Page 70 of Counterfeit Boyfriend
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Ethan said, so quietly I might’ve thought I’d imagined it if his voice didn’t also do the annoying tingly-nerve-ending thing.
The door opened and closed, but I could still feel Ethan’s hulking presence. Feel the weight of his stare. Smell his damn new cologne that was apparently not new, but just what he probably always wore.
He stepped closer, and I quickly zipped my suitcase—or that was the plan, but the stupid thing snagged, and I jerked harder and harder, crazy desperation making getting it zipped up suddenly the most important thing in the world.
Ethan reached around me, his chest bumping my back. He gently removed my hands, stuffed in the wad of fabric that hadn’t quite made it all the way inside, and finished zipping it, the noise so freaking loud in the silence.
“I know it’s too late, and I messed up,” he said. “But for what it’s worth, I kept trying to tell you last night. I even started to when we were in the pool…”
I squeezed my eyes against the clashing mix of pleasure and pain that flowed through me.
His warm breath skated across my neck, soothing yet torturous. “And about what happened before we jumped in the pool… I was pretty buzzed, and I didn’t mean for it to go that far.” I heard him swallow. “Not that I’m absolving myself. I still should’ve stopped sooner. I told myself that I couldn’t sleep with you until you knew the truth. Until it’d be my name coming from your lips.”
Damn it, my body forgot to be pissed again, heat pooling low in my stomach and spreading outward.
“We just kept getting interrupted, and I know that’s not good enough. I’m just hoping it means something.”
His fingers brushed down my arm, featherlight. “By the way, how’d it go with Paige? I didn’t have a chance to ask.”
“We talked. Cried some.” My voice came out croaky. Weak. My knees trembled and my hands weren’t so steady, either. I wanted to turn around to face him, but if I did that, I might forget that he’d lied and I couldn’t trust him, and I shouldn’t still feel our connection pulsing between us, begging me to do something to make it stop pulsing and flow freely again.
Sorry, body. Sorry, heart. You guys aren’t the best judges of character.
I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palms to redirect the pain there and keep myself on guard. “I told her that I forgave her, but things won’t ever be the same, and if you think that if I forgave her, I can just forgive you, too, then—”
“Not why I asked,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I don’t feel okay. That same sense of betrayal I felt when I found Kyle and Paige is burning through me again. I told myself I’d never let anyone play me for a fool ever again.”
“I don’t think you’re a fool. You’re so smart I doubt I’ll ever be able to quite keep up with your beautiful brain, but I know I want to try. You’re funny and kind and so perfect that this whole trip felt like an amazing dream I never wanted to wake up from. That’s just part of why I want to be with you, and I’d be the fool if I walked away without begging for your forgiveness.”
“Ev—Ethan.Dammit.” A couple tears spilled down my cheeks. “Don’t you get it? You’re the one I fell for.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. His arms came around me and I flinched, telling myself that I couldn’t, under any circumstance, fall into the comfort of his embrace.
“And you’re the one who broke my heart,” I finished. Misery rushed through me, slamming into the dam holding back my tears and releasing the floodgates.
“Shit, I’m so sorry. You have no idea how sorry.” His arms tightened. “Don’t go. We’ve got to be able to work this out. Just tell me how—I’ll do anything.”
“It’s over, Ethan.”
He made a low sound in his throat, like my saying his name was a relief and yet left him completely tormented at the same time. Saying it felt that way, too.
“Guinevere, please.”
Man, that hurt, the misery inside of me growing fangs and sinking them into me until internal bleeding seemed imminent. “I can’t. Just let me go.” I threw the word he’d used back at him. “Please.”
He pressed his lips to the back of my neck, then dropped his arms and took a large step back. “I’ll give you some space. But I’m never gonna let you go.”
