Page 13 of Fanged Desire
The sharp, barking laugh was past my lips before I could stifle it. “Aside from the crippling guilt and ten thousand ‘what if’s’ playing on loop in my head? Just dandy.”
Ethan gave me a wry smile in response.
I looked down at my hands, picking at long, manicured nails that had once been foreign to me. “Sorry, just… tense.”
He shrugged, leaning back in his seat and crossing long, gangly legs that barely fit in the cramped space. “It’s all right, I get it.”
He was probably the only one who did.
Back when Hunter had asked about Ethan, I couldn’t give her the truth. Not the whole truth, anyway. Ethanhadhelped me climb the ranks, and he did get me the job at Micere. Hell, he even taught me how to walk in heels. But before that, before I had ever crammed myself into a corset and stepped into the spotlight, Ethan had known Penelope.
He knew her, and he knew something of what happened to her.
I kept my gaze fixed on the window, watching the streetlights zip by. “I’m sorry, by the way – for how I treated you back then.”
It was Ethan’s turn to laugh, the kind of breathy half-laugh that insinuated ‘you were an asshole – but water under the bridge’.
“I mean it.” I knocked my knee against his, a small, sheepish smile on my lips. “I was so rude to you, and you just wanted to help.”
I could still remember the night he turned up at my apartment, banging on every door until he found the right one – found me. He said he’d been looking for me, and I’d told him I hadn’t ordered a stripper. He told me Penelope was taken.
I let him in swiftly after that.
The shaking blond had been nearly inconsolable, oscillating between snarky and sarcastic, and overtly distressed. I made him a cup of tea and he told me what happened.
“Seriously, K.” Ethan nudged me with his elbow. “It’s fine. Besides, from what I’d heard about you, I was prepared for you to be a tight ass.”
“I am not a tight ass!”
Ethan snorted in response, then his expression grew more somber. “I wish I could have done more that night. I keep replaying it in my head, trying to figure out what I could have done differently.”
My burgeoning grin quickly dissipated, the weight of the world crashing down on my shoulders once again. I reached for his hand, giving it a light squeeze. “You did the best you could.”
Penelope’s ghost was at my shoulder again, wide eyes watching the both of us.
Ethan had witnessed her kidnapping at Micere where she danced every night. He’d been out for a smoke, eyes half-lidded, his mind somewhere else. He barely noticed the trio slipping out the back entrance, didn’t pay them any mind – until the one in the middle cried out to him.
By the time he realized it was Penelope, she was already in the car. And by the time he reached the sidewalk, the car was long gone.
He’d tried the police and found no allies there. So he came looking for me.
We were both angry then, both distressed. Both determined to get her back. It was why we stuck together, and it was why wewere in that cab, speeding off with no sleep to speak of to meet with someone who might have some answers – a former client of Penelope’s who claimed to have more information.
Penelope.The name was an echo in the back of my mind, building to a thundering roar. Alongside it were my usual companions – tearing pain and unavoidable, crippling guilt.
I should have listened to her.
I sighed, sinking into my seat. “You’re not the only one wishing to turn back the clock.”
Ethan cocked his head to show me he was listening.
“She called me, months ago, right before she went missing. She had asked for advice, casually, like it was an afterthought – something about a friend struggling with addiction.”
I winced, like the memory was bound in barbed wire, pricking and poking where it rolled around in my head. “She needed help. And I, always busy, always working, brushed her off. It hadn’t seemed important at the time. I had promised myself I’d call her back later, but – later never came.”
Now, I would do anything to do that conversation over again. To pay attention, and hear what she was really trying to tell me.
Ethan didn’t speak, but he didn’t have to. His hand found mine and squeezed it tight. Misery loves company, but company is comfort, after all.
