Chapter 54 Rewrite the Stars
Both my hair and makeup were done, but I’d yet to pick the perfect outfit. My floor had gone from carpet to piles of discarded clothes over the last hour. The chilly weather outside was putting a major damper on the mix of cute and sexy I was trying to go for to impress Ethan tonight.
In all of our interactions together, I’d never been in the position to dress up for him or to specifically entice him. It had never been my place until tonight to look good for Ethan, and I absolutely could not and would not disappoint.
All I was set on so far was a light grey, wool dress that ended mid-thigh and was snug to every curve. It was warm but sexy, and if I paired it with the black, knee-high boots I was currently tearing through my closet looking for, it could actually be the outfit.
“Aha!” With a victorious yank, the boot I was searching for plucked out of my mess of a closet and into my hands.
That very same second, there was a knock at my front door.
Horror snapped my head up, butterflies springing to life in my stomach. “Oh no. Oh no no no.” Scrambling up to my feet, I launched myself towards my phone laying on my bed to see the time. “Are you early? Why are you early?” I whined to myself.
7:01
“Shit! I’m late? Oh my God, I’m never late.”
Throwing my phone back on the bed, I bolted to the full-length mirror hanging on the back of my bathroom door to give myself a once over.
My fingers pinched at the bottom of the dress to pull it back down into place.
Any artificial blush I’d added to my cheeks was now upstaged by the all-natural flush beneath my cheeks that was impossible to hide.
Not quite the look I was going for, but I had negative time to fix it so it would have to do.
I left behind my frazzled reflection and rushed on bare feet towards the front door Ethan was standing behind.
I’d been waiting and agonizing and dreaming of this moment for over a year now and finally, it was here and I didn’t even have a spare second to center myself before throwing open the door to my hopeful future.
“Hi!”
My winded greeting pulled up the eyes of the well-dressed man standing in the hallway with a bouquet of flowers. His stare touched with mine, and that was all it took for the butterflies in my heart to break out into song and dance. Just one look from him and I was practically vibrating.
Contrary to my obvious excitement, Ethan hardly reacted at all.
His gaze was hard and steady and utterly overwhelming in a way only Ethan could accomplish with just a look.
The only visible reaction he gave was as his eyes dropped low, giving my half-done outfit a lingering once over and his nostrils flared.
“I’ve just gotta grab my coat and put my boots on. Do you want to come in?”
Ethan’s eyes jumped back up to mine, my heart stuttering on their arrival. In all the ways I knew Ethan, I knew him well enough to see that there was something off about him tonight. Something that stiffened the air between us, pressing down on my mind and making it hard to remember to breathe.
“Sure,” he agreed, deep and heavy.
Wow. One of the most simple words in the English language and he somehow managed to make it sound like a death sentence.
I moved to the side to let him in, noticing how he hugged the opposing side of the doorway.
Confusion blossomed a frown down my lips, but I tried my best to shake it off and woo him out of whatever dark mood he’d arrived in.
I shouldn’t have just assumed he’d be as excited for our first date as I was.
He was still hurt, and I had to work for him this time, and I was ready and willing to put in as many hours as it took to get him to trust me again.
Closing the door behind me, I spun to see Ethan strolling on slow feet through my living room.
It struck me as surreal seeing him here after dreaming of it so many times.
He was here. He was really here in my tiny apartment, making it appear tinier than normal with how tall and broad a man he was.
His heavy boots fell in soft thuds across my floors as he paced around my apartment.
The flowers he brought with him were still wrapped in his hand, and I was all but positive he’d forgotten about them.
“Are those Cherry Blossoms?”
Ethan’s head dropped to the flowers, pretty much confirming to me that he’d forgotten he was holding them. A breath of a laugh pushed from my nose at his scatter-mindedness. Maybe he was as nervous as I was about tonight?
The thought that that’s what was causing his rigid behavior put an easy smile on my face as Ethan walked back to me, his eyes on the bouquet.
Before he handed them over, he feathered his thumb over some of the red kissed petals.
“They’ve become my favorite flowers recently.”
At the end of his words, I let them sink in. The sweetness that came with them swelled my heart and my smile two sizes. I shut my eyes for just a moment to feel the relief of what he was implying wash over me.
Feeling cheeky and flirtatious because I could be, I asked, “Why’s that?”
His gaze wandered down from mine, across my face with distant memories alight in his eyes. “They remind me of someone I missed.”
The sincerity of his voice strangled mine away almost completely.
“I bet they missed you too.”
Ethan offered me the flowers and I took them, feeding my daring new confidence as I intentionally brushed our fingers together as we made the exchange. Heat sparked through my hand, pooling out into the rest of my body that so vividly remembered how it felt to be touched by him.
He pulled his hand back into himself, dropping them by his sides, and I watched with delight as he caressed his fingers over where I’d purposefully touched him.
He missed me.
He missed my scent, my touch, my presence maybe as much as I missed his and to know that funneled a fresh batch of excited nerves through to my stomach for the rest of the night.
“Do you want some wine? A little liquid courage to get this night going, eh?”
If there’s anything I learned from working at a bar, it was that alcohol loosened people up, and from how tense Ethan’s jaw looked and how nervous I was, loosening up is exactly what we both needed.
A glass or two of red wine had always been a reliable calming agent for me, and right now, I could use three.
“Liquid courage?” Ethan asked, lingering closer to where I was. “You think you need extra courage to get through tonight?”
My lips parted to respond something breezy and excusing for the words I hadn’t fully thought through before saying, but the words caught on my tongue when I realized they were a lie.
Even as white a lie as it would have been, part of the new me was committed to a life of honesty, no matter how embarrassing it might be.
“I just don’t want tonight to be a disappointment for you, so I’m a wee bit nervous.” I finished with a pathetic laugh, digging my toes into the coarse carpet beneath my feet.
Ethan appeared thoughtful for a moment, and whatever he was thinking softened his eyes as he gazed at me.
“You opened the door when I knocked. Nothing past that could be a disappointment tonight.”
And there they were again—the butterflies. If Ethan was going to continue to slide out heart fluttering comments like that all night long, I had a feeling the butterflies in my stomach were going to be a third wheel this entire date.
“So… drink?”
Ethan agreed to a glass of wine, so I rounded into the kitchen to pour us both a glass.
Behind me, his heavy footsteps followed, slow and foreboding into the room of the house that had always been special for us.
The tension from earlier followed too, squeezing around my heart and pumping it to its own, anxious beat.
Neither of us spoke while I popped the bottle open or gathered the wine glasses from the cabinet, but I knew he was watching me.
The weight of his stare burrowed into the back of my neck as red wine splashed in the bottom of the wine glasses, filling them up halfway.
Nerves raced through my hand, shaking the bottle of wine clutched in it.
“You need some help?”
His rich voice startled the silence and my heart as it jumped. Setting the bottle down on the countertop, I turned to him. His stare was waiting for mine, snagging up my heart on a line connected directly to his soul, which was now and had always been perfectly encapsulated in his eyes.
“No,” I replied, my breath shaking. “I’m just a bit rusty. I haven’t been on a date in over a year, and that one didn’t exactly go so well.”
The focus of Ethan’s eyes intensified as I mentioned old memories.
“No?”
“No.” In the back of my mind, the newly developed voice of confidence was urging me to keep going. Keep reminding him of Us .
“I sort of ended the night with another man that I wanted to kiss way more than the one I went on the date with.”
Heat rolled the blue of Ethan’s eyes over black, and I knew he remembered exactly which night I was talking about. He was drunk. I was hopeless. He turned me on in every way he knew he shouldn’t have, turning my body to putty in his hands using the confessions from his heart.
“That guy sounds like an asshole for trying to kiss you when you were dating someone else.”
“No…” I shook my head, twisting my fingers around the fabric of my dress. “He just knew something I didn’t.”
The flame in Ethan’s stare was turning combustible the more I poked and prodded at our past. The back of his jawline condensed as he clenched his teeth together, undoubtedly trying hard not to gnaw at the insides of his cheeks.
The atmosphere I was willingly creating around us wasn’t one I intended on, but now that it was here, I wanted nothing more than to see it through.
By the fire holding on by a dwindling thread in Ethan’s gaze, he knew I was going somewhere with this.
Somewhere that would either send him into my arms or flying right out the door.
Even still, he asked, “What was that?”