Page 27 of You for Her (The Edge of Retaliation 2)
“Five minutes,” I mutter. “Not a second longer.”
He nods.
I don’t move to sit or go inside. I stay standing right where I am and wait. I don’t know if I’m ready to hear what he’s going to say to me, but at the same time, part of me has been desperate to know this story from the moment I found out who they were. I want to know all of it, even if it hurts.
“I grew up with Tanner, Andrea, and Celia,” Ethan tells me. “I lived just down the road, and Tanner was my best friend in school. Celia, she was like the little sister I never had. I had a hard upbringing, things weren’t always easy for me, but that family made me feel like I had a home, always. They kept me afloat during times when I had nothing, when I thought I was going to sink.”
I swallow but say nothing, just hold his eyes. Emotionless.
“When Celia died, it was hard. It was hard on everyone. Tanner was away serving, and the two of us hadn’t spoken for a few months because I didn’t go with him. Their parents were going through a really hard time. Then they lost Celia. In the most tragic way. When Tanner came home and found out what happened, he went into a rage. He wanted revenge. He wanted you to suffer. You took away the only thing in this world Tanner Yates has ever truly cared about.”
“Why?” I ask, my voice husky. “Why did he care about her so much?”
“Because he had to protect her. Because she looked up to him. Because without her, he wasn’t complete. They had an incredible bond, if someone picked on Celia, Tanner would bring them down in any way he could. If Celia was unhappy, Tanner would go to great lengths to make her happy. She brought this light into his life. She had this spirit that was so … pure. The two of them were close, but only he could tell you more in-depth why that was.”
I nod, crossing my arms, trying to keep a barrier up between us, even though my chest is aching and my stomach is doing flip flops.
“When Celia died, he lost it. He just … lost it. As I said, he wanted you to suffer. He wanted you to pay for taking her away. When we found out where you were getting locked up, he saw it as a chance for me to get in and create the ultimate revenge plan. I could be your guard. I could make sure you didn’t have it easy. When you got out, he would make sure you never lived a happy moment in your life again, so you knew what it would feel like for him, what it feels like for him every day.”
I swallow what feels like a hard lump stuck in my throat. I close my eyes and take a deep shaky breath, emotions that I can’t quite process radiating through my body.
“It was an accident,” I whisper.
“I know,” Ethan tells me. “Within a few weeks of getting to know you, I could see that the person you had been painted as, was not correct. I believed your story. I saw the truth in your eyes. I knew that you weren’t bad, and that you weren’t at fault. I told them that I wasn’t going to keep helping them, and I pulled away. I swear to you, I stopped. I made sure you were protected. Tanner disowned me, and we stopped speaking.”
I rub my hands down my face and murmur, “You could have told me, Ethan. All those times I told you things were happening to me, you could have told me. You chose to let them keep doing those things.”
Ethan nods, his face solemn. “Yeah, I know. Because they’re my family, because I know how broken Tanner is, because I thought maybe I could change it. I didn’t want them to get into trouble for it. I didn’t want them to hurt you. It was messed up.”
“I had a right to be warned. I had a right to know that the man I thought I was dating was only doing it to hurt me.”
“I tried to tell you to stay away from him.”
I shake my head, laughing bitterly. “You could have tried a little harder. You could have just told me what they were doing. You owed me that.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, I did owe you that. Look, I never meant to let you get hurt. I never meant to lie to you. Those people, they walked me through the worst times in my life, I felt like I owed them. I felt like I had betrayed them as it was, and let my family down, but then at the same time I really cared about you and … it was fucked, Callie. If you have any idea what it was like for me …”
