Page 57 of His Captive

“That I can give ya.” The woman sets to work, and Millie breathes a nervous sigh while she waits. When the glass lands on the bar I push a bill across to the barmaid. Millie Sorrento has probably never had to pay for a drink in her life, she has no reason to start now.

“Thanks,” Millie smiles at me and I try to ignore the warmth it settles inside me.

“Welcome.” I take a sip of my beer. I’ve already picked the label off while I’ve been waiting so I rotate a beermat in my hand instead.

“I’m sorry about your dad,” she says.

My dad passed a few years ago. Millie’s mom had been the one who contacted me to break the news. I’d been too busy buying my third multi-million dollar company to have given a shit. There was no love lost between me and the old bastard. Not after I’d left town and realized the real reason mama had left him.

“We were never close,” telling her something she already knows, makes us seem even more like strangers.

“So, how have you been? I hear you’ve set up a business in…”

“What do you want, Millie?” I cut her pleasantries short, bypassing the bullshit to get to the point of me being here. This is punishing enough without the torture of turning it into a long drawn out reunion.

She looks at me nervously over her glass as she takes a sip of her wine.

“I guess… I’ve missed you,” she admits.

I clamp my jaw, my foot ticking against the leg of the stool while I try to simmer down the rage collecting inside me.

“You miss me.” My hand almost smashes the bottle it’s holding as I repeat her words back to her.

“You brought me here tonight to tell me that you fucking miss me?”

“Ethan,” her eyes flit around the bar, as if checking we aren’t making a scene. “Ethan, please,” her whisper an attempt to calm me down.

“No, Mill. You can’t say that. You made your choice five years ago. You knew then what the consequences would be, and yet you went ahead and did it anyway.”

I stand up and make for the door, this was a bad idea, and I’m unwilling to spend a moment more torturing myself like this. I can already feel it, that familiar burn in my chest, emotions seeking the space they’d left vacant, like old friends, who I’d willingly mislaid.

It’s the reason I can’t be around her anymore.

I hear her chasing after me, and she catches up with my fast-paced stride as I make it out to the parking lot. Her hand wrapping around my arm, and a small tug urging me backward, making me freeze.

I whip around so fast I nearly knock her over.

“Let me go, Mill,” I warn.

“No. Not until you’ve heard what I have to say.”

It’s the first time tonight I’ve seen a glimpse of the girl I used to know, and I’m relieved that she hadn’t lost her bite completely.

“I lost you.” The words fall from my mouth, and it’s sickening how feeble they sound.

“You never lost me, Ethan, we would have always been friends,” she says, her hand still on me, gripping tight, clinging, and refusing to let me go.

“I didn’t want to be your fucking friend, Mill. I wanted to be your everything. The same way you were mine. But then, I guess I didn’t have everything to offer you.” I sound bitter, pulling from her grip and walking toward my car.

“You take that back. Take it back right now,” she shouts after me. Reminding me of the ten-year-old Millie I’d known so well. The one who would scream for me to come out when she’d decided that she’d been the seeker for way too long. My hiding places were far too good for her ever to find me.

The memory makes me stop, giving her the chance to run in front of me.

“That was a cruel heartless thing to say. The Ethan Shaw I used to know would never have said something like that.” She looks like she’s gonna cry.

Tears that I’ve imagined would bring me so much pleasure over the past years, now make my stomach knot.

“Yeah, well that guy up and got fucked the day you married the wrong man,” I tell her. Not giving a shit how sad I sound anymore.

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