Page 59 of The Gathering
Big G’s voice inside her dropped her to her knees.
Don’t hold that in, Cat,he admonished in all his adorable gentleness.Let it go.
Cat didn’t need to be told twice. She let it go. Boy did she let it go.
****
Ethan stood at the bathroom sink. Staring into it.
“Cat’s waiting on the deck,” Big G said. “It’s time.”
It was. And he’d never be ready for it.
He turned on the water and splashed his face with cold water, his skin on fire. He filled his hands and doused his head next, then chest, wishing it was colder.
“You need to prepare, Ethan.”
“There is no preparing for this,” he muttered, shaking the water from his hands.
“You will learn things that are difficult to accept.”
“Stop, Big G,” he said. “Please.”
He headed out of the bathroom, not wanting anything but whatever there was. He’d accepted the worst while praying for what felt impossible and wrong. Her somehow still loving him. Even if he couldn’t make it fit logically in his reality, he still wanted it more than the air in his lungs.
His muscles seized at hearing crying. “Fuck,” he whispered, pacing in the kitchen as the sound of her fucking agony ripped him to shreds and filled him with a burning, self-loathing acid.
He’d done this.
“What’s happening?” he whispered, winded as he braced the counter. “What do I do?”
“Go to her.”
“And do what?”
“Be what you are to her.”
He looked up. “And what the fuckis that?”
“A husband. A lifeline.”
Ethen pushed off the counter and grabbed the doorhandle.
One. Two. Three.
Breathe.
He turned it and opened it slowly.
Her sobs silenced almost instantly.
Fuck. “Cat?”
“Hey,” she answered in that sweet fucking tone, cramming all her pain back inside.
Seeing her hit his body like fucking kryptonite, filling him with a crushing hunger to touch her.
“Let’s get this over with,” Cat said, her words a sledgehammer to his chest.
