With and Without | Open Heart 2/3 AU | Choices

Vending Machine Confession

Ethan hated goodbyes.

He hated drawn out farewells and lingering endings. He'd never been one to hesitate when it was time to go. Ethan hadn't noticed the change until now – the hesitance in his limbs and the dread in his chest. He wasn't comfortable on the precipice because he had too much to lose now.

Or maybe he had too much to lose.

Perhaps for the first time since he'd met Charlie, Ethan was free from the shackles of indecision. He knew exactly what he had to do, and as he barreled towards self-destruction, it felt like the only right thing he'd done in a long time.

Naveen told Ethan to give it a few days before acting on his decision to leave Edenbrook. You might regret it, Naveen politely cautioned. Until now, Ethan's devotion to Edenbrook had been unrelenting, unforgiving, and undying. He sacrificed everything to the altar of his career.

He'd sacrificed Charlie in the name of saving her.

It was a cautionary tale as old as man's arrogance.

But now it had an ending.

The final chapter had been written, and there was ease in certainty. Even if the conclusion was devasting, at least he knew when it would happen. His ego destroyed him, and now it was a quiet, sneering companion in his grief – reminding him of all he could have achieved if he'd been brave.

Faced with mutual destruction, Ethan had the pleasure of pulling the trigger first. As long as Charlie maintained her corresponding threat to destroy her career, Ethan would gladly do the same. It was a small consolation, but it was his to seize. A final sacrifice – his magnum opus of self-sabotage and poor conflict resolution. Ethan ruined Edenbrook for Charlie, and if he could do nothing else, he owed it to Charlie to give her the dream back.

Stubbornness was their chosen vice. Together, they'd buried themselves in the name of burying the other. Now, there was no escape.

The worst part was that, despite the fights that preceded these lonely nights, they'd never stopped loving each other. Neither saw the other as irredeemable – foolish, inconsiderate, and frustrating, maybe, but not irredeemable. Circumstances ruined them, but the relationship itself was still painted in streaks of gold.

Gold that seeped into the red rage and gray despair.

Gold that kept Ethan up late into the night – pacing a lonely apartment until he could no longer look at the space he once shared with Charlie. Ethan was a man on the run, but he didn't know where he was going. So, he worked until he didn't have enough energy to think.

Ethan gazed at the Boston skyline and wondered if any other skyline would feel so lonely. New York? Chicago? San Diego? Dallas?

He had offers from every city. All it would take was a mild display of interest, and he would be whisked away to a new life. His Rhode Island roots recoiled at the possibility of life in the blazing heat, but the broken pieces of his soul longed for anything unfamiliar and untainted. Change could be good, he thought, if for no other reason than it would let him sleep at night.

Idly, his eyes drifted to his laptop screen – waiting for the email he knew was coming. He'd sent out his interest. Now, he just had to wait for an eager recruiter to claim the fist interview. Wherever it was, he'd go – sunny, dark, rainy, hot, whatever. Selectivity required too much from his frayed mind.

For a moment, he imagined a world where the email never came. What would feel worse – the blow to his ego or his failure to make the grand sacrifice?

But of course, the email arrived. To those followers lucky enough to admire him from afar, Ethan was still a god. By the luck of the draw, a hospital in San Diego was the first to claim him. Only a few minutes later, it would have been a medical school in Chicago.