Page 77 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
Maggie’s eyes sprang open but she willed her body not to move and the words went on, low and dark in the stillness.
“We were getting ready to move, packing up. But there were still boxes in the garage from thelastmove, and she couldn’t find the wrapping paper. That was it. My brothers were roughhousing and knocked over the tree, and my dad...” The words trailed off, and his chest stopped moving. “She couldn’t find the wrapping paper, so she went to buy some. She should have been back in an hour, but I guess she just kept driving because we got a letter a week later. She was through. She couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I’m so sorry,” Maggie whispered.
“I don’t blame her. It wasn’t her fault. My father was—is—a hard man to live with. And there were five of us boys, and... It wasn’t her fault. She loved Eleanor Ashley.”
It took a moment for Maggie to hear the words, they’d been so unexpected. “Wait. What?” She pushed up onto an elbow and looked down at him. And, amazingly, he was smiling—not at her. At a memory.
“They were the first grown-up books she ever let me read.”
“But you said...”
The little boy grin was back on his hot guy face again. “I lied.”
She pinched his side, but he just smiled. “They were our thing. Just my mom and me. She called itbook cluband my father...” The words turned cold and raw. “The week after she left, he burned them. They were all I had of her, and...”
“Oh, Ethan...”
“No. Shh. Don’t cry for me, sweetheart.” His fingers were in her hair again, the slow steady sweep and Maggie realized it was for him as much as it was for her. “A week later, I was in a new school in a new town, and it was like she never existed. It was easier that way, honestly. Move on. Be someone new.”
Be. Someone. New.Maggie felt the words rattling around in her head. Like bells beginning to chime. Ringing out because, suddenly, the world made sense.Ethanmade sense.
He wasn’t some hot guy breezing throughlife with no worries and no burdens. He was the kid who had gone to ten schools in twelve years. He was the boy who had looked at the parts of himself that were just like his mother; and then he’d watched his father set those parts on fire.
Ethan wasn’t who people wanted him to be. He was who he needed to be to survive: someone charming and easy and cool. Someone who makes friends and keeps the peace. The life of the party. The guy who gets invited back.
She’d heard at least a hundred theories about where Ethan Wyatt came from and who he really was, but in that moment Maggie knew the only version of him that really mattered: he was the guy who takes the bullet and a warm and steady presence in the dark.
“Ethan?”
His voice was groggy when he answered. “Yeah?”
“I want to make out.”
Chapter Fifty
Maggie
For a moment, Maggie wondered if he hadn’t heard her. Or if he’dmisheard her? Or changed his mind? Or maybe the offers hadn’t been offers? Maybe they’d been meant to tease or mock or annoy or—
She hadn’t known a man could fly while lying down, but in the next moment, Ethan was springing on top of her, the long, heavy line of his body pressing into hers as the too-cold room turned way too warm. It felt like all the air had left Maggie’s lungs and, worse, she didn’t want it back. Because Ethan was looking down at her like she was the prize, the gift—the only thing that mattered.
But when he moved next, it was slow and cautious—a careful, halting pace that seemed to askIs this okay?andAreyou sure?andAm I still dreaming?But if he was dreaming so was she.
And, suddenly, Maggie couldn’t wait anymore. She surged up and found his mouth with hers, and every cell in her body came alive. She felt everything. Sheheardeverything—from the crackling fire to the moaning wind and even the little voice that had spent the last year telling Maggie she wasn’t smart enough, pretty enough, or sexy enough to keep a man like Colin, so what kind of fool would she have to be to think she might find somebody better?
But she had. Hadn’t she? She’d found Ethan. And Ethan was a million times more. But if she wasn’t good enough for Colin, then...
“Hey.” The lips were gone, and she missed them. She reached up and tried to draw them back, but he held her face in his hands. “We don’t have to do this.”
“I want to do this. I’m sorry. I’m just not very... I want to.” And then she kissed him again, and he made a sound that was low and dark and feral, and somethinginside of Maggie went silent. The words and worries went away. Like someone turning the music down until Maggie, a world-class overthinker, wasn’t able to think at all.
Not about Colin and the first kiss he’d ever given her because that would have been like comparing a candle to a campfire.
Ethan’s hands moved from her face to the delicate skin of her neck, sliding lower. Slower. And Maggie changed her mind.
It would be like comparing a campfire to the sun.
