Chapter 31 You’d Rather I Love Her Than You
“ I didn’t need you to carry me all the way to my door.”
Standing in front of my apartment, Ethan kept me tucked into his chest so tightly I could feel the deep vibrations from his voice through my side. “And you didn’t need to get into a bar fight tonight either, but we all do things we don’t need to do sometimes.”
I held back on the desire to roll my eyes at him.
“It wasn’t a bar fight. It was barely a fight at all.”
“Yeah—” Ethan paused just long enough that I moved my eyes up to his out of curiosity. Waiting for me when I reached his stare was a comically arched dark eyebrow and a swoon-worthy, lopsided grin. “But you still won.”
All right, he needs to go before he lets another one of those bad boys loose.
“Well, winning or not, I’m just happy to be home. Can you set me down so I can unlock the door?”
“I don’t think so. Give me your keys.”
“Ethan, I can unlock my own door.”
“Or you could just let me do it.”
“And how do you plan on unlocking the door while you’re still holding me?” Cocking my head upwards, a triumphant perk cinched up my eyebrows as I had caught him in an obvious bind. “It’s either me or they keys. Can’t have it both ways.”
Unanticipated amusement speckled his focused stare. “Is that a challenge?”
“Actually, it’s a fact.”
“Wanna make that a bet?”
The muscles in my neck loosened as I dropped my head back with a sigh.
“No, I just want inside my apartment.”
In a voice low and charming, Ethan spoke. “As you wish.”
A shriek jumped out of my mouth as the hallway around me flipped upside down—literally.
My body propelled over Ethan’s shoulder until the world was right-side down, the blood filling my head up to my ears.
The only real visible sight in front of me was that of the perfect, jean clad ass of my soon-to-be-brother-in-law.
“Ethan!” I scolded, pushing my hands against his back, trying not to focus on the muscles layered beneath the fabric of his shirt.
He gave no verbal answer. His only response was in his actions as he stole the keys from my back pocket, followed by the clicking sound of my front door unlocking and my house keys dangling between his taunting fingers.
“You were saying?”
Annoyance boiling up inside of me, I sank my teeth into my lips and refused to respond past an almost painful eye roll.
“I can practically hear you rolling your eyes, Slim,” he quipped. Hanging upside down, my jaw dropped up—technically. How in the hell did he know?
Behind us, Ethan kicked my apartment door closed as he walked us through.
“Can you please put me down now? I’m starting to get a head rush.”
“All right, hold on.”
I couldn’t see much as Ethan walked me through my own apartment, so I had no notion of where he was taking me until he lowered me and my backside molded with the semi-soft surface of a kitchen chair.
Coming up, the pressure released from my head as slowly as Ethan released his grip from around my waist. “How’re you feeling now?”
Overwhelmed and agitated.
“I’m okay. The ankle thing isn’t even bad. I’m just being overly cautious.”
Just what I needed added to my plate, too. A minor injury weeks before the biggest dance competition of my entire life. Great .
“Do you want me to ice it for you?”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll do that later. You can go home if you want.”
Please .
Hesitation cut a clear line across Ethan’s eyes, but he blinked it away and we both pretended like it wasn’t even there to begin with.
Usually, I would be able to picture him making a joke about me trying to get rid of him so quickly, but we both knew the joke would have an air of truth to it that neither of us wanted to touch.
“I will.” He nodded. “Just let me clean up the scratch on your cheek first.”
My fingers twitched to rise and brush my cheek. “Is it that bad?”
He waved off my concerns as he rounded the corner into my kitchen. “Not at all. I’m sure the other guy looks much worse.”
Guilt sunk my stomach low, my head sinking down with it.
“He did look pretty bad when he left.”
Flashes of blood so red it matched the angry fire in the man’s eyes as it dripped down his head poured through my memory bank. Each image sent a cringe through my muscles, gripping them tighter as the gory images refused to stop.
“Hey—” Looking back up from my trip down a grisly memory lane, I found Ethan standing in front of me with a damp looking cloth in hand and a pointed look on his face. “He got exactly what he deserved. You know that, right?”
“I do, yeah. I just don’t like hurting people is all.”
Something sweet passed through Ethan’s gaze, dragging behind it a cloak to cover it all up with.
“I know you don’t.”
He dropped his attention to the washcloth in his hand, dwarfed by the large palm it lay in. Gingerly, he picked it up between his fingers and brought it near my face.
“This is going to be cold, just a heads up.”
“Thanks.”
An unintended intake of breath shook my lips as the cloth covered my cut. The ice cold touch splintered deeper into my flesh than I had expected. Immediately, Ethan pulled it away.
“Shit, I’m sorry. I can make it warmer for you—”
“No, that’s okay.” Warmth touched my fingers out of nowhere, and I peered down to see what it was. It was then that my heart punched a punishing heartbeat inside my chest as I saw that I had—completely without thought—reached my hand out and settled it on his that held the cloth.
Tearing my eyes up to his, my embarrassment toppled even higher as I found Ethan had noticed this, too. His eyes were on my hand and by the pained crease to his stare, he had no idea how to react to it. As quick as anything, I snatched my hand back to myself.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
His chest lifted as he inhaled in a sigh that raised his stare to mine. “It’s okay.”
Swallowing down a gulp of air, now thick with uncomfortable tension, I offered him the out we both knew he needed to take.
“I can do this myself. It’s really not a big deal. I’ve been my own nurse lots of times before.”
“What? No. Just tilt your head to the side.”
Albeit begrudgingly, I did as he said and we did a take two of the whole thing.
This time, I didn’t flinch, and I didn’t grab his hand.
I just sat in silence and let him rub the wet washcloth across my cheek.
I didn’t dare say or do anything that could have introduced anything awkward and inappropriate between us, because I knew it wouldn’t take much.
It never took anything more than a spark of fate to pull us back down into the trenches of each other.
Regrettably, Ethan didn’t care to be as careful with our tumultuous connection as I did.
“Have you ever had the wind knocked out of you?” he asked suddenly and randomly.
“Uh, yeah. A few times. Why?”
Focus trained on my cheek, Ethan spoke with such a heavy tone, I barely kept myself upright as I sat there and listened to it. “When Pat called and told me what happened at the bar, that’s what it felt like. Like someone had hit me so hard in the center of my chest that I’d lost all of my air.”
“I don’t even remember driving to the bar,” he continued. “I just remember getting there and seeing you sitting there with these sad eyes and this sort of pout to your lips and suddenly, all the air was back. One look at you and I could breathe again.”
Well that made one of us.
Each of his words hit with the same impact as knocking the wind out of your lungs. The pain of gasping for breath and not being able to find it punctured right through my rib cage and I fought not to double over and let the agony show.
Ethan’s gentle touch certainly did not help as he abandoned the wet cloth and cupped his hand under my jaw, lifting my head. I went helplessly, his thumb beneath my chin as he stole the very last breath I had left with the explicit look in his eyes.
“That’s what you do to me, Slim, and I don’t know how much longer I can pretend that you don’t.”
“You can’t say things like that,” I said with barely any volume. “You’re getting married in a month.”
He held his tongue for just a beat.
“But what if I wasn’t?”
The defenseless riptide that Ethan’s sinful words had caught me up in spit me out for just a moment. “Excuse me?”
At hearing the spark of outrage in my tone, Ethan’s hand beneath my chin disappeared and his lips thinned, but he didn’t stop.
“You heard me. Do you really think it would be smart to go through with marrying someone when I’m thinking about someone else all the time? That’s not fair to her or to me.”
“Okay, but then take me out of the equation. Forget I even exist!”
“I’ve tried.” Ethan shook his head. “Didn’t work.
You’re like a seed. You started off as this small thing burrowed inside of me that I tried to ignore was there, but you just grew and grew more each day until you were impossible to ignore.
Now, you’ve taken over and are the only thing breathing any life into me anymore. ”
“I sound more like a weed than anything.”
And that’s exactly how I felt, too. I was a toxic, unwanted, eye-sore on the otherwise perfect life between Monica and Ethan before I came into the picture. I’d overstayed my welcome and suffocated the beauty out of the lives around me.
“No, Slim.” He raised his hand to smooth across my hairline while his eyes danced a romantic dance with mine. “You’re a Cherry Blossom. Unique, stunning…” He paused, his smile drawing wide and adoring. “And you smell like cherries.”
Weakly and pointlessly, I said, “Cherry blossoms don’t smell like cherries.”
“Okay, smartass.”
We both laughed softly, the moment a gift wrapped in sin, but still so welcomed. Our laughter bled to silence as Ethan curved his fingers behind my ear, his palm cupping the back of my head.
“I miss you, Slim,” he lamented. “I know I’m not supposed to but, at any given point of the day, the only thing on my mind is you.”