Chapter Eleven #2
“Ethan,” I said, my tone firm as I stepped back, putting space between us.
His pale eyes snapped to mine, pupils blown wide—want written openly across his face. His lips curved into a slow, flirtatious smile. “Did you need something, Ash?”
I shook my head. “Ethan.” This time it came out as a warning. A boundary. A plea.
The smile faded—just slightly—as something in my voice landed. He sighed and looked at Luca. “I’m sorry.” Flat. Not sincere in the slightest.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
A flicker of something—surprise, maybe fear—crossed Ethan’s face. “What?”
I ignored it with effort. A staggering amount of it. Because walking away from him felt like tearing muscle from bone.
It always had.
“Bye, Ethan.” I pressed my hand to Luca’s back and guided him away, the music swallowing us as we moved.
The heat of Ethan’s body still clung to my chest.
I forced myself not to look back.
Things weren’t looking up in the morning.
I’d hoped sleep would settle everything from yesterday, but sleep never truly came, and when it did, it was flooded with him. The feel of his body against mine. That impossible intensity in his baby-blue eyes. The rough warmth of his voice when he said my name.
And then Luca’s face. Angry. Hurt. Humiliated.
The tightness in my chest refused to ease—and why would it?
The kiss hadn’t been the worst part. It was everything that came before it.
The constant pull toward Ethan. The messages.
The flirting. The way my thoughts circled back to him no matter how hard I tried to redirect them.
The way, even now, my body remembered exactly what it felt like to have him in my bed.
The boundaries we set had come too late and held too loosely. That was on both of us.
But this—this was mine.
Henry was right. I’d lost the plot.
And it wasn’t just about Luca. It was the company I couldn’t save. The people depending on me. The look of disappointment on my brother’s face. My father’s voice in my head, reminding me that my ambition would cost us everything.
And Ethan—god—Ethan was air.
Everything I needed.
But he didn’t fucking deserve this mess. He was supposed to get the best version of me, not the one scrambling through the wreckage of what I’d burned down. I knew not choosing was its own kind of cruelty, but choosing Ethan in the middle of this would be worse.
Last night had made that brutally clear.
We’d almost made it to his apartment in silence. The tense kind. The city slid past outside the window, streetlights flickering over the dashboard.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“Yeah.” Luca’s jaw tightened. “We do.” The coldness in his voice didn’t surprise me, but it made me aware of how stiff his posture had gotten.
“Are you coming up?” he asked, still looking away.
Traffic hummed past us as I bit the inside of my cheek and forced myself to push forward. “No.”
Luca let out a hollow laugh. “You are unbelievable.”
“Luca—”
“This was never about your rules,” he snapped, turning toward me. “It was never about work. This is about your obsession with that guy.”
I froze for a second, then adjusted in my seat. How could I deny it? “I’m sorry, Luca.”
He shook his head, muttering a long string of Italian that I was sure were insults meant for me. “You’ve barely kissed me since—” He bit the side of his thumb, staring at his lap. “It is him. This is so fucking humiliating.”
His hair fell over his eyes. Passing headlights flashed across his face, lighting up the frown tugging at his mouth.
I reached for him, but he pulled his arm away.
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
I couldn’t keep doing this. Faking it. Dragging him through the mess I’d created. Even if our relationship wasn’t ever going to deepen, we’d been friends before everything got fucked up. I respected him, and I’d stopped acting like it.
The car slowed to a stop in front of his building. Neither of us moved.
I leaned a little closer—careful not to touch him. “Can I explain?”
A notification ping snapped me back to the present.
My phone lit up with a text.
Ethan.
Pet
what you doing stranger?
My thumbs hovered over the keys. Always fucking hesitating with him.
Me
coffee?
Pet
are you drinking it or do you want to get one?
Me
remember the café near my place?
Pet
yeah
I needed to get this over with. The sooner, the better.
Me
can you meet me there?
He typed. Stopped. Typed again.
Pet
be there in ten
Me
okay
This is it. Stop being a coward.
Changing quickly, I made my way downstairs and stepped out into the warm October afternoon. I walked the short distance to the café and chose a table outside, one of the small round ones tucked against the brick wall.
The street was alive with weekend noise—scooters whining past, low conversations drifting from nearby tables, and the clatter of cups and saucers from inside.
The air was dry, threaded with the smell of coffee and cigarette smoke.
It hit the back of my throat with a familiar bite, and for a brief, treacherous second, my body remembered the ritual—the slow inhale, the burn in my lungs, the illusion of control.
I flexed my fingers against the tabletop instead.
After signaling the server, two espressos arrived in quick succession, their bitter steam curling into the air. I set them in front of me and focused on the dark surface, willing my mind not to rewind to last night.
I spotted Ethan the moment he rounded the corner. Sunglasses, and one of those coordinated sets where the loose shirt matched the pants—effortlessly clean, understated, elegant. Very him.
Forcing my smile away, I schooled my expression into something neutral despite the heat gathering at the back of my neck.
“Hey,” he said, voice low as he slid into the seat across from me. A small mercy that he didn’t lean in to kiss my cheek this time.
“Hey.” I nodded toward the cup in front of him. “Hope that’s okay.”
He pushed his glasses up and took a sip. “Perfect. Thanks.”
Cars rolled by, sending warm bursts of air across the table. Inside, the espresso machine hissed, small sounds filling the space between us.
Ethan’s eyes stayed on mine, a faint curve at one corner of his mouth that almost looked playful. But the tension in his body told another story. His leg bounced beneath the table, tapping a restless rhythm against the metal frame.
“So why the coffee place?” He rubbed his knuckles under his nose. “We could’ve gone up to yours, no?”
I looked toward the street, toward anything that wasn’t him. “We have a rule about that.”
His leg stopped, then started again, faster, a ringed finger drumming against the cup. “Yeah, but…” Something flickered behind his eyes. Not quite a question. A nudge.
“We need to be stricter about the rules,” I said. “Otherwise—”
“Otherwise what?” His voice sharpened.
“Well… we’re just friends, right?”
His mouth tightened, gaze dropping to his lap. “Right.” After a beat, he pushed his chair back, the scrape loud against the stone floor as he stood.
“Ethan—”
His hands slid into his pockets. “Did you break up with him, Sebastian?”
The noise of the café pressed in around us, filling the space I didn’t.
He let out a short breath through his nose, almost a laugh. “Okay.”
“Ethan—”
“Fuck you.” He started to walk away, then stopped and turned back, facing me with something flat and furious in his eyes. “For the record,” he said, “this is not how you keep the door open for someone.” His jaw tightened. “You fucking lied.”
Then he left.
And somehow, the calm on his face was worse than his anger.
I’d hoped for shouting—anything but that quiet certainty, like he’d already made peace with expecting nothing better from me. The guilt hit immediately, heavy and inescapable, settling inside me as I watched him disappear around the corner.
I didn’t even manage an I’m sorry.
He’s going to reach his limit with me. I’m screwing this up. Permanently.
I stayed there long after Ethan had gone, staring at the half-finished espresso growing cold in front of me. The street noise blurred into nothing until, finally, Luca’s voice pushed through my head.
“No, I do not need your explanations. I can see very clearly what is going on between the two of you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“No more excuses, Sebastian,” he said. “You are practically foaming at the mouth every time he comes around. I actually thought you were better than that.”
That hit a nerve. “Better than that?”
“You are obsessed with a guy half your age—who acts like it—just because he is attractive and desperate to fuck you.”
That’s not what this is. That’s not what we are.
All I managed was, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I thought you were serious,” he continued. “That you wanted something real in spite of your stupid rules. But you have no idea how to be in a relationship, do you? You don’t know how to stay for someone. With you, it is always work. Always appearances.”
“That’s not true.”
Was it?
He let out a bitter laugh. “It isn’t? I have never met anyone more addicted to the chase than you.
You want trophies, Sebastian. Not people.
This is not how you treat people.” He shook his head slowly.
“I almost feel sorry for him. The disappointment he’ll feel when his god, Sebastian Langley, finally comes crashing down. ”
I held his gaze, saying nothing.
“You will keep him at arm’s length. You keep everyone there.”
The low hum of the engine filled the space between us.
“It is incredibly sad watching a man your age mistake obsession for love,” he said, his voice turning cold. “But it is not my fucking problem anymore.”
I remembered him opening the car door, the cool night air hitting my face.
“Have a nice life.” The door slammed behind him.
My heart had been pounding—part anger, part something far worse.
Doubt.
Images flooded behind my eyes: Ethan’s easy laughter, the way he refused to be pushed away, the way he stepped straight through every boundary I tried to build and stood there anyway, unapologetic and bright and impossible to ignore.
The way he filled a room simply by existing in it.
The way he looked at me like I was something worth reaching for. Like I was someone he believed in.
He wasn’t the problem. He never had been.
Ethan was fire—open, reckless, alive. And I was the one standing too close to it, pretending I wouldn’t burn.
Luca was wrong about many things, but not about this. I had no business reaching for something real when I could barely keep the rest of my life from splintering apart. Look what I’d already done. To Luca. To Ethan.
I couldn’t do it. Not like this.
It was too soon. Too unfair to him.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do when the ground shifted beneath my feet.
I pulled everything back under control.