"From now on, I won't let anyone hurt you again. Not even a little."
To me, Ethan wasn't just the boy next door I grew up with. He was family.
His words felt like warmth spreading through my chest, and my eyes stung all over again.
The second he saw I was about to cry, he panicked a little. "Hey, don't cry. It kills me to see that."
During my hospital stay, he barely left my side.
Zane never showed up again. But his father did, carrying gifts, acting concerned the moment he saw my hand.
"Faye, we had no idea that Zane did all this. If you had told me and his mother earlier, we would've dealt with him ourselves. And now things have blown up like this… even Ethan's ready to turn against the Hayes family."
Maybe they didn't know everything between me and Zane. But there was no way they
