Chapter 23
Sophia
‘So what I’m hearing,’ Bree surmises, ‘is that Ethan is far too dysfunctional for you to ever fall for him.’
I stare at her, horrified. ‘God, no. He’s good for one thing, and one thing only.’ I shrug. ‘And the work is interesting, I suppose.’
Given that this fabulous sex club, Alchemy, has a strict two-drink limit for those of us wanting to partake in the good stuff next door in The Playroom, we’re engaging in a thoroughly enjoyable character assassination of my good boss instead of getting hammered.
Athena and Marlowe are the only ones getting stuck in.
Athena, of course, is heading home after this to the lovely Gabe.
Saintly he may be, but I know he enjoyed Alchemy’s ‘facilities’ before he employed Athena.
Marlowe’s boyfriend Brendan, on the other hand, apparently had one extremely short and deeply unfortunate visit here before he came to his senses over Marlowe, and is also apparently horrified that she’s here tonight.
She didn’t give him much choice in the matter, but we all know she’ll be catching a cab with Athena later so they can slink back to their delicious Sullivan men.
I’ve spent the past quarter of an hour regaling the seraphim with my tales of Ethan ‘Eight’ Kingsley.
It’s not merely that I’m feeling frustrated and bitchy after my morning with him, but that it’s useful to process this shit before it takes up too much headspace.
If I don’t talk it through with the girls, get a little validation from them, and, ideally, have a good laugh about it, I could end up stagnating or, worse, spiralling.
We’ve already covered the nuts and bolts of the Montague deal—the bits that are in the public domain, at least, Ethan’s mounting stress levels, his majorly dysfunctional family dynamics, and his little hissy fit at the gym as well as his somewhat sweet but totally deluded proposal that we go exclusive.
When I let drop the bombshell of his nasty, hurtful outburst today, it’s met with the horror and righteous indignation I knew my girls would serve up.
‘He said what?’ my friend Maya says.
‘Yeah.’ I screw my face up. ‘So demeaning. And he meant it to hurt, too. He lobbed that grenade for maximum effect.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Talia puts a hand over mine.
She looks beautiful tonight in a powder blue silk slip that offsets her olive skin perfectly.
‘That’s exactly the kind of shit he used to pull with me.
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with him, because I know he doesn’t actually believe what he’s saying.
He’s a decent guy at heart, but when he lashes out, it’s so…
I dunno. Toxic. Like he’s rotten inside. ’
Talia may not be familiar with parts work, but she’s hit the nail on the the head.
Unforgivable as that kind of behaviour is, it’s not the real Ethan.
No wonder she and he were a nightmare together.
She’s a brittle Three Enneagram—an outward-looking overachiever who’s overly focused on seeking validation from other people.
Add to that that I suspect she has a strong Six part—The Loyalist, who craves connection and security and is also a gigantic worrier, and their pairing was a fucking nightmare.
‘You’re right,’ I tell her. ‘It’s not who he really is.
And, weirdly enough, he’s not trying to wound.
I think he’s trying to test people, see how hard he can push them before they abandon him.
Think about it: if security for him is being in control of his relationships, then intimacy threatens that control.
So it makes sense that he’d push the people he gets close to, to stress-test those relationships. ’
Marlowe rolls her eyes. ‘You’re far more evolved than me. I would’ve slapped him across the face. I could tell when I met him that he was a cold fish. I don’t know how you put up with it.’
‘That would have been incredibly unprofessional and insanely tempting.’ I take a sip of my champagne. ‘And don’t think I missed your euphemistic choice of the verb “met”.’
Everyone laughs, not unkindly, and Marlowe goes instantly red. I bet she wishes she’d never had that threesome with Ethan and Brendan. Unlike me, she’s pretty virtuous.
‘Still,’ Talia says, ‘that feeling that he was constantly trying to break me was what I just couldn’t handle, you know? It was so horrible. I felt like he was constantly setting me up to fail.’
‘Of course he was,’ I tell her. ‘And you absolutely did the right thing by jumping ship. He wasn’t good for you.
’ What I don’t say, because there’s no point, is that, in my experience of humankind and with the benefit of my psychology degree, testing someone to see if they’re breakable is entirely different from wanting to break them.
It’s the opposite, in fact, because, wholly ignorant though Ethan may be of this fact, he wants people to pass his tests.
Every escalation is basically him asking will you stay?
And that’s the heartbreaking part.
Because Talia and Elena and all the others who bailed didn’t fail the tests because they were weak.
They failed because they mistook being tested for being abused.
And who can blame them? Why should they suffer mistreatment because another person doesn’t have their shit together?
They shouldn’t, of course. Most abuses, most crimes, come from a place of trauma, and that may be unspeakably sad, but it categorically does not mean that any of us should tolerate them for a single moment.
The impact of Ethan’s behaviour on the people he hurts is the same either way, and they have every right to protect themselves.
Believe me, I’m hyper-vigilant to our dynamic.
Right now, I’m staying because I think I can handle him.
I believe I have the necessary skills and boundaries.
But the moment his behaviour escalates, I’m out of here like a scalded cat.
I’m choosing myself. I’m not a martyr, and I’m no one’s punching bag, regardless of the psychology that’s driving them.
‘Here’s the interesting takeaway for me,’ Athena muses, breaking my reverie.
I catch her eye. She has her thinking face on.
Uh oh. She’s about to make some deadly observation, I can tell—probably to get me back for ribbing Marlowe.
‘Soph here has got herself a gorgeous billionaire boss, who wants to spend every waking—or at least working—moment with her. Marls and I are both poster girls for falling for your boss. But. Soph has managed to find a guy who’s so spectacularly fucked up that there’s zero chance of her being tricked into settling down with him.
If that’s not a quintessential Seven, I don’t know what is. ’
I give her my most unimpressed frown. ‘Kindly fuck off.’
‘Remind me what a Seven is?’ Bree asks, tilting her head.
‘The Enthusiast,’ Athena tells her with glee. ‘AKA the vivacious social butterfly who hates standing still, and hates pain, and will chase all manner of new, shiny things to avoid anything real and uncomfortable.’
Bree’s laughing. ‘Oh, man. Busted, girl. That’s you to a T.’
‘At least I know how to have fun, unlike you Threes. Your Doer parts are running the show so aggressively that they won’t let you rest for a minute.’
‘And we wouldn’t have it any other way,’ Athena says happily. ‘Also, I’m now engaged to, and employed by, a saintly Two, so I can over-function on the Audacity Foundation to my heart’s content and call it altruism. Happy days.’
Talia’s been listening, head cocked. ‘So you’re saying Soph chose Ethan on purpose, even if she did it unconsciously, because he’s damaged enough that there’s no risk of her being tempted to commit to him.’
Athena raises her glass. ‘Precisely.’
A guy wanders over, smiling at us. ‘Hey, ladies. I wondered if—’
Athena cuts him off with a raised hand. She doesn’t even look at him. ‘No.’ He shrugs and meanders off sheepishly.
Talia is still staring at me in fascination, and I want to tell her to knock it off. Just then, opposite me, Marlowe does the most comedic duck-and-dive, scrunching her entire upper body over while her neck disappears between her shoulders.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I ask laughingly.
‘Speak of the devil.’ She gives the tiniest jerk of her head in the direction of the door. ‘Ethan’s here.’
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Ethan sits alone at the bar doing a most excellent impression of Hades, having slipped up from the Underworld for a night of debauchery.
I acknowledged him with a nod and a tight smile as he walked across the room, because I’m not totally immature and he is my boss, after all.
He certainly hasn’t undertaken any debauchery yet, though.
As I continue to chat and laugh with the girls, I watch him rebuff woman after woman at the bar with Darcy levels of imperiousness.
He’s dressed all in black, as befits the ruler of the Underworld, in a form-fitting shirt and trousers.
No jacket, no tie. A few buttons open on the shirt. All very austere and dramatic and sexy.
And, if I’m totally honest, his eyes seem to be trained on me—or us—most of the time. I wonder how he’s handling the gorgeous riot of colour in here. The bar is pink onyx, backlit so it glows wonderfully, the bar stools Kelly green. It’s far too warm and sensual for Ethan.
‘He’s totally here for you,’ Talia says.
‘No he’s not,’ I argue, although I know she’s probably right.
I studied enough Attachment Theory in my degree to know that if Ethan’s parenting attachment style is all-out avoidant, his attachment style to me seems more disorganised, which, to any of us on the receiving end, would look like blowing hot and cold.
Push her away and then run after her to make sure she’s not really going to abandon him, you know?
Then have a moment of vulnerability, feel desperately unsafe, and freeze her out again.
That kind of attachment style tends to stem from a person’s caregivers representing both safety and danger. Not knowing which way a parent figure will go makes for a chaotic upbringing. That said, the output is always equally chaotic and draining for everyone involved.
If I force myself to have a moment of introspection, I’ll admit Athena had a point earlier.
She called out one of my blind spots—that I’m attracted to people who won’t tempt me to settle down.
And, when people whose opinions you value show you your blind spots, it’s worth paying attention.
There’s nothing more satisfying than knowing you’ve met one of your unknown unknowns face to face. For me, anyway.
None of that changes my current situation, which is that my boss is a majorly hot and majorly dysfunctional arsehole who has followed me here tonight like a little lamb who’s lost his mama.
It grates, and it also makes me feel guilty, which is really fucking unfair.
His behaviour earlier was beyond demeaning.
If I was anyone else, I would have called Camille straight away and demanded out of my contract.
And now all I want to do is have a fun night out with my girls, and here he is, cramping my style and probably planning to cockblock me.
I don’t even know if I want to go next door.
Ethan was right when he called me out on that aspect earlier—it’s not like I haven’t had enough orgasms this past week.
But what I would like is some sex on my terms, with a guy who knows what he wants and doesn’t view his own emotional world as the Bogeyman.
Or guys.
Just saying.
What I do know is that, now Ethan’s turned up, I’ll have to go next door just to prove a point.
Marls and Athena are making noises about going home, anyway, so I sigh and turn to face the others.
‘Come on, girls. Let’s go see what all the fuss is about.’