Broken Juliet (21 page)

He’s trying so hard to show me he’s changed, and I’m determined to drag him back into our old patterns. Why? Because they’re familiar? Because I feel safe in them? What the hell good is that going to do anyone, especially me?

“Cassie?”

I open my eyes to see Elissa standing over me.

“You okay?”

I have the urge to giggle hysterically. The one thing I’m absolutely not is okay. “Sure, Elissa. Great.”

She nods, but the hard press of her mouth tells me she’s not buying it. “Uh-huh. So, Ethan looks ragey. What did you do?”

I sit up and run my hands through my hair. Ethan’s shame might be on vacation, but mine is very much present. “Oh, you know. The usual. Unleashed my inner bitch on him.”

She nods again. Her disapproval engulfs me like a noxious cloud.

“As your stage manager, I have to remind you that maintaining professional conduct with all members of this company is required. As Ethan’s sister, I want you to know that he’s dragged himself to hell and back to become a better person for you, and if you know he has zero chance of making it work, tell him now and let him get on with his life.”

“By hell and back, do you mean the accident?”

She frowns. “He told you about that?”

“Grudgingly.”

“Then you know what he’s been through.”

I nod. “I do. And I want things to work with us, but I can’t change overnight.”

“I know that. Neither could he, but he wanted to. Do you?”

Marco walks across the stage, clearly agitated. “Elissa! I need you. I have every intention of hunting Lance down and flaying his skin from his bones. I need you to stop me.”

“Coming.”

She leaves, and it’s just me, sitting on a fake bed in a fake house, trying to figure out how to make all the fake parts of me line up to form a real person.

I knock on the dressing room door.

There’s no response. When I enter, Ethan mutters, “I didn’t say to come in.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t say ‘fuck off,’ either, so I figured I’d take a chance.”

I close the door and lean against it. He’s sitting on the couch opposite the mirrors, head back, arm thrown over his eyes. He’s changed into his own jeans, which is understandable, considering what just happened.

“What do you want, Cassie?”

“To talk.”

“No, I mean, what do you want from me? Tell me what I’m doing wrong. Because I’m really trying here, but it feels like all I’m doing is finding new ways to lose you.”

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t look at me. I press my back into the door. It reminds me a backbone is there for a reason and not just to hang my bones on.

“I’m sorry.”

I whisper it. Ashamed. Afraid after all this time, I’m not good enough for him. That he’s now a better person than I ever was.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he says as he rubs his eyes. “I just had a grand romantic fantasy of how things would be when we got intimate again. Strangely enough, blowing my load fully clothed during a tech run wasn’t part of the plan.”

He still doesn’t move. I go sit next to him and pull his arm away from his face. He’s flushed. I don’t know if it’s from embarrassment or anger. Maybe both.

“Yeah, I kind of missed that memo. Sorry for orgasming you against your will.”

He laughs. “It’s ironic, considering the amount of times I’ve practically begged you to touch me like that. I’d almost forgotten how quickly you can make me come when you put your mind to it. It’s mortifying.”

He’s still not looking at me. Instead, he looks at his hands as he fiddles with the hem of my skirt and occasionally brushes my thigh.

“I didn’t know if I still affected you like that,” I say. “I thought … maybe … you’d outgrown it.”

Now he looks at me, incredulous. He opens and closes his mouth and blinks. Then he frowns at the floor, the wall, the mirrors, before he makes a disbelieving noise and looks back at me.

“You’ve met me, right? I’m Ethan. Late-night drunk-dialer. Compulsive ass-groper. Shameless boob-ogler. Forever-erect-in-your-presence serial masturbator. How the hell could I possibly outgrow that? If anything, it’s gotten worse over the years. Did you not just witness me coming from you fondling my cock for less than three minutes?”

His complete bewilderment makes me laugh.

He shakes his head. “Crazy fucking statement. Not attracted to you? Jesus.” He pauses. “So mystery solved. Was it gratifying to see me completely lose my shit in record time?”

“A little.”

He nods. “At least you’re being honest.”

Honest. Right. He used to tell me I’d be horrified if I knew the stuff that went through his head every day. Now the reverse is true. Still, I know nothing’s going to improve between us if I keep things from him.

I take a deep breath and say, “Elissa said I need to figure out if I can make this work, and if I can’t, I need to let you get on with your life.”

He turns to me, his expression intense and on edge.

“I love my sister, but she really needs to stop giving you sucky advice.”

“She’s trying to protect you.”

“I don’t need protecting.”

“Don’t you? Have you considered that maybe you’re placing all your hope in something that’s doomed to fail?”

That makes him pause. He studies me. “No. Have you?”

I want to laugh. “Ethan, that’s
all
I’ve thought about for the last three years. I mean, I know the accident inspired you to better yourself and try to get me back or whatever, but until we started this show, I didn’t know that. As far as I was concerned, we were over. We’d been over for a long time. I had my future all planned out, and as painful as it was to admit, you weren’t going to be a part of it. Now, I have to entertain the possibility that you’ve changed and will stick around? I mean, come on. It’s difficult to process. Did you ever think that your epic plan to get us back together should have included consulting me?”

“I tried to tell you in the e-mails.”

“But you didn’t. You told me you were getting help and that you wanted to be part of my life again, but you spoke about being friends, nothing more. You didn’t even tell me you loved me, remember?”

He rubs his eyes. “I thought I had it all figured out but … fuck, Cassie, I’m sorry. I’m kind of new to this whole winning-back-the-love-of-my-life thing.”

He says it so easily. Like it’s not one of the most momentous things he’s ever uttered.

Love of my life.

It’s such an clich
é
, but that’s exactly what we are to each other. Even if we both walk away now and end up in other relationships, we’ll forever be that. Some people never find it. Yet here it is right in front of me, and I have no idea how to keep it.

“Cassie, remember how pissed you used to get when I was thinking important stuff but wouldn’t tell you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I can tell you’re doing that right now. Care to share?”

I sigh. “I’m thinking that … I really want to change, but I don’t know how, and part of me thinks it might be too late, anyway.”

“That’s not true.”

“What if it is? Denying how badly this could end up doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen. I think you believe that if you ignore that I’m broken, it will somehow make it not true. But it is.”

“Cassie—”

I stand and pace. He wants to know what I’m thinking? All of a sudden, I want to give it to him.

“And I sometimes think the only reason you want me back is because sexually, we’re spectacular. But what if we get back together, and months from now we realize that apart from great sex, we really have nothing in common? Then we’ll have gone through all of this for nothing.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

“Is it? Maybe we’re just one of those volatile couples who are supposed to fuck like animals for a few months, then go their separate ways. We’ve never really had the chance to get each other out of our systems. But what if we did? What if we finally realized all the crap that fueled our problems also fueled our passion, and without it we’re dead in the water?”

He stares at me. “You don’t honestly believe that.”

“Maybe I do. I don’t even know anymore.”

He shakes his head and smiles.

Smiles
.

Why doesn’t he look terrified? I just spewed all of my crazy at him, and he seems completely calm.

What the fuck did that therapist do to him? Did she have all of his fear and panic surgically removed?

“Cassie, come here.”

He’s still so calm, he’s like freaking Buddha. If Tristan were here, he’d have a Zen boner.

“Please,” he says, as I stew in my agitation. “I need to show you something.”

I go and stand in front of him. He takes my hands and strokes them gently, then pulls me forward until I’m straddling him.

Now I’m agitated and aroused. Not sure what this is going to prove.

“I thought we were keeping this platonic,” I say as he grips my hips.

“We are.”

I grind onto his growing erection. “Uh-huh. That guy is making a liar out of you.”

He wraps his arms around me and pulls me against his chest. The contact is almost too much. A vicious ache immediately grows, reinforcing my point about our sexual chemistry driving the disaster train of our relationship. I want to soothe the burn, but he tightens his arms and just hugs me. Breathes into my throat and wraps me in reassurance as he urges me to relax more with every exhale.

“Just breathe,” he whispers. “Ignore everything else.”

I close my eyes and try to do as he says.

Within a few minutes my lust has ebbed to a vague simmer, but in its place is something else. An effervescence in my blood.

He strokes my back, and I melt into him. He leans back, and I follow. After a while the rest of the world ceases to exist.

Our universe is the hush of air between his lips and my throat. The brush of his fingers on my neck.

“Do you feel this?” he whispers. “This is what makes us keep coming back, despite everything we’ve gone through. This is why I had to change, and why, despite how much I hurt you, you can’t walk away. The way we sink into each other. The way I can’t tell my heartbeat from yours. We have this perfect rhythm, whenever we’re together, and
that’s
the essence of us. It’s not just about sex. It’s about this.”

He pushes me back, so I can see his face. “Cassie, I want to be with you. Always. If that involves us being naked and making love in a hundred different ways, every day for the rest of our lives, that’s fantastic. If it involves us sitting and talking, wearing barbed wire and cast-iron body suits, that’s fantastic, too. I just want you. Now. A week from now. A year. A decade. Whenever you’re ready. What I want is never going to change. It’s you. Just you. Naked or clothed, doesn’t matter to me.”

I take in a ragged breath. What he’s saying …

He strokes my arms. Keeps me grounded in this moment.

“That’s why I haven’t had sex for three years,” he says as he runs his hands up my shoulders and caresses the back of my neck. “There were plenty of girls who reminded me of you. Similar hair, or eyes, or smile. If I’d squinted, I could have easily pretended they were you. But I didn’t want a lookalike. I haven’t been able to have sex without emotion since you, and considering you own all of my emotions, who the fuck was I going to have sex with? From the moment I met you, it was only ever going to be you.”

I lean my forehead against his. “But—”

“No buts. If our relationship was only based only on sex, do you think we’d have gone through all the shit we have? Sex is easy. It’s an itch that needs to be scratched, and as much as I love having sex with you, what I want from you isn’t easy. It’s messy and complicated, and it’s filled with so much fucking passion, I don’t have a clue how to cope with it all. But I find a way, because I love you. And love is hard, but it’s worth it.
You’re
worth it. And I hope one day you’ll realize I’m worth it, too.”

I’m too choked up to speak.

I know he’s worth it. I’ve always known that. I knew it before he did, I just need to stop doubting we can make this work.

“Ethan? Your therapist … would she maybe take me on?”

He frowns. “I don’t know. Is that something you want to try?”

I nod. “I need to change. But I can’t do it by myself. I need help. I don’t want to be … like this … anymore.”

He pulls me into a hug, and his breath is ragged against my throat as I stroke his hair. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“We’re going to get through this. Have no doubt.”

I squeeze him tighter. “That’s the plan.”

NINETEEN

EMOTIONAL EVOLUTION

Four Years Earlier

Aberdeen, Washington

The thing about developing an addiction is that it happens so quietly, you don’t know how much trouble you’re in until it’s too late. It tiptoes through the rooms of your mind and body, gently inserting hooks and strings into every cell, until you don’t know where you end and it begins. And untangling that web is nearly impossible.

By the end of our second year at The Grove, my sexual encounters with Ethan have increased in frequency, but I tell myself I have it under control. Whenever we stray into areas that feel too intimate, I go cold turkey for a couple of days to remind myself he’s a luxury, not a necessity.

It’s not until I go home for the summer that it occurs to me I may be in trouble.

For the first few days, I’m fine. I sleep in. Spend time with my parents. Listen to music and pray for sunshine.

By the end of the first week, I’m antsy. Restless and horny. I think about him way too much. His face. His smell. What I wouldn’t give for just one hit of his smell.

Halfway through the second week, I take a job at the local diner, partly as a distraction to stop me thinking about him, and partly to get me out of the house so I won’t have to listen to my parents argue.

By the end of the third week, I’m in full-blown withdrawal. Irritable. Intolerant. Needing a fix of someone who’s on the other side of the country and pissed at everything and everyone that’s not him.

I guess he misses me, too, because on my way home from work at the beginning of the fourth week, I receive a text.