Page 33 of Pucking My Bad Boy Enemy

I open my mouth and nothing comes out.

Because I built Ethan out of pure cowardice, and I never gave him a last name or a face.

He was never a man. He was a wall. He was the thing I hid behind so I could have Jax. And protect what's left of my heart.

And now my brother is watching that wall split straight down the middle in real time.

I did this. I stood between the two of them and I lied to both, and tonight I watched them try to skate through each other, and I don't even get to know how bad the damage is.

"Margot" Cade's voice goes soft, and soft is so much worse than the yelling. "I watched you tonight. From my bench, between shifts, I watched you. "It’s like your whole heart was out there on the ice."

I'm crying now.

He gets up and sits besides me wrapping his arms around me. He hugs me, my big brother, the boy who stared down every kid who ever made me cry, and he knows.

"There's no Ethan." His voice cracks clean through the middle. "Is there, Mar?"

Chapter 16: Margot

"No." The word comes out of me small and broken. "There's no Ethan. I made him up."

Cade just holds my hands, and I watch the last of his hope drain out of his face, the version of tonight where his sister is fine, where there's a nice steady guy who travels for work, where none of this is the thing he's been afraid of since he flew in.

"Why?" Just the one word.

And the dam I've held for years, finally lets go.

"Because I couldn't tell him the truth." My voice splinters. "If I told Jax the real reason I asked him to spend all this time with me, he'd have run. Or worse, he'd have pitied me, and I could survive a lot of things, Cade, but not that. Not Jax feeling sorry for me. So I built a fake man to hide behind. I told him there was someone else so he'd never once guess there was only ever him."

Cade goes very still. "Only ever him. Since when, Mar?"

"Since always." I laugh, and it comes out wet and ugly.

I watch my brother's face process what I’ve confessed. "You asked me that night at the party. You asked if somebody did something to me… "

"Margot."

"Jax kissed me." The words are a relief and a wound at the same time.

"I wanted it more than I have ever wanted anything, and then I understood he was drunk, he'd laugh it off by morning and call it nothing. That's what happened, Cade."

My brother sits back like I hit him. He scrubs both hands down his face, and when he drops them his eyes are shining, and I’ve made Cade cry maybe a few times in our whole lives, and every single time it has taken a piece out of me.

His voice is a ruin. "Why didn’t you tell me?"

"You'd have gone to war."

"Of course I'd have gone to war." A broken almost-laugh. "For you. I’d bury Jax."

That might have been true back then, but now I can tell he wouldn’t hurt Jax. He knows something.

"Cade." I grip his hands. "What did he say to you out there? Please just tell me what Jax said."

"No." It comes out gentle, and it is the kindest, cruelest ‘no’ anyone has ever said to me. "Some things you don't get secondhand."

He stands, and he draws me up with him, and he takes my face in both his hands the way our dad used to do. "Stop building walls and inventing men to hide behind, and go talk to Jax."

"I can't."