Page 181 of Vows We Never Made

Everything I stressed about.

Everything I tried to believe was irrational, coming out to play.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” I tell him, “but what gives you the right to take it out on me?”

“I warned you. I told you to leave several times.”

“And Margot warned me aboutyou.She said you back out the second things get real. And maybe I’m projecting, but that doesn’t give you the right to crumple me up and throw me away like a dirty tissue.”

“This conversation is over.” He shakes his head, striding to the door.

“No, it’s not. Ethan!” I hop down and chase after him. “You know what you could have done tonight? You could have been an adult and talked to me.”

Ethan throws open a side door that leads out to the path winding down to the rainy beach.

Pine trees ripple, bending in the wind.

The rain savages on the paved walkway with punishing impacts.

And he just keeps walking into the mess.

Away from me.

Away fromus.

Away from giving me a flipping explanation.

“It doesn’t have to be like this!” I yell after him—scream, really, forcing the words out so harshly they scrape my throat raw.

And I can feel the panic hardening.

This was always the ending I feared.

Ethan, flippantly walking away after grinding me into the dust.

“You can be better than this, you big idiot! You don’t have to be an emotionally stuntedcavemanwho shuts down and runs from his problems. If I was actually good enough for you, you’d know that. You’dknow!”

The words hang in the air, suspended in the rain.

But I don’t even know if he can hear me.

Then another lightning bolt splits the night and thunder interrupts us.

I gasp when I see him turning around and striding back, his face furious and too close. Water drips from his hair, jet-black and shadowed, and his eyes gleam like volcanic stone.

I want to choke on my words, claw them back.

Instead, they’re out in the open, and I know he heard them.

The rain soaks my hair as I wait helplessly, miserably cold for the summer.

Our wedding was supposed to be a few weeks away.

A stupid thing now, but it’s in my head and I can’t get it out.

This beautiful, complex, infuriating man won’t ever fake marry me.

Not when he’s determined to destroy himself.