I nodded, reminding myself that no one knew how deeply Kona had taken offense at my leaving Ransom four years ago, and how deeply his rudeness had cut me. The first time I had seen Kona after I had walked out on his injured son, he had interrupted my quick return to the lake house to pick up Mack for a girls’ day out. He’d been cold to me then, his temper flaring when I didn’t back down from his bluntness, Kona had let his mumbled disrespect cut me to the bone. “What kind of woman leaves her man when he’s hurt?”
Keira had yelled at him, telling him to mind his own business, but even that simple question stung. Kona hadn’t realized what his anger had done, how that snap at me for leaving Ransom had stuck. But he also hadn’t realized the secret I had been carrying deep inside, a secret that no one knew, that had been the catalyst for my leaving Miami, or how much his drunken words months before had made it a secret I could not share with those I loved the most.
Ethan moved closer, no longer, it seemed, interested in discussing my warring emotions or what I felt about Ransom. He seemed to want my mouth just then, eager to see if I wanted his too. When I didn't move away from him, smooth, collected Ethan kissed me like he always did—like it was the first and last kiss all at once.
I didn’t know if I could name what I felt for Ethan. Maybe it was that I’d deprived myself for two years of a man’s touch and he ticked off all the buttons that made me reconsider my celibacy. For more than a decade, there had only ever been Ransom. Even after we broke up. Only him until that text message two years ago. Maybe it was Ethan, who he was, how he treated me, that had me second guessing myself anytime I stopped him from pushing me too far.
He wanted me. That I felt in the aggressive movement of his mouth over mine, in the way he held onto my hip, how his fingers dug into my skin, how he bit my bottom lip, how his breath went quick and pulsing inside of a minute of me returning his kiss. And when Ethan moved his hand down my arm, when he rested his palm flat against my ribs and brushed my nipple with his thumb, I was aroused enough to do little else than arch into that touch.
“Shit, Aly…” He was gentle, as much as a frenzied tornado can be and I didn’t push him back, letting him sweep me along by his smell, by the heat in that car and the satisfied buzz of my body finally being touched. For just a second I forgot to keep myself restrained. “Baby…I don’t want to rush anything but I…” He grunted, an unsatisfied sound, before he gripped the back of my neck, holding onto me like he thought I might float away. “I just want to taste you. No…no pressure, but please, let me…” He cleared his throat, finally glancing at me. “Come inside with me.” A graze of his mouth on mine and his fingers shook against my arm. “Stay with me tonight.”
I didn’t answer, felt a little flustered, a lot turned on, then annoyed with myself when that small, cruel voice in the back of my mind told me how hurt Ransom would be if he knew what I was up to. For once, I didn’t care what he thought. Ransom wasn’t mine anymore.
Ethan was.
There is nothing sadder
Than love left untended.
Mine
Yours
Theirs.
It cripples.
It shakes.
My past
Your pain
Our memories.
It destroys.
The whole
fucking
world.
Three
For four years, we existed in text messages. Greetings, check ins, questions about how we were doing, sometimes even the occasional late night confession that we’d missed each other—Aly and I swam in the circles built by zeroes and ones, wifi and distance.
I’d hated every second of it. Especially when the last year we were together I’d seen her texts more than her. That hadn’t changed, but the frequency had. Then two years ago, someone else replied to a text that Aly had sent to me. One quick shower trying to wash a stranger from my skin, a missed text from Aly, and it all fell apart. For good. “Who the hell is this?” was the reply Aly had gotten from someone who wasn’t me, and it changed everything.
I couldn’t stop it in time.
There was nothing for me to feel guilty about. At least, that’s what Aly had sworn when I finally got her to speak to me. But I heard the hurt behind her words. We weren’t together, technically, but we’d still been sleeping with each other on and off, had been for two years after she walked out. There was still a connection, so of course my fuck up hurt her.
“I knew it would happen eventually.” That reply had been short, brutal and the sound of it made my stomach drop until I thought there would be nothing left inside me.
“That’s not the point,” I’d told her. It had been damn hard to reign in my anger at myself and at her for brushing off the fact that I had been with someone else. “It didn’t mean…”
“If you tell me giving that part of yourself to someone else meant nothing to you at all, then my opinion is going to change.”
“Aly…”
“If my opinion changes, then I won’t be able to find time to speak to you anymore.” When I’d spent the next handful of seconds listening to her breathe, to the crackle of emotion she tried to repress, and mixing in a few prayers between my own ragged breaths, Aly continued. “Did it mean anything?”