Wrong (21 page)

I pitched forward when I came, crying out as Liam caught the nape of my neck and held me cruelly down at the base of his shaft. His stare dug into my weak gaze, his eyes piercing through me as I shook on him, my cheeks still wet in tears he didn’t wipe away. He let me breathe for a minute, still staring at me, holding a handful of my hair now and making a fist around it. Then with a guttural sound, he came inside me, his teeth gnashed, his groan tortured. I gasped for breath as he pulled me close, pressing my naked chest to his and panting hard against my collarbone. But within a few breaths, he lifted me off his body. Hurt prickled my skin as I sat away from him again, hugging my arms around my body.

This wasn’t what I was used to after we were finished. I was used to feeling him close – feeling happy and content. Not unsure and ashamed.

I looked out the window. We sat in traffic, ten minutes from home. Fully sober in every way, I turned back to Liam. His hair was damp and matted to his forehead, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he caught his breath. I waited for him to look at me and when he did, his eyes were harsh, and his voice was gravel.

“You put me through every kind of hell tonight, Sash.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“It didn’t have to happen. None of this tonight had to happen.”

Fresh tears burned my eyes. “I know, Liam, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I do to you. You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve the way I deal with problems, or all the anxiety I have. You don’t deserve the burden I’ve put on you every day since you met me.”

His fury was instant. “Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t use that word with me.”

My breath caught in my throat, I realized what he was referring to.
Burden
. He hated that word, but I couldn’t think of a better one to describe myself with – especially not tonight.

“Look, Sasha. The reality is that we could easily end the bullshit,” Liam muttered, fastening the buttons of his shirt over his chest. “We could’ve gone to dinner tonight together. As a couple. I don’t know what makes you think it’ll be any easier to tell Riley the truth in a year or two. It’ll only be harder, so just do it now. There’s no sense in prolonging the inevitable.”

My jaw tightened. I hated hearing his words because they were true. It was easy to make excuses, especially with Aria’s hopeful encouragement, but the reality was that the truth would hurt no matter when I revealed it. “What about you? There’s no one in your life who you wouldn’t want to know about us? Your dad? All the girls who are in love with you?”

“If you think I have the slightest shit to give about strangers, you don’t know me as well as I thought you did.”

“They’re practically a part of your gym, Liam,” I argued. “They fund your trainees.

“They might make a couple things easier, but my gym will stay on its feet as long as A.J, Max and I are there to hold it up, you know that. You know I don’t need anyone else to keep my business running, so don’t use that as a goddamned excuse to keep yourself miserable,” Liam snarled. His words stung so viciously I wanted to shove him.

“What about your family
,
for God’s sake? Your
dad?
”

“Let him think what he thinks, Sasha! I don’t give a flying fuck.”

“Well, I do,” I argued. “And even more than that, I give a shit what my mom thinks!”

“For the last fucking time, why?” Liam shouted, the rage in his voice igniting flames under my skin.

“You know why!” I screamed. “You know, so stop trying to make me say it!”

His face was inches from mine now. I tried to push him away but he refused to let it go. “Say it. Just fucking say it, Sasha, so you can hear how goddamned ridiculous it sounds!”

“You’re just trying to torture me – ”

“
Say it
.”

“I don’t want to look like some
serial offender
, okay, Liam?” I broke down in hysterical tears. But Liam didn’t console me. He pulled back and shook his head in disgust, and it only made me sob harder.

“There’s no fucking way you can believe that, Sasha. Is that what you think this is?”

“Of course not, but in my mother’s eyes, that’s what it is, Liam. In her eyes, I have a problem, okay? I’m sick. And I know she’s wrong but you know what, it still fucking hurts me. I still want her to hold me and kiss me and just
like
me the way she used to. I want to feel like I have a family, and there’s no doing that if my mom thinks I jumped from sleeping with my stepfather to my stepbrother!”

“You can’t possibly fucking compare me with him!” Liam hissed. “You can’t fucking put me in the same breath as that piece of shit.”

“Liam, I am
not
, I’m speaking from my mother’s – ”

“He was the one who was sick, Sasha. He was the grown fucking adult who took advantage of a fifteen-year-old, and your mother
knows
that, but she won’t admit it because her life is a whole lot easier when she’s blameless and you’re the scapegoat, which is fucking revolting and infuriating, but the worst part of it, Sash, is that you
let
her treat you like this. You’re not that girl anymore. You’re a grown woman and you deserve to live for yourself. I swear you do. Just try it. Do whatever makes you happy,” Liam implored, emotion rising in his voice. “As long as you’re not hurting anyone, fuck the rest of the world – including Riley or your mother or anyone else who thinks they can live freely at your expense. Fucking try it, Sasha,” he pleaded, eyes blazing. “I swear to God, you will never go back.”

I wasn’t sure when he’d pulled me back to him, but I was clinging to his body like I’d never let go. I cried against his chest, but I barely made any sound.

“What can I fucking do? What can I do to show you, Sash?” Liam’s whisper was soft but urgent. “Tell me. I’m begging you right now, if there’s anything you think will help, I will find it. I’ll do whatever it takes to hunt it down and put it in your hands so you can have peace. I swear, Sash. Help me. Let me make you happy.”

“
You
make me happy.”

His firm grip held my cheek. “Good. But I’m not going to stop fighting for you till you want for nothing in this world, and it’s going to plague me every day of my life, so tell me. Tell me what I can do. I’ll find Owen. I’ll make him stand in front of your mother and say everything. I’ll do it.”

“Please don’t,” I whispered. “I don’t want him anywhere near my family.” Liam clenched his teeth but when he nodded in respect of my wishes, I exhaled. “There’s nothing you can do,” I lied, shaking my head. “I’ll handle it myself,” I murmured.

“That’s bullshit,” he snarled. “That’s a fucking cop-out because you don’t want to address this. What are you going to do to handle it? What?”

Something
. That part wasn’t a lie.

When we got back to the apartment, Liam went straight for the shower. I knew he was angry. I knew he didn’t believe me. “
I’ll handle it myself
” sounded like another vague promise so we could just sweep the dirt under the rug and move on. But for once, it wasn’t.

I didn’t want to invite Owen back into my life. I knew that for sure. But if I had to, I’d retrieve the letters he wrote me. The pages he’d ripped out of his diary, detailing the first day he ever saw me, and every lewd, disgusting urge he felt. I had no idea why he thought I’d want it then. Technically, I still didn’t want it now. But if I didn’t want to lose Liam, I needed to do something new. If insanity was doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results, then I was certifiably that because I’d spent ten years hoping that being nice and ladylike for my mother would win back her love. But it hadn’t and it wouldn’t, so clearly, it was time to fight fire with fire. I needed something to confront my mother with, and that something was Owen’s shameful letters. But even before I could do that, I had another obstacle to overcome. I had to simply get my hands on the letters.

With Liam’s shower still running, I went to my room and charged my phone, kneeling on the ground and feeling appropriately low as I sent a text message to Ethan.

We need to talk
.
Can I come by the apartment tomorrow?

Chapter Twenty-Four

I sat with the meter running in the cab for ten minutes, typing and deleting my text to Aria, over and over and over.

I’m at my old apartment. I had to see Ethan. Will you come spot me?

I trailed my thumb across the screen. Chewing my bottom lip, I deleted the text for the last time and tossed my phone into my bag. I wanted Aria with me, but I knew what she would say. After an immediate “on my way,” she’d also tell me to reschedule the meeting in public and wait for her, which would obviously be ideal. But what I needed from Ethan was inside my old apartment, and my plan had been to keep my need for those letters a secret, so he wouldn’t know to use them against me. I hoped to talk long enough that perhaps he’d excuse himself to use the bathroom. Maybe even take a call or get a drink from the fridge. Whatever gave me enough time to go into the bedroom, open the drawer of my old nightstand and empty the contents into my bag. It was nerve-wracking, but there was no other way to what I needed. So I just had to do it.

“Sorry about that. Thanks,” I said to the cabbie before finally climbing out of the car. Once I did, I stood frozen on the sidewalk for a couple seconds. I hadn’t been anywhere near the Upper East Side since breaking up with Ethan and moving out of his apartment. It was too risky. His family owned four luxury rentals between Seventy-First and Eighty-Sixth Street, and half their units were occupied by friends of Ethan. And since every one of those friends made his business theirs, they’d been trying constantly to get us back together since hearing we were “taking a break,” according to Ethan. In the first few weeks, I responded to their pleading Facebook messages and emails, but after their words started getting aggressive, I stopped.

And, of course, I started sleeping with Liam, which meant just about no brain space for anything else in the world.

“Miss Blakely! Long time no see,” exclaimed Franco, the doorman. “How was your vacation?”

I cocked my head for a second then smiled. “Oh. It was great, Franco. I needed it. Thank you for asking,” I replied. There was no sense in confusing him. Clearly, a vacation had been Ethan’s go-to excuse for anyone who saw me leaving the building with suitcases. I should’ve known. Anytime something happened without being done on Ethan’s terms, in his eyes, it never happened at all.

“Sasha. Hey.”

I’d barely knocked before Ethan opened the door of my old apartment wearing a blue T-shirt and sweats, looking as if he’d just gotten out of bed. I blinked, surprised, since he rarely let anyone see him unshaven with his hair less than perfect. Of course, the one person who ever got to see that side was myself. A part of me was glad that I wasn’t about to get the showy version of him with his signature brand fakeness and bravado, but another part of me wished he wouldn’t still treat me so familiarly, like I was still his fiancée.

“Hi.” The greeting I finally returned was stiff. “Can I come in?”

“Sasha, come on. Obviously.”

“Thank you,” I muttered, trying not to look outwardly panicked by the fact that I was stepping into what felt like a time capsule of the loneliest years of my life. It still smelled like the ground coffee beans I’d poured in little pots and put in every room, because the scent reminded me of Aria’s house. Next to the coat rack, there was still those bags full of clothes Ethan refused to return, because he didn’t see what was wrong with replacing my wardrobe without asking. In the living room, the leather sectional was still there, the left side still sagging from where I slept every night, waiting ages for Ethan to come home. 

But my stomach went cold when I saw the one new addition – a dog crate in the corner, right outside the door of our bedroom. There was a pink leash inside along with a chewed toy. I turned to Ethan with wide eyes.

“You didn’t.”

He was in the kitchen now, preparing two lattes with the two thousand dollar espresso machine his parents bought for my twenty-third birthday. I shook my head as he broke into a smile, pouring a measured teaspoon of brown sugar into my drink.

“I did, baby.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

He didn’t retort as I’d imagined he would. Instead, Ethan pressed his mouth into a line as he brought the lattes over, nodding for me to take a seat on the couch. Breathing steady, I reminded myself of why I had come here. It wasn’t to curse Ethan out or remind him that he’d treated me like shit. I was trying to get into my old bedroom, preferably without him following me, and I was trying to grab the letters from Owen. For the sake of my plan, it was probably best to keep things at least civil. So I joined him on the couch.

“I can’t believe you adopted her.”

“Daisy. That was what you called her.”

“Yeah.” I shifted uncomfortably. In the last five months of my relationship with Ethan, I’d become a little obsessed with the idea of having a dog. I was lonely. Admittedly, I’d caved in some ways and stopped seeing Liam as much when Ethan requested it. Before I even moaned his name in my sleep, I’d apparently talked to and seen Liam enough to make Ethan feel threatened, so he had limited me to once every week or two and shamefully, I’d agreed. Aria used to visit, of course, but Ethan didn’t like having guests sleep over, and he was averse to me sleeping over her house because it meant he’d have no one to come home to at 3AM. So often, I was alone, and eventually, I fell in love with a chubby little Shar-Pei mix I found on Instagram – rescued from an abusive home in Florida and miraculously, available for adoption barely thirty miles from us in New Jersey. Admittedly, I obsessed over Daisy. She was part pug, part something else, and so cute I did a week-and-a-half of dog-owning research complete with Excel-made expense sheets and lists of companies that walked and babysat for when Ethan wanted to go on vacation.

But he shut down my proposal before I could begin and barely looked at my research before tossing it aside and laughing. He said he wasn’t a dog person, that wouldn’t change, and that I should let it go. Of course, every time he wanted something from me, he’d dangle Daisy in front of my nose. “If you help me host a dinner for my new clients, I’ll think about adopting that dog – especially if it’s really good,” or, “If you help my brother spy on Ashley at her bachelorette, I’ll start thinking seriously about Daisy.”

Like an idiot, I did all those things. And he never got Daisy.

Apparently not till now.

“Where is she?” I asked quietly. I had only ever become obsessed with Daisy because of how lonely I was, but still, I couldn’t help the excitement building in my bones.

“She’s with the neighbors right now. Remember the Colemans in 5J?”

“Yes.”

“She has playdates with their lab sometimes,” Ethan said, watching me closely because he knew I was dying to gasp and coo and act like the girlfriend he remembered. “Anyway, I dropped her off downstairs for a bit so you could come in and we could concentrate on talking before getting, you know, crazy excited over the puppy.”

My stomach flipped at the word “puppy.” God, it was such a cheap shot, but I had to hand it to Ethan – he knew how to manipulate me. He always had.

“So what exactly did you want to talk about, Sasha?” Ethan asked, leaning sideways against the couch, his latte resting on his knee as he gazed expectantly at me. I looked away, hating how familiar it felt to sit with him in this room. Even more, I hated that I had to keep this a secret from Liam. On top of the discomfort of even being in my old apartment, I was wrestling shame, guilt and fear all at once.

“Well.” I took a sip of my latte to stall, realizing I had no idea what I really wanted to say. “I thought it’d be best for us to get some closure. Considering what happened the last time we saw each other.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Ethan blurted straightaway. I was surprised, having expected him to grin or smirk or say something about how I looked too good for him not to touch. Instead, he raked his hand through his blonde hair and held a frustrated handful as he shook his head. “That was… Christ, that was so fucked up.
I
was so fucked up. And I’ve been wanting to apologize to you for that, but you blocked my number and Aria refused to put me in contact with you. Which I get. I acted like a piece of shit and I was drunk, but that’s no excuse. I just hope that you believe me when I say that I’ve felt like garbage every day since that happened. It was a turning point for me, and I’ve been taking steps since then – to become more like the man you’ve always wanted me to be.”

My nose wrinkled instinctively at his hopeful words. I forced myself to make a neutral face, but I couldn’t believe he still thought that we were on some kind of break – that we weren’t actually broken up. I wanted to laugh in his face and tell him I was too smart to fall for his epiphany speech, or be his girlfriend ever again. But I didn’t. Instead, I nodded, expertly hiding the look of disgust that wanted so desperately to crawl onto my face.

“So adopting Daisy was step one of being a changed man, I’m guessing.”

“Yes.” Ethan flashed me half of that cocky grin of his. “Did I do good?”

I ignored his question to ask my own. “Can I see her yet?”

“You wanna come downstairs with me to get her? I’m sure the Colemans would love to see you. Bridget keeps asking when you’ll visit for another girl’s night. We could even do that double date night we only ever talked about.”

“Ethan,” I started warningly.

“What – too fast? Sorry. Thought I could trick you into thinking you were my fiancée again,” he joked, his laugh almost sheepish. I wrangled my revulsion.

“No, it’s just… I don’t want to go down there and spend two hours catching up with Bridget. It’s a little too much today. But I do really want to see Daisy,” I said, managing to crack a laugh. “Can you please just go get her? You have to realize that I’m dying here.”

“Oh, I’m aware,” Ethan grinned. “And it was all part of the plan to win you back.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll sit here. Just get her.”

“Fine. But only because you asked so nicely,” Ethan grinned.

I chuckled for him. But the second he was out the door, I went for the bedroom. My pulse went from steady to pounding in a second as I shut the door behind me, making a beeline for my nightstand. Tearing open the drawer, my heart nearly jumped out my throat because I immediately spotted the letters, neatly stacked and bound together with a green rubber band. But they were buried under all my other junk, so digging through, I grabbed them, slamming the drawer shut right away and returning to the living room.

I was shoving the letters in my purse when the front door swung open.

“Hey.” Ethan stared at me, clearly having caught a glimpse of the letters before I put them away. “Forgot her leash,” he said slowly, eyeing me. “What was that?” He stood still as he let the door close behind him. I knew I looked like a deer in headlights, and I knew that every second that passed without an answer only made me look worse.

“It was my diary,” I blurted as he came toward me, eyes on the purse that I clutched to my chest. “I’m sorry, I had to grab it. I was just embarrassed it was here – I was afraid you might read it and I only wanted it back so I could throw it –
Ethan!
” I gasped as he grabbed my bag, yanking with all his might. I fought back, hugging it to my body and trying to twist away from him. It didn’t work. I cried out as I found myself flying to the ground, though my hands and knees had barely smacked the hardwood before I was up again and lunging.

“Give them to me!” I seethed, fighting his instant grip on my wrist as I went at him, reaching for the letters.

“What are these, huh? Love letters to Liam?” he demanded, holding the envelopes high above my head. “God, you’re so fucking ridiculous about this stupid crush, Sasha. I can’t fucking believe this,” he snarled, shoving me furiously toward the door. Before I knew it, he threw it open and flung me out like a trash bag, slamming the door in my face.

“Ethan!” I pounded on it, listening to the sounds of him tearing the envelopes open from the other side. “
Ethan!
You have
no
right to read those!”

“Tell me more about what I have the right to do in my own fucking house,” Ethan muttered, though he trailed off as clearly, he started reading. Panicking in the hall, I tried to think of what moves I had left. When he swung the door open again, I burst into tears I wasn’t sure if I was even faking or not.

“Ethan,” I pleaded. “If you want to know the truth, I just need to show those to my mom, and then I need to burn them. That’s it. That’s all I want, and it has nothing to do with you or us or Liam. I just need those for me. You know what happened with Owen, you
know
everything with me and my mom, and if you ever loved me at any point, Ethan, you’d let me try to get some closure on that part of my life, so please hand those letters back to me. Please.”

Ethan’s wild eyes flickered down at the letters in his hand. He was calming down, visibly thinking. Finally, his jaw went slack as he let out a sigh. “Fine. Have them.” He held out the letter in his hand. I breathed out hard, but just as I reached for it, he snatched them away. “Actually, no. You don’t get to have them just yet,” he said, tucking the letters behind his back.

“Damn it, give them to me now,” I demanded shakily. When I started into the apartment, he stood in my way.