Mended

35

**trigger warning**
Self-harm.

Ethan's POV

My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

The letter was blurry. The words had shifted into incomprehensible black lines of ink that my mind refused to process. My vision began to narrow. My mind began to curl in on itself. My lungs began to shriek for air.

Ethan's hatred terrifies me because I fear it's nothing compared to what he'll feel towards me when he finds out what everyone believes I did.

Why was this happening to me.

I've lost my wife. I've lost my son.

Bile rose in my throat. The letter slipped from my hands. My stomach convulsed and I barely made it to the bathroom before I bent over and threw up.

I knew I was shaking and sweating. I knew that my legs had stopped working. I knew that I couldn't pull myself up off the floor. I knew that there was a numbness spreading through my chest that wasn't supposed to be there. I knew that I wasn't supposed to feel a grief of this magnitude ever again.

Not again. Not again. Not again.

Somehow, I found the strength to pull out my phone.

She answered on the first ring.

"Rose." Why was my face wet? The phone almost slipped through my fingers because my hand was shaking so much. "Rose."

I couldn't get another word out because my stomach constricted again. I dry heaved, clutching the edge of the bathtub as I tried to hold myself up.

There was so much panic in her voice as she shouted my name through the phone.

"He lied, Rose," I choked out into the phone. My hands were wet now, but I didn't understand why. I didn't cry. "Nobody told me."

What was I saying?

Ethan's hatred terrifies me.

I closed my eyes, but the words my dad had written were burned into my mind. I needed them to get out, but I knew they'd never leave.

God, all that time I'd wasted resenting him. All those moments he'd asked me if I wanted to do something with him, and I'd said no because I believed I was sticking up for my mom. I'd said no because even before I'd known about the affair, I'd always blamed my dad for the drifts that had been occurring in my family.

I didn't know. Nobody told me the truth. Nobody cared enough.

"Where are you, Ethan?" She sounded terrified. "I'll come to you. Please tell me where you are."

My chest ached. My shoulders fell back against the shower door behind me. I wanted to smash my head into it. I wanted to never feel anything ever again.

"I didn't know," I croaked, my voice shaking. Rose was saying things, trying to get me to listen to her, but I couldn't hear. "I didn't know. I didn't know. God, I didn't fucking know."

"Didn't know what, baby?" Rose's voice was shaking too. I wondered if she was stalling; trying to make sure I stayed on the phone with her. I heard an engine start.

My tears burned as they dripped onto my lap. "How do I tell him that I didn't know? How do I tell him that I don't hate him? He thought I hated him."

I didn't hate him. Not even close. I loved him and it had been easier to think that I always resented him because I didn't think I could have handled losing both my mother and father as a child.