Chapter 83
Ethan's POV
"You think you're being so generous," I said instead, my voice low and vicious. "You think offering to share makes you some kind of enlightened person instead of the manipulative piece of shit who created this situation in the first place?" I took another step forward, closing the distance between us until I could see the faint bruising along his jaw where I'd connected. "What's your angle here? What do you get out of this?"
"I get to keep her without breaking her." Alex didn't retreat, didn't back down even with me looming over him. "I get to have what I want without destroying what makes her who she is. And maybe—" He paused, something flickering across his face that might've been uncertainty if I thought he was capable of it. "Maybe I get to prove I'm not completely incapable of caring about someone else's needs instead of just my own."
"Wasn't enough last time I hit you?" The words came out before I could think better of them, before I could stop the surge of rage that wanted him bleeding and broken instead of standing here calmly proposing this insanity.
Alex raised both hands slowly, palms out in a gesture of surrender that somehow managed to feel condescending rather than conciliatory. "All right," he said quietly. "I can see this isn't the right time. But if you change your mind—" He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a business card, held it out between two fingers.
I took it because some part of me couldn't help it, couldn't resist the physical representation of the choice he was offering. The card stock felt expensive against my palm, heavy and textured with embossed lettering.
Then I tore it in half.
The sound of ripping cardstock was satisfying in a way that nothing else had been since Emily had told me she'd slept with him. I tore it again, reducing it to quarters, and threw the pieces at his face. They fluttered between us like confetti, like the world's saddest celebration.
"You think leaving your card makes you look cool?" My voice came out rough with contempt. "You think that's how this works? Get the fuck out of my house!"
He brushed a piece of the torn card off his shoulder without comment, his expression remaining maddeningly neutral. "Like I said. If you change your mind." He turned to leave, paused at the edge of my porch. "For what it's worth, Ethan—she loves you. She's just convinced herself that loving you means losing herself, and she's not wrong given how the relationship was structured. Maybe think about whether there's a version of this where she doesn't have to choose."
Then he was gone, walking down my front path with the same calm confidence he'd arrived with, like he hadn't just proposed the most fucked up arrangement I'd ever heard and left the pieces of his business card scattered across my floor.
I stood in the doorway watching his car pull away, my chest heaving with rage and something that felt uncomfortably close to temptation. My hand throbbed where I'd hit the wall. My jaw ached from clenching. Every part of me wanted to reject what he'd suggested, wanted to hold onto the righteous anger that said sharing Emily with him was impossible and degrading and completely unacceptable.
Except I kept seeing her face this morning. Kept hearing the way her voice had cracked when she'd told me what happened. Kept remembering the devastation in her eyes when I'd turned to leave, like she'd expected it, like she'd known all along that this would be the thing that finally made me give up on her.
I closed the door. Walked back into the kitchen. My coffee sat cold and forgotten on the counter. I grabbed a beer from the fridge instead, cracked it open, downed half of it in one long pull that did nothing to quiet the war happening inside my head.
The pieces of Alex's business card lay scattered across my floor like evidence of my own hypocrisy. Because I'd ripped it up to prove a point, to show him exactly what I thought of his offer, but I was standing here drinking at ten in the morning and seriously considering whether he might be right.
Whether losing Emily completely was actually worse than sharing her.
Whether love meant holding on tight enough to strangle what you cherished or whether it meant something bigger and messier and infinitely more complicated.
I finished the beer. Set the can down harder than necessary. Then I crouched and started collecting the torn pieces of cardstock, fitting them together like a puzzle on my kitchen counter until I could make out the phone number printed in elegant script across the top.
My phone sat charging on the counter. I stared at it for a long moment, watching my own distorted reflection in the black screen, trying to figure out who I was about to become if I did this. Trying to decide if I could live with myself.
Then I picked it up and dialed before I could talk myself out of it.
The line rang twice before Alex's voice came through, smooth and unsurprised, like he'd been expecting this call all along.
"Ethan," he said simply. "I'm listening."
I gripped the phone harder, my knuckles going white around the plastic case. The words felt like glass in my throat, sharp and cutting on the way out.
"I'll do it," I said. Each syllable cost me something I couldn't name. "Your fucked up arrangement. I'll—" I had to stop, had to force myself to actually say it out loud. "I'll share her. If that's what it takes."
The silence on the other end lasted maybe three seconds but felt like an eternity. Then Alex's voice came through, and I could hear the smile in it, the satisfaction that made me want to reach through the phone and strangle him.
"Excellent," he said, like I'd just agreed to a business proposal instead of the complete destruction of every boundary I'd ever had. "That's perfect. Now I just need to convince Emily."
My brain stuttered. Stopped. Restarted.
"Wait." I pressed the phone closer to my ear, sure I'd misheard him. "What?"
"Emily," he repeated calmly. "I need to convince her to agree to this. Shouldn't be too difficult given how miserable she is right now, but she can be stubborn about accepting things that look too good to be true."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" My voice came out somewhere between a shout and a snarl. "You came to my house and put me through that whole—you got me to agree to this insane bullshit and Emily doesn't even know? She hasn't agreed to any of this?"
"I needed to know you were willing before I approached her with the option," Alex explained, like this was perfectly reasonable logic. "There's no point in offering her something she wants if you're going to refuse to participate."
"You're sick," I said. My hand trembled around the phone. "You're genuinely sick. What the fuck is wrong with you?"