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The Ghost of Six Years
POV: Maya
The text message was three words long, but it felt like a detonator.
I need you. I didn’t check the time. I didn’t grab a jacket, even though the October air in Seattle was sharp enough to draw blood. I just ran. I had been running toward Ethan Vale for six years, through his promotions, his depressions, and his endless cycle of beautiful, hollow women who treated his heart like a seasonal accessory.
I was the constant. The "safe" girl. The one who held the umbrella while he stood in the rain for someone else.
As my tires screeched into his luxury apartment complex, my heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs. This is it, I thought, a desperate, shameful hope blooming in the center of my chest. The toxicity is over. Claire is gone. Now, he’ll see me. Finally, he’ll see that the person who loves him most has been standing right here.
I used the spare key, the one he’d given me four years ago "for emergencies", and burst through the door.
"Ethan?"
The penthouse smelled of expensive bourbon and ruin. It looked like a war zone. A crystal decanter had been shattered against the floor-to-ceiling window, the amber liquid weeping down the glass like blood. Designer furniture was overturned, and silk pillows were torn.
In the center of the wreckage sat Ethan.
He was slumped against the mahogany bar, his head in his hands. He looked small. This man, who commanded boardrooms and turned heads in every room he entered, looked like a broken child.
"Maya?" His voice was a rasp, thick with liquor and grief.
"I'm here." I was across the room in seconds, dropping to my knees in the glass-strewn carpet. I didn’t care about my jeans; I only cared about the way his shoulders shook. "Ethan, talk to me. What happened?"
"She’s gone," he choked out, finally looking up. His blue eyes were bloodshot, his golden hair a chaotic mess. "She called me… she called me emotionally dead, Maya. She said I don't know how to love. She said I’m just a hollow suit."
"She’s wrong," I whispered, reaching out to cup his face. My thumbs brushed away the salt of his tears. "She never understood you. Not like I do."
He leaned into my touch, a desperate, seeking movement that made my breath hitch. For a second, the air between us charged. I could see the reflection of my own yearning in his pupils. I thought, Kiss me. Realize it’s me. Realize the search is over.
But he didn't kiss me. He collapsed forward, burying his face in the crook of my neck, sobbing into my skin.
I spent the next three hours in caretaker mode, a role I had mastered to a fault. I cleaned the glass so he wouldn't cut his feet. I made him tea he didn't drink. I eventually managed to steer him to the sofa, where he clung to my hand like a life raft.
"Don't leave," he murmured, his eyelids fluttering shut.
"I'm not going anywhere," I promised.
As he drifted into a drunken stupor, his weight heavy against my side, I allowed myself one moment of weakness. I leaned down and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his forehead.
"I love you, Ethan," I whispered into the silence of the room. "I've always loved you."
I stayed there, anchored by his weight, until my own eyes grew heavy. I fell into a light, restless sleep, dreaming of a version of Ethan that finally turned around and reached for me.
5:00 AM.
A cold draft sliced through the room, snapping me awake.
The apartment was still dark, save for the blue-gray pre-dawn light filtering through the windows. My neck was stiff, and Ethan was dead to the world, snoring softly against my shoulder. I started to shift, intending to adjust the blanket I’d thrown over us, when I froze.
I wasn't alone.
A silhouette stood in the archway of the kitchen, framed by the shadow of the hallway. He was motionless, a dark monolith that seemed to absorb what little light remained in the room.
My heart did a slow, terrified roll in my chest. "Ethan?" I whispered, even though I knew the man beside me hadn't moved.
The figure stepped forward.
The floorboards didn't creak. He moved with a predatory silence that made the hair on my arms stand up. As he entered the gray light of the living room, I realized this wasn't Ethan.
He was taller. Broader. Where Ethan was golden and polished, this man was iron and grit. He wore a black tactical jacket and dark jeans, and as he stepped closer, I saw the ink—dark, intricate tattoos that climbed up the tanned column of his throat and disappeared under his jaw. A jagged, thin scar traced a line from the corner of his left eye down to his cheekbone.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked.
His voice wasn't a rasp like Ethan’s. It was a low, vibrating growl that seemed to rattle the very bones in my chest.
I scrambled up, nearly dumping the sleeping Ethan onto the floor. I felt disheveled, my heart racing, my "emergency" dress wrinkled and stained with Ethan’s tears.
"I'm Maya," I snapped, trying to find my voice through the sudden surge of adrenaline. "I'm Ethan’s friend. I have a key. Who are you? How did you get in here?"
The man stopped three feet away. He didn't look at the mess in the room. He didn't look at his sleeping brother.
He looked at me.
His eyes were a storm-cloud gray, so piercing and perceptive that I felt suddenly, violently naked. It wasn't a sexual look; it was a diagnostic one. He was stripping away my layers, reading the desperation in my posture and the puffiness of my eyes.
"Friend, huh?" he said. His lips curved into a slow, knowing smile that didn't reach his eyes. "The kind of 'friend' who sits in the dark and waits for the scraps?"
The blood rushed to my face. "Excuse me?"
"I'm Cade Blackwood," he said, ignoring my indignation. He tossed a set of heavy keys onto the bar, the same bar Ethan had destroyed. "I'm his brother. I just got back from overseas."
Blackwood. I’d heard the name whispered by Ethan’s parents in hushed, ashamed tones. The black sheep. The one who went into the military and never came back. The one they said was "too much like his grandfather."
"Ethan never said you were coming," I managed to say, clutching the back of the sofa.
Cade stepped even closer, invading my personal space. He smelled of rain, tobacco, and something metallic—like spent shell casings. He looked down at Ethan, then back at me, his gaze lingering on the way I was still subconsciously trying to shield his brother.
"He wouldn't," Cade said. "Ethan only remembers things that are useful to him."
He reached out. I flinched, but he wasn't touching me. He picked up a stray lock of my hair that had fallen over my shoulder, his rough, scarred fingers grazing my skin for a fraction of a second. An electric shock, sharp and terrifying, bolted through my system.
"You've been here all night," he noted, his voice dropping an octave. "Cleaning his mess. Holding his hand. Hoping that when the sun comes up, he’ll realize you’re the prize he’s been looking for."
"You don't know anything about me," I whispered, my voice trembling with a mix of fury and fear.
Cade leaned down, his face inches from mine. I could see the flecks of silver in his gray eyes.
"I know enough, Maya," he murmured. "I know the look of a woman who’s been starving for a man who’s already full of himself."
He straightened up, his shadow looming over both of us.
"Go home, Maya. He’s not going to wake up and suddenly see you. Men like Ethan don't see the air they breathe, they just take it for granted until they start to suffocate."
"He needs me," I insisted, though it sounded weak even to my own ears.
Cade turned toward the kitchen, his movements fluid and dangerous. Over his shoulder, he threw one last look that felt like a brand.
"He doesn't need you. He needs an audience. And you? You need a wake-up call."
He walked away, leaving me standing in the wreckage of his brother’s life, the echo of his words stripping away the last of my "safe" fantasy.
My hand went to my throat, where the air still felt charged from his presence. Ethan was my past, my six-year habit, my safe harbor.
But Cade? Cade Blackwood was a landslide.
And I was standing right at the bottom of the hill.
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