My chest felt tight. Was he checking in about what I wanted or saying what he wanted? “Wouldyoube interested in something not casual?”
He tilted his head and studied me. I could feel my heart beating, a persistentthump-thump, thump-thump, though I couldn’t tell if it was going to stop entirely or burst out of my chest. I felt like we were in a standoff, two Wild West cowboys waiting for the other to draw first.
Then Ethan said, “Yeah. I would be.”
Oh my god. Oh my god, oh my god.“Um. I need a moment.” I sank down onto his rug, the same white cotton rug as in my cabin, and curled my knees to my chest.
This was exactly what I wanted. This was everything I wanted. So why was I freaking out?
Ethan knelt across from me. “Are you okay?”
Because I had tried this before. I had done this before. And it never, ever worked. It would almost be easiernotto try, because how could I believe this could end well?
“It’s complicated,” I managed. “You’re my dad’s assistant.”
“True. But honestly, he loves me. I think he’ll be psyched.”
I let out a startled laugh. “You’re so full of it.”
“With good reason.”
I grinned, and god, I wanted to reach out and take what he offered, but—there was this horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. He was. My dad’s. Assistant. We could try, but I had tried before, and it hadn’t worked.
My smile slowly fell away.
“What?” Ethan asked.
“It’s—what happens when we break up?”
Ethan’s brows flew up. “What?”
“You work with my dad. We won’t stop being in each other’s lives. It’ll make everything so much messier.”
“Why are you already breaking us up?”
“Because that’s life,” I said. “Because I’ve done this before, and it never works. I have a pattern, where I fall for guys I’m obsessed with and it never works out. It’s stupid for me to ignore my past experiences and imagine the future might be different.”
His lips quirked. “So you’re obsessed with me.”
I dealt him a sarcastic look. “That’s not supposed to be your takeaway.”
“But it is. Come on, Jordan. Let’s give this a go.”
“How?” I whispered. “Ethan…Every time I like someone this much, it ends with my heart getting broken. And I’m sick of it, Ethan. I’m fucking sick of getting my heart ripped out and stomped on, and having to patch it up and paste it back together. Each time I do, there’s more missing pieces, and eventually I’m going to have more patches than heart.”
“I won’t break your heart.”
“You can’t promise that.”
He was silent a minute. “Okay. True. So what do you want to do?”
I leaned my head against the wall and stared at the ceiling. What did I want to do? My whole body—my wholebeing—strained toward Ethan all the time. If I thought there was the smallest, slimmest chance this would work, shouldn’t I throw myself into it with my entire heart?
But wasn’t it the stupidest thing in the world to think this would work? I’d tried dating boys like Ethan. I’d dated John and Tarek and Louis, and I’d been wild about all of them. And I’d cried my eyes out on a park bench over John, stopped enjoying food for a week after Tarek, and been bone-achingly sad about Louis. Why do that to myself again?
Or, who was I kidding, I’d do it to myself in a heartbeat. But I didn’t want to do it to Dad.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I want to be with you. I just…I have a hard time trusting it’ll work.”
