Recklessly Bound

Chapter Twenty Four

I wake up to the sound of nature. The waves crashing to the cliff and birds chirping somewhere in the small jungle behind us. When I stretch my body, I feel a tingle. Memories of last night help me relocate the cause of the pain. I bite my lips. Turning my head, I half expect to find myself lonely, except that I'm wrong. Ethan is sleeping next to me. He's his head nested on his bicep and the other resting on my body.

I turn to him completely to see his face. His lips are full and lush, ready for a long ravishingly kiss of a lover. I guess that lover is me now. I look down at his chest and how it calmly rises and falls with each breath. This man is breathtaking. And what's the best in all of this is that this man is my husband, at least legally.

"Staring is rude," Ethan mumbles. I gasp taken by surprise. Seconds later, he opens his eyes and looks up at me with his gray eyes.

Facing too much rejection in my life, the majority of them from him, my smile shortly falls apart. What if he's regretting this moment? What if he was drunk last night like he was a month ago and rejects me again? His affection is too strange. How can he possibility wake up and realize he wants me after all?

"What are you thinking about?" he asks, leaning up and on his forearm.

"Nothing." I shake my head but then decide that if this thing is going to work, at least one of us need to be honest. Seeing as he can't get more open that he is now, I volunteer myself. "When did you start noticing me? Surely, you didn't wake up all of a sudden feel a passion towards me and left Lorena for me. Was it our marriage status that made you notice me?"

"Evelyn..." he starts but falls silent, perhaps thinking what to say. "I have always noticed you. Even in high school when you thought I didn't. How can a man not notice you?"

"Yet, you always distanced yourself away from me." I raise my eyebrow.

He opens his mouth to say something but decides against it.

"there was once a tv series I had to study at university. It was about misperception. Seeing one thing and concluding something else. I wasn't trying to ignore you or distance myself from you. When I say I notice you, always, I mean it. It might sound confusing to you now, but there is more to the story."

"then explain it to me?" I search his eyes looking for truth, anything that would replace the empty space. Why he insists on noticing me, seeing me, when he kept his space and yet claims he didn't mean it.

"I... Ok, fine, yes, I was trying to stay away." He sits up, frustratingly and rubs his fingers over his mouth as he stares off to the ocean. "It wasn't that you weren't worthy of me. Or that I was trying to get away from you because I hated you, no. It was because I knew you deserved better. When we married, I laughed. Not because I thought I was in love with Lorena, but because I thought this is a good slap to my face for distancing myself away from you."

I notice the way he said "thought" when he refers to his relationship with Lorena.

"You want to know why I was acting the way I was acting... then here's your reason. I wasn't good for you. I'm still not good for you. What can I offer? Nothing. Sure, I can give you money, status, a role in a movie, but I can't give relationships, I can't give love. And you, more than anyone, deserve it."

I look at him, shocked. Those words are not something you would hear Ethan speaks. Mouth half-opened, I look ahead of me at the ocean, my brain not functioning. Besides the fact that he just mentioned that love is not something he can give me, he also finally revealed the true reason why he has been acting the way he has. Of course. It all makes sense. The way he was trying to ignore me everything he saw me was to make me hate him, not him showing his hatred.