And that's how he'd ended up there.
A scotch in his hands as he watches her dance from the balcony of a high end club, probably the only in the smallest damn town in the world. He'd barely made it through his second drink before he realized the vision he'd honed in on the dance floor, the one among the mass of bodies that managed to hypnotize him with an unusual tinge of familiarity, was none other than Kristina Davis. Or Corinthos, depending on who you talked to.
It seemed insane. That after days of hoping to see her, hoping to bump into her at one of her old haunts... The one day that he tries get away from her... there she is. Waiting for him it seemed. They kept getting pulled together like that. Like magnets, unbidden and inescapable. It kind of scared him.
He twists the empty glass in his hands, content with just watching her. Trying discern in the darkness how much she'd changed. And she had, something in her had changed so drastically since they'd last spoken. The fact that she was in the club at all spoke volumes, but to what end he couldn't say. Maybe it was that her skin was a shade darker, or that she no longer dressed to hide bruises- maybe it was that for the first time in a long time she had no scars or markings to speak of. Not on the surface anyway.
Suddenly she'd opened her eyes, meeting his gaze dead on from the floor below him. The air stilled in his chest as she froze on the dance floor, her face tilted upward at him. Even from a distance he could see the tear that slipped down her cheek like a small diamond as her expression melded from one of awe and incredulity to a frown before she turned away and practically ran for the back exit. He had no choice but to go after her, waving at a confused Johnny as he left. He took the stairs two at a time, surely only escaping broken bones by pure miracle. But he kept going. Weaving through people as best he could to try and catch up with her.
When he barrels through the back door mere seconds behind her, Ethan is surprised to see that somehow he's ended up in a relatively deserted back alley. Even more so to see that she'd stopped running. She stood with her back pressed against the far wall, a curtain of curls framing her breathless face. Though her brown eyes pierce him to the spot, laces of accusation and maybe... relief?
"You're real." She says with an air of surprise.
"Yeah." He breathes, unsure what else he should say. So instead he steps toward her until there's less than a foot between them. Though the tension in that small space felt thick like enormous wire chords that refused to be cut.
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His voice swept over Kristina like warm summer waves. She wanted to curl up inside them and let it carry her away. She hadn't realized how long it had been since she'd heard his voice. Her own little safe harbor in the storm that had been her life. How long had it been since he'd looked at her like that, like she was all he could see. All he cared about. She felt seduced by the mere presence of him, by everything she knew that he was.
She wanted to tell him how she missed him every single day that he was gone, even if she'd convinced herself and everyone else otherwise. She wanted to scream at him for abandoning her in the end. But more than anything she wanted him to pull her into the warmth of his arms, to feel the way he breathe her in when he'd hold her. To finally, after years of tortured dreams and constantly wondering, know what his skin felt like on hers.
"Kris?" His voice broke through her thoughts and the silence around them.
It shook her from her reverie, she'd been about to abandon everything she'd worked so hard at for the past two years. That Ethan Lovette was just a nice guy who'd saved her life once. Nothing more. He didn't want to be friends and certainly nothing more. She'd only made a fool of herself chasing him all that time. She was done with that, and other than civil pleasantries she was done with Ethan as well. She didn't want or need him anymore. "I'm glad your out, but I need to get home."
And so without another word, or before he could even argue, she'd spun on her heel and headed down the alley toward the street. The resounding clicking of her heels meshing with the sounds just beyond the street. She took comfort in that sound that never slept. Cars driving past and the voices that sometimes spilled from the radio through their open windows. The static like chatter of people on the sidewalks, the occasional bark of a dog being walked before bedtime.
She hailed a cab immediately and was almost disappointed when she realized he hadn't gone after her. Kristina looked back down the darkened alley, only to see him still standing there. Motionless but watching her, his mouth open slightly as if he had wanted to say something.
It made her want to cry as the cab drove her away.
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Ethan watched her go. He had wanted to go after her, but something held him back. Maybe it the desperation in her that seemed to need to get away. Though it struck a painful chord in him that it was him she was trying to get away from. Still, he wanted desperately to know what she was thinking now that they had met again after all this time. Had she thought of him too, more than just in passing? Had she found someone else?
But most importantly, he needed to know if she was okay.
Or if the scars Keifer had left had lasted even until now, beneath the surface. Was she still afraid? Did the memories still haunt her? It twisted his insides to even think that she might still be afraid after all this time. That she might still be in pain from what had happened.
He pushes his hands into his pockets and ponders going back in to drink some more, but that hardly ever proved to have anything more than temporary results. He more often than not woke up with a hangover and something stupid marring his already fringed moral fiber. No, instead he follows her lead. Walking out to the street he hails a cab and heads back to Kelley's for the night.
He watches the familiar scenery drip past him like wet paint. Smearing comfort across his chest at their vague shapes. Port Charles was never the kind of place he thought would keep calling him back. He used to think he could leave any place or person behind and never look back. He used to think life wasn't meant for attachments, that they only held you back from all the real pleasures in life. But the longer he stayed, the more he was being proven wrong. He'd found a family here. And not just a long lost parent but a crazy, feuding, loving family. He'd found her here. The one girl in his life who had him so confused about things he'd always been so cynically sure about.
He hands the cabbie a twenty when they jerk to a stop outside Kelly's, "Keep the change." As he heads up the stairs the drugging feeling of sleep and two glasses of scotch weighing his limbs all along the way.
She's there in his dreams when his head hits the pillow, waiting for him like always. He dreams of kissing her, though the memory was so faded and worn it hardly seemed like a memory at all, but more like a film playing on a screen in his head. Distant and removed. He'd forgotten what it felt like to kiss her, the way she'd made him into a piece of her when she did and vice versa. He could swear that piece of her was still inside his heart somewhere, sleeping. Waiting to be woken up by the real thing.
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Kristina navigated herself carefully through the bushes below her bedroom window, cautious not to snag her new and very expensive dress. Sure her parents would buy her anything she wanted, even now but sometimes she got more of a thrill buying her own things with her own money. Something gratifying to reward herself with when she aced an exam or finished a project ahead of time.
She stopped halfway waved her foot slowly over the soft dirt until the tip of shoe nudged the end of the small crowbar she kept buried there. Dusting it off she pries open her already unlocked window silently, making noise only in her struggle to hop over the ledge and inside. With a heavy sigh Kristina locks the window behind her and pulls the fake ID from her bra. She stares at the plane-jane name and the date of birth that isn't hers. Kristina sometimes wonders that if she were that girl, would anything be different?
Knowing that it wouldn't matter either way she tosses it into the drawer her nigh stand before slipping the black sequin mini dress over her head and into a shimmering puddle on the soft cream-colored carpet. Too distracted to do anything else she slips under the thick comforter, her mind flooded with thoughts of one Ethan Lovette.
It seemed harmless, in the cover of night and the privacy of her mind. But she wondered about him. She hadn't expected to feel like this seeing him again, she'd spent so much time trying to convince everyone else that she didn't care about him that way anymore that she'd even fooled herself. But seeing him there in the club, watching her with dark burning eyes. It set her skin on fire in a whole knew way. God, how she had missed him.
In all honesty she had expected. after all that had happened, that he'd never want to come back to Port Charles. She almost hadn't. She'd convinced herself that it was pure chance that her summer plans fell through but deep down she knew the truth. Michael had let it slip none too casually that Ethan had finally been let out of prison. She'd come back secretly hoping for even a glimpse. That that would be enough and then she could let it go forever.
And she wanted to, she desperately wanted to be able to just let him go like he'd let go of her. To be able to just thank him and carry on with her life. But she just couldn't. Every boy that came along just... couldn't compare. She wanted to care about them but after Ethan they never stood a fighting chance. He'd saved her life from and Kiefer and her own self-destructive depression. He was literally her hero. In more ways than just that he'd destroyed the villain in her story, he was kind and caring. He didn't treat her like a child the way her parents, and sometimes even Michael, did. And he'd been the complete opposite of Keifer. Where Kiefer had been cruel and controlling, Ethan had been warm and kind. He'd made her forget that she'd ever been a victim, he'd made her hope again.
"I miss you." She whispered into the empty room, hoping somehow the sentiment would secretly find Ethan wherever he was.
