Page 108 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
Ethan locks the door behind them.
The sound of the deadbolt sliding home echoes in the apartment.
I back up until my legs hit the coffee table. I hold the scissors out in front of me.
“Don’t come any closer,” I warn them, though my voice shakes.
Ethan looks at the scissors. He looks at the boxes. He looks at my tear-stained face.
He takes a step forward. He looks like a man walking into a fire.
“Put the scissors down, Tessa,” he says gently.
“No. I’m leaving.”
“You aren’t going anywhere,” Owen says, stepping up beside Ethan.
“You can’t stop me!”
“We can,” Ethan says. “We reject your resignation.”
“I paid the debt!” I yell, gesturing to my laptop on the counter. “Check your email! You don’t own me anymore!”
“This isn’t about the debt,” Ethan says. He stops three feet away from me. He looks at me with an intensity that burns, strippingaway all the walls we built. “This is about the fact that we can’t function without you.”
I stare at him. The fight slowly drains out of me, replaced by utter confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“We share everything, Tessa,” Ethan says, his voice dropping to a low, raw rumble. “That’s how we survive. We share the burden. We share the risks.”
Owen moves to my left. Asher moves to my right.
I am surrounded. Boxed in by the Bransons.
Ethan reaches out, his hand wrapping gently around mine, gently prying the scissors from my fingers and dropping them onto the table. His thumb strokes the pulse racing at my wrist.
He leans down until his mouth is inches from mine.
“And now,” he whispers, his voice thick with a desperate kind of hunger, “we’re going to share you.”
19
ETHAN
“Share me?”
Tessa whispers the words like they’re a foreign language, a dialect she’s never heard and certainly never spoke. She’s pressed back against her small, wobbly dining table, her hands gripping the edge so hard the cheap wood creaks.
She looks terrified. She looks beautiful. She looks like a fox cornered by three lions, trying to decide if she should run or bare her teeth.
The air in the apartment is stiflingly hot. The AC unit in the window is silent—likely broken or turned off to save money. The room smells of cardboard dust, packing tape, and the faint, lingering trace of her jasmine perfume.
“You’re insane,” she breathes out, her eyes darting between us. “You’re all actually insane. I’m calling the police.”
She reaches for her phone on the table.
I move.
I cross the distance in two strides and place my hand over hers, pinning the phone to the scratched wood.
