Chapter 14 – His Father’s Son7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiSDJzyw2Xx
The Villegas house was quieter than usual.
It wasn’t the peaceful kind of quiet, but the tense, wounded type—like a house holding its breath, waiting for someone to shatter everything.
Ethan didn’t come home the night he left Janina’s room.
Janina told herself not to care. She told herself again and again until she stopped believing it.
But Gregory noticed.
"He's been coming home late. You two fight again?" he asked over breakfast, flipping through the business section of the newspaper.
Janina stirred her coffee slowly. “He’s just busy.”
“Must be more than that. Cathy called me last night. Said she hasn’t heard from him either.”
Janina froze. Her guilt stretched like a noose around her throat.
“I’m sure they’ll figure it out,” she muttered.
Gregory glanced at her then, and for the first time in weeks, there was a flicker of something sharp in his eyes. “You know, sometimes I think you and Ethan have more to talk about than you do with me.”
Janina looked up, startled.
Gregory didn’t wait for her to respond. He stood and adjusted the cuffs of his suit. “I’m off to the city. Call me if he comes back.”
He didn’t kiss her goodbye.
That night, Janina found Ethan sitting alone in the old music room, where Beatrice’s piano still stood. The lights were off, the only glow coming from the moonlight outside the glass windows. His fingers hovered over the keys but didn’t play.
He didn’t look at her when she stepped inside.
“I used to come here with Mom,” he said softly. “She’d play something sad, then tell me it was okay to cry if I wanted to.”
Janina folded her arms, heart clenched. “You don’t have to punish yourself like this.”
He finally looked at her, and in his eyes were all the storms he’d been holding back.
“I’m not punishing myself,” he said. “I’m punishing you.”
Janina’s breath hitched.
“You walked away,” he continued. “You left me with all of this... wanting, and nowhere to put it.”
“Because it’s wrong, Ethan,” she snapped. “This... us... it was a mistake.”
“You kissed me,” he said coldly. “That wasn’t a mistake. That was you, not my stepmother, not my father’s wife. Just you, wanting me.”
Janina blinked back tears. “Even if that’s true... it can’t happen again.”
Ethan stood up slowly. “You sound just like him, you know. My dad. Always choosing what’s safe. What looks proper. No wonder he married someone twenty years younger and still can’t give her what she needs.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” he challenged. “Because I look at you and I don’t see someone happy. I see someone starving. And I’d rather be hated by everyone than let you rot in this house pretending you're not.”
The words sliced her open.
And still—she said nothing.
Ethan walked past her, but this time, he stopped at the door.
“You were right,” he whispered. “You’re not like me.”
And then quietly, painfully—
“You’re just like him.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
And Janina?
She stared at the piano.
Then finally sat down and played.
A sad, broken melody she didn’t know she still remembered.
One that tasted like shame.
And longing.
And a kind of love that was already too late.
ns216.73.216.82da2
