Chapter 31 You’d Rather I Love Her Than You #2
A noise whimpered out of me that sounded like actual heartbreak.
I couldn’t do this anymore. I was cracking, piece by piece, crumbling beneath the forbidden nothings he should never have been whispering to me.
They were too much. He was too much. I was only so strong and in moments like these, I feared whether the connection between us was stronger than my abilities to fight it off.
“Why are you saying all of this now?”
His eyes jumped between mine, a desperation blossoming.
“Because I’m tired, Alice. I’m exhausted pretending all the time in some half-assed attempt to keep my mom happy and make my dad proud by keeping my promise. I only proposed because it’s how I was raised and since then, I’ve just lost total control of the situation.”
“But Monica—”
“Will be just fine,” he finished for me. “She knows it’s not working between us. She’s just pretending like I am.”
“I don’t believe that. She loves you.”
“She’s never said it.”
Astonished, I sat taller in my chair. “What?”
Ethan shook his head, and almost seemed to relax as he spoke, as if each word was a weight lifted from his tired muscles.
“Neither of us has said it, actually. We’ve found ways around it like saying ‘I love being with you’ and things like that, but we’ve never said those three words.”
“Did you ever feel it?”
Sadness crept into the divots between his sewn together brows.
“I feel like you want me to lie to you and say yes.”
“I don’t want you to lie,” I pushed out, my eyes zigzagging between his until they overwhelmed me and all I could do was drop my face into my hands. “I just wish that it were true.”
“You’d rather I love her than you?”
He’d asked the question so simply, as if he was asking what time it was. Even if it was a hypothetical, the impact behind it had snatched my voice clean out from my chest. All I could do was stutter and pray that he wouldn’t see the deceit in my eyes as I told a lie.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I just—” Finding the right words while the man I wanted to love me as much as he suggested he could was staring at me like he could see right through to my heart, was nearly impossible. But it wasn’t right. That look shouldn’t be for me.
“I just want my sister to be happy.”
“Then you don’t want her with me,” he countered, shaking his head. “You should want her to be with someone who isn’t so fucking mad all the time thinking about and wishing for you instead.”
“Then stop thinking about me.”
Ethan twisted his mouth together, conviction carved along the shine of his eyes. “Can you stop thinking about me?”
How dare he. How dare he throw that question in my face when he full-well knew the answer.
I didn’t need the reminder that he was my every waking and sleeping thought.
That, no matter what I did, he was there in every corner of my mind, smiling and sweeping me off of my freaking feet.
I already knew that his name was on every breath I took, in every beat of my heart, and written into the stars in my eyes every time I saw him.
I knew all of this, and that’s why it hurt . It hurt like metaphorical and literal heartbreak, because none of it mattered. His name would be traced into my body forever with invisible ink like mine was on his. We were hidden tattoos on each other’s hearts, and that’s all we’d ever be.
“I won’t help you cheat again.” The unfaithful word tasted dirty on my tongue, like my body revolted just the idea. “So please don’t ask me to.”
“I’m not asking you to. In fact, I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you I’m ending it with Monica whether you want me to or not.”
“Not,” I quickly begged. “Please not .”
The nail for Ethan and Monica’s coffin was in my hand, the hammer in the other. Despite my pleas and desperate screams, I was watching the hammer come down right before my eyes.
“You’ve got to stop, Alice.” Ethan’s eyebrows bunched together, distress dented between them.
“Your heart is so big and so kind and, fuck , I love that about you, but you’ve got to stop trying to force something that’s not there just because you think it will make everyone else happy. You told me that.”
“But I didn’t mean it like this,” I tried, regret creeping up my throat.
Ethan shushed me gently, sensing the tears that were likely on their way.
His large hand came up to cradle the side of my face, so warm and so not helping the situation.
It deepened the self-loathing because of how badly I wanted his comfort, his touch, his endearing love despite knowing the consequences.
“Your happiness may not mean a lot to you, but it means a hell of a lot to me.”
“I wish it didn’t.”
“Well, it does so tough shit.”
A laugh stole from my mouth despite the souring mood between us, and I pressed the heel of my palm against my lips to hide it.
Just then, a random twinge of pain shot off in my ankle, scrunching up my nose through the ache.
I bent down around his body, wrapping my hand around the sneaker of my injured foot.
“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked.
“Nothing. Just some pain.”
“Well, let’s take off the shoe then.”
Before I could even raise a finger in protest, Ethan had knelt to his knee in front of me and pulled the knot undone on my sneaker.
Both the shoe and sock were pulled off, and a fresh batch of embarrassment hit my cheeks as Ethan held my bare foot in his hands.
But I was thankful for the change of topic.
“God, I hate my feet.”
“Why?”
“They’re just so ugly. Like, I know dancers are supposed to have nasty looking feet, but I always felt like mine looked worse than the rest.” Curling my toes together, I went to pull my foot back when his hand locked around the base of my ankle.
“What’re you doing?”
“Relax. It’s only a foot massage.”
Oh my god. “You don’t have to do that, really.”
From knee level, he shot a curious look up at me. “Are you saying you don’t want a massage?”
“Well, I just think it’s— oh …” His thumb pressed into the arch of my foot, my head falling back. Any more protest from me swallowed down my throat as Ethan worked his magic along the bridge of my foot.
“So you were saying?” he mused.
“Shut up.”
Ethan’s snicker floated to the back of my mind, and I tried to enjoy the moment at its simplest. Just the massage and how it felt and nothing more. Not who the massage was coming from, not what he had said to me prior to the massage. Just the feeling of being touched.
“For the record.” Deep tones pulled my focus back to the present. “I don’t think there’s an ugly thing about you.”
Just how many lovely things was he going to say to me today before my heart had its fill and exploded?
I only hummed in response, knowing that any words I could say at this point would either be useless or weaponized against my own rules standing in place between us. They were already on wobbling legs as it was.
“How does that feel?” Just then, his thumb slid against a particularly sore area of my foot and a gasp sucked between my lips.
“So good,” I moaned, squeezing my eyes closed.
Ethan’s hands stilled on around my foot, the quiet atmosphere interrupted by the low grumbles of him clearing his throat. “If you want to keep this interaction innocent, I suggest not doing that again.”
At that, my eyes flew open just as heat hit my face from every angle.
“Sorry.” My voice was all but a squeak. “I didn’t even think about it like that.”
“I know.”
“I can leave if you want.”
“This is your apartment, Alice.”
A pause.
“Right. Sorry. I just didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
A curt breath slit through his throat. “Hearing you moan because of how I’m touching you doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”
Right then, his thumb dipped against the same spot along my arch he had before that drew the very moan we were debating now—and he did so purposefully. Mirroring the time before, a moan out of my control slipped through me and my head bowed over the back of the chair.
The sensations ran up my thigh and smacked right between my legs with the knowledge that he’d pulled that noise from me on purpose. Before I could catch onto my breath, Ethan spoke.
“Knowing I can make you moan with one touch only makes me want to do it more.”
Anxious nerves tumbled around in my stomach as I recognized that unfiltered hunger in his voice. I knew this tone from him. I’d seen him lose or willingly give up his holdings on his wants and desires more times than I should be able to know. I could even feel his losing grip in how he touched me.
What had started out as therapeutic now felt undeniably sensual. The prolonged strokes of his fingers up the sides of my calf and how deep the indents of his caresses went—like he was infusing his desires into my skin with his deliberate touch. It was working, too.
The harder he worked his hands and the further they smoothed up my leg, the more pressure built between my legs and the heavier my chest rose and fell.
His touch was magic and I’d never been more sure of it than now, but it was a dark magic.
It cast a perilous spell over my body that made it crave the unthinkable and unforgivable.
His magic worked its way up my body to poison my mind, tearing down even my more impenetrable defenses and smothering their screams of protest.
My brain had lost its touch on right and wrong with my lust holding the two apart at arms length. Ethan’s hands were now around my thigh, massaging his way closer to the edge of my shorts, and the closer he got, the harder it became to hide my unprincipled arousal.
Those soft sighs and moans that he’d warned me against were breaking past my incapacitated defenses and out into the air, relishing in the fact that Ethan could hear them.
I couldn’t stop myself either. The fire from his touch had consumed me once again and I had a feeling that this time, I would burn in hell for it.
The tips of his fingers brushed the edge of my shorts and a pitiable whimper dropped from my lips.
He was so close and there was no denying what he was doing, no thinly veiled lie we could tell ourselves tomorrow to keep from admitting the awful, selfish, incredible misdeeds we played out.
Ethan was touching me, worshipping me, taking me like I was his to own.
Like my body was his to pleasure and my heart was his to hold.
“Ethan,” I gasped his name like a sharp curse at the feeling of his mouth, hot and wet, smoothing over the inside of my thigh. His mouth was on me now, unabashed and determined to strip me of the last of my virtue, his tongue signing my fate on the dotted line.
My grip on the chair condensed and my eyes slammed shut as his mouth drew up and closer to my center, his stubble scratching deliciously across my skin.
I was a panting mess by the time his lips dared to brush the material of my shorts, and I thought I might die before he actually got there.
Especially when his lips disappeared altogether from my body.
Distraught, my eyes flew open to find Ethan standing right over me, his face not even an inch away and his harsh breathing raining down on me like wildfire.
“I need you to tell me yes.” His voice was as severe as the ravenous look taking over his eyes. “I need to hear you say ‘yes’ before I go any farther. I need to hear that you want me to do this.”
Holy hell. Here he was, seconds away from having me in a way I was positive he’d dreamed about, and he was giving me an out.
He was asking me because he knew what we were about to do was bad.
He knew that it would change things from here on out for us.
We could never go back to being the same versions of ourselves that we were right now.
If we crossed this line, we’d effectively destroy it forever.
If we crossed this line today, it was all but accepting the doomed fate of my sister’s engagement and that I was at fault for it.
He said he was ending the relationship no matter what, and this would solidify that promise.
Yet, for as badly as Ethan wanted me right now, he wanted my permission even more.
With that fact blurring up my already lust-muddled thoughts, I couldn’t think of any other way to answer him.
“I need you to do this to me, Ethan.”
A flash of something stunning streaked across his dark eyes and then, his mouth struck down onto my own, and after months of exhausting ourselves trying to win the impossible game, we finally lost for good, once and for all.