A House of Cards: Deconstructing Ethan (26 page)

„I think…„ she started and then after a long pause, continued, „I think Jayden is in love with you, Ethan.’

NO.

That couldn’t be it at all. I wasn’t gay – I couldn’t be. I’d fucking kick his ass if he said anything like that to me. He would have to know that there was no future with me, couldn’t give him what he wanted. Even if I were…gay, I’m not capable of that kind of romantic attachment. It would be a fucking waste of his time.

And there it was.

I remember the feeling of dread starting to build with her words, but then I really didn’t understand why.

Now I do.

The dread lifted, until I heard him confess his feelings for her in his own playroom. Then, the dread and, everything else, came crashing down on top of me.

I thought back to what Lexi had told me when we talked about Jayden just a few weeks ago. „Yearning for someone who’s in love with someone else is the fastest way to a broken heart’? Now I have to wonder if she wasn’t talking about herself, that it was she that was in love with someone who was in love with another. Even after all that time?

Then I remembered how Jayden was when he showed up after my session with Dominique. He was so passionate about helping me, so determined. When he cared for me physically – both during the shower and after -he was very…loving. Lexi had an infallible gift for reading people. Was she right about Jayden? What difference did it make now? He is obviously devastated over Lexi’s death. Whatever Lexi thought about his feelings for me, they obviously changed into feelings for her. What kind of pain was I looking at if I went ahead and followed him to Washington?

Why would I do that to myself?

Because I’m in love with him.

I don’t know what caused me to come to this conclusion when I did. It seems like it was always there within me, just below the surface. Watching Lexi, my best friend, die in front of me, it blew apart the final remnant of that wall inside me. It stripped me, reducing me to my most primal self, something I didn’t think was possible. But with nothing separating Ethan Bryant from Ethan Hughes – the two have merged into a single man.

I was the boy on the milk carton.

I was the tortured soul.

I was the doctor.

I was the Master.

I am Ethan Richard Hughes Bryant.

Now I am all of them. Lexi, more than anyone else, would have been proud of this development. She was the one who had encouraged me from the beginning to find that boy in the box, to find Ethan Hughes, the abomination that I had hidden so deep inside of myself that I hoped never to find him.

But now I have.

He is a part of me – something that hasn’t happened since college.

It’s taken the weeks since Lexi’s death for me to realize this, to understand it. Since I haven’t been spending time with Gabriel, and Jayden has been virtually silent, I have had a lot of time to analyze myself. I have finally found a single self. Now I am just left with questions that I can’t answer yet. Where do I go from here? Am I still the Dom? Am I still the doctor? Do I want to walk back into Ethan Bryant’s life? What will happen when I do?

I miss Lexi so much.

I closed my journal and set the pen on top, steeling myself for what I was about to do. Taking a deep breath, I pushed away from my desk and stood up. Then I walked through my bedroom door and down the hall to where he was. I had heard him moving and shifting things a few times while I wrote in my journal, I think I even had heard him throw things. When I knocked lightly on the doorframe, he looked up from the box he was packing, even though he could have just left everything here and bought new stuff in Washington. It wasn’t about the money though; he was trying to find something to occupy his mind until he could get out of here.

He looked disheveled, his hair in his eyes, a light sheen of sweat on his face and arms from working so diligently. A look of hope passed across his face as his eyes met mine. I held his gaze for just a moment before nodding. He dropped the box he was holding and made his way over to me. Surprised when he threw himself at me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and burying his face in my neck, I hesitantly wrapped my arms around his waist.

We stood like that for a long time.

Then I heard his soft murmur into the hollow of my throat.

“Thank you, Ethan.”

Chapter 15

“Hey,” Gabriel said quietly as he closed the door, wrapping his arms around my waist, kissing me softly just below the ear. I let him hold me for a long time while I worked up the courage to have the talk. He must have noticed that I was stalling, because he pulled back slowly to look at me.

“Ethan, what is it?” he asked, far more gently than I deserved. I pulled him against me one last time, squeezing hard before I met his eyes and wondered if I was about to lose my oldest friend.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. Clearing my throat, I gathered my resolve and sighed. It was going to hurt him and I didn’t want to be the one to do that. Although he had said that no matter what I decided to do he would always be my friend, he deserved so much more than just a postcard from Seattle.

Upon my admission, he paled, but led me into the living room, trying to pull me down onto the couch with him. I refused, wanting to stand. It seemed an easier way to distance myself from the situation a little. I couldn’t be wrapped in his embrace when I told him, I needed to do it and get it over with. When I looked down, I was startled to see the fear in his eyes, his body tense, as if he was waiting for some kind of attack.

I wished I could take it from him, the fear, the pain it would cause – but I couldn’t.

“Gabriel, I’m going back to Washington,” I said and was surprised by his lack of response. He looked almost relieved.

“Okay, I think maybe that’s a good idea. You can get out of here for a while. You can get away from me and away from him. You will have space to think things through,” he surmised methodically.

I took a deep breath.

“No, Gabriel, it’s Jayden who wants to go and he wants me to go with him.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished I hadn’t said them, as it was going to be so much worse than I had feared. I could see that it wasn’t that I wanted to leave, but that I wanted to leave with Jayden that upset him, but he made a visible effort to keep his emotions in check. At his sides, his hands balled into fists and took long deep breaths before he spoke.

“Why are you going with him?”

“I know we haven’t really talked about it, but the reason I came to Chicago in the first place was because I was very depressed. Jayden and Lexi had flown out to Washington to check on me, and asked me to stay with them because they were worried about me. If they hadn’t come with them, I don’t know that I would be alive right now.” His eyes widened, but he didn’t interrupt. “Jayden is going through a difficult time right now after losing Lexi. I owe it to him and to her, to be there for him – to help him as much as I can.” I closed my eyes and took another deep breath.

Opening my eyes again after a long pause, I looked directly into his face. “And…I want to go. I’m in love with him. I want to be where he is."

The anguish flashed across his face so intensely, it looked like someone had kicked him in the stomach. Sharply, he looked away from me and I saw that he was fighting to keep his emotions in check. When he finally he looked back, he wasn’t looking at me, but at the floor in front of me.

“How long?” he asked in a low, trembling voice.

How long? How long have I been in love with him? Years, I realized – but I needed to know that’s what he meant. “How long?” I prompted.

“Have you known?” he asked loudly, almost yelling.

“Since Lexi’s funeral. That’s when I really understood what I was feeling.” Relaxing back onto the couch, his tense posture loosened, his face contemplative.

“Ethan, are you sure? Are you sure it’s not just some knee-jerk reaction to losing Lexi? You have had a real emotional time these last few weeks – maybe if you wait, just until you’re thinking more clearly…” he trailed off. Something in my expression must have told him I didn’t appreciate his rationalizations.

“Damn it!” I growled as I started to pace. “It’s taken my whole fucking life for me to figure out what falling in love even was. Don’t fucking tell me that I screwed it up now. I love him, I can feel it.” Putting my hand up to my chest, I continued, “The times Jayden and I have been together here in Chicago, I’ve felt it…HERE…Every single time…No amount of time is going to…“ I stopped dead at his expression. It was a look of pure rage and it occurred to me what I’d said. I reached for him, but he jerked back, repulsed that I would even try.

“You’ve been fucking him while we were together?” he asked, and while his voice was low and steady, I noticed that his hands were shaking. Normally, his face was pale and open, but it was now tight and flushed with furiousness. I couldn’t lie to him, but I didn’t think he needed the entire truth right now either, so I just nodded. “Since we made love?” Looking away, I nodded again.

Trembling, he stood up and stood still for a long time. I didn’t dare approach him.

“Get out,” he finally said in a flat defeated tone.

“Gabriel, I…“ I wanted to make things right. I couldn’t stand knowing that I had hurt him.

“GET THE FUCK OUT!” he screamed at me and turned around, stalking up the stairs. After he got to the top, I heard his bedroom door slam and then a thud followed by breaking glass. I closed my eyes at the sound. The force of the door slamming must have caused a picture in the hall to hit the floor.

I did what he wanted and I let myself out.

As the door closed behind me, I couldn’t help but see that as metaphoric – the door closing on the last remnants of my childhood. I had just lost my best childhood friend.

* * *

When my mother opened the door, she could immediately tell that something was bothering me. Her brow furrowed as she reached out to hug me, but rubbed my arm instead. Standing on the porch looking at each other for a moment before she invited me in, I knew that she was waiting for me to open up to her, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. The pain of knowing that I would never hear Gabriel’s voice or see him smile again was just eating at me. I can’t believe I had brought up my sex life with Jayden. All I had to do was say that I was leaving, but I didn’t stop there. I had to hurt him and in such a brutal way.

She led me into the sitting room and I sat down on the couch next to her. With my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, I stared at the floor. I felt her rub my back with her small hand, trying to comfort me.

“Would you like to talk about it?” she asked in a motherly tone.

“Mom, Jayden is not taking Lexi’s death well at all,” I started, keeping my eyes trained on the floor, not wanting to see her face when I told her I was leaving. “He wants to go back to Washington and he’s asked me to go with him.” She was quiet for a moment before she reached over to hold my hand and I finally looked up at her.

“Do you love him, Ethan?”

I nodded.

She squeezed my hand and then smiled. “Then I think you should go with him.” My face must have betrayed my surprise, because she continued. “I saw that very first day outside the restaurant how much he cared for you, how he wanted to protect you from the world. He cares about my son and he makes my son happy

– that’s all I could have asked for.” She moved closer and put her head on my shoulder as she wrapped both of her arms around mine.

“Just tell me that you boys will come back and visit once in a while?”

I pulled back just enough to extract from her embrace and pull her into a closer one. “I promise.”

“What about Gabriel?” she asked solemnly and I just shook my head, not yet ready to talk about that, and she understood. We sat on the couch, talking for a long time about what might happen once Jayden and I got back to Washington and about the likelihood of patching things up with Gabriel and about Lexi. My parents had been at Lexi’s funeral, they had come to support me during a time that I had needed them and it meant everything to me. It had gone a long way toward starting to repair our relationship – much farther than a few Sunday brunches.

As I got ready to leave, I asked her to say goodbye to my father for me, not that I didn’t want to see him, but he wouldn’t be home until late. She said that she would and pulled me in for one last hug. The tears in her eyes broke my heart, but she was right, my place was with Jayden. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to get him to see it that way, but I owed it to myself to try.

* * *

It had started to rain on my way home from my parents’ house. I loved the rain, it calmed me, soothed my nerves, which was exactly what I needed before I got home to face Jayden. He was having a hard enough time without my histrionics. When I got home, I walked past the kitchen, where he was sitting the table, and went upstairs. I sat in the bay window of my bedroom with my head resting against the wall, listening to it rain. The soft patter of the drops on the window was serene in its simplicity. The natural beauty of it contrasted sharply with the chaos in my head – the image of Gabriel’s tortured face as he screamed for me to leave. Hurting him was the very last thing I ever wanted to do, he had been such a good friend to me, supportive and caring.