Page 15 of Texts From My Exes

---

“You mean…” I swallowed hard. “You think I don’twantsex?”

CHAPTER

SEVEN

EZRA

I swear she’s just a friend, you didn’t even give me a chance to explain why we were naked!

—Les

Iwas so ridiculously offended I almost laughed.

If I’d been any other guy, I would have thrown her over the coffee table right then and there, stripped my clothes off, and given her a first-person demonstration of exactly how much Ididwant sex.

But instead… I did what I always did.

I stared.

I waited.

I counted to four—because three felt too normal, too mundane.

And I didn’t lose my shit.

Because what was the point?

She clearly saw me as some kind of platonic monk. Anasexual beingwho didn’t need or want sex.

Was I even human?

Had I ever been human?

If there was ever a situation—no, ascenario—where a man snaps, cuts his hair, hits the gym twice a day, and flaunts every single thing he’s got just to prove a point…

This was it.

The gauntlet had been thrown.

The line drawn in the sand.

The first chess piece had been moved?—

and she didn’t even realize it.

But in that one small moment in time, she’d released something.

Something that had been bending, straining, so close to snapping?—

and her callous words were the final push.

Now I didn’t just want to save her from herself.

I wanted her to regret ever putting me in the zone I’d been trapped in for half my life.

Was it so wrong to want her to feel what I’d been feeling for years?

To have her suddenly, painfully aware of me the way I was of her?

---