Me: OK. Am I making dinner again?
Brendan: I wouldn’t complain if you did, but you don’t have to cook for him if you don’t want to.
Me: I’ll cook. For YOU, not for him.
Brendan: I love you.
Me: Love you too. <3
Sliding my phone back into my purse, I got out of my car and headed inside. I heard voices in the dining room and headed in that direction, and was shocked to find Naomi sitting at the table with Kate and Ashton.
“Hey, Nay,” I said. “This is a nice surprise. I didn’t see your car out front.”
“It’s in the shop. Again,” she grumbled. “Ash came to pick me up so we could all hang out today.”
“What’s wrong with it this time?” I chuckled humorlessly as I walked into the kitchen to pour myself a cup of the coffee I smelled brewing.
“Starter. Alex keeps saying he wants me to just trade it in instead of sinking more money into it, but I’d like to know what money he thinks I can do that with,” she scoffed.
“Right?” I agreed. “We just graduated from high school.”
“And we don’t get any of our financial aid until we actually start college in the fall,” she pointed out.
“Yep,” I muttered.
I still had no idea how Brendan and I were going to get by on just my scholarship money and his income. Thankfully, I’d already filled out the federal financial aid application before everything happened with my dad, but because I’d had to declare his income, it meant I didn’t qualify for much in the way of financial assistance, despite the fact that I was now estranged from him. Brendan kept promising that we’d figure it out because he didn’t want me to have to give up going to college, but I couldn’t see how. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t make a dollar out of fifteen cents.
“Okay, what’s with you, honey?” Ashton asked. “This is not the face of a girl who just got to spend the night with her boyfriend for the first time in weeks.”
I knew that. And it definitely wasn’t the face of someone who’d just gotten engaged last night. Yesterday had been one of the best days of my whole life. For once, I’d felt like a normal high school graduate, and then, to top it off, the man I loved had asked me to be his wife.
But then when Brendan broke the news about Ethan to me this morning, it had sort of put a damper on that. I wasn’t upset with him for waiting until this morning to talk to me about that. I understood why he’d done it. I just wasn’t sure if I really wanted to see Ethan or not, but now it was too late to back out.
“Brendan told me that Ethan Smith’s back in town,” I told them as I carried my mug of coffee back to the table and sat down next to Naomi. “He just got hired at the company Brendan’s working for, and he actually shadowed Brendan yesterday. I guess he apologized to Brendan for how he treated him while we were all in high school, and he asked Brendan to talk to me and see if I’d be willing to sit down with him so he could apologize to me too.”
“And you said yes because you can’t say no to Brendan, but now you don’t know if you really want to be anywhere near the asshole who made your life a living hell four years ago,” Kate finished for me.
I nodded. “Pretty much.”
“Darla, it’s been over three years since you last saw him. And his parents sent him to military school,” she reminded me. “For some kids, that doesn’t do a damn thing about their behavioral issues, but for other kids, the structure and discipline actually end up doing them a world of good. Maybe he was one of the ones who actually benefited from it.”
“I know, but what if he wasn’t? He used to tell my dad every little thing I did just to see me squirm,” I countered. “What if this is a trick and he tells my dad where I am?”
“If this was your dad, he’d at least have sent someone you trusted,” Ashton interjected. “He might not have known how much of a prick Ethan was to you, but he had to know you didn’t like the kid.”
That…was actually a good point. My dad would have had to be getting pretty desperate to use someone like Ethan to try to lure me out. I would have trusted literally anyone else in the First Baptist Church congregation before I trusted Ethan. Except maybe Brendan’s mom.
“Damn you and your logic,” I mumbled.
“It’s not going to kill you to hear him out, sweetie,” Naomi said. “And you know your man’s not going to leave you alone with him, so you’ll have support.”
I groaned and buried my head in my hands. I knew they were right, and I knew hearing Ethan out was the right thing to do. But that didn’t mean I had to like it.
Suddenly, my left arm was yanked out from under me, and I almost fell face-first into my coffee mug.
“Um, excuse me!” Kate shouted, making me pick my head up and look at her. “The fuck is this on your hand? Explain! Now!”
Ashton gasped and pulled my hand out of Kate’s grasp. “Well, hello sparkly!”
“Sparkly?” Naomi asked as she took her turn grabbing at me. “Oh, my God! Darla, I thought we were friends! When did this happen?”
“Last night,” I mumbled, pulling my arm back as I flushed with embarrassment.
“And you didn’t lead with this because…?” Kate stared me down like it was a contest. “We need details! How’d he do it? Why last night?”
“What do you mean, why last night?”
“We weren’t supposed to say anything, but he was planning on surprising you by coming down to Savannah with us next weekend and popping the question while we were there,” Naomi explained. “He roped all of us and a few other people into this huge, elaborate plan. It was actually really sweet how much thought he put into it.”
I chuckled. Yeah, that sounded like something he’d do. And now him saying that he couldn’t believe last night turned out to be the perfect moment made even more sense. He’d abandoned all of his elaborate plans in favor of just asking me when the time felt right.
“Honestly, I don’t even have a good story,” I admitted. “I just felt like making something special for dinner, so I got there a couple of hours before he was going to be home and put it in the oven early. And literally, he got home and went to shower, and he walked back into the kitchen while I was pulling everything out of the oven. He just told me he loved seeing me so happy and that all he wanted was to be able to make me that happy every single day. Then he said he’d been waiting for almost a year for the perfect moment and he couldn’t believe that turned out to be it, and he dropped to one knee right there in the kitchen.”
I smiled at the memory of how happy I’d been in that moment, then blushed as I remembered everything that had come after it. With the exception of eating dinner, most of our evening had been spent in the bedroom, sans clothing.
“Okay, that’s freaking adorable,” Naomi gushed.
“Leave it to Brendan to just abandon weeks’ worth of planning and go, ‘Fuck it, I’m doing this right here in the middle of the kitchen,’” Ashton laughed. “This is the same person who decided that a good time for your first kiss was while you were screaming bloody murder at him. Man has zero impulse control.”
I burst into a fit of giggles. They weren’t wrong. Anyone else would probably have waited until I wasn’t mad before trying to kiss me. Nope. Not Brendan. My very first kiss ever was while I was ranting and raving at him.
“False,” Kate snickered. “That wasn’t their first kiss, remember? That was practice.”
That didn’t help with the giggling, though at least everyone else was laughing with me now. But, no joke, that was still one of my favorite memories with Brendan. Him telling me that kiss, and the one he’d given me just a few minutes before, were just practice for our real first kiss. That day in the carpentry room was the day my whole life changed. It was the first time that I admitted I wanted something enough not to care what my father or anyone else had to say about it, and it was the beginning of our love story.
“That ring is so cute, though,” Naomi said once she caught her breath.
“Um, anything bigger would have looked like a paperweight on your tiny hand,” Kate chuckled. “That’s perfect, and very you.”
“Okay, this calls for celebration. Who’s up for IHOP?” Ashton asked, pushing their chair back from the table. “I’m buying.”
I grinned. “Pancakes sound amazing.”
Brendan was already home when I let myself into his apartment. I saw a pizza sitting on the stove, and the smell made my stomach growl.
“Hey, baby,” he said, flashing me a smile.
“Hey,” I sighed as I walked over and flopped down next to him on the couch.
“You look like you’re headed to your own execution,” he chuckled weakly.
“Can you blame me?” I pointed out. “The last time I saw Ethan, he was stumbling around drunk in the church parking lot. And he made my life hell in high school. I mean, I’m sure he didn’t know my dad was abusing me, but he knew my home life wasn’t good. Everyone did.”
“I don’t know about everyone. Heather did, though. It’s one of the reasons she tried to help me get through to you. She knew you needed someone in your corner, just like she needs Christy in hers.”
“I miss them,” I mumbled.
“I do too,” he said, planting a kiss on my head. “They should be getting back into town soon for the summer. We’ll work something out so you can hang out with them. Anyway, I thought I’d save you from cooking since you’re nervous enough already. Didn’t figure you’d complain about pizza.”
“Do I ever complain about pizza?”
Before he could answer me, there was a knock at the door, and my heart rate kicked up a few notches. Brendan gave me a quick peck on the lips before walking over to the door, looking in the peephole, and then opening it.
If I hadn’t known that it was Ethan Smith who’d just walked into this apartment, I never would have recognized him. The lumbering fifteen-year-old kid who was mad at the world now looked like a military cadet, which actually made perfect sense, since he’d just graduated from military school.
Ethan gave me a sad smile. “Hey, Darla. Been a while.”
“Yeah, it has,” I managed to say. “Hi, Ethan.”
Brendan grabbed the pizza off of the stove and pulled a few Cokes out of the fridge before coming back to sit next to me. Ethan looked beyond awkward as he took a seat on Brendan’s other side, turning sideways and leaning out a little so he could look at me.
“So, I hear congratulations are in order,” he started. “Brendan couldn’t shut up about popping the question last night at work today.”
For a second, I wondered why Brendan would have told Ethan about our engagement. But I guessed that showed how much he trusted him. Because that didn’t just put me in a potentially dangerous situation; it was dangerous for Brendan too. My dad would have killed both of us if he knew about Brendan’s plans to keep me away from that house permanently.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
Ethan took a deep breath. “Look, I know why you’re nervous to talk to me. If it was me, I would be too, especially because I asked to meet you alone. But I’m not the same messed-up kid you remember, Darla. And I just really wanted a chance to tell you how sorry I am for how I treated you.”
A lump rose in my throat and tears started to sting my eyes, but I blinked them back. I couldn’t cry right now. He didn’t deserve to see my tears.
“Why, Ethan?” I choked out. “I mean, I guess I get why you were a jerk to me at school. Sort of. But why would you be so cruel to Kate and Ash? Why would you tell my dad about them? Why would you threaten to tell him about me and Brendan? You knew he was hurting me.”
I noticed his nostrils flare, and he swallowed hard, like he was trying to contain his emotion too. Why was he about to cry? He wasn’t the one who was beaten with a belt. He wasn’t the one who had Scripture used to justify abuse every single day of his life.
“There’s nothing that can make what I did to you okay,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “And there’s nothing that can make what I did to your friends okay either. But I was in a lot of pain back then. I was struggling with a lot of things. Including…” He took a deep breath. “Including my sexuality. My friend, Tommy…well, he wasn’t just my friend. My parents actually caught us together the summer before we started high school. They told me that God hated homosexuals and that I was going to Hell if I didn’t change my ways. Tried to get me counseling. And I tried to numb my feelings with drugs and alcohol and lashed out at the whole world. The ironic thing is, it was one of my instructors at military school who helped me to accept who I am and not be ashamed of it anymore. My parents sent me away trying to discipline the gay out of me, and they led me right to someone who helped me embrace it instead.”
“You know, Kate and Ash could have helped you too, if you’d let them,” I bit out. “They never would have judged you. And neither would your other friends at church. But you never let us.”
“I know that. But at the time, I didn’t want to be helped. My parents’ attempts to help me just seemed to be making things worse, not better,” he sniffled, wiping a few tears out of his eyes.
That made a lot of things make sense. Like why he was so hostile toward Kate and Ashton. It wasn’t really them he hated. It was himself. And that broke my heart. It broke my heart that my dad had preached so much hatred and bigotry that it had made Ethan hate himself. It broke my heart that this poor kid had been so confused and angry at the world because of something he couldn’t control.
But it still didn’t explain why he’d made a game out of snitching to my dad about every little infraction he saw me commit. Yeah, he’d been cruel to my friends, but he’d singled me out more than them. He wanted to see me suffer specifically. That couldn’t be explained away by his struggles accepting himself.
Something else had happened to him. Something big. I’d been able to tell that he was in a lot of pain back when we were in high school. The kind of pain I recognized, because I was dealing with it too. And bile churned in my stomach as I came to a sickening realization.
Please, God, let me be wrong about this, I prayed.
“What happened to you, Ethan?” I whispered.
His eyes snapped to mine, going wide. “What?”
“You singled me out, more than Kate and Ash. You wanted to see me hurt. Why?” I pressed.
A sob tore out of his throat and tears started streaming down his cheeks as he buried his head in his hands. I stood up, ignoring the confused look from my fiancé as I walked around the coffee table to sit on Ethan’s other side and hugged his shoulders.
I wasn’t wrong. I knew exactly what had happened to him.
His parents had tried to get him counseling. And when people who were devoted to their religion needed counseling, they didn’t go to doctors or therapists. They looked for the answers within their faith. They went to their priests and ministers. And that was where Ethan’s parents had sent him.
Straight to my father, who didn’t have a kind or helpful bone in his whole body.
“It was my dad, wasn’t it?” I murmured. “My dad hurt you.”
Ethan nodded as more tears streamed down his face. “I’m sorry, Darla. I’m so fucking sorry. Every Wednesday night before church, he’d close the blinds on the windows and the shade on his office door. He’d tell me not to make a sound. And he’d…he’d…”
He broke down in another round of sobs, and I tightened my arms around him, looking over his shoulder at Brendan, who seemed to be frozen in shock.
“It’s okay, Ethan,” I whispered. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it. You thought you were the one who did something wrong, because that’s what he told you. And you thought that maybe if you told him what his own child was doing, he’d stop hurting you and hurt me instead. Ri
ght?”
He nodded. “It was stupid. Please…please tell me he didn’t do to you what he did to me. Please.”
Time seemed to stand still as I processed what he was saying.
My dad hadn’t just hit Ethan. He hadn’t just told him he was a sinner and going straight to Hell because he was gay.
No, he’d molested him. He’d taken the very thing Ethan was struggling with and used it against him, betraying his trust in the worst possible way.
“Jesus, Ethan,” Brendan gasped. “Why…why didn’t you tell someone?”
I looked up at him, and his expression mirrored my absolute shock, horror, and disgust.
“I tried,” he bawled. “I tried to tell my parents. And they said…they asked me how I could accuse a man of God of something so heinous and literally stripped my bedroom down to bare essentials because I refused to back down from my claims. If my own parents wouldn’t believe me, why would anyone else?”
“You didn’t go to the police?” I asked as tears started to trickle down my cheeks.
He shook his head. “No. And it’s been three and a half years. It’s too late now. Please tell me he never did that to you, Darla. Please. I’ll never forgive myself if he did.”
“No, he didn’t,” I sighed. “He came really close a couple of weeks before I graduated, but my mom stopped him and I left home. That’s why Brendan proposed last night. So we can get married as soon as I turn eighteen and I never have to go back.”
“And no one believed you about what he was doing either, did they?” he guessed.
“Nope. Not after he got to them and told them how I was a pathological liar who made up stories for attention,” I sniffled. “But as soon as I turn eighteen, I’m going to the police. I’m telling them everything. You could too, if you want. It’s worth trying.”
“No,” he said, taking a deep breath and wiping his eyes. “I can’t…I’m not strong enough to go through that. I’m only just now getting help from a real therapist. I can’t handle going through reporting it. Besides, at this point, it’s literally just my word against his. There’s no proof.”
My Vows Are Sealed (Sealed With a Kiss) Page 32