Page 66 of Jealous Boss

I let myself in with the spare key. The one he gave me when he’d smirked and said I practically lived there anyway. The key that now feels like an invitation rescinded. A gift I’ll have to return because it was only ever on loan and not for keeps.

I close the door behind me and lean against it, my throat tight.

His scent is still in the air—soap and coffee and intoxicating sandalwood. The apartment is still. Too still. Like it’s waiting for something that won’t come.

I move slowly.

Packing the small things. My toothbrush. The fuzzy socks he always teased me for. The tiny shorts that made his eyes blaze without fail. The silk scarf he pulled from my neck once just so he could kiss the curve of my throat.

My fingers close around a book I left on the coffee table. The French copy ofWuthering Heights.He hated it. Called Heathcliff a melodramatic bastard.

I hold it to my chest and hitch-laugh.

Then hate myself for the inevitable tears that follow.

But I don’t stop it. I sense it’s the first of many, and all I’ll be doing is holding back a fracturing dam with a Band-Aid.

So I take my time to cry and to pack.

Because some part of me—some stupid, desperate part—is still hoping Ethan will come through that door.

That he’ll be breathless and angry and apologetic andmine.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t come.

And eventually, there’s nothing left to pack.

Back in my own apartment, I don’t turn on the lights. I crawl into bed still in my clothes, bury my face in the pillow that still smells a little like his shampoo because it’s become my favorite thing to use, and let more tears come.

They’re hot. And ugly. And completely silent.

Because I learned not to cry too loud in that boarding school hidden in the Swiss mountains, because crying meant punishment. And as the nuns had scathingly reminded me then, and as it echoes through my mind now, crying doesn’t change anything.

Not when no one ever stays.

Dad didn’t. Mother didn’t. Uncle Phil did, briefly. But now I’m a disappointment, and he’s gone.

So is Ethan.

Despite all my hopes. Despite giving him everything.

Even when I thought maybe I was finally someone’s first choice.

I hate that I hoped then and hope now. I’m terrified that this love will break me.

And I hate that if he knocked on the door right now, I’d open it.

* * *

Ethan

I tooka shoulder to the head during football practice once. I remember the agony, then the feeling of weightlessness as I hit the deck. Then ten times the agony as I wondered if this was what impending death felt like.

All of that pales in comparison to how I feel once the enormity of what I’ve done hits me.

Once I tear out of my office like the unhinged asshole I am and find Pia gone.

Jesus. I sat in my office like a goddamn coward while the woman I love walked out—and maybe out of my life. More concerned with Philip’s words ringing in my head like gunfire.

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