As Luca all but sneered at him, the moment settled into place with brutal clarity.
Ethan wasn’t the problem here.
I was.
I was the one who had let this blur into something reckless. The one who hadn’t ended things when I should have. The one who kept standing too close, touching too long, and wanting too much.
Enough.
“Ethan,” I said, my tone firm as I stepped back, putting space between us.
His pale eyes snapped to mine, pupils blown wide—want written openly across his face. His lips curved into a slow, flirtatious smile. “Did you need something, Ash?”
I shook my head. “Ethan.” This time it came out as a warning. A boundary. A plea.
The smile faded—just slightly—as something in my voice landed. He sighed and looked at Luca. “I’m sorry.” Flat. Not sincere in the slightest.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
A flicker of something—surprise, maybe fear—crossed Ethan’s face. “What?”
I ignored it with effort. A staggering amount of it. Because walking away from him felt like tearing muscle from bone.
It always had.
“Bye, Ethan.” I pressed my hand to Luca’s back and guided him away, the music swallowing us as we moved.
The heat of Ethan’s body still clung to my chest.
I forced myself not to look back.
Things weren’t looking up in the morning.
I’d hoped sleep would settle everything from yesterday, but sleep never truly came, and when it did, it was flooded withhim. The feel of his body against mine. That impossible intensity in his baby-blue eyes. The rough warmth of his voice when he said my name.
And then Luca’s face. Angry. Hurt. Humiliated.
The tightness in my chest refused to ease—and why would it? The kiss hadn’t been the worst part. It was everything that came before it. The constant pull toward Ethan. The messages. The flirting. The way my thoughts circled back to him no matter how hard I tried to redirect them. The way, even now, my body remembered exactly what it felt like to have him in my bed.
The boundaries we set had come too late and held too loosely. That was on both of us.
But this—this was mine.
Henry was right. I’d lost the plot.
And it wasn’t just about Luca. It was the company I couldn’t save. The people depending on me. The look of disappointment on my brother’s face. My father’s voice in my head, reminding me that my ambition would cost us everything.
And Ethan—god—Ethan was air.
Everything I needed.
But he didn’t fucking deserve this mess. He was supposed to get the best version of me, not the one scrambling through the wreckage of what I’d burned down. I knew not choosing was its own kind of cruelty, but choosing Ethan in the middle of this would be worse.
Last night had made that brutally clear.
We’d almost made it to his apartment in silence. The tense kind. The city slid past outside the window, streetlights flickering over the dashboard.
“We need to talk,” I said.
