“Ethan.”
Ethan doesn’t hesitate: He rises to his feet and picks up his plate. Calum sighs as his brother scrapes the peas into the garbage bin. As soon as Ethan has left the room, Natalie turns to her oldest son.
“I never hated the fact you married Loretta,” she says quietly. “I just wanted you to be careful. All I knew about the girl was what you told me, and you never told me much. You kept her close to your chest. I know you loved her, Calum, but…”
“But?”
Natalie sighs and sits in the chair Ethan vacated. “But I don’t think she was very good for you. Not toward the end. When Georgie told me Loretta had gone off to college, I—”
“You what? Expected her to break up with me?”
“Long-distance relationships hardly ever work, Calum.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?”
Calum opens his mouth to say something, anything, but he can’t argue. His mother is right. His long-distance relationshipcrashed and burned, despite his best efforts and deepest wishes. He’d tried, but Rett had given up on them. And now…
Now he’s divorced.
He’s signed the papers he spent so long refusing to sign, denying their existence despite knowing they were in his safe. He’s left them there for six long years, but now they’re in Rett’s possession. She’ll file them, and they’ll be no more.
It isn’t fair, he thinks as he takes the stairs two at a time. It isn’t fair that Rett is doing this to them—tohim. They were so good. They loved each other deeply. Enough to marry at eighteen with a simple band he’d borrowed money from Georgie to afford. She hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t said. He thought what he and Rett had would last forever, and it isn’t fair that it hasn’t.
He has to get out of here.
“Cal.”
He turns with one hand on the handle of his truck door. Ethan runs to the passenger side of the truck and grins at his older brother through two panes of glass. Rolling his eyes, Calum unlocks his door and slides onto the bench-seat. Leaning over, he pulls the lock up, and Ethan yanks open the door. The roar of the engine drowns out the sound of evening birds, and the younger Wilson hurriedly buckles his seatbelt. Calum meets his mother’s gaze where she stands in the window of their second-story apartment, then he reverses from the parking spot and drives away.
Ethan chatters on about what’s new in Las Vegas, about his baseball team and his friends and even school. Calum listens with one ear, his curiosity piquing when his brother falls silent. Cheeks flushing, Ethan turns his face toward the window, his hand tapping out a staccato beat on his thigh. Calum stifles a smile; he remembers the awkwardness of being fourteen, of having crushes and first girlfriends. He doesn’t push Ethan totalk. Instead, he tunes his radio to the familiar hard rock station, turns it up, and drives on.
“How come we never met her?” Ethan asks after fifteen minutes of Calum driving aimlessly.
“Who?”
“Loretta.” From the corner of his eye, Calum sees Ethan shrug. “I just thought we’d meet the girl you married at some point.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“How come?”
“Because… Because the relationship ended six years ago.”
Ethan frowns and angles himself toward Calum. “But—”
“Sorry, E-man, but I don’t feel like talking about this.”
Calum’s grip tightens on the steering wheel, and he glares out the windshield and keeps his foot on the accelerator.
Talking about Rett to anyone in Oak Creek is impossible, but to speak of her to his family who’s never met her? The ones who only seem to think the worst of her? That’s intolerable. He knows his family. Even if they don’t say it, they never approved of his relationship with Rett, and that hasn’t changed with the divorce.
Ethan doesn’t ask about Rett again while they sit on the hood of the truck and eat ice cream. In fact, he barely speaks at all, even as Calum drives them back to their mother’s apartment. Calum wants to apologize, wants to tell his little brother everything if only to get the dejected expression off Ethan’s face. But he can’t. There are things about the situation that Ethan won’t understand—not until he’s older. Not until he’s fallen in love and had his heart broken.
Midnight finds Calum still awake on the couch, and not for the lump in the middle. He tried for too long to pretend Rett wasn’t finished with them, that she’d made a mistake when filing for divorce without talking to him. But he can’t lie to himselfanymore: She did what was best for her. She was—is—selfish, and there is no use in denying it.
Now, he figures, all he can do is move forward and pretend he still has a heart in his chest, one that hasn’t been torn asunder.
