Chapter 54
Emily's POV
I pulled back just enough to look up at Ethan, and the rawness in his expression made my eyes sting. "For not responding to your message. For avoiding you. For being a coward who doesn't know how to—" I stopped, trying to find the right words, but they all felt inadequate. "For making you feel like you don't matter. Because you do. You matter so much it scares me."
He was quiet for a long moment, his hands still resting on my back, and when he finally spoke his voice was softer but no less intense. "Are you still planning to run away from this? From us?"
I shook my head, and to my surprise I meant it. "No."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
He exhaled shakily and pulled me back into his chest, and we stood there under the streetlamp while the warm May air settled around us and I tried not to think about how close I'd come to losing this, to losing him, because of my own stupid inability to balance ambition with actual human connection.
After a minute he guided us over to the bench. We sat down and he kept one arm around me like he was afraid I'd disappear if he let go. Maybe I would have, two days ago. Maybe I still wanted to, just a little, because sitting here with him meant confronting the fact that I'd hurt him and that hurt didn't just evaporate because I'd apologized.
"You quit Luciano's," he said, not quite a question but not quite a statement either.
I nodded. "Yeah. Finals are coming up and I needed time to study."
He was quiet for a beat, and then his voice sharpened slightly. "Last semester you dealt with finals by asking for time off, not by quitting your job. You still gonna keep doing this thing where you only tell me half the truth?"
The question stung because it was accurate.
I'd been doing that for weeks now—giving him just enough information to keep him from asking too many questions, but never the full picture, never the part that would reveal how fundamentally I was prioritizing everything else over him.
And maybe that had worked when we were first dating, when the relationship was new enough that he didn't push back, but we were past that now and he deserved better than my carefully edited version of reality.
I took a breath and made myself say it. "I'm doing the summer internship at The Echelon House. Starting after finals. And after that... I probably won't have time to come back to Luciano's."
His expression didn't change but I felt him tense slightly beside me. "That's Alex Monroe's place, right?"
"Yeah, he said even when fall semester starts, I'll likely need to handle company stuff during my free time."
"You know he's into you, right?"
The bluntness of it caught me off guard. I twisted to look at him fully, trying to gauge if this was jealousy or genuine concern or some combination of both. "It's not like that. Alex is from this whole legacy family but he's getting pushed out by the board, and The Echelon House is basically failing, and he genuinely needs good people. He's not offering me the internship because he wants to sleep with me, he's offering it because I can actually help him. He needs me."
Ethan held my gaze for a long moment, his eyes searching mine for something I wasn't sure I could give him. Then he said, very quietly, "I need you too."
My chest tightened. I looked away, focusing on a spot somewhere over his shoulder because looking directly at him felt like staring into the sun. "I know, but that's...that's different."
"How is it different?"
The question hung in the air between us, and I didn't know how to answer it without sounding like exactly the selfish, ambitious asshole he probably thought I was.
How was I supposed to explain that Alex's need for me felt safe because it was transactional, professional, something I could quantify and measure and control, whereas Ethan's need for me felt like standing on the edge of a cliff with no idea how far the drop went?
How could I admit that I was terrified of being needed in a way that had nothing to do with my skills or usefulness, that the idea of someone wanting me just because I was me—flawed and difficult and emotionally stunted—made me want to run so far and so fast that I'd never have to face what it meant?
"It's just different," I said finally, and I heard how weak it sounded, how insufficient.
"It's different because my need is one-sided, right?" His voice was sharper now, edged with frustration. "Because it's childish and inconvenient and doesn't benefit you in any tangible way, whereas his need is mutual, it's strategic, it helps you build your career. That's what you mean, isn't it?"
"No!" The word came out too loud, too desperate. I grabbed his arm, forcing him to look at me. "That's not what I meant! God, Ethan, you know that's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
I felt my eyes burning and I hated it, hated that I was on the verge of crying when he was the one who'd been hurt, when I was the one who'd caused this. "I need you too. You know I do. It's just—it's just—"
"It's just you'll never put a relationship ahead of your own future," he said quietly, finishing my sentence for me. "Because you're terrified that people change, that they leave, that the only person you can actually rely on is yourself. Right?"
The truth of it landed like a punch to the sternum. I couldn't look at him. Couldn't do anything except stare down at my hands folded in my lap.
"You already know the answer," I whispered. "So why are you asking?"
His hand found mine, warm and steady, and when he spoke his voice was softer than I deserved. "Because I'm scared too."