Chapter 6
Chapter Six
L ily
My stomach flutters as I knock on the door of the frat house. The prospect of teasing Ethan for a full hour fills me with a strange sense of purpose, something I haven’t felt in months. I ought to be embarrassed that such childish behavior can make me feel like my old self, but I’ll take these small wins as they come.
Ethan is all business in his approach to everything. He’ll be aggravated out of his mind if he feels like I’m not taking this whole “accountability partner” thing seriously.
It will be his own fault. He overstepped by agreeing to this. Even he admitted that.
The door opens, revealing Ethan’s tall form. The warmth in his eyes makes my smile fade. Why does he look so excited to see me?
His demeanor toward me has changed since that night. I wasn’t imagining it during the meeting with Noah. He’s somehow…softer, more inviting.
I brush off the thought as I walk inside and follow him down the hallway. I won’t let his new warmth stop me from teasing him. I’ll make it my mission to bring out that grumpy, exasperated Ethan who never fails to amuse me.
He leads me inside a room that looks like a library.
“What is this?” I ask, my gaze drifting over the wall-to-ceiling bookshelves.
“We call it the study.”
I snort. “Pretentious.”
“Yes. Especially coming from a group of guys who hold a monthly beer chugging competition. No one uses our study except me.” He pauses for a beat. “Because I’m pretentious, I guess.”
When I whip my head in his direction, he’s smiling faintly—a sweet little quirk of the lips—but it’s nearly blinding. My God, this man is beautiful when he smiles. It sure beats his usual stoic frown. I was never affected by his looks until recently, but then again, I don’t think he’s ever smiled at me like that before.
I turn away, pretending to examine a shelf of books. “I wouldn’t say pretentious. That’s not your brand of asshole. Don’t be offended by my use of the word ‘asshole.’ We all have our own unique brand, even me.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s my brand?”
I frown at the question. It’s not like him to indulge my rambling silliness. “I’d call you the intellectual gym rat. You’re analytical about your approach to athletic and academic excellence, and it makes you feel like you’re better than people who don’t work as hard as you do. It’s totally insufferable, but it doesn’t matter because you’re hot. You don’t need a personality when you have nothing to compensate for.”
When he bursts into laughter, heat breaks out over my cheeks. I just told him he doesn’t have a personality, damn it. I’ve said versions of the same thing many times, and he almost always rolls his eyes.
“I love how you hide your viciousness in backhanded compliments,” he says, his voice strained from laughter. “You tried to disarm me by saying I’m hot, and then you followed it up by basically calling me a dumb jock. Your sass is almost Machiavellian, Lily.”
The warmth in his voice sends a pleasant tingle over my skin. When I turn around, his eyes are soft and affectionate.
Who the fuck is this playful version of Ethan?
I swallow. “I only have a vague idea of what Machiavellian means. I was a C student before my grades started failing. Maybe this is our cue to start our…accountability session, or whatever.”
“In a minute.” He takes a step in my direction. “You haven’t told me what your brand of asshole is. I’m dying of curiosity.”
My head grows fuzzy. This isn’t going according to plan. He’s supposed to be annoyed that I’m distracting him from our session with my teasing, not asking me for more.
“My brand of asshole is the most insufferable of all,” I say, “but I take care not to let it show.”
“Insufferable how?”
“I’m vain. I think I’m the most delightful person in the world. The most fun. The life of the party. Not the prettiest girl at the party, mind you, but always the drunkest.”
Ethan snorts, shaking his head. He believes this to be true, no doubt, and I almost believe it myself. I’m performing for him right now. Pretending to be the girl I once was.
Is that what my plan to tease him was all about, really? I wanted to annoy Ethan so I could feel like my old self, if only for an hour.
How sad.
“If there’s a pole,” I say, striving for lightness. “I will be dancing on it. If there’s a karaoke machine, you bet your ass I’ll be belting out ‘Wildest Dreams’ at the top of my lungs. Off-key, of course. Fun people don’t need to be good at anything. We’ll always get jobs because we’re personality hires. I’m extremely smug about this. I pity people who don’t know how to have fun.”
“Like me,” he says without flinching, and my smile fades.
No, Ethan. I pity myself. I’m not that wild, boisterous girl I used to be, and I’m not sure if I ever will be again.
“You’re wrong about one thing,” he says. “You’re always one of the prettiest girls at the party.”
I shake my head sharply, even as my stomach flutters. He’s called me pretty before, but he was only being polite. Ethan is, above all, a gentleman. He’d never let a girl call herself unattractive without contradicting her.
“My personality confuses people,” I say. “I’m so much fun that it distracts from the flaws in my face.”
“What flaws?”
I wave a hand. “Stop with the flattery. You think I’m being humble, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m saying my personality is so spectacular that no one notices my average looks. Do you know what a gift that is? I could rule the world someday.”
He stares at me with such warmth, I could almost call it tenderness. My stomach flips over. The little speech I gave was so vain it bordered on obnoxious. I never would have said it to anyone but Ethan. Someone who already thinks I’m a frivolous party girl without a deep thought in her head.
Nothing about this meeting is going the way I planned.
“How about we get to our session?” I say. “I’m excited to show you my activity log. I was very meticulous.”
And I included an item that’s going to make his eyes pop out of his head. When he scolds me for it, I’ll remind him that Noah told me to log every single activity.
Ethan frowns, but he gestures for me to sit down at a big wooden desk in the corner of the room.
My head starts to swim. Maybe I shouldn’t have rushed this part of our meeting. I don’t want to talk about my grades for the better part of an hour. I want to shut them out of my mind and pretend they don’t matter.
“Are you okay?” Ethan asks, snapping me into the present. He’s now sitting in front of the desk. When did he move?
Damn, I was zoning out. This twilight hour is always difficult for me. My brain is ready to shut down. The problem is it never does. Once I enter my bedroom, my adrenaline spikes, and my thoughts start racing. No amount of exhaustion can bring me down.
“I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately,” I find myself admitting. “Probably because I’m stressed about my grades.”
He tilts his head. “How long has this been going on?”
“Months.” I plop down on the seat opposite Ethan.
“Lily, that’s not good.”
The concern in his voice draws my gaze to his face. He’s staring at me with a furrowed brow. “Sleep is essential to productivity. No wonder you’ve been having trouble focusing.”
I shrug. “There’s not much I can do about it.”
“That’s not true. You need to see a doctor. Nothing I suggest will help you if you’re not sleeping.”
“I already went to a doctor. He gave me Ambien, which didn’t work.”
Ethan frowns. “Then you should try something else. When we’re done here, I’ll write you a whole list of supplements you can try.”
I give him a thumbs up. “Sounds good, Coach.”
He nods. “Let’s get to your log. We’ll talk about sleep more when we wrap up, but there’s something I want to mention before we get started. It might be awkward, but it needs to be said. We’re going to be spending quite a bit of time together over these next few weeks, and given recent events…” His lips purse. “You don’t have to worry about me kissing you again. It’ll never happen.”
I grit my teeth. Of course golden boy Ethan would take Noah’s misogynistic rule about no teammates touching his sister as seriously as the word of God. He already told me that he’s never going to kiss me again. Does he think I’ve been on pins and needles waiting for another kiss?
“Damn.” I huff. “I was hoping for constant kisses. I never study without kissing. The two things go together like peanut butter and jelly. How will I get through the next hour?”
Ethan tries to smile, but the movement is tight. His cheeks flush, and his eyes dart to my mouth, lingering there. Heat pools in my belly.
Is he really getting flustered at the mere mention of kissing me?
Interesting.
“Well.” He clears his throat, shifting in his seat. “I guess we’ll have to find some other way to keep you focused. Can I see your daily log?”
“Sure.” I’m grateful that he changed the subject. I’d rather not think about kissing him again either.
It was a delicious kiss—sweet and sensual. The perfect antidote to my recent revulsion of being touched by any man.
I pull out my laptop and flip it open. The excel spreadsheet is still up on the screen. “I’ve accounted for every single minute of my day.” I slide my open laptop across the desk. “It was so mind-numbingly boring, I wanted to claw my eyes out.”
Boring isn’t the right word, though. The effort it took to document my day was nothing short of herculean. Attention to detail makes me want to bash my head against a wall, especially lately when focus is so difficult to harness.
Ethan’s gaze drifts over the screen. “Like I said, if it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else. This is supposed to—” His lips close, and his eyes grow huge.
I strain my throat to keep from laughing. I know exactly what he just saw.
The single entry I wrote just for Ethan. It wasn’t even true, but I had to include it. It’s something the old Lily would have done. She’d have followed Noah’s law to the letter just to disconcert Ethan.
11:30 a.m. Watched porn and masturbated
“Lily.” Ethan’s voice is probing.
“What?”
“You don’t need to write down every single thing you do.”
“But Noah said?—”
“Don’t give me that. You know why you wrote this down.”
The huskiness in his tone startles me. When I lift my gaze, his face is flushed. Oh wow. I really flustered him.
“Alright, fine,” I say. “I wanted to embarrass you.”
To my surprise, a faint smile tugs at his lips. “I’m not embarrassed. It’s a normal thing to do.”
A sudden jolt tingles through my body, and my mouth falls open. “Are you saying you watch porn and masturbate too?”
His face grows utterly still, and his throat works. “I try not to watch porn, because I’ve read that the industry is corrupt. But I do masturbate.”
I slap my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God, Ethan. You have no idea how happy this makes me. I really thought you were so religious and uptight you wouldn’t even masturbate. So if you don’t look at porn, what do you think about when you do it? I need porn because I’m a visual girlie. I like thrusting bodies and moans.”
He stares at me for a long moment, as if in indecision. Shit. I think his face is growing damp.
What a liar. He is embarrassed.
Still, I never thought he’d share something like this openly with me. The thought of Ethan with his hands moving up and down his cock with his face as flushed as it is now…
Fuck. I almost wish I hadn’t left that entry.
In a flash, the discomfort on his face vanishes. “You truly are Machiavellian. You know what you’re doing right now.”
“I told you I don’t even know what that word means.” I frown. “So no, I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He shakes his head. “It means you’re smart and strategic against your enemies, and you use their weaknesses to your advantage. You didn’t give me those graphic details because you have no filter. You did it because you know I don’t want to imagine you…”
His eyes widen minutely, and he scratches the back of his head. A charged silence follows, and the air grows thick as mud.
Holy shit. Was Ethan about to admit that he pictured me masturbating? The thought makes a delicious pressure build in my tummy.
I school my expression to look innocent. “Doesn’t want to imagine me what?”
He lifts a hand. “Stop. This conversation is over.”
“But you’re my coach. You need to spell things out for me when I don’t understand.”
He groans. “You’re the fucking worst, Lily Greenwood.”
Warmth rushes through my veins. My God, I haven’t had this much fun in months. How bizarre that it would be in the company of stick-up-his-ass Ethan Harrington.
Maybe I’ve misjudged him. At least a little.
A while later, Ethan looks up from my laptop. “I have to say, I’m impressed with your attention to detail. You logged every day to the minute.”
His tone is gentle but ever so slightly condescending. I grit my teeth. “You don’t need to praise me for something a ten-year-old could have done.”
“Did it help?”
I let out a long sigh. “If I’m being honest, it was distracting. I’m having such a hard time focusing in general. It sucked having another thing to do. It took my attention away from things that actually matter.”
“Then we don’t need to do it anymore. The whole point is to find strategies that work for you.”
“I don’t think anything’s going to work.” I rub my temples to ease the tightness in my scalp. “I can’t think straight. My brain hasn’t worked since I stopped sleeping.”
“How much sleep are you getting?”
“Like four hours a night, if I’m lucky.”
“Four hours a night?” He sounds appalled. “That’s insane. How long has this been going on?”
A shiver runs down my spine. There’s something in his voice… Something probing, like he knows that my lack of sleep was caused by a single event.
That’s crazy. I’m reading signs that aren’t there.
There’s no way he could possibly know that I could tell him the exact date when I stopped sleeping. April fourth. The night after…everything happened.
Crazy. Mason overpowered my body for ten minutes, and I’m still facing the repercussions six months later.
I know what he did was a terrible thing, but I didn’t think I was this type of woman. How could I have let my life spiral out of control because of a man?
“It’s been months.” I keep my answer vague, not wanting Ethan’s meticulous brain to trace my problems back to my relationship with Mason.
“No wonder your grades are suffering. Do you know how important sleep is for your brain? You literally can’t function without it.”
“What do you expect me to do about it? Telling myself I need to sleep won’t make it happen.”
“No, but we can try strategies to get you to sleep. We’ll come up with a plan.”
I snort. “Good luck with that.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” He snaps my laptop shut. “I don’t care about Noah’s plans for our meetings. We’re nixing them. I don’t want you to even think about schoolwork before bed. It’s only going to stress you out and make it harder to sleep. We’ll take a walk.” He twists around to look out the window. “The sun is setting now, and I’ve read sunsets get our brains ready for sleep—something about the light. We’ll head over to a campus coffee shop and get you some chamomile tea.”
“Ethan, you’re making sleep sound like homework.”
“You got a better idea, Greenwood?”
His sternness makes a smile rise to my lips. In Ethan’s mind, every problem has a solution if you just follow the right steps. He’s so confident that he’s nearly convincing me that he can help me sleep tonight when nothing has worked so far. Then again, I haven’t tried much of anything besides my late-night walks.
“I don’t have a better idea,” I say. “Let’s do this, Coach.”
He grins. “I like the sound of that. From now on, I’m your sleep coach.” He stands up from the desk and crosses his arms over his chest, looking as commanding as his own Coach Rodriguez. “On your feet. Now. And no more whining.”
As I stand, warmth spreads through me. I ought to be annoyed that he accused me of whining, instead I find his high-handedness strangely…cute. It must be months of sleep deprivation making me delirious.