You Make Me (12 page)

Ethan sat up and reached for his phone. “It’s nine. Shit. I’m late.” Getting out of bed, he shuffled to the door and cracked it open.

I could hear a low conversation but I couldn’t hear what was being said. Then he swung the door open wide and light from the hallway poured into my dark room, making me wince. “What? Who is it?”

“He says he’s your brother,” Ethan said in amazement.

I looked over, startled. No. It couldn’t be.

It was.

Brian gave me a salute. “Hey, Cat. What’s up, buttercup? Long time no see.”

Chapter Ten

Of all times for Brian to break our unspoken truce, he had to do it now? I crawled out of bed, wanting to punch myself repeatedly in the head until I passed out. “What do you want?”

“That’s the greeting I get?” He strolled in, because that’s what Brian did. He strolled. He sauntered. He grinned. He never had a goddamn care in the world. “Give me a hug. It’s been awhile.”

“It’s been eighteen months.” I stood there stiffly while he hugged me. I caught a whiff of alcohol on his breath. Rum, most likely. It was nine am and he’d been drinking already. Or maybe he hadn’t been to bed yet. There was no telling.

“Has it been that long? Feels like no more than nine months. Maybe six.” He either didn’t notice or didn’t care that I didn’t return his hug. “So who is your friend here, Cat? Must be a good friend since he’s sharing your room.” He winked at me.

Brian was three years older than me but he looked even more. He’d gotten too much sun in his childhood and alcohol had broken blood vessels in his nose and cheeks, so he had a ruddy complexion. His stomach was rounder now, a quintessential beer gut, and when he smiled, I could see that he was missing his incisor. Whether from a bar fight or a cavity, there was no telling. Brian disappeared and resurfaced at will, depending on how well he was able to charm and con his friends, or more likely, women.

I had no intention of introducing him to Ethan. I just wanted to hear why he was there, then get rid of him. But Ethan’s manners had him sticking his hand out.

“I’m Ethan Walsh. Caitlyn and I are engaged.”

“Engaged?” Brian’s eyebrows shot up and he gave me a grin. “Moving up in the world, eh, little sis? Good for you.” He took Ethan’s hand and shook it. “I’m Brian,
Caitlyn’s
brother.” His emphasis on my full name was mocking. No one in Vinalhaven called me Caitlyn and he clearly found it amusing. “So when is the wedding? Despite the fact that my sister has been a complete bitch to me, I’m happy to walk her down the aisle.”

“Over my dead body,” I told him bluntly. “You’re not even invited.”

Ethan looked astonished.

Brian turned and gave me a vicious glare that Ethan couldn’t see. But when he looked at Ethan again, he was smiling casually. “She has mommy issues. She never could stand that I was our mother’s favorite.”

My fists clenched at my sides. I forced myself to take a deep breath and not go off on him the way I really would have liked to. “What do you want, Brian?”

“I just wanted to drop by and say hi. See if you want to go to breakfast or something.”

“I have class.”

“Another time then.” He gave a cough, and it was wet and deep in his chest. A smoker’s morning cough. “Do you think you could lend me twenty bucks? Kerri doesn’t get paid until Friday and we’re a bit short.”

Kerri was apparently the sucker letting him stay with her. I didn’t want to give him anything but a hard kick in the ass, but I also wanted him to go away. So I went and found my purse and scrounged up sixteen dollars. I held it out for him without a word.

“Thanks, Kitty Cat. I appreciate it. I’ll give Mom your love since you never get up to see her.”

He didn’t either. That was a dig designed to make me look bad in front of Ethan. “Wonderful,” I said, voice dripping with sarcasm. I went and opened the door.

Brian gave me a salute and walked through it. He turned and was about to say something but I slammed the door shut. And locked it. I could hear him laughing on the other side, clearly having enjoyed getting me riled up.

I swore. I stomped over to my desk and took a swallow from an old can of Diet Coke. It was flat but my throat was dry and I was pissed off.

“Are you going to explain that to me?” Ethan asked. “Since when do you have a brother? Are there any other relatives you’d like to mention to me? You know, to the guy you plan to marry?” He sounded angry.

Which maybe he had a right to be.

“I have a foster sister, Tiffany. She still lives in Vinalhaven. But Brian doesn’t count. He’s dead to me, seriously.” I paced back and forth, wondering how he’d known where I lived and what it meant. Brian wanted more than a lousy twenty. When he roused himself from his bar stool, he always had an agenda.

“Dead to you? Jesus, Caitlyn. Who talks about their brother like that?” Ethan was looking at me like I was a horrible human being. “And I just can’t believe that he never once came up in a conversation between us. Even in a you know, my brother is dead to me, kind of way.”

This wasn’t the way I wanted Ethan to learn about my brother. He couldn’t possibly understand how truly awful Brian was. “I don’t like to talk about him. He’s always been a vicious person and he’s been an alcoholic since he was sixteen. But the final straw was my dad’s funeral. He showed up drunk, Ethan. He knocked over things. He threw a vase. Then he stood up to give a speech and laughed. He fucking laughed at my father’s funeral.” I was furious having to say the words out loud, to remember. “So you tell me why I would acknowledge him as a brother. He’s a grade A asshole and if I never see him again it will be too soon.”

“Tell me how you really feel.”

That just made me even angrier. “Don’t patronize me!”

Ethan held up his hands. “No, I’m being serious. For once, tell me how you really feel, because clearly there is a whole lot of shit that has gone down in your life that you haven’t bothered to share with me.” He shook his head. “I’m looking at you and I’m wondering if I even know you. Who is this angry girl? Who is Cat? Because all I know is Caitlyn.”

“All you need to know is Caitlyn.” Viciously I yanked my shirt off and went to my dresser for a clean one.

“But you’re not one or the other. You’re a combination of the two. The past creates the present, baby. I want to know who you are, where you’ve been.”

I was wearing a bra but I could see even that much casual partial nudity surprised Ethan. He was staring at my chest, eyes darting up to mine than back down again. He swallowed hard. I didn’t ever walk around in my panties in front of him, and after a night together, if I slept naked, I always pulled on pjs first thing. Something about our relationship had always bred modesty, but I was too agitated right then to care. “It hurts to talk about. I want to focus on the future.”

“But—”

I cut him off, yanking a clean shirt on over my head. “But nothing. Look, Ethan, I don’t have a family like yours. Mine put the D in dysfunctional. My dad is dead. My mom is in crazy town. My brother is a drunk. I had dozens of foster siblings because they brought government checks with them. Heath and Tiffany are the only ones I really cared about, and Tiff is seventeen, stuck taking care of her dying grandmother. Heath was in Afghanistan. It’s just been me for the last few years, alone. And then there was you.”

It made sense to me. It hurt too much, was too shameful, to share my family history with anyone. How could I move forward if there were questions? If I had to keep explaining it, and therefore reliving it? Besides, I hadn’t wanted it to influence what Ethan thought of me, and how could it not?

But his reaction wasn’t positive. “So then there was me. Me, who is looking at you right now and wondering who in the fuck you are. Jesus. I feel snowed.” His hands went into his hair. “I’ve been a fucking idiot. I was just so in love with you that I never stopped to think about why you talked so little about yourself. God, what a douchebag tool I am. I saw that you loved me and I loved you for it. I saw that you were kind and sweet and cared about my family and I thought that was all I needed to know. You said your father passed and your mother was living in Rockland. It never even occurred to me you had skeletons in your closet.”

“Skeletons? Is that what we’re calling them? See, this is exactly why I didn’t tell you! There is nothing wrong with
me
. But people hear your mom is nuts, your brother is a drunk, your father had one hand, and they put all this shit on you. It becomes
skeletons
. Then I’m a liability. I wanted a clean slate, is that so hard to understand? For once, I didn’t want to be that poor Cat Michaud. I wanted to be an equal.” I tore down my pants and went for a new pair of jeans. The shower wasn’t going to happen this morning. I had already missed one class. I wasn’t going to miss another one because of my dickhead brother.

“You are my equal. I never would have thought otherwise.”

“Bullshit.” I jammed my feet into the pants.

“Well, we’ll never know because you didn’t trust me enough to see what kind of integrity I have.”

Seriously? My anger started to fade, fear creeping in to replace it. Ethan looked beyond angry. Ethan looked cold. “How could I take that risk?”

“Initially I understand why you didn’t. But you could have let me in, bit by bit. You could have trusted me.”

I paused in putting my sweatshirt on. I had the neck hole in front of my chest. “It’s very hard to trust,” I whispered. “I learned a long time ago that if you trust someone, they will take from you.” There had been only one person I had trusted with everything in my heart. My whole heart. And look what had happened. “But I do trust you, Ethan. I wouldn’t be with you if I didn’t. You’re the only guy I’ve been this close to.” Since Heath. But I kept the caveat to myself.

“Besides Heath.”

Damn it. “I was seventeen,” was my only response to that. I didn’t have a better one.

“Do you love me?” he asked. “Or do you just love the idea of me?”

It was both. I did love him, in a solid way, and I loved what he could offer me. But I wasn’t about to admit that. “I love
you
.” I took a step towards him but he backed up, putting his hands out.

That hurt. Ethan never pulled away from me. Ethan was my rock. Ethan was always there, like granite. Unbreakable. He wasn’t the tide, like Heath, who crashed in and then washed back out at will. “Ethan? Don’t. Please.”

But when I reached for him again, he flinched. “I think we need a break. I need to think about all of this. I’m really confused.”

“A break?” My voice went shrill, panic overwhelming me. No. He couldn’t do this. “A break is a breakup. That’s always what happens. Are you breaking up with me?” I yanked the sweatshirt back off my arms, encumbered by it. I reached again and again he backed away. He was at the door now. Oh, God. He was leaving me. He was pulling away. He was actually leaving me.

I was losing Ethan.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“But I chose you,” I said, and it sounded pathetic and desperate.

It was the wrong thing to say. “And you cried about it! You
sobbed
. You chose me because I come with the right pedigree. Because I have two normal parents and a future career in law. Because I’m the ‘right package.’” Ethan had tears in his eyes. “But I’m not the one you burn for, I can see that. You suppress the real you around me and I don’t want that. I want your
passion
.”

“You want me to be angry? To yell at you? That makes no sense. I don’t want to be volatile. I’m happy with you.” I was crying now too. I didn’t understand how we had gotten here or what he was asking for. “This is my brother’s fault. He has always ruined everything for me.”

“Caitlyn.” Ethan shook his head. “I can’t be with somebody I don’t understand and right now I don’t understand you at all. I thought I loved you but I don’t even know you.” He made a choking sound. “It’s over, this is over.”

He opened the door and started out and I followed him. I wanted to have dignity but it fled. It was gone and I needed him to stop, accept me. I didn’t feel hard to understand. I felt obvious and open. I felt busted and hurt and jerked around yet again by another man who made promises he couldn’t keep. My whole life everyone controlled me… my father, my brother, my mother, Heath, now Ethan… I was the ball in the pinball machine, bounced from one swinging arm to the next.

“Don’t! Please don’t.” The whole future, gone. Just like that. Everything I had ever wanted. Gone. It couldn’t be possible. He couldn’t do this to me. I grabbed his arm, desperate.

He shook me off, walking faster. “Just stop! I can’t. Just stop.”

Doors were opening and curious heads poking out, including Aubrey’s.

“What the hell?” She looked at us, alarmed.

Humiliation and anger forced me to rein it in and come back swinging. If he was going to dump me then I wasn’t about to take the full blame. It wasn’t smart, but it was survival, and that was one thing I knew how to do. Survive. So I screamed at his retreating back, “Fine! Just walk away then! I’m sure you can find a nice blonde in Bangor to sit on your lap and grope your junk tonight, so enjoy your freedom.”

He paused and for a minute I thought he was going to turn around and apologize. Say this was all a mistake. But he didn’t. He started walking again and I leaned on my doorframe, crying, while arms came at me from sorority sisters, offering murmurs of comfort and exclamations about what a prick he was. Aubrey asked me what had happened but I barely heard her. I felt like I was going to pass out, and all I wanted was to lie back down and cry.

So that’s what I did.

Then when everyone left me alone, to sob by myself, I picked up my phone and sent a text.

Chapter Eleven

When Aubrey knocked a few hours later, I was packing a bag for a few days away. I couldn’t afford to miss class, but my sanity couldn’t handle staying in the house with all those prying eyes and ears.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “Heath’s?”

That offended me. “No! Of course not. I haven’t talked to him. I’m going to see my foster sister back home for a few days.” I couldn’t face Heath or find comfort with him. He would want Ethan and I split up and he wouldn’t appreciate my pain. Tiffany would.