Page 43 of Shared By my Ex's Best Friends
I press my forehead to his, our breaths mingling. “You don’t have to wait anymore.”
He groans again, this time deeper, and captures my mouth in another kiss—hotter now, more urgent. My hips shift, seekingfriction, and the way he grips me tighter in response has my whole body lighting up.
Every nerve ending, every thought, every wall I’d carefully built around myself—it all falls away.
We lose ourselves in that moment, in each other. In the honesty of it. The ache of finally giving in.
Then footsteps echo in the hallway.
We freeze.
I’m still in his lap. His hands are still under my shirt. My lips are swollen, and his sketch of me is face-up on the floor.
Ethan looks at me, chest rising and falling, eyes dark with everything we didn’t get to say.
“We should…” I breathe.
“Yeah,” he says, voice raw.
Reluctantly, I move off him, smoothing my shirt. He bends to retrieve the sketchbook, closing it and tucking it away.
Chapter seventeen
ETHAN
The second I hear Maya’s voice say my name, I know I’m not walking away from this unscathed.
Not now.
Not ever.
The kiss is still thrumming through my bloodstream like an electric current that’s rewired everything I thought I knew. We pulled apart, yeah, but the moment hasn’t let go. It’s stitched into my skin, caught between heartbeats.
Her lips. That stunned, quiet gasp. The way her fingers curled in my hair like instinct had finally won the war against reason.
Now I’m rooted in place at the edge of the craft room, sketchbook tight against my ribs like it’s the only thing keeping me from coming undone.
My breath is shallow, and the air tastes like hot glue and lavender and citrus and something else entirely—something that might be her.
Across the room, Maya stands near the long folding table littered with centerpiece chaos—plastic bins half-filled with ribbon, fake eucalyptus leaves curling at the edges, a pair of gold-handled scissors glinting in the sunlight.
She brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, but her fingers tremble just enough to give her away. She still won’t meet my eyes.
She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, arms folded loosely across her chest like she’s trying to protect herself from something that already happened.
The hallway behind us is quiet again. Whoever shuffled by earlier is long gone, but the silence left in their wake is thick and charged, pressing in around us with all the things we haven’t said.
I clear my throat, fumbling for something that sounds normal. Safe. Not “I’ve thought about kissing you more times than I can count.” Not “you undo me without even trying.”
“So… Danielle’s going to be okay, right?”
It’s a dumb thing to say. A conversational life raft, but Maya lets out a small, breathy laugh that feels like a pressure valve finally releasing.
“Yeah,” she says, smoothing the skirt of her dress like it might help ground her. “I think the threat of fabric peonies finally snapped her out of it.”
I smile despite myself. Her laugh slips under my ribs, curling warm and dangerous.
Then, finally, finally, her eyes lift to mine.
