I rub the left side of my chest. My heart is cold, aching, and hardly beating. “Barely alive, but I don’t complain.”
He shakes his head. “My man, you need an intervention. If Grace had gone through all the shit Zeke did, I’d be devastated. I’d need therapy. Maybe even a retreat to find myself.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I squeeze my eyes briefly. He’s not wrong. I’m back to having night terrors. They were gone for years, and now I wake up every night screaming Zeke’s name. I see him on that steel table at the morgue. Other times he’s under the white blanket. It doesn’t matter where he is at, when I see him, he’s cold. Dead.
For years, I’ve been lying to myself, hiding in a labyrinth that doesn’t seem to have an exit. I have no idea who I am anymore. There are so many layers of shit covering the real me.
“Is there a way out of the hell where I live?” I ask out loud.
“Of course there is,” he responds. “You just need to reach out and ask for help. Google ‘grief counselors near me.’ You can always try CBT therapy. It’s none of my business, but you can search for resources to help you come out to your friends, family, and business associates. If you’re not ready for any of that and you need anyone to talk to, I’m here.”
“Thank you for helping him,” I mumble.
He nods. “I just ask you to keep my secret, just as I’m keeping yours.”
I nod.
After he leaves, Hannah enters the office.
“Why was Beacon Aldridge here?”
I glance at the papers he brought me, and I guess my game is so weak today that I realize too late that I left them at her mercy. She goes through them and frowns.
“Why did Zeke move from the Ft. Lauderdale facility to Luna”—she looks closer at the papers—“Luna Recovery & Restoration? That sounds like a mental health institution. Are they going to help him with his treatment?”
“It is, and yes,” I respond. “Zeke felt that he needed more help, something that included a long-term program. Beacon knew about this place. He helped us with the transition.”
I should stop lying to everyone, including myself. But what am I supposed to tell her? The truth is too hard to handle. She broke up with Alex Spearman a few weeks back, and her birthday is tomorrow. I’ll hold the news at least until Zeke is ready to tell her himself.
“Who is paying for the expenses?”
“I am,” I answer.
“If you need money,” she states.
I give her a please-I can-afford-it look.
“Well, I’m just offering,” she states and frowns. “Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
She walks around my desk and studies my face. “You haven’t slept well, have you?”
“I—”
“We’ve known each other for years, Eth,” she interrupts me. “I’ve seen that face. It’s the one you have when the night terrors are back. What happened?”
“How long do you have?”
“For you, a lifetime,” she offers.
“I love you, you know?”
She nods with a smile she’d give someone who is about to walk to his doom. “It’s them, isn’t it? The guys are falling apart.”
Everything has been falling apart for years. She saved herself when her mother died. That trip was the best thing that could’ve happened to her. I guess we all could use a break from each other and from life to figure out who we are.
“We are all broken,” I state. “You at least sorted out your future.”
She blows out some air. “As if. I feel like I can’t get a break in the love department. You were close to the gates of happiness once—closer than any of us.”
“You can’t consider being engaged to Lori happiness. It was more like hell.”
I glance at the desk where the paperwork for Zeke’s recovery is. He might be a mess, but at least he’s in rehab sorting his life.
I, on the other hand, am nowhere near fixing myself.
“Maybe I’m more broken than any of you. I’m just better at hiding my lies, my addictions, and my problems.”
She rubs her eyebrow, giving me a confused look. “What on Earth are you talking about?”
I take a deep breath, and I let the air out, along with the words. “Do you know I’m in the closet?”
She blinks a couple of times before saying, “No, you’re not.”
“Outside the Sinners, no one knows I’m”—I clear my throat—“bisexual.”
She frowns. “No, you…” She pauses and blinks a couple of times.
When she focuses her attention on me her eyes open wide as if a switch was flicked and the light is letting her see everything clearly. This is what I’ve been doing for years. I learned that one can control the narrative since I moved to Seattle. For more than fifteen years, I’ve regulated the rhetoric that has persuaded everyone to believe what I want them to believe. While I convinced my friends that I’m transparent, the outside world has a different image of me.
Powerful, single, playboy Ethan Killion.
I’m the biggest lie I’ve told anyone—including myself.
“You never mentioned it.” Hannah scrunches her nose, looking from me to her hand. As if the answer to the puzzle is there. “I’ve never seen you with a guy. When you ‘date,’ it is always women. How did I never notice it?”
She’s dumbfounded and maybe a little annoyed because her tone of voice changes. “I mean, how?” She flaps her hands. “You still like guys, right? You’re just denying that part of yourself, aren’t you?”
I nod once.
“Lori didn’t know, did she?”
“I mentioned it casually, but I made sure she didn’t pay enough attention to care.”
“Why?” she asks, taking a seat on my leather couch. “Why would you do that to yourself? I can’t believe we never noticed. No wonder sometimes you look sad. I should’ve pushed you to tell me what was happening with you.”
The sadness wasn’t about not coming out but my relationship with Zeke. That’s yet another untold story that I’m not sure I’ll share with her. I feel like I’m going to break the flimsy link keeping the Sinners together.
“Ethan,” she says my name with worry and not anger. “Can you tell me why, please?”
“So many reasons,” I mumble. “My mother almost killed me because of it. When I came to Seattle, I wanted this to be a clean slate. I was afraid that someone would beat me up or shoot me, as she tried. People aren’t as accepting as they want you to think.
“Yes, they say that our rights matter, but do they really? You’ve no idea how many times I’ve heard people saying that bisexual men and women are just perverts, pedophiles, and so many gross things. We’re not. This is our making. I can’t change people’s minds, but I can keep that part of myself hidden.
“Our company wouldn’t be as successful if everyone knew I’m bisexual. A part of me still wants the acceptance of my mother. I have it. She thinks I changed, and it was a phase. I thought it was for the best.”
“But it’s not, is it?” Her voice is barely above a whisper.