I Moved 1,500 Miles Away, Now You Can Favor Her Openly Chapter 08

Diane stared at her own hand in disbelief, then at Chloe, whose head had snapped to the side, and stammered, “How could you talk to Mason like that? Everything he did was for you.”

Chloe clutched her cheek and glared at them with pure venom. “For me? If you really cared about me, you would’ve made her completely deaf ten years ago and kicked her out. You never should have kept that ticking time bomb around!”

A deathly silence fell over the car.

Gregory, Diane, and Mason all stared stiffly at Chloe in the back seat, her face twisted.

She was nothing like the little princess they had doted on and carefully protected for ten years.

The sweet, “innocent” Chloe who teared up at the smallest slight and felt bad about stepping on an ant was now cursing her own twin in the vilest words, even blaming them for not being ruthless enough back then.

Diane reached out with a trembling hand to touch her face. “Chloe, did the stuff online get to you? What are you saying?”

Chloe slapped Diane’s hand away and stopped caring altogether. “I mean it. The whole internet knows anyway, so I’m done pretending. I hate her, okay?”

“Why was she always smarter than me? Why did Ethan always say she had pretty eyes? So what if I pushed her into the water?”

“You’re the ones who kept her around and made her sick with your high-and-mighty charity. Now that it’s blown up, why should I take the fall alone?”

Gregory roared, his face livid. “Enough! You ungrateful little monster. This whole family has buried its conscience for you, and you say something like this?”

Mason slumped in his seat, staring at Chloe, and the shock in his eyes slowly gave way to despair and confusion.

He thought back over the past ten years and all the times he had made Hannah swallow her hurt for Chloe’s sake.

When Hannah wanted a bite of cake, he accused her of picking on Chloe.

When Hannah’s ear hurt so badly she couldn’t sleep, he complained that she was making noise and keeping Chloe up.

He had believed he was protecting a fragile angel. He never realized he had raised a selfish little devil with his own hands.

Mason covered his face in agony, tears seeping through his fingers. “What have we done?”

Ethan, who had been sitting silently in the passenger seat the whole time, suddenly pushed the door open.

Diane called out in a panic, “Ethan, where are you going?”

Ethan stood outside the car. The sun was shining on him, but he was shaking with cold.

He turned his head and gave Chloe a calm, flat look, then looked at Gregory and Diane.

Ethan answered, his voice rough as sandpaper. “Somewhere I should’ve gone a long time ago. Hannah was right. Her hearing became Chloe’s summer camp in Alpenvale, and I helped make it happen.”

He remembered sitting by Hannah’s hospital bed when they were eight and swearing to her, “From now on, I’ll be your ears.”

But in the ten years since, he hadn’t even managed to remember what she was dangerously allergic to. He had handed her a glass of lemonade that made her throat swell shut.

When he saw that refund slip, he had chosen to stay silent and protect Chloe, who was in the wrong.

He had prided himself on being devoted, but like Gregory and Diane, he had been numbing himself with cheap sentiment to cover the selfishness underneath.

Chloe panicked and scrambled to get out of the car and grab him. “Ethan, don’t go. You said you’d protect me forever.”

Ethan stepped back out of her reach, as if he were dodging something filthy.

Disgust filled Ethan’s eyes. “Don’t say my name. Watching you play the victim makes me sick.”

With that, he flagged down a taxi and sped off without looking back.

The Reeds were left sitting in the car, staring at the wreckage of everything they had lost, sinking into a bottomless pit.