Read Online The Blank Canvas (Apartment #2) by Amanda Black - Free Book Online Page A

and unsure of her own shifting emotions, but that didn’t make him any less attractive to her. She wanted to kiss his bruises and hold him for hours. Then she wanted to throttle him.
    Ethan cleared his throat nervously. “Well, first off, let me start by saying that I wasn’t getting regular updates on you. Nobody even knew where I was until last week when Eric showed up out of nowhere and punched my lights out.”
    Good
, Lily felt like saying, but held her tongue. She couldn’t allow herself to say it when she knew that she didn’t mean it. She didn’t think that violence was the way to solve things and she hated to think of him swollen and in pain. But she also knew Eric well enough by then to know that he must have been very scared, worried, and hurt to have done that to his own brother. It didn’t exactly excuse it in her eyes, but she could certainly understand it.
    “And where
were
you?”
    Ethan watched her mouth form the words as she spoke and felt a pang of desire in his stomach. When he realized that she had actually asked him a question, he shook his head quickly and fought to regain his composure.
    “Uh… holed up in a hotel room in New York.” He brushed his hands roughly over his face and hissed when he bumped the sore flesh. “Ouch. Anyway, I sort of cut myself off from everyone. I wasn’t even taking their calls.”
    “How could you
do
that to them?” she gasped. “They care so much about you!”
    “I know that—now,” he sighed. “There is a lot of backstory between me and my family that you don’t know, and I’ve just begun to see how much time I’ve truly lost with them. But luckily, it seems like their love outweighs their frustration with me.”
    That was another thing that Lily could certainly understand.
    “Am I ever going to hear any of this backstory?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.
    He smiled gently. “Actually, I’d love to tell you anything you’d like to know about me. And there’s even more that I want to learn about you.” He looked into her eyes and took a deep breath. “Will you allow me the chance to get to know you, Lily? To
really
get to know you?”
    “What… um… what did you have in mind?” she whispered.
    “Well,” he swallowed roughly, “I was thinking that we might… go out? For starters, that is.”
    “You want to take me on a date?” she asked, her head swimming with a mixture of apprehension and elation. “Like… a
real
date?”
    “Well… more than one, if you’ll let me.” He started to fidget a bit and she could have sworn she saw a hint of a blush tinting his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m terrible at this, I know. It’s just that I’ve never really done this before.”
    “What, dated?”
    “Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever even asked anyone out before.” He definitely blushed that time. “I went from being a shy kid to a snobbish adult stuck in a miserable relationship for years, and it was like all of those things just… happened to me. Does that make sense? Like I was sort of being led about, never making my own choices in life.”
    “I guess I get it,” she said after thinking about it for a while. “But it also sounds like you allowed it to happen to you.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, you didn’t
have
to be
stuck
with her. Once you found out what she was really like, you didn’t have to stay with her as long as you did. It sounds like you just… sat back and took what was handed to you, without ever bothering to search for anything better.” She looked him in the eye again, suddenly worried she had misspoke. “I’m sure that’s oversimplifying your situation, I hope that doesn’t offend you. I know that I don’t have all of the details yet.”
    “No… I’m not offended,” he said slowly, a bit rattled that she had hit the nail on the head so easily. “That’s actually pretty accurate. I guess I just never thought that anything better was really out there. I figured it would all just be more