Pretty Little Lies (Lie #2)

  “I’m sorry. It was a mistake coming here.”

  “Damn, right, it was a mistake. I don’t want you here. You don’t belong in a place like this,” he said indifferently. The look on his face unleashed the never-ending pain clawing inside of me.

  I didn’t give him time to explain. I bolted from that building.

  “Dylan, Dylan,” Ethan screamed after me.

  I didn’t have time for any of his stories. Even with a bummed leg, I took off running. He caught me almost instantly.

  He smoothed his finger over my cheek, wiping away a tear. “Dylan, talk to me.”

  I closed my eyes, unable to look at him. That was more than I could deal with. The small prayer I had that my heart wouldn’t react when I finally saw Ethan’s face was futile. It was hard to breathe. “Have you ever once cared about me?”

  I heard his breath hitch, but I was still unable to open my eyes.

  “Never doubt that; never think I don’t care.”

  “Then let me go,” I said and felt his hands slide down my arms. I slipped into the car and raced out of there. Agony ripped through me at the sight of a hollow Ethan left in the dust.

  At the apartment, I scrambled through the front door and lurched my way to the bedroom.

  Sunday, March 8, 2015

  Ethan

  The grinding of the printer was cutting into every nerve I had left. It had been three months, fourteen days, and twenty-three hours since I had laid eyes on her. If I had been drunk, I would have blamed it on the whiskey. But I was sober. It was not an illusion that my angel had stepped into my nightmare. I had scoured the security system to have the perfect picture of my Dylan. I clutched the printout before it finished sliding onto the tray. The sadness in her eyes was mixed with something too deep for me to even comprehend. It made me go bat-shit crazy, causing me to finish pushing her further away. I didn’t want her there in my Hell, but with me I always wanted her. Damn, I wanted to go all caveman on her. Fuck it, I wanted to tie her to the cross in the backroom and keep her there until she could see what she meant to me.

  “Ethan, it’s two. We’re closing shop.” Amanda sat across from my desk and fastened her shirt. How could I have ever found nights there pleasurable? Hell, how can anybody find that shit fun?

  “I’ll lock up in a few,” I said and swiped my hand in the air, dismissing her. The last thing I wanted was to hear anyone talking, much less, a slut I was sure Dylan thought I wanted. Hell, no wonder she didn’t trust me. I was sure I repulsed her.

  “You really have a thing for her?”

  I cut my eyes over to Amanda, trying to get the point across I hated everyone but Dylan.

  “A thing doesn’t even cover it.”

  “E, people like us don’t get to have what she needs.”

  How the fuck did Amanda even know what Dylan needed? She would never be in the same book as a girl like Dylan, much less on the same page.

  “Get out.” I shoved everything off my desk and then pulled my fingers through my hair. All I ever wanted was the only person I could never have. Damn, I loved Dylan Summers so much it hurt. So why could I not stop hurting her? The stabbing pain in my chest was back. I welcomed it. No one deserved pain more than me.

  I grabbed my cellphone from the top drawer of my desk. I scrolled through my contacts until I came upon the name Privy. My finger lingered over the name. The sound of her voice that night almost sent me to my knees. I couldn’t even think straight. All I could think was to get her out of there and hold her forever. I wanted to call her, to express my feeling to her in a mature and cogent nature. I needed to explain. I didn’t mean to send her away. Shit, I had spent every moment of the last few months praying God would let me touch her again.

  The cellphone buzzed, knocking me out of my reverie. Charlie flashed on the screen. I wasn’t in the mood to talk, but I knew Charlie enough to know he didn’t care. He would call continuously until I answered.

  “What?” I answered.

  “I was expecting a more cheerful Ethan,” Charlie spoke in the phone. “Go back to sleep, angel,” Charlie murmured, and I realized he had muffled the phone to talk to Cherry I was sure.

  A horrible feeling of jealousy tightened in my chest. He had his love. She was tucked in softly at his side. My love was out there thinking I didn’t want her with me.

  “What do you want? It’s three in the morning.”

  “I was hoping Dylan had come by.”

  I held my phone out and stared at it as if it could make sense of what had happened and what Charlie had to do with it.

  “What did you do?” I screamed, ready to slam my fist through his face.

  “I went to see Dylan. I knew you weren’t man enough too. I told her where to find you.”

  “You sent her here, bastard? Do you have any idea what you did? I had been fucking the red head from last night. I didn’t even have my pants fastened when Amanda called me. Thanks to you I disgust her now.” I shut the phone off. If I went on any longer, I would say things I’d live to regret. But if he was smart, he’d avoid me for a few weeks.

  A text flashed on my phone almost instantly.

  She was in a wreck the night she left.

  She remembers hardly anything

  From your relationship.

  I am not sure if she even

  Remembers the rape.

  She needs you NOW.

  I fisted my hands at the thought she had been hurt. For the first time, I regretted not reading that letter. Had she really lost her memory? Is that why she moved on so fast because she had forgotten what we had. I slung on my coat and picked up the key ring off the filing cabinet. I still had her house key on there. I was ready to beg. She was going to talk to me whether she wanted to or not. And if she was sleeping with another man, he’d better run before I killed him.

  Dylan

  “Shh, Privy, don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.”

  I was woken by that simple phrase in utter darkness as a hand worked through my hair. I became a frozen statue.

  “Beautiful Privy, it’s me Ethan.” I heard as the mattress dipped under his weight. The will to scream was gone. I would have done nothing that would have caused him to move one inch from my side. “Is it true? Do you not remember who I am? Were you really in a wreck?”

  I balled up as much as my hip would allow, trying to hold myself together. “Yes,” I said back.

  Our eyes locked. He looked gorgeous, kissable, and slightly pissed. I rolled away from him. It was too much being that close to him. He had moved on, and the baby in my belly kept me from ever moving on. His hand encircled my elbow.

  “I missed you.” His jaw tightened. He missed me and by the sound of his voice, he missed me like I missed him. “I never read that letter. Sarah led me to believe it was a final goodbye. I couldn’t.” He gritted his teeth together. I still never looked back at him. "I’ve tried staying away, giving you the goodbye I truly thought you wanted. Did you truly believe I was that heartless?” He lay down and spooned his body around mine.

  “I didn’t know what to believe,” I breathed and laid the back of my head against his chest. He kissed the top of my head. “Did you ever take me to that club? Did you let someone else have me there?” I needed to know if he was there because of me or because he was trying to cover up his own sins. If him being there had nothing to do with me, then my heart needed time to adjust.

  He trembled. “No,” he said desperately and pulled me tighter to his body. “That place is Hell, and you’re my Heaven. The last place I ever wanted you to go was to a place like that. You’re too good for a place like that.” His voice cracked. “I would kill any man that tried to touch you. You don’t share an angel. You, my love, are my angel.”

  “I can remember everything but you.” I took a deep breath. The beating in my chest drowned out everything around me.

  “Then I’ll spend every moment of every day trying to get you to love me again,” he whispered against the sensitive spot behi
nd my ear.

  “Where have you been?” I whined, unable to control my emotions.

  “Trying to survive without you and failing terribly.” He held onto me like I was his lifesaver and he was drowning.

  I flipped around still sure I was dreaming. “How did you get in?”

  “I have a key. I’ve wanted to use it a million times, but I didn’t want to misuse your trust.”

  I didn’t care that he basically broke into my house; I wrapped my arm around him. The fact he came here for me was enough to ease the burn of him turning me away in front of anybody at the club. I was weak where it concerned Ethan. I didn’t care. For once since the wreck, I felt something I didn’t believe possible; a total and completely irrational healing. He placed his hand on my waist, protectively. If he only knew what he was protecting.

  “Why tonight?” I finally asked.

  “Because you thought I didn’t want you with me. That’s as far from the truth as you can get. This is what I want.”

  “Sarah will shoot you if she catches you in here.”

  “I’m not here for Sarah.”

  “Well, I have to live with her. So you need to get the hell out,” I said and shoved his side.

  He gripped my wrist. “Not until you agree to see me again.”

  “Can you take me out to eat tomorrow?”

  “Babe, as long as I get to be with you, I’ll take you anywhere. How about say noon?”

  I was pregnant with his baby. Whether I raised him or not was still up in the air, but it didn’t change the fact that at that moment Ethan’s baby was growing inside of me. I had to know if we could get over the past, if I could handle the past when the memories came.

  I reached up and lightly kissed his lip. “See you at twelve, Ethan.”

  As quickly as my dream appeared, it disappeared.

  *****

  Still groggy from the lack of sleep, I glanced over at the clock. Hell, it was almost noon. I sat up and ran my fingers through my tangled hair, thinking back over the previous night and pondering what was reality and what was a dream. I was still up and watching television when Charlie appeared in my living room. So, I knew that had happened. Going to the club was real too. If I would’ve dreamed it, Ethan would have loved me like he did in the dream I had of him slithering into my bed. It was so life-like. I swore I still smelled his cologne. I picked up the pillow and held it to my nose then screamed. I wouldn’t let myself believe it was anything other than an illusion. Ethan spoke the words at the club that he had made obvious the past few months. “I don’t want you here.”

  The unrelenting noise coming from the living room wouldn’t stop. Once the whistling of the Andy Griffith Show drifted down the hall, I knew that Deacon was home for lunch. Not ready to talk, I buried myself under the covers and faked a snore.

  Knock, knock, knock, a set of knuckles beat against the bedroom door.

  “Get the fuck up. I’ve lived with you long enough to know your real snore is a hell of a lot more annoying.”

  I blinked my eyes open and sighed.

  “Damn, I didn’t get much sleep last night. Give a girl a break.” I twisted out of bed, realizing how stiff my hip was. I didn’t use my cane last night, determined that Ethan wouldn’t see how badly I was hurt.

  An irritated Deacon stood there with her hands crossed over her chest. “You would’ve gotten some sleep if you hadn’t snuck out in the middle of the night like some crazy teenager.”

  I shifted my eyes from her. The one thing I sucked at was lying. I was incapable of getting by with a lie. “What?”

  “Don’t lie to me,” she said and tossed an envelope in my lap. “You forgot this in my car.”

  I picked it up and saw that she had opened it. I glanced up at her, crushed. I was not ready to learn what the baby was. If I was going to give him up for adoption, I didn’t need to get any more attached. “You know?”

  “Yeah, I thought it was some mail I left in the car . . .”

  “Don’t say what it said. Please, don’t tell me.” I interrupted her and begged. “Not even Sarah.” I was desperate.

  Deacon sat down beside me. “You went to find him. Didn’t you?”

  My eyes closed as I nodded my head. “His brother came right before you got home.”

  “Here,” Deacon said and handed back the ultrasound picture.

  “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want me. He made it clear.” I bored my eyes into hers. “Please don’t tell me what the baby is.”

  “The jerk needs to know he has a baby on the way. A baby he’s responsible for.”

  “I’m not a charity case. I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m not arguing that fact. But the day he knocked you up, you became his responsibility. He might not be the most noble of men, but I firmly believe he takes care of what is his.” She combed her fingers through my hair. “Don’t drive anymore. I’ll take you anywhere and not judge. But right now you can hardly move your right leg and still take pain meds daily. We don’t need you in anymore wrecks.”

  “Maybe, the next one will knock some sense into me.” I nervously laughed. Deacon had done everything to make it easier on me, but nothing was easy when you couldn’t remember parts of your life and the parts you did remember were too painful to comprehend.

  “If that was the case, I’d knock you upside the head myself.” Deacon patted my knee and stood up. “Going to grab a sandwich and head back to work. Behave.”

  I picked up the laptop off the bedside table to check my emails but found myself typing Ethan Asher in the Google search bar instead. Nothing about The Dungeon popped up, but an impressive list of court cases did show up. Ethan was a lawyer, and by the look of his biography, a damn good one.

  A loud thump at the door interrupted my reading. I stopped my snooping of Ethan and went to open the door.

  “Can you ever remember your keys?” I yelled at Deacon sure she had locked herself out again.

  I yanked on the door and was not expecting what I saw. It was Ethan. He stood there with his hands crammed into his hip-hugging jeans. He reached up and tugged a pair of Ray-Bans off his face. I wished he would have put them back on. The gold flecks in his brown eyes were breathtaking and made it hard to think.

  “Hello, my Privy,” he said and glanced over my fleece pajamas. He paused over the tear on my left knee. “I love the new look.” Ethan was nervous. Ethan didn’t do nervous well.

  “Um, uh.” I shrugged unsure why he was there. “What are you doing here?”

  “Dylan.” His eyes closed. “You asked me to lunch.”

  I swallowed to relieve the lump in my throat. Did that mean he did crawl into my bed the night before? It wasn’t a dream after all.

  “Who’s at the door?” Deacon walked in and asked with a mouth full of food. She started to take another bite when she froze in place upon spotting Ethan. My head dropped. I had hoped she was already gone. He pushed his hair off his face and shifted from one foot to the other. No one spoke for a few seconds. Deacon finally broke the silence between us. “Dylan. Bedroom. Now.”

  She took off walking, never looking back to see if I was following her. I did however. I was in such a state of mixed emotions I needed her to tell me what to do. She slammed the bedroom door before I even had cleared it.

  “Watch it, I can only move so fast,” I said, clutching my cane as the door bumped me in my good hip.

  “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Why are you so mad? You’re the one who said I needed to talk . . .” I trailed off and slumped on the bed. I didn’t know what was up or even down. Ethan was standing in my living room and quite possibly had lay in my bed the night before. My heart was not ready for all that.

  Deacon frowned. “You’re right, but can I talk to him first?”

  I nodded my head and motioned with a fleck of my wrist for her to be my guest. I limped down the hall after her.

  Ethan stood a good foot over Deacon. I watched her shiver under his impre
ssive glare.

  “I don’t know why you finally found it fit to show up, but take it easy with her. She has regained a great deal of her memory, but you cannot . . . I repeat . . . cannot tell her anything. Dr. Sawyer said pushing memories on her can be detrimental to her overall wellbeing. The only thing we’ve been able to tell her was who the fa . . .” Her head snapped up as her mouth clapped together.