جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 188

ETHAN'S POVI woke up reaching for her before I even opened my eyes.My hand found a cold empty space where she should have been, and for a second I told myself she'd just gotten up to stretch her legs, maybe walked down to the water's edge to watch the sunrise. I sat up fast, scanning the tree line, the empty bench, the flat gray surface of the lake with nothing moving on it at all.She was gone.Not gone-for-a-minute gone as her side the mat was cold enough to tell me she'd been gone a while.I called her twice before I even stood up all the way, my thumb clumsy against the screen. Straight to voicemail. I told myself there were a dozen reasonable explanations. Her phone had died or she'd walked home for something ordinary and simply forgotten to grab it, same as she had the night before. I've never been good at believing my own reasonable explanations when it came to her.I thought of going to her but then I remembered I had a meeting that morning I couldn't move, investors were fl

Song Recommendation: Train wreck by James Author ETHAN'S POV I almost turned around twice before I made it to her door. Five days of silence will do that to a man. Make him rehearse a hundred versions of a conversation in his car, then abandon every single one of them the second his hand actually lands on the door handle. I told myself I wasn't going to push. I told myself that the whole drive over. Somewhere between her my house and this bakery, I stopped believing it. The bell rang before I'd even finished deciding what to say. "We're closed," she called out but didn't turn. Then she did turn, and I watched every ounce of color drain sideways out of her face. "Oh. Hi, Ethan." Bright and brittle, a voice built to hold a door shut. "What.. what are you doing here?" I asked her straight out if she was avoiding me. But I already knew the answer. Some part of me had known it since her mother stood in that doorway, sighing like she'd been carrying a lie too heavy to hold anymore.

ETHAN'S POV "Come on, Ethan, at least look like you're having fun. You're supposed to be the face of this whole expansion." My business partner Luke said it low, leaning toward me over his glass, nodding at the room like it was mine to enjoy. Rooftop bar, the whole city glittering out past the railing, a crowd of investors and their guests mixing brand of expensive perfume with expensive liquor. I'd been standing in the same spot for twenty minutes holding a drink I hadn't touched. "I'm having plenty of fun," I said, which was a lie neither of us believed. It's been three months of this. Three months of rooms exactly like it, cities blurring into one long string of good lighting and better small talk, my face apparently now familiar enough that some magazine had slotted me into a list of the city's most eligible bachelors a few weeks back. Luke had framed the page and hung it in his office, which he thought was hilarious. I hadn't found much of anything funny lately. A woman,

ARIA'S POV The smoke alarm went off before the turkey even finished resting. I found Flynn standing on a kitchen chair, waving a dish towel at the ceiling like he could argue the beeping into silence, our daughter propped on his hip and shrieking with delight at the noise instead of being scared of it the way any sensible baby would be. "It's the rolls," he said, not looking at me. "I think. Or the thing in the oven. One of the things." "Which thing, Flynn." "The bread thing." "That was supposed to be dinner rolls." "They still might be edible." I climbed up next to him, silenced the alarm, and opened the oven to a tray of what could generously be called charcoal. He had the decency to look only mildly ashamed. "I'm sorry?” He said, leaning his head to one side. Then he brought Hazel up to his face and mimicked her. “Daddy said he is sorry. You should forgive him?” I let out a small laugh at his silliness “Daddy insisted on helping.” “Well… He really did try” He said in t