“I thought he would have figured it out anyway. Both leaving on the same day.”
He shrugged.
“I’m sorry.” Her words did little to smother the hurt he felt right now. All the pain of that night came back to smack him in the face. All because he felt trapped by her love and retaliated without thinking it through.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t get too close. I don’t want to hurt you again.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to try and make things right, Mari. I do and not just because of Noah. You see, I don’t thing we ever got to be the people we could have been together and I blame myself for that. I still want that for us but I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do if these issues aren’t put to bed. You and Rake must have had something good together. You did, right?”
She dropped her head, hiding her face from view. “Your brother was complicated.”
Complicated? What the heck did that mean?
“Rake was driven to be the best. Sometimes I think he had something to prove and not just to himself.”
Ethan snorted. “Sounds about right. He was always reaching for that next level, never happy with what he’d already achieved. I’ve never seen anyone so focused as he was.”
She tucked her hair around her ear and glanced sideways at him, a smile curving her lips. The double lines at the edges of her mouth deepened. They’d always fascinated him.
“I know your dad had something to do with it but Rake wouldn’t talk about him. Jeff’s name was a dirty word in our house.” She clapped when Noah scored a goal. “Woo-hoo, go you!”
“He miss Rake?”
“Yes and no. He was too young to understand a lot of what happened. Rake was sick off and on for a long time before he died. He refused to admit to it most of the time and tried to pretend it wasn’t anything to worry about. Then when he did accept his diagnosis, he spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital before he finally took his life. So Noah didn’t get a whole lot of time with him in the last year or so.”
“That sucks.” He clasped his hands together, sucked in a breath, the question he wanted to ask bursting on his tongue. “Why didn’t you call me? I would have come, you know that.”
Mari stared at him, pain etched on her face. “Rake… Rake didn’t want anything to do with the family. He forbade me from calling anyone, especially you.”
“But why? My brother and I were best friends growing up. I don’t get it.” Frustration and pain sharpened his words. “I’d understand it if we didn’t get on as kids but we did.” It wasn’t fair. The brother he adored had shut him out of his life and for what reason? Only she knew and she wasn’t saying. “I would have been there for him. For both of you.”
“I told him that but it didn’t make any difference. It all became too much for him and it wasn’t worth fighting when he was in a mood.” She straightened up and her defenses settled around her. He knew the look when Mari shut down.
Had he pushed too much too soon? “But you know why, right?”
“This isn’t going to achieve anything, Ethan. Hashing over all the pain will do nothing but hurt everyone involved. Please, just leave it and move on.”
Move on? Not easy when he’d waited most of his adult life for answers. “Does it really mean that much to you?”
“It does.”
By the look on her face, he wasn’t sure if he believed her or not but it looked like he didn’t have any choice. At least, not at the moment. It might be safer to ask her later when they’d gotten over the awkward stage of trusting each other again and she’d dealt with whatever it was she wasn’t talking about. She was stubborn but also honest and fiercely loyal. If it was something Rake didn’t want known, she wasn’t going to tell anyone. It left him with no choice if he wanted her in his life.
“Mari, I don’t know how to deal with this now that I’ve had time to let it sink in. I thought I was good with it. You coming back and our past. The things you won’t say that I need to hear. I don’t know what the future holds for us.” He reached for her hand. “But I’d like to see if we can get something back. Even if it’s just best friends for now. I missed you, I really missed us. What do you say?”
“You’ll always be special to me, Ethan. You were my best friend growing up and that won’t change, no matter what’s happened in the past.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I wish you’d stop worrying about him and enjoy yourself.” Bella nudged her sister and picked up her glass of wine, leaned in to whisper into her ear. “You have a really hot guy here giving you puppy dog eyes and you’re worried about something that happened when you were a teenager? Ignore the old fool. Everyone else does.”
Mari was thrilled her sister, Jake, and Cory had all decided to join them for dinner but it didn’t take her mind off what had happened this afternoon as much as she’d hoped it would. And with her conversation with Ethan still foremost in her mind, she was easily distracted. “Really? The way Jeff was talking he was well liked and could easily ruin things for me.”
“Not according to my sources. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he does a great job with his cherry farm but he’s a bit of a grouch. People put up with him because of Pearl and Ethan.”
“It’s
