Chapter 131: Never to End
The air was thick when Ethan stepped inside.
He hadn’t called. He hadn’t needed to. Mara felt him coming long before he knocked. Or maybe she had just hoped for him so often that her body no longer knew how to relax when he was near.
She was in the kitchen, wearing one of his old shirts, she kept telling herself she would toss out. But she never did.
"Mara," he said softly. She turned, slowly. The look in his eyes nearly undid her. He looked like he had a million things to say, and none of them were safe to say out loud.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, a voice lower than she intended. He stepped closer, tension rippling between them.
"I couldn’t sleep," he admitted. "I kept thinking about... today."
Her breath hitched. "I felt it too," she whispered. The space between them felt electric. Dangerous. "I don’t know what to do with how much I still want you," he murmured.
"You do." As if that was hard to believe, well, you couldn’t blame her, his actions of late said otherwise. But there was something else, her heart was lit as if she was on another planet, just the two of them.
"I do." But his hand brushed her waist anyway.
She didn’t move. "You still wear this shirt?" he said, his fingers grazing the hem. "You remember what happened the first time you wore it?"
She shivered. "Ethan..."