38. Thirty-eight
Ethan is back at my table less than an hour later, somehow looking better than before, and I curse my stomach for the acrobatics it’s doing.
“How was everything?” he asks, taking a seat across from me like he owns it.
Which he technically does.
“Awful. Now tell me why I waited here. I don’t want to drag this out.” I look around impatiently. Like I have somewhere else to be.
“Where do you have to be?” he asks, making a face that says liar.
I roll my eyes, annoyed by the question—and his face—and refuse to answer.
He picks up a fork and reaches over the table to scoop a bite of tiramisu off my plate, moaning with pleasure.
I push the plate toward him with another roll of my eyes. “Please, help yourself.”
He smirks as he takes another bite.
“C’mon, Ethan. Just tell me what this is about.”
“Dance with me.”
His voice is so velvety smooth I hate him even more.
I scoff. “Oh no, not this again.”
He pouts out his bottom lip.
My teeth clench.
“Ethan, there are people still eating, and nobody else is dancing.” I gesture toward the other tables of the dining room. “Why can’t you just talk to me like a normal man over this bad espresso and mediocre tiramisu?”
“You know that tiramisu is good. Some people even say it’s better than sex.”
His lips curl sinfully.
“Don’t say sex to me,” I hiss. I throw my napkin on the table. “Fine.” I jerk to a stand. “Let’s get this over with.”
His smirk as he stands tells me he sees this as a victory, and it makes my blood boil.
He walks us over to a corner of the room with a small opening between the tables. The couple singing croons on about love lost, and it makes the taste in my mouth sour.
Ethan grips the small of my back and pulls me close to him. His scent envelopes me—woodsy aromas mixed with the smokey smells of the kitchen—and his rough hand grabs mine.
“Talk,” I snap. “You have a harem of women staring at us, and being so close to you is making me nauseous.”
I nod toward the hostess stand at the entrance where several of the female staff members are staring, no doubt wondering who I am and why I’m dancing like an idiot with their boss.
“You took your ring off.” His whispered voice combines with the scruff of his jaw rubbing against me to send chills down my neck like ripples on a pond. My body is a traitor.
“Irrelevant. What do you want?” I ask, clipped.
“This restaurant is open from May to October, and I spend a lot of that time here. I try to stay in Bar Harbor from the Fourth of July to Labor Day, popping in otherwise as needed. I left a day later this year to be with you. And I didn’t tell you about this place because I just didn’t think you were ready.”
His grip tightens around my waist, but I don’t look at him. His logic pisses me off.
“Fine, you have a restaurant here, and you’re here. Ethan, that’s not even the biggest thing. Why the hell did you just leave? You just let me spend a whole day at your house, with my kids, and then disappear. Why? I cannot wrap my brain around that.”
His shoulders tense under my palm.
The song ends, and the blurred sounds of conversations combine with the scratching of chairs moving across the floor to fill the quiet pause before the music plays again.
“Since the night I met you, I can’t stop wishing the world was smaller and a mile wasn’t so far. Because you belong in Maine as much as I belong in Florida, but I keep trying to convince myself that maybe they aren’t so different.” His mouth is next to my ear as he continues, “and because Nel, if I had said goodbye, I would have also asked you for time I knew you couldn’t give me because of a wedding band around your neck that I didn’t want to compete with.”
Somewhere in the letters of all those words, the fa?ade of fury I had tried so hard to maintain shatters. He rests his forehead on mine, and the look in his eyes makes my own burn.
“You said that if I wasn’t leaving—”
“I lied,” he confesses.
We stop dancing, but neither of us let go, frozen like a statue of two bodies carved as one.
My breath is labored, like I just ran uphill with boulders tied to my legs, and if my heart adds one more beat into the mix, it’s going to give out.
“I dropped my ring off at a jeweler, and he’s melting it down into a gift for Finn and Marin.”
He doesn’t move—doesn’t speak—just looks at me like he can see every thought I have and ever will have.
“Hey, Ethan?” a girl’s voice breaks whatever spell we’ve been standing in. “Sorry to interrupt, Boss, but Chef has a question about the menu before he shuts it all down for the night.”
He loosens his grip and glances at her. “Right, thanks, Emily. I’ll be right there.” He looks back at me. “Wait for me, and I’ll walk you home?”
“Yes. Fine. I mean…” I shake my head and smile. “I’ll wait.”
***
I wait outside on the sidewalk, vibrating with anxiety.
My brain doesn’t know what to do with everything Ethan just said, while my body seems very confident with what it wants to do based on the pressure that’s rapidly building up in me.
It is a battle of my brain versus my vagina, and I’m really hoping my vagina wins. I am Team Vagina so much that I would wear a jersey and wave a pompom if I had one.
Our reality hasn’t changed. I’m still leaving. He still changes women like I change underwear. The whole thing is a horrible idea, but dammit, if that man doesn’t know how to make me want to bulldoze down logic and reasoning.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he says, looking at me like I’m his favorite thing—the only thing.
I don’t bother to hide my smile.
He grabs my hand without hesitating, intertwining our fingers in a way that feels different from before. Like there’s no going back. Like it means something.
“What was your plan here? You thought I’d see the name of the restaurant and come throw myself at you? Were you ever going to call?” I ask as we start walking.
“I hoped. You said you were coming to Bar Harbor and that you’d be here for three weeks. It’s not a big town. I thought you’d see the sign and know. I didn’t know if you’d want to see me, but I figured I gave you a way to make the choice. Plus, you have been known to drive across the country to find me after I send a couple of emails. I decided it wasn’t such a long shot.”
I laugh.
Then he adds, “I don’t know if I would have called, but I would have waited.”
My eyes search his, trying to understand the enormity of what that might mean, before I blink away.
Maybe it’s because we’ve both said everything we needed to say, or maybe we don’t want to ruin whatever this is, but neither of us says another word the rest of the walk. Our two hands are a single shape right until we stop in front of the house and step onto the porch.
“So,” I say.
“So,” he echoes.
I look up at the night sky.
Do you want to come inside?
I can’t get the words to come out of my mouth. They are trapped in my throat by bars made of fear.
His hands settle on my hips, and it feels like a surge of electricity.
“Penelope…” His mouth hovers over my jaw. “You take my breath away in that dress.”
My thighs clench together on reflex, and some kind of garbled sound comes out of my mouth.
He laughs against my skin and grazes the side of my neck with his tongue.
Holy hell.
“Ethan.” I press my hands against his chest. “You are about to burn down the damn neighborhood with your mouth!”
I push him away. “I’m going to invite you in, but I’m still mad at you, so there will be no funny business tonight.”
Unfortunately.
“Define funny business.” His fingers dance across my shoulders as I fumble to unlock the door.
“I will not be naked, and you will not be naked, for starters.”
I flick the light on as we walk inside.
“According to the way your body behaves, I don’t need to get you naked.”
My body purrs.
No.
“And none of that. No comments that make me feel like there’s lava in my underwear.”
Every word I say is the opposite of what I want.
He raises his eyebrows. “Lava in your underwear, Nel?”
“You know exactly what I’m saying. Deal? Or you can leave and see if I decide to show up in your little restaurant again.” I cross my arms as we stand inside the doorway.
My body may want to do very dirty things to him, but I need him to prove something to me. That he wants to stay. That he knows how to stay.
He takes a step closer. “I’ll be on my best behavior. I won’t even touch you.”
I hope he’s lying.
“Perfect. Grab a beer, and I’ll go get changed.”
Before either of us can change our minds, I walk out of the room and up the stairs.
Much to my dismay, my brain wins the battle against my vagina’s best efforts.