His eyes widen at my words and I blink away the tears I didn’t realize had started pooling in my eyes.
“I understand her a little more now, knowing that she couldn’t take you and get away from him. I still wish she had been stronger and had tried harder, but I get it.” I feel a blanket of shame settle over me as I look into his beautiful blue eyes. “I’m just as guilty as her,” I tell him as a sob escapes. His head snaps up, an emotion I can’t read plays in his eyes as he waits for me to continue. “I know what’s been going on and I’ve told no one. What kind of person does that make me, Ethan?”
“No, Blair, don’t go there, Princess. I’m the asshole here for putting this shit on you and then making you hold onto it. My dad’s right, I am a selfish little prick. I told you not to tell anyone, I made you promise. God, baby, if I’d known how much I was hurting you doing that…” He trails off, shaking his head. I watch his hands clench as he pounds his fist into the sand next to him, cussing before finally looking back to me.
“I’m sorry I’ve put this on you, you don’t deserve this.” He squeezes his eyes shut as a tear escapes and it all but breaks my already heavy heart.
The sight tips me over the edge and I cry, not just a few silent tears, but a real honest-to-god uncontrollable outburst. The look on his face makes me cry harder. He’s apologizing to me and it’s so fucked up. I’m the one who should be asking for his forgiveness. I’ve failed him.
He straightens his legs and pulls me into his lap. I cling onto his neck and cry into his shirt as he gently rocks us back and forth.
“It’s me who should apologize, Ethan,” I tell him when my breathing has calmed. “You have nothing to be sorry about, you’ve been dealt a completely horrendous hand in life. The people that should protect you haven’t and you need to believe me when I tell you that it’s not your fault. You can’t think like that. Please trust what I’m telling you.”
He squeezes me slightly burying his face in my hair. He kisses my head and then moves to place a kiss against my ear and then my jaw, making his way around to my lips. I can taste the saltiness of our tears and he cups my face and lets his lips fall from mine. Our foreheads are pressed together and I’m dizzy with the sensation of his kiss mingled with the emotional intensity of the moment.
“I love you,” he breathes out so low that I can’t be sure that I didn’t just imagine it.
I pull my head back to look at him and before I can breathe a single word his lips are on mine again, moving so slow and tenderly that I know I heard him. I can feel the love that he’s pouring into this kiss and I let it wash over me. My body melts against his as he drops his hands to my waist. He pulls me closer and then snakes them up and down my back. I’m not sure if we spend minutes or even hours like that, but when we pull away I’m breathless. I open my mouth to tell him that I feel the same but he speaks before I have a chance.
“I think I knew the moment I first noticed you sitting in the library waiting on me. You’re like this amazingly beautifully blinding light that has drawn me out of my own darkness. I was living in a constant state of numbness and I thought it was fine to go on like that. I didn’t realize it was possible for another person to make me feel the way that you do. You changed that for me. I love you so damn much.”
I smile as he lifts me from his lap and then places me in front of him and brushes the sand from my legs. I desperately want to tell him that I love him, too, but the words don’t seem enough after his declaration. I need him to know that I’m not just saying it in response to him saying it first.
“Come on, Princess, it's getting cold, let’s get back to the car.” He takes my hand as we walk across the beach in silence. My mind is desperately trying to formulate the words to let him know, to show him that my feelings run so much deeper than what those three little words can describe. I need to make him feel the way he’s just made me feel, and ‘I love you’ just doesn’t seem adequate anymore.
I PULL UP to the curb and turn off the ignition. The drive back to Blair’s has been mostly silent and subdued, the gravity of the day’s events looming over us like a thick heavy black rain cloud.
“You can stay here tonight. I’m sure I can talk my mom into it, although it will mean you sleeping in the guest room?” she says, looking pensive.
I want to tell her yes, that I want nothing more than to stay here with her and not return to the messed up situation I walked away from a few hours ago. I know I can’t, though. It would cause too many questions that I don’t have answers for yet. As much as I hate the idea, I need to go home. I’ll keep up the pretense that everything is normal until I can process this thing properly.