Chapter Thirty-Five

LARA

“You are not going to take our granddaughter away from us,” I hear Ethan’s dad saying, and I know before we even get into the dining room that he’s talking to my father.

“I am not going to let your son get away with destroying my family again,” Dad says in response, and I look at Ethan. We both know that we can’t let something like this just slide, but we also both know that there’s no real point in trying to stop the argument.

“We need to get Riley out of here,” I say.

Ethan nods. “You go get her and put her in your car,” he suggests.

“What are you going to do then, Ethan?” I ask, dreading the response.

My heart’s beating fast, I can feel it at my neck and in my chest. Just the thought of what’s going on, how incredibly complicated and tense it’s become, the explosion that’s happening right now, is enough to send me into a kind of fight-or-flight mode.

“I’m going to tell them that we’re leaving, and that Mom and Dad can find their own way home,” Ethan says, sounding way calmer than I feel.

“That will go well,” I say sarcastically, but I’m glad that he’s taking care of that aspect of the situation.

“Just take care of Riley, and I’ll get us out of here,” Ethan says.

I head back up the stairs as quickly as I can, hoping against hope that Riley won’t wake from her nap, even while knowing how unlikely that is. I hear Ethan go into the kitchen and turn on the landing between the floors, shaking my head. This is becoming an absolute shit show, and for a moment, as I reach my sister’s bedroom door, I wonder if we shouldn’t have done things differently.

But then, I remind myself, something like this was bound to happen, no matter what we did. We had to give our parents a chance to do the right thing, and now we had. We just have to go on with things the way we talked about.

I manage to get Riley off the bed without waking her, and I pause at the door to the bedroom, listening to hear if the argument is still raging. It’s gone shockingly quiet downstairs, so I take advantage of the moment and just scurry downstairs as quickly as I can, grabbing my purse from next to the door and hurrying out to my car before anyone can say anything to me.

I get Riley into her car seat and she stirs for a moment, but she’s truly in a turkey coma. She goes right back to sleep, not quite snoring her deep breaths. Maybe three minutes later, I see Ethan coming out of the house, walking quickly to my car.

“I told them they can take my car home,” he says, coming around to the passenger side. I give him a wry grin and climb in behind the wheel, and start the car. Once again, Riley stirs murmuring something, but by the time we’ve pulled away from my father’s house and started down the road, she’s asleep once again, and for good.

We don’t really talk all the way back to Ethan’s place, and by the time we get there my nerves are calmed a bit and I can think some about what happened at the table.

I put Riley to bed in her nursery and when I come out, Ethan is standing in the living room, looking a little lost. Before I even know what I’m doing, I’m walking right up to him, wrapping my arms around him, holding him tightly. I bury my head against his chest and feel his heart beating against my cheek and for the first time in a long time I actually feel safe. Safe, comforted, and comfortable in a way I hadn’t expected to feel for years.

Ethan turns my face up to him and then he’s kissing me, his arms still tight around me, but I know, somehow, that if I want to stop, if I pull back and tell him we can’t do this, that he will stop. Just knowing that fact, and how much I really and truly need this right now, is enough to make me kiss him back.

Gradually, things heat up between us, and I find myself touching him all over, as if I have to memorize the shape of his body through his clothes by feel. Ethan is doing the same thing to me, cupping and squeezing my breasts, letting his hands drop down along my waist to my hips. The last time we hooked up, neither of us said that we could never do it again, not like the first couple of times, but we’ve both avoided, at least a little bit, being alone together like this.

I don’t stop him, and I don’t let myself stop to think about what we’re doing, and whether or not we should be doing it. Instead I just give into the moment, and when Ethan pulls my shirt over my head and reaches back to unhook my bra, the only thing on my mind is the concern that we get done with this before Riley wakes from her nap. I tug Ethan’s shirt off as well and then more and more of our clothes fall to the floor until there’s almost nothing between our bodies, just my panties and his boxers.

He pulls me onto the couch with him, and I straddle his lap, kissing him hungrily. I want this more than I want anything else in the world right now, whether it’s wrong or right. Even if part of my brain is listening for the sounds of Riley waking up, the rest of my mind is focused on the feeling of Ethan’s body against and underneath me, the strength of him, the sense of his muscles rippling under his skin and how good it is to have him touching me so eagerly.

I can feel the hardness of his erection, the heat of him, through Ethan’s boxers and my panties, and I’m rubbing against that ridge almost mindlessly, eager to feel him inside of me. Somehow we’re both taking our time, in spite of the fact that it’s almost like torture for me, at least, to keep waiting. Ethan slips a hand down the front of my panties and finds my clit by touch, stroking and rubbing me, making me moan.

I reply in kind, managing to reach past the waistband of his boxers and find his hard, throbbing cock to begin stroking him. We tease each other like this for what seems like hours, long enough for me to wonder at the fact that Riley hasn’t gotten up yet. We’re just touching and working each other with our fingers, kissing each other, trying to keep the noise down so that neither one of us manages to wake up the little girl down the hall from where we are.

Finally, I can’t take it anymore and wriggle free of Ethan’s hands, grabbing at the waistband of my panties and struggling to get them down over my hips. I want to be fully naked, and I want more than anything to feel him inside of me. But even as I start to climb back on top of Ethan, he chuckles lowly and tumbles me down onto my back onto the couch, pinning me there.

“Not yet,” he says. I pout up at him, twisting my hips, trying to get better contact with the ridge of his erection that I can feel against my thigh.

“Why not?”

“If I have you right now I’m going to come in like, two minutes, and I want you to get off, too,” Ethan tells me. I have to giggle at that, but as he kisses me he swallows down the sound, and I give up on the idea of feeling him inside me for a few moments longer.