Page 172 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

I take a sip of water mostly to avoid saying something humiliating.

Ethan leans against the opposite side of the island, watching me carefully. “You okay?”

And the thing is, it’s such a simple question. But nobody’s asked me that tonight like they genuinely wanted the answer. Bryce certainly never did. So somehow that tiny bit of sincerity nearly undoes me all over again.

“I don’t know,” I admit finally.

His gaze softens immediately.

“I feel stupid,” I say quietly. “And embarrassed. And weirdly angry at myself for still caring enough to react like that.”

“You cared about someone,” Ethan says calmly. “That isn’t stupidity.”

“It feels like it.”

“It shouldn’t.”

Easy for him to say. He didn’t get publicly dumped beside an Auntie Anne’s. I groan softly and cover my face with my hands.

Ethan’s brows pull together immediately. “What?”

“I just remembered the Auntie Anne’s part again.”

For half a second, he looks confused. Then understanding hits, and he exhales a sound dangerously close to a laugh. “You’re thinking about pretzels right now?”

“I’m thinking about how every time I smell cinnamon in an airport for the rest of my existence, I’m going to remember getting emotionally assassinated beside baked goods.”

His mouth twitches.

“There’s no dignified way to recover from that.”

“I disagree.”

“Oh yeah?” I peek through my fingers. “How?”

“You move into a billionaire’s penthouse and make his life significantly harder.”

There’s a warmth unfolding beneath the surface. “You don’t seem to hate that very much.”

His eyes hold mine.

“No,” he says quietly. “I don’t.”

Oh.

My pulse stumbles slightly as his lips edge closer toward me, and the air between us condenses, syrupy and electric.

Ethan sets his elbows on the island and, with an ungodly amount of self-possession, just waits for me to close the last inch.

I lunge across the space like an idiot and nearly smack foreheads with his, inhaling a startled yelp against his mouth. It takes less than a second for him to recover, one hand flat against the small of my back, the other cupping my jaw like I’m breakable.

But he kisses me like he’s starving.

I can taste salt and want. Kissing Ethan is nothing like kissing Bryce. It’s nothing like kissing anyone. It is, to my horror, exactly like stepping off an elevator and realizing the floor is missing.

Gravity claims me, and apparently, I like it.

“I want you, Ethan, so bad it hurts.”