Chapter 10
I looked at Ethan for a very long time.
“You’re asking me to marry you because my mother needs treatment?”
“No.”
He answered immediately.
Then, with startling honesty, he said, “I have selfish reasons.”
“What selfish reasons?”
He gave a soft, humorless smile.
“I like you enough to want to keep you. And if we get married, Tyler will finally give up.”
He glanced away for one brief second before looking back at me.
“I can’t stand the way he looks at you. Even though he’s my brother, there are moments I want to tear him apart.”
It was the first time Ethan had shown me his possessiveness so plainly.
I had felt it before, hidden beneath his gentleness, tucked inside every careful thing he did for me. But now it stood in front of me without disguise.
And strangely, I didn’t recoil.
Because his honesty felt cleaner than everyone else’s pretending.
Still, marriage was not a decision I could make standing outside a hospital.
“This is serious,” I said. “I need time.”
“I’ll wait.”
And he did.
The very next day he quietly arranged additional caregivers for my mom to lighten my load. After that, I made a deliberate effort to see him less. I didn’t want to keep him hanging on false hope. But I also refused to rush into something that permanent without understanding him better.
So one afternoon, when he picked me up from the hospital, I asked the question that mattered most.
“Why me?”
He drove for a while before answering.
Then he said, “Before the dreams, I assumed I’d stay alone forever.”
“That’s ridiculous. Women probably line up for you.”
He smiled faintly. “That doesn’t mean I ever wanted any of them.”
I waited.
He kept his eyes on the road.
“I’m the eldest son. Since I was old enough to think, my life had one purpose. Be excellent. Be useful. Be reliable. Be what the family needed.”
“And Tyler?”
“I envied him.”
I turned to look at him. “You envied Tyler?”
“I never raced cars. Never got drunk. Never made mistakes loudly.” His voice stayed calm, but the words landed heavy. “Even during social events, I clung to the last thread of self-control. Before you, I had never been in love.”
Something about that made my chest ache.
Ethan Crawford looked perfect from the outside.
But perfection is often just another word for pressure with expensive tailoring.
Then he said quietly, “Before the dreams, I had severe anxiety.”
I blinked.
That was the last thing I expected.
“My family didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t want them to worry. At one point I couldn’t sleep without medication.”
He smiled a little then, as if remembering something absurdly dear.
“And then you appeared.”
I stayed silent.
“You talked too much,” he said. “About classes. Cafeteria food. Professors. Petty campus gossip. The weather. Whatever crossed your mind.”
I narrowed my eyes. “That sounds rude.”
“It saved me.”
That shut me up.
He continued, voice low.
“Little by little, I started sleeping again. The anxiety eased. I looked forward to night. I looked forward to you.”
By then the car had reached the parking lot outside my building. The engine cut off, but neither of us moved.
“Then later,” he said, eyes dropping briefly, “I liked you even more.”
I almost laughed. “Because the dreams got less innocent?”
“I’m a healthy heterosexual man, Claire.”
The sheer seriousness with which he said it made me laugh anyway.
He watched me laugh like it was something precious.
Then he said, “You gave me a future again. How should I thank you for that?”
I tilted my head. “What are my options?”
“Anything.”
An hour later, our clothes were a little less orderly than before.
We were still fixing ourselves in the parked car when someone knocked on the tinted window.
I turned.
Tyler.
Of course.
He couldn’t see through the tint from outside, but he clearly knew whose car it was. And apparently he also knew I was inside.
His jaw was tight as Ethan lowered the window.
Tyler’s eyes swept the back seat once.
They immediately turned bloodshot.
“That’s your boyfriend?”
Ethan didn’t bother pretending.
He and I were both seated in the back, close enough that no explanation in the world would have saved anyone.
Tyler looked like he was actively dying.
“How long?”
Ethan answered before I could.
“Recently, three months. If you want the fuller answer, before you.”
Tyler stared at him. “Before me?”
“Strictly speaking,” Ethan said, with lethal calm, “you were the later arrival.”
That was cruel.
Accurate, but cruel.
Tyler looked at me with the expression of a man discovering the earth was not stable beneath his feet.
“So you two were playing me?”
“No,” I said. “We were not.”
I gave him the simplest version possible.
“Your brother and I were internet friends.”
Tyler let out a hollow laugh. “Right. Online dating. Great. So I’m the idiot who brought you two into real life.”
“Something like that.”
He slammed a fist against the side of the car, furious and hurt and humiliated all at once.
Ethan opened his mouth to speak, but I touched his arm.
“This part is mine.”
Then I looked at Tyler and spoke as gently as I could manage.
“I rejected you three times. I was very clear. I don’t owe you the details of my private life.”
His face twisted.
“A year ago, when you used me to make Ava jealous, did you explain any of that to me?” I asked. “At the reunion, when you knew I’d be targeted, did you warn me? When Ava and her friends tore my dress, what did you do? You told me to apologize.”
Every word hit him harder than the last.
“So no,” I said. “You don’t get to demand honesty from me now.”
Tyler looked like he wanted to argue.
Instead, he looked like he might break.
Ethan tossed him a set of car keys.
Tyler caught them automatically and stared down at them in confusion.
“We’re settling this,” Ethan said.
My stomach dropped.
That tone meant trouble.
And trouble, unfortunately, was exactly where they were headed.