He Thought I’d Never Leave Chapter 09
Ethan didn’t go.
He checked into a small guesthouse across the street. Every morning at seven, he was crouched outside my gallery, waiting.
Sometimes I walked along the beach. Sometimes I went to the grocery store in town.
He followed at a distance—never quite close, never quite far.
He bought a huge bouquet of white hydrangeas and left it at the gallery door with a note.
I didn’t take them.
He asked around, found out I loved the almond croissants from a bakery in town, stood in line for forty minutes, and left a box on my doorstep.
I stepped around it.
Winter rain started falling in Carmel.
He stood under an awning across the street, drenched to the bone, holding an umbrella out.
When I came out of the gallery, he crossed over in two strides and held the umbrella over my head. “Don’t get wet.”
I glanced at him and stepped out from under it.
“Ethan. Go home.”
“I’m not going.”
“What about your company? What about your son with Claire?”
“I don’t want any of it.” His eyes were bloodshot. “I don’t want any of it. I only want you.”
I stopped walking. I laughed softly.
“But I don’t want you.”
“You disgust me.”
He froze.
That night he drank himself sick. He pounded on the door of my guesthouse, drunk, sobbing my name.
“Emily! I was wrong! I know I was wrong! Please, just come out and see me once!”
“I’ll never see her again! I don’t want anything else!”
I stood at the second-floor window and looked down. The streetlamp stretched his shadow long and thin.
He was crouched on the ground, shoulders shaking. He looked like an abandoned dog.
But nothing in me softened anymore.
The next morning when I stepped out, he was leaning against the frame of my gallery door. Mud caked his knees. His lips were cracked and bleeding.
He pulled himself up against the wall, staggered forward.
“Emily. Tell me what to do. Anything. What do I have to do for you to forgive me?”
I looked at his face and said, one word at a time:
“Ethan. You don’t have to do anything.”
“We can’t go back.”