A House of Cards: Deconstructing Ethan (27 page)

He didn’t deserve to have his heart broken.

And that was exactly what I had done.

My chest tightened and my throat burned. In the solace of my bedroom, alone in the dark, the tears fell silently. They fell for his pain, they fell for my fear and they fell for the loss and the desperation we all felt at that moment.

A noise from the hall brought me out of my musings and I turned to look. Jayden was leaning against the wall, with his hands in his pockets, watching me with a look of such sadness; my heart skipped a bit at the intensity of it. He held my gaze for a long time, watching my tears as they quietly dampened my face. It appeared as if he wanted to say something, but he just dropped his eyes and turned away.

I pulled my knees up to my chest, rested my forehead on them and waited for the dawn.

Chapter 16

As I left the volunteer clinic to head home, the last month weighed heavily on my mind. Even as emotionally retarded as I was, I knew it was too soon for our relationship to have evolved into anything beyond friendship. The problem was that Jayden’s emotional state actually seemed to be deteriorating.

When we had first returned to Washington, I would have described his emotional state to be coping; however, it had become virtually non-existent. Picking up where he left off, he had gone back to school to complete his master’s degree. It was like the last few years had never taken place. It was like he was trying to ignore that his relationship with Lexi ever existed, like his arrangement with me ever existed.

He went back to his bedroom on the second floor while I stayed in mine on the third. As heartbreaking as it was to watch, I felt like could do nothing to soothe his overwhelming grief.

I, on the other hand, had come back to Washington as a completely different person from when I’d left. Jayden and Lexi had rescued me from myself. That broken, devastated soul devoid of hope, had been replaced by one that had found love -that had found hope.

I held onto that light inside me during the dark times with Jayden. The worst of those times were when I looked into his eyes and saw the emptiness there. I understood that feeling all too well, empty and dejected, like there is absolutely no reason for you to keep breathing. I never wanted for him to have to cope with that hollow, dead kind of existence.

Pulling out of the parking lot of the clinic, I sighed. There wasn’t anything I could do about Jayden right now, but I wished he’d talk to me about it. Maybe if I knew exactly what was going on with him, I could help. Notwithstanding anything else that was happening in our lives, I was his friend. When I had come back to Washington, realizing that I didn’t have the same emotional baggage I’d had when I left, I had called Dr. Thomas without any real hope of securing my previous position at the hospital. He might have felt that my emotional breakdown had left me unreliable because other people had to cover for me in my abrupt departure. He informed me about a free clinic where I could put my skills, and the fact that I don’t need a salary, to good use. After I met with the director, he was thrilled to give me some place to spend my free time. The work helped to keep me grounded and I found myself opening up and forming at least friendly relationships with the staff. I had mostly kept to myself while working at the hospital, but something in me had shifted. The change in my social habits gave me hope that maybe I was finally over that last hurdle in my recovery.

If I could just help Jayden…

I pulled out my phone to see if he was interested in dinner. Maybe beer and a pizza would help relax things enough so we could talk. Usually, he just brought something home and ate in his room while he read. It’s not unusual for me to go days without seeing him. Tonight, I wanted to remedy that. I just...I wanted to see him.

“Yeah, Ethan?” he answered in a dull, monotone sounding, tired, worn and defeated voice. My chest clenched a bit to hear it.

“Well, hello to you too,” I said with a sigh.

“Hello, Ethan. How is your day? Is it fucking fantastic? Mine pretty well sucks,” he spouted off and I was taken aback, realizing it was the most I’d heard him say in weeks. “Sorry,” he murmured, a little embarrassed by his outburst. “Did you need something?”

“I just wanted to know if you felt like some beer and pizza for dinner,” I said softly, starting to regret dialing the phone. The silence on the other end wasn’t helping that regret either.

Finally, he spoke, “I think that would be a fine idea. I’m leaving here in a few minutes, why don’t you pick up a pizza and I’ll get the booze?” he suggested, perking up a bit.

“Okay, see you at home,” I replied and after his acknowledgement, ended the call.

The conversation had made me hopeful, maybe he would let me in, let me know what was going on with him. I had a feeling it was more than dealing with Lexi’s death, there was something else and it was killing me that I couldn’t help. Even emailing my mother hadn’t helped, she had said that he would come to me in his own time -I just hoped that time was soon. It has been nearly two months since Lexi’s death. I needed to find a way to help him live again because, right then, he wasn’t living.

He merely existed.

I called in a pizza on my way home, making it a large in the hope that it would last a while and we would have an excuse to keep the conversation going. As I sat outside waiting for the pizza, I went over a few conversation starters in my head. It was difficult for me, as I wasn’t used to having conversations with people. For the next twenty minutes while I waited, I practiced and rehearsed what I would say to him. Finally, when the pizza was ready, I felt confident enough that I could have the conversation with him. I stopped in to get the pizza and then got back in my car and headed home.

A few minutes later, I pulled up behind Jayden’s car in the driveway. Since I had to wait for the pizza, he’d probably been home for a while and I hoped that he was still waiting for me in the kitchen because I really wanted to talk to him. Balancing the pizza in my left hand, I opened the door. As I closed it behind me, I heard Jayden’s voice in the kitchen. I headed in there, but stopped in the doorway. Jayden was sitting at the table across from a full six-pack of beer, the pristine bottles unopened. In front of him, was a nearly half empty bottle of whiskey. Directly in front of him, was a small shot glass and a glass of what I could only assume was soda.

Setting the pizza down on the table, I looked closely at Jayden. His eyes were heavy and a little bloodshot; his jaw a little slack.

I sighed.

So much for having a real conversation with him.

I put a plate in front of him, placing a couple of slices on it, but he ignored them completely and kept drinking his drink. After my third slice and first beer, his head fell onto his arms. As I watched, his eyes started to droop. I knew it would be my only chance to try and get him upstairs. There was no way I could support his entire body weight up a flight of stairs. I had to get him to cooperate with me if I was ever going to make it.

“Okay, Jayden, how about if we get you to bed?” I asked, standing up. I could clean the kitchen up later, it was more important to take care of him.

“You want to go to bed with me?” He asked with a smirk and, for the first time in weeks, I felt that jolt of sexual need shoot through me. I couldn’t help it, I grinned at him. Starting to stand up, he swayed, overbalancing, I caught him before his head slammed into the table. Wrapping his arm around my shoulder, I supported him as we shuffled over to the stairs.

“Mmmmm…I like how you smell,” he murmured and kissed my neck.

Fuck.

I was never going to get him upstairs if he kept coming on to me. I missed him so much and wanted him so badly. Grasping him tighter around the waist, we made it slowly up the stairs. Finally, I pushed open the door to his bedroom and pulled him inside. We fell onto his bed and I slid down to my knees on the floor to remove his shoes. He looked down at me, his eyes twinkling with the first light I’d seen in them in so fucking long.

“Hey, while you’re down there…” he said, trailing off suggestively. Shifting, I adjusted myself in my jeans and finished taking off his shoes. Then, I sat down on the bed next to him and began to unbutton his shirt. Roughly he pulled me to him and, without any kind of warning, kissed me hard. I was unprepared for the fierceness of his kiss and allowed myself to be pushed back onto the bed. Rolling us, I trapped him underneath me.

Somewhere in my mind, I felt a nagging suspicion that it would be wrong to allow him to continue. He was drunk; he wasn’t responsible for his actions. Yet it felt so good to be with him, to feel him touching me. I stroked his face with my fingers as we lay kissing on his bed, my chest close to bursting with that warm feeling, with my love for him. I moaned into the kiss, thoughts of stopping receding with the feeling of his hard body underneath me.

Breaking away from his perfect lips, I started to kiss down his neck. His head fell back to the pillow and I took my time going over every inch of his smooth skin. The glow in my chest had reached a fever pitch.

I wanted to say it. I moved my lips back up to his ear, but before I could get the words out, I heard his soft snoring in my ear. Pulling back to look, I realized that he’d passed out. I sighed and leaned back down over him, my lips just an inch from his ear.

“I love you, Jayden,” I said softly and pulled back, kissing his cheek gently as I moved. He was sound asleep.

All of the urgency gone, I sighed and removed his shirt and jeans. It took a lot of effort, but I finally got him lying down on the pillow, on his back, snoring. As I watched him, it occurred to me that with the amount of alcohol he had consumed, he could vomit and choke during the night in that position. I rolled him onto his side, pulling his knees up and pulled the blanket over him. He smiled in his sleep and my heart leapt. Watching him for a few minutes, I cherished the peaceful look on his relaxed features before turning to leave. I heard him shifting and turned back around, he was returning to his back.

Twice more I rolled him onto his side and twice more he returned to his back. There was no way I was going take that kind of chance with him. I walked over to the desk and pulled his huge leather chair next to the bed. Sitting down in the chair, I put my legs on his bed to watch him sleep. He looked so damned peaceful, but I wished he’d tell me what was bothering him; all I wanted was to help him. He sighed in his sleep, his face turned slightly away from me and I heard his voice, soft, but distinct, as he spoke to an unknown person in his dream.

“It has always been you.”

When I woke the next morning, my back was stiff from sleeping in the chair. However, my legs were still up on the bed, but there was a blanket tucked around me. Jayden must have covered me up when he got up. Idly, I wondered why I hadn’t heard his alarm go off. Shrugging off the blanket, I straightened up in the chair and the ache shot through my spine. Suddenly I was grateful I had the day off from the clinic. Tossing the blanket onto the bed, I bent my knees to pull my legs down and was rewarded with a cramp in my left calf.

My body ached as I walked down the two flights of stairs to the kitchen. When I came in through the door, I noticed that Jayden had cleared away the pizza and booze from last night. As I walked by, I saw the bottle of Jack, still half full, in the trash. I threw together a quick bagel and coffee for breakfast and went back upstairs. I had every intention of lying down and taking a nap, when I saw my journal lying on the bedside table. I’d taken to bringing it in here rather than writing in my office because I felt more comfortable for some reason. My office was for work stuff, and Dom stuff, this was much more personal.

So I sat back on my bed propped up against the headboard. Positioning a pillow between my back and the wood, I took the pen from the table and opened my journal. There was something that had been weighing on me for a while and I just wanted to get it out.

Journal Entry: Jealous Ethan

I can’t think of a better way to describe my current situation with Jayden than by saying that he haunts me. The circles under his eyes, the way his hair seems to have gotten out of control, the state of his clothes when he walks out the door…he’s given up. He just doesn’t care anymore. This goes so much deeper than Lexi. Jayden has fallen into a full blown depression. He wasn’t even this devastated when Kimberly walked in on us in the playroom or when he received the check from his parents. He wasn’t even this overwhelmed after the tragic death of his parents. Something else is going on with him and I need to find out what it is.

As for me, well that part is easy. I am fucking jealous of a dead girl. She had slept in his bed, she had made love with him and she had his heart. Even now, in death, she has his heart. I think the first time I’d ever recognized jealousy as a strong physical reaction was…oh, the boy. I had trained dozens of submissives and played with countless different combinations, but seeing the affection Jayden showed that boy during his Dom training, that’s when I really understood what jealousy was all about.

I had talked to Nicole about borrowing one of her subs for Jayden’s training. Of course, Ryan immediately volunteered, practically begging Nicole to send him, but I told Nicole that Ryan and Jayden had already played with Jayden as a sub. I wanted Jayden to interact with people that hadn’t previously seen him in that position, which was partially true, but really, I didn’t want to deal with Ryan. Once he had found out that Jayden was transitioning into a Dom role, Ryan had started begging to become my sub. Nicole had decided to bring little Sean instead.