Page 97 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
He doesn’t wait. He turns and walks back.
I take a deep breath. I grab my purse—my phone is in it, buzzing with the email from Markus—and I follow him.
I close the door behind me. The sound cuts off the hum of the office, sealing us in the silence of his glass cage.
Ethan goes to his desk, but he doesn’t sit. He leans against the edge, crossing his arms over his chest. It’s the same pose he used the night he took me on that desk.
The memory flashes through my mind—the cold marble, the heat of his skin, the sound of my name on his lips.
I push it away. I lock it in a box and throw away the key.
“Where were you?” he asks.
“I had a morning meeting,” I lie.
“With who?”
“That’s personal.”
“Nothing is personal right now,” Ethan says. “The app goes live globally in forty-eight hours. Asher said you were with him last night.”
I flinch. “He told you that?”
“He told the chat,” Ethan says. His voice is tight, controlled, vibrating with a suppressed rage. “He said the ‘status quo is unsustainable.’ And then he stopped sharing his location until 7 AM. Which, in Asher-speak, means he slept with you.”
I don’t deny it.
“Yes,” I say.
Ethan closes his eyes for a second. His jaw tightens, a muscle twitching under the skin.
“Owen. Then me. Then Asher. You’re thorough, I’ll give you that.”
“Don’t,” I warn him, stepping forward. “Don’t you dare judge me. You were the one who told me there was no ‘us.’ You were the one who told me to be professional. You pushed me away, Ethan.”
“I told you to be professional!” he shouts, his control snapping. “I didn’t tell you to go sleep with my brother the second you left my office!”
“You hurt me!” I shout back. “You used me and then you threw my debt in my face! Asher was… kind. He was there. He didn’t treat me like a problem to be solved, he treated me like a person.”
“Kind,” Ethan sneers. “Asher isn’t kind. He saw an opportunity and he took it. Just like Owen.”
“And you?” I challenge. “What did you do, Ethan? You saw a ‘liability’ and you fucked it.”
The silence that follows is heavy, suffocating.
Ethan stares at me. The anger in his eyes is warring with something else. Pain. Genuine, raw pain.
“I didn’t want to throw you away,” he says, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. “I tried to save you.”
“By threatening to sue me?”
“By making you stay,” he says. “Because if you left… if you walked out that door… I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring you back. I knew you’d disappear.”
“You have a strange way of showing affection, Ethan.”
“I don’t know how to do affection,” he admits brutally. “I know how to command. I know how to protect. And right now, I am failing at both.”
He walks around the desk. He stops in front of me.
