“Ethan—”
“Fuck you.” He started to walk away, then stopped and turned back, facing me with something flat and furious in his eyes. “For the record,” he said, “this is not how you keep the door open for someone.” His jaw tightened. “You fucking lied.”
Then he left.
And somehow, the calm on his face was worse than his anger.
I’d hoped for shouting—anything but that quiet certainty, like he’d already made peace with expecting nothing better from me. The guilt hit immediately, heavy and inescapable, settling inside me as I watched him disappear around the corner.
I didn’t even manage anI’m sorry.
He’s going to reach his limit with me. I’m screwing this up. Permanently.
I stayed there long after Ethan had gone, staring at the half-finished espresso growing cold in front of me. The street noiseblurred into nothing until, finally, Luca’s voice pushed through my head.
“No, I do not need your explanations. I can see very clearly what is going on between the two of you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean?—”
“No more excuses, Sebastian,” he said. “You are practically foaming at the mouth every time he comes around. I actually thought you were better than that.”
That hit a nerve. “Better than that?”
“You are obsessed with a guy half your age—who acts like it—just because he is attractive and desperate to fuck you.”
That’s not what this is. That’s not what we are.
All I managed was, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I thought you were serious,” he continued. “That you wanted something real in spite of your stupid rules. But you have no idea how to be in a relationship, do you? You don’t know how to stay for someone. With you, it is always work. Always appearances.”
“That’s not true.”
Was it?
He let out a bitter laugh. “It isn’t? I have never met anyone more addicted to the chase than you. You want trophies, Sebastian. Not people. This is not how you treat people.” He shook his head slowly. “I almost feel sorry for him. The disappointment he’ll feel when his god, Sebastian Langley, finally comes crashing down.”
I held his gaze, saying nothing.
“You will keep him at arm’s length. You keep everyone there.”
The low hum of the engine filled the space between us.
“It is incredibly sad watching a man your age mistake obsession for love,” he said, his voice turning cold. “But it is not my fucking problem anymore.”
I remembered him opening the car door, the cool night air hitting my face.
“Have a nice life.” The door slammed behind him.
My heart had been pounding—part anger, part something far worse.
Doubt.
Images flooded behind my eyes: Ethan’s easy laughter, the way he refused to be pushed away, the way he stepped straight through every boundary I tried to build and stood there anyway, unapologetic and bright and impossible to ignore. The way he filled a room simply by existing in it. The way he looked at me like I was something worth reaching for. Like I was someone he believed in.
He wasn’t the problem. He never had been.
Ethan was fire—open, reckless, alive. And I was the one standing too close to it, pretending I wouldn’t burn.
