( continuation from previous chapter )
The silence between us answered before I ever could.
Ethan lowered his head and let out a slow breath. Not the kind that came from frustration. The kind that came from someone who had been holding onto something and had finally accepted they needed to put it down.
"I thought so," he said.
There was no triumph in it. He sounded like someone watching the last reasonable explanation dissolve.
"I kept telling myself there had to be a reason," he continued. "That maybe you'd been protecting someone. That there was something I wasn't seeing." A faint shake of his head. "But if Felix had never come back, you would've carried this through the rest of our lives."
"You're right," I said.
The words hurt more than anything else I had said since walking through his door.
"I kept waiting for the perfect moment to tell you." A short bitter sound escaped me. "It never came because it never existed."
"No," he said quietly. "It didn't."
