoned and that I couldn’t manage my own emotions enough to stay in your life, even if it wasn’t the way I wanted.”
The soft brush of his thumbs under my eyes startles me. My tears are silent grief for lost years. When he starts to pull away, I lean my cheek into one of his palms and just allow myself to feel. I’ve missed him. Our connection has always been unique. Consuming in a way that sometimes felt overwhelming. His touch could calm and excite simultaneously. Like being given a sedative and a shot of caffeine at the same time.
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this kind of intense draw to another person.
The tenderness of the moment is broken by the sound of the front door opening and Carmen’s voice booming through the intercom system. I jump up and rush over to see my sister on the little screen, calling our names as she drops her purse on the table in the entryway. I find the intercom button. “Carmen? Can you hear me?”
“Holy crap!” Her hand goes to her heart and she spins around. “Lilah? Where are you?”
I drop my head against the screen and exhale a relieved breath. “Thank God. We’re in the wine cellar.”
I can see her eyebrows raise and a smile quickly form, but it disappears when I continue. “We’re trapped in the panic room. Do you have any idea how to get out of it?”
Her hand goes to her mouth. “Oh God. I’ll be right down!” She disappears from one screen, passing through several on her way downstairs until she ends up on the other side of the door we’re locked behind.
“Can you still hear me?” She knocks, making a muffled tinny sound.
I press the intercom button. “Yes.”
“Okay, good. When you talk, you’re broadcast all over the house, so I can hear you anywhere, and I think it should be the same for me. I’m so sorry—I forgot to tell you about the panic room.” She’s scrolling through her phone frantically while she speaks. “The Hoffmans gave me the code in an email before they left for France. I just need to find it.”
“We need a code,” I murmur, maybe to myself, or Ethan, or as reassurance that I won’t be in this room much longer.
Carmen says something under her breath on the other side. “Found it! Okay, you have to punch in the code from the inside.” She purses her lips. “But I guess you already knew that.”
“Just give me the goddamn code so we can get the fuck out of here, Carm.”
“Right. Okay. It’s five-eight-six-seven-one.”
With a shaky hand, I punch in the numbers. Ethan meets my gaze as we wait a few shockingly long seconds before a series of metallic clicks reverberate through the room and the door begins to move. As soon as there’s enough space for my body, mashed boobs or not, I squeeze through and slam right into Carmen.
Her arms come around me. “I’m so sorry, DJ. I know how much you hate closed spaces.”
If I continue to let her console me, I’ll probably cry again, and that’s the last thing I want to do. I push away and rush for the door, stepping out into the basement. The bright light and high ceilings are disorienting. “I’m fine.” I beeline for the French doors leading to the backyard patio. Wrenching them open, I step outside, sucking in lungfuls of fresh air, working to regain some composure.
“How long were you stuck in there?” Carmen asks Ethan, her voice wavering.
“Awhile.” He’s quiet and reserved.
“I’m so sorry. They mentioned there being a glitch with the door sensors. I didn’t realize they meant it locked people in there.”
“Why the hell do they even have a panic room?” I yell from the patio.
I hear the jingle of her bracelets before I see her approaching. “Apparently George Hoffman was a bit eccentric and paranoid. He had it installed about a decade ago, before he passed away, and then his son moved in with his family and no one maintained it, because, well, no one needs a panic room in Forest Lake.”
I glare at her when she chuckles.
“I’m so sorry, Lilah. I didn’t even think to warn you about it. Do you want a few minutes? I can answer any questions Ethan has about the house.”
I need time to get my emotions under control, and not just because I was locked in a dark, windowless room. I’m reeling from our conversation. “Please. I’ll be up in a minute.” She squeezes my arm and goes back into the house, leaving me to collect myself.
“Lilah?” Ethan’s voice is full of worry.
“I’m fine. I need a minute.” I’m sure he’s aware I’m lying, but the kiss, the revelation, and the confined space are a lot to handle all at once.
“Okay. I’m sorry.”
When the words aren’t followed by the sound of his departure, I glance over my shoulder. It’s the worst possible thing I can do. He’s standing with his hands shoved into his pockets, huge shoulders hunched in what looks like defeat. But it’s the haunted regret that cuts through my heart. “Me, too. Carmen’s waiting for you. I’ll come up soon.”
He sighs but heads upstairs. I take a few steps farther out onto the patio, staring past the pool to the lake beyond. I don’t know what to do with everything he’s told me. With one conversation, Ethan has reframed the last eight years. My heart aches from the phantom pain made real again.
I pause at a bathroom on my way upstairs. My lipstick is gone and my hair is a bit wild, maybe from Ethan’s hands being in it when he kissed me.
I’m embarrassed my panic was the impetus. Still, it’s probably one of the most passionate kisses I’ve experienced since…him. Past and present are merging, and I don’t know how to separate them.
Now that I’m no longer locked inside a panic room, I’m mortified that I lost it in there like a kid throwing a temper tantrum. I kicked Ethan in the shin for Chrissake.
I consider slipping out and going home without telling them, but my purse is in the kitchen, along with my car keys, so I don’t have a choice but to go get it. Just as I’m about to take the last step from the carpet runner to the marble floor, Carmen says, “If you want to think about it and come back later in the week, we can schedule another appointment. The Hoffmans are
in France until next Friday.”
I step into the kitchen, arms crossed over my chest. “I thought you said this was urgent, that Ethan only had a short window to view the property.”
Carmen looks up, eyes wide—the way I associate with being caught in a lie rather than innocence.
I point an accusatory finger at her. “Did you set me up?”
“Lilah—”
“You’re unbelievable.” I shift my anger, finger wagging to Ethan. “Were you in on this? Was the whole panic room thing part of the damn plan?”
“I don’t even know what there is to be in on.” His confusion seems genuine, but I’m too upset with my sister’s meddling not to project my anger on him, too.
“Bullshit.”
“And I would never lock you in a windowless space on purpose,” he adds.
I prop a fist on my hip and narrow my eyes. “Are you sure about that? It seemed to give you opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t have had.”
“Come on, Lilah—it’s really not what you think,” Carmen says.
“You tricked me,” I say to her. “You pushed me into this.” I swing around and point at Ethan again. “And you—I don’t know what you want from me. You say you want to be friends, but friends keep their damn lips to themselves!” I’m embarrassed and overwhelmed all over again. “I’m going home.”
I need time to process. Alone.
Chapter Nine
Words and Deeds
Ethan
I admit I check out Lilah’s ass as she stalks out of the kitchen. It’s a great ass, even in a flowy, pretty sundress. Especially in a flowy, pretty sundress.
“Should we go after her?” I ask Carmen.
I’m at a loss here. Eight years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about chasing her down to find a way to fix whatever I’d done wrong, but now I’m not so sure. She’s really damn angry. And I just unloaded a lot on her while she was trapped with me. Her anger might be justified. The slam of the front door echoes that thought.
The Good Luck Charm Page 8