"Then what do you want?"
"I don't know." For the first time, he sounds uncertain. Honest. "I just know I can't stay away from you."
The admission hangs between us, dangerous and vulnerable.
"That's not my problem."
"Isn't it? We're stuck together, Ivy. Same classes, same project, same campus. You can't avoid me."
"Watch me."
The song ends and I pull away from him, from the warmth of his body and the confusion in his eyes.
"Thanks for the dance. Don't ask again."
I find Isla and Sebastian and tell them I need to leave. She doesn't argue, just gets her coat and follows me out.
We get into Sebastian's car, and she sits in the back with me, takes my hand. "You okay?"
"No. But I will be."
"What did he say?"
"That he can't stay away from me." I laugh bitterly. "Like I'm supposed to feel sorry for him. Like his inability to leave me alone is somehow romantic instead of just cruel."
"Maybe he's just as messed up about this as you are."
"I don't care. He made his choice three years ago. He doesn't get to come back and act like it was complicated."
But even as I say it, I'm thinking about the look on his face. The uncertainty. The way he said "I'm not happy" like he was confessing something.
No.
I won't feel bad for him. Won't make excuses. Won't let the tiny part of me that still cares about him override the larger part that remembers what he did.
Ethan Zhang destroyed me once.
I won't give him the opportunity to do it again.
Chapter 4
Ethan
I'm drunk.
Not falling-down drunk, but enough that Marcus has to help me back to our dorm after the party.
"You good, man?" he asks for the third time.
"Fine. Perfect. Never better."
"You danced with Ivy."
"I did."
"She looked like she wanted to murder you." He jokes, but it’s the truth.
"She did."