Page 108 of Playing for Keeps
“What day have you got him till?”
“He goes back to Char on Monday, so we could get together on Monday night.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
Ethan’s shoulders slumped and he clunked the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. “Shit. I really don’t want to spend my weekend counting down the minutes until my kid leaves so I can hook up with his uncle.” His voice had a trace of despair.
I tried to inject some light-heartedness into my tone. “When you say it like that it does sound like something that should be on Jerry Springer.”
Ethan closed the dishwasher with a bang and stabbed at the buttons. “Jerry Springer probably wouldn’t accept us onto his show. He’d say we were too fucked up.”
My breath left me. Fuck.
The dishwasher lurched into life as Ethan’s green eyes fixed on mine. “We really need to talk about this, don’t you think?”
My heart thudded. I’d been trying so hard to avoid this conversation.
What had I hoped for? To blow Ethan’s brains out with amazing sex so he had no room for rational thought?
“What do we need to talk about?” Yeah, judging by the look on Ethan’s face, playing dumb might not be the best strategy right now.
He shook his head. “Bloody hell, Luke. I’m trying not to overthink things here, because god knows that isn’t my strong suit—” he inhaled deeply before continuing “—but I can’t stop thinking about you. And us. And how in one way it makes such complete sense. But in another way, it’s the most fucked-up thing that could possibly happen.”
My heart hammered in my chest.
“But we don’t talk about it. We joke around and now we fuck around, but we don’t deal with some of the seriously messed-up shit between us.”
I raked my hands through my hair. “I know.”
He rubbed his neck, his gaze stuck on the counter. “I guess what I really need to know is if this is just some temporary thing to you, or whether it’s more than that.”
The vulnerability on his face had me immediately standing up, scraping the stool against the floorboards and stepping toward him.
Ethan was right. I was so shit at communicating sometimes. And this was the biggest thing in my life.
I hated that Ethan was feeling insecure because I was too scared to talk to him—too scared to find out whether or not he returned my feelings. It appeared I hadn’t progressed much from my eighteen-year-old self, who’d been desperately in love with my best friend but paralyzed about taking the next step.
“Of course it’s more than a temporary thing for me,” I said.
I needed to wipe the uncertainty off his face, so I went for the best way I knew how.
Kissing him.
I pulled him into my arms and kissed him softly, gently. Ethan kissed me back, tentatively at first, but then our kiss ramped up and became passionate, intense.
We stumbled out of the kitchen toward his bedroom, our mouths not leaving each other’s, hands fumbling as we struggled to remove our clothes and get skin to skin. I couldn’t bear the thought that this beautiful man, who I loved more than anything, had even a moment of uncertainty about my feelings for him.
And so I showed him.
I showed him how much I loved him with my hands—skimming his body, touching every part of him reverently, worshipping him until he was begging and writhing under me.
I showed him how much I loved him by fucking him slowly and deeply, my palm cupping his cheek, my gaze never leaving his face.
It was achingly perfect and so, so right.
And when I’d taken him apart completely and he lay curled up against me, drifting off to sleep, with his breathing evening out and his warm skin pressed against mine, I found the courage to whisper my truth into the crook of his neck.
“I loved you before I even knew what love was.”
