Chapter 11

My mind went completely blank.

Ethan opened his mouth. He seemed to say something.

But the sound came to me from somewhere very far away. I couldn't make it out.

There's no going back.

That was all that was left in my head.

Even if I did nothing from this point forward, we couldn't return to what we had been. The clothes scattered across the floor said everything.

So instead of struggling, I drew in a sharp breath.

I didn't pull away.

I let his grip anchor me, and then — with everything I had — I threw myself back toward him, reckless and absolute, like a moth that had finally given up on flying away from the flame.

"What do you think you're doing to me?"

I finally heard his voice.

"You already know," I said.

And even as I said it, I was binding his hands.

"You just sit there and let people walk all over you. If she doesn't want you, why waste yourself on her? Better to waste yourself on me."

I sank my teeth into Ethan's shoulder.

I'd expected him to fight back.

I'd even braced myself for chaos — ready to knock him out if I had to.

But he didn't move. Not at all. He just let me take out everything I had on him, completely still.

I worked myself to exhaustion. In the brief pauses between gasping breaths, I slapped him again.

"From today on, you're mine. You got that?"

"You're the one who said it."

His black hair was soaked with sweat, clinging at his temples in strands. Rather than making him look undone, it made him look like something that had been caught in a downpour — breathtaking in its fragility and danger.

I hadn't fully processed what his words meant.

The world tilted.

Ethan turned the tables.

In the span of ten or fifteen seconds, everything reversed.

I couldn't speak after that.

That night, Ethan was a stranger. Wild and unlike anything I'd seen before.

Several times I tried to leave, and each time he pulled me back by the ankle.

His breath was warm at my neck.

"Stopping halfway is a bad habit, wouldn't you say? Little sister."

I was completely out of breath.

Everything went dark.

...

Morning.

My biological clock woke me just past five, as always.

But I was aware, sharply, that someone was watching me. So I kept my eyes closed and stayed still.

Finally, a shadow spread over me — slow, cool, like dark water rising at my back, cutting off all the light.

Ethan said nothing. Made no move. He just stood there, silently, radiating a strange, cool stillness.

I broke out in goosebumps all over.

I sat bolt upright.

"You're awake," he said.

I thought of how he'd been the night before. My eyelids wouldn't stop twitching.

But he looked exactly as he always did. He even held out a glass of water for me.

"It's warm. Drink."

I took it from him, forcing myself to look composed. I sipped.

I used the glass as cover and studied him from the corner of my eye.

Then his dark gaze found mine directly.

"Do you regret it?"

I couldn't put my finger on it, but something about Ethan felt completely different. Same face, same expression — and yet he was a stranger to me.

"No regrets," I said, hauling my nerve back by force. "But you—"

"But I drank the water, so why was I still awake. Is that what you're wondering?"

I paused. Nodded, not quite naturally.

"Because I didn't drink it. When you handed me the glass, I noticed something had settled at the bottom. I thought it was residue and poured it out.

"Fortunately. Otherwise I'd have had no idea what my dearest little sister had planned for me."

I closed my eyes.

Of course. The dosage was too high — it hadn't fully dissolved.

But it was done. Regretting it was useless.

I couldn't read him. I set the glass down with a small thud.

"You can punish me however you want. Or if you think you can't live under the same roof as me anymore, I'll start looking for a flat today."

But to my complete surprise, Ethan didn't seem angry at all.

He accepted it almost immediately.

"Have I ever hit you? Punished you? Even once?"

He pulled up a chair and sat down in front of me.

"The event happened. Let's skip debating the process and go straight to the conclusion.

"Zoe — I'll take responsibility for you."

I blinked.

He immediately turned it back on me: "You don't intend to take responsibility for me, do you?"

"Of course I do."

I raked a hand through my hair.

"Then get some more sleep," he said, pulling the duvet back up around me. "I'll go make breakfast. I'll come get you when it's ready."

He said it, pulled the door to behind him, and left.

I lay there in a daze, vaguely unsettled.

His reaction was way too normal.

Wasn't it?