The Blank Canvas (Apartment #2) (7 page)

“Hold on a sec, someone’s at the door … I don’t know who … No, I
don’t
have a peep hole … Yes, Dad has already told me that I should install one. My God, would you please be quiet for a second?”

Ethan held his breath as her footsteps approached, but nothing could have prepared him for what the sight of her would do to him.

Lily opened the door with her cell phone held against her collarbone, a look of mild curiosity on her face. She was still in her scrubs from work, a fact that he was trying very hard not to focus on, and her long hair was swept up into a loose bun. She looked flushed and healthy, and even more beautiful than he remembered. He instantly felt as if someone had punched him in the gut, knocking the wind out of him and causing him to feel lightheaded.

Once Lily realized who she was looking at, she froze like a deer in headlights, dropping her phone to the floor with a loud thud. Her mother’s voice could be heard throughout the room—a distant, tinny sound, as if some mouse had suddenly wandered into the apartment and started yelling. When Lily made no move for the phone, continuing to stare at him as if a ghost had appeared, Ethan slowly bent over and picked it up. Without ever taking his eyes from hers, he carefully lifted it up to her face as if she were a caged animal that might strike out at him at any moment.

Her mother’s voice still squeaked out between them. “Lily?! Are you alright? Do I need to call your father?
Hello
?”

He watched as she blinked a few times rapidly, as if noticing the voice for the first time. She glanced at the cell phone and swallowed quickly, reaching up to pull it from his fingers without allowing their skin to touch. When she had a firm grasp on it again she held it to her ear.

“Mom, I’m sorry, I have to let you go.” Her eyes were back on his as she listened for another moment. “No, everything’s fine. I just dropped the phone… but I do need to hang up now. Talk to you soon.” Without waiting to hear another word, she ended the call and tossed the phone on the half-round table against the wall.

Lily stared at him for another thirty seconds in complete silence.

“What… what are you doing here?” she finally whispered.

Ethan fought off the urge to pull her close, wanting nothing more than to hold her in his arms again, but knowing that he needed to go about things very carefully to avoid scaring her away.

“May I please come in?”

She rocked on her feet briefly, startled by the effect his words had on her body. The velvety richness of his voice washed over her in a tidal wave of heat, and for a second she felt as though she had just been given her first drops of water after wandering the desert for days.

He looked different to her somehow, but still achingly beautiful. He was a bit thinner, and there was a less haunted look to his eyes. Instead, they looked more… determined. And bruised.

“What happened to your eye?” she gasped, stopping her hand in midair as she reached out to touch the yellow and purple skin, then dropping it back down to her side quickly.

“Eric.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No,” he answered instantly. “Well… yes and no,” he said, trying to be as truthful as possible.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“If you’ll let me in, I’ll try to explain it the best that I can.”

“Oh, an
explanation
?” she replied sarcastically. “Why on earth would you think I deserved one now? You never did before.” She was surprised by her own bitterness, having thought, up until that point, that she would be happy just to have him back in her life in any way possible.

“I know… and I’m sorry. I want to fix that. Can we please go inside and talk?” It was taking all of his strength to keep from touching her. Even the slightest brush of his fingers against her bare arm might set him off, and that was not the impression he wanted to make at that moment.

“I’m shocked you didn’t just barge in here like you still owned the place. I mean, it’s only been three fucking months, why would that be odd?”

If she only knew how close he’d been to doing that very thing.

“Lily… please,” he choked out.

“Alright,” she sighed, unable to handle the look of anguish on his face. That combined with the bruising was just too much. Standing aside, she ushered him inside with an exaggerated wave of her arm.

“Thank you,” he said quietly as he passed her, stopping in the middle of the room as she shut the door. After an awkward silence in which they simply stared at each other, Ethan took a deep breath and bit the bullet.

“So…” he exhaled loudly.

“So…” she returned, visibly as nervous as he was. Her emotions were running the gamut from angry to worried to excited. She honestly had no idea why he was standing in front of her in the little room that had once been their own private sanctuary. She only knew that something deep inside of her finally felt right again, despite her anger.

Ethan glanced around, really taking notice of his surroundings for the first time. “Wow… I can’t believe this is the same place.” He turned slowly, making mental comparisons to what it had looked like before. “It’s so… comfortable. So lived in.”

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I really like it. Emma and Maggie helped me put it together.”

“Yes, I heard that. It seems that they are all fond of you. Especially Eric,” he added with a grimace, gently touching his discolored cheekbone. It had made amazing progress healing over the last week. The swelling had gone down and he could open his eye easily again, but the dark splotches were slower to disappear.

Fighting back the urge to show concern for his face again, Lily was overcome with a sudden rush of rage. “Oh really? You’d heard that, huh? Well, it seems that one of us is at a disadvantage, because while you were apparently getting regular updates on me, I haven’t heard one fucking
word
about you!”

Ethan made to grab her shoulders to calm her down, but stopped himself halfway and simply held his hands up in surrender between them. “Hey… it’s not like that.”

“I think you need to start talking
now
, because I’m getting angrier by the second,” she fumed.

“Here, let’s sit down,” he said, gesturing to the love seat. He ignored the new, comfortable-looking though much less lavish bed that he saw from the corner of his eye when they passed the bedroom door, refusing to think of his fond memories of that room and his desire to create new ones.

When they had settled on the cushions, both instinctively sitting as far away from the other as they could, they turned to face each other with their backs against the armrests. Lily tucked one of her legs up under her other knee and crossed her arms, giving off the impression of hostility, but really hoping to just hold herself back long enough to keep from jumping on him.

She was angry. She was confused and upset and unsure of her own shifting emotions, but that didn’t make him any less attractive to her. She wanted to kiss his bruises and hold him for hours. Then she wanted to throttle him.

Ethan cleared his throat nervously. “Well, first off, let me start by saying that I wasn’t getting regular updates on you. Nobody even knew where I was until last week when Eric showed up out of nowhere and punched my lights out.”

Good
, Lily felt like saying, but held her tongue. She couldn’t allow herself to say it when she knew that she didn’t mean it. She didn’t think that violence was the way to solve things and she hated to think of him swollen and in pain. But she also knew Eric well enough by then to know that he must have been very scared, worried, and hurt to have done that to his own brother. It didn’t exactly excuse it in her eyes, but she could certainly understand it.

“And where
were
you?”

Ethan watched her mouth form the words as she spoke and felt a pang of desire in his stomach. When he realized that she had actually asked him a question, he shook his head quickly and fought to regain his composure.

“Uh… holed up in a hotel room in New York.” He brushed his hands roughly over his face and hissed when he bumped the sore flesh. “Ouch. Anyway, I sort of cut myself off from everyone. I wasn’t even taking their calls.”

“How could you
do
that to them?” she gasped. “They care so much about you!”

“I know that—now,” he sighed. “There is a lot of backstory between me and my family that you don’t know, and I’ve just begun to see how much time I’ve truly lost with them. But luckily, it seems like their love outweighs their frustration with me.”

That was another thing that Lily could certainly understand.

“Am I ever going to hear any of this backstory?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.

He smiled gently. “Actually, I’d love to tell you anything you’d like to know about me. And there’s even more that I want to learn about you.” He looked into her eyes and took a deep breath. “Will you allow me the chance to get to know you, Lily? To
really
get to know you?”

“What… um… what did you have in mind?” she whispered.

“Well,” he swallowed roughly, “I was thinking that we might… go out? For starters, that is.”

“You want to take me on a date?” she asked, her head swimming with a mixture of apprehension and elation. “Like… a
real
date?”

“Well… more than one, if you’ll let me.” He started to fidget a bit and she could have sworn she saw a hint of a blush tinting his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m terrible at this, I know. It’s just that I’ve never really done this before.”

“What, dated?”

“Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever even asked anyone out before.” He definitely blushed that time. “I went from being a shy kid to a snobbish adult stuck in a miserable relationship for years, and it was like all of those things just… happened to me. Does that make sense? Like I was sort of being led about, never making my own choices in life.”

“I guess I get it,” she said after thinking about it for a while. “But it also sounds like you allowed it to happen to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you didn’t
have
to be
stuck
with her. Once you found out what she was really like, you didn’t have to stay with her as long as you did. It sounds like you just… sat back and took what was handed to you, without ever bothering to search for anything better.” She looked him in the eye again, suddenly worried she had misspoke. “I’m sure that’s oversimplifying your situation, I hope that doesn’t offend you. I know that I don’t have all of the details yet.”

“No… I’m not offended,” he said slowly, a bit rattled that she had hit the nail on the head so easily. “That’s actually pretty accurate. I guess I just never thought that anything better was really out there. I figured it would all just be more of the same.” He met her gaze again before adding, “I’ve never had a reason to want to make a choice before.”

Lily gulped so loudly that he could hear it. “But you do now?” she barely squeaked out.

His eyes began to smolder, becoming a bright, scorching jade before he answered her. “I do now.”

She felt like she was drowning in those eyes, about to go under and not really caring anymore.

“Lily, may I please take you to dinner tomorrow night?”

The breath in her lungs whooshed out, making her feel instantly lightheaded. She was balanced on the edge of a cliff, wobbling back and forth. It was there in the distance, she could just see it out of reach.
Surrender
. All she had to do was let go.

Lily closed her eyes and jumped.

“Yes.”

“Really?” he smiled, and it was brighter than the sun. “Thank you, Lily. Thank you so much. I know I haven’t given you any reasons to give me a chance.” He leaned forward without thinking and placed his hand on her knee.

They both froze.

Both pairs of eyes stared at his hand as if it might start talking.

Lily braced herself against the onslaught of emotions—fear, resentment, need, lust—coursing through her body as his fingers rested on her knee. Her emotions were all battling each other for dominance, and none of them were winning.

Their skin wasn’t even touching—she was still wearing her scrub pants, but she would swear on a stack of bibles that she could feel the electric current passing between them once again. It was scary… but familiar. It instantly reminded her of so many heated encounters that had taken place in that very apartment.

And judging from the panicked look on Ethan’s face, he too was remembering them all.

“I should go,” he blurted out, standing up quickly. Lily forced herself not to whimper at the instant coldness she felt at the loss of his touch.

“So soon?” she said, still a bit dazed from the unexpected contact. She stood up slowly and followed him to the door, trying desperately to clear her mind of all the cobwebs.

“Yes,” he nodded curtly. “I think it’s for the best.”

“But I thought we were going to talk? You still haven’t given me much of an explanation.”

“I know,” he sighed, his hand resting on the doorknob. He kept his back to her, never looking back at her as he spoke. “It’s coming, I promise. I was just hoping that we could discuss it all over dinner tomorrow.”

“Ethan… what’s wrong?” She could see a shudder pass through his body when she said his name.

“Nothing,” he gritted out between his teeth.

“I don’t think I believe you,” she huffed. “If this is how things are going to be already, then perhaps we should just forget it.” It killed her to say that out loud, but having him near her wouldn’t mean anything if she was always worried that he was ready to bolt for the door at the first sign of discomfort.

She wondered how she would ever be able to trust someone who had always chosen flight over fight. He was going to need to fight for this if he wanted her to take him seriously.

“No, please!” he gasped, finally turning to face her completely. He didn’t move any closer, but he made eye contact. “Lily… please.”

“Then tell me what’s wrong.”

He looked uncomfortable and embarrassed, and it was the oddest thing she’d ever seen. Ethan always owned any room he was in, and his self-confidence practically oozed out of his pores. She had never seen this vulnerable side of him before, and if someone had asked her about it three months ago, she would have sworn that it didn’t exist. Even when she first met him and he seemed so broken, he still had a carefully constructed wall around him. She could tell that he desperately wanted something to hide behind as he stood there under her scrutiny.