Chapter 5

That night, I couldn't wait until midnight. I went into Ethan's room early.

He'd drunk the water I'd prepared for him, and he was sleeping deeply, sunken under.

Oh, Ethan.

I touched his face.

How can you have absolutely no sense of self-preservation?

But then again — who would guard themselves against their little sister?

Who would ever imagine a little sister could be this far gone?

In the dark, my gaze moved across his face, heavy and slow, sticky with wanting.

Then, at some point, my hand reached out and slipped open a button.

I'd tried to talk myself down over the past few weeks.

It's fine if Ethan gets married. As long as I don't marry, I can just stay here — stubborn and shameless — and see him every day.

But tonight, I finally understood that none of that would work.

I loved Ethan too much.

I couldn't bear the thought of him marrying someone else.

Even the idea of him getting close to another person was enough to eat away at my sanity.

I'd made up my mind.

I was going to make this impossible to undo.

Knowing Ethan, he'd take responsibility for me. He always did.

"Ethan..." I whispered to myself.

"When you wake up tomorrow, you'll hate me for this, won't you? Maybe even despise me. But this is on you, you know. You're the one who kept me so close, kept me so warm — you're the one who raised this viper."

My fingers worked faster now.

The fabric fell away.

I leaned over him and kissed him.

Our first kiss.

It was wet with my own tears. Nothing sweet about it.

I didn't want Ethan to hate me.

But I couldn't bear to hand him over to anyone else either.

I didn't understand... when had this need to possess him become so consuming?

I didn't know how to kiss properly. I just pressed my lips against his, clumsy and desperate.

When I'd had enough, I straightened up, took the tie I'd never managed to give him, and began carefully, deliberately binding his wrists.

Then I pushed his arms up and away —

Thud.

His arms were long. He knocked something off the nightstand.

A box fell.

A cascade of loose buttons and a sewing kit scattered across the floor.

I froze — like I'd been struck by lightning.

I'd been living alone with Ethan since high school.

All these years, he'd been everything to me — parent and sibling rolled into one — and he'd taken care of me without complaint. A grown man who'd quietly taught himself how to polish my shoes and mend my clothes.

Those buttons. He'd bought them for my eighteenth birthday celebration.

I'd been out taking photos with Lily, and I'd somehow lost one of the decorative mother-of-pearl buttons from my dress. The shop wouldn't send a replacement.

Ethan spent hours searching online, ordering dozens of different buttons, trying to find the closest match.

I thought it was unnecessary and told him to forget it. "It's one button. No one's going to notice."

He shook his head. "I won't settle for that. I don't want your eighteenth birthday to have any regrets."

He'd always been like that with me.

There was no one on earth who would ever take better care of me than he did.

Was I really going to break his heart?

Was I really going to destroy whatever happiness he might have had — just to drag him down with me?

My breathing grew ragged.

No.

At the last edge of losing control, I sucked in a sharp breath.

Then I scrambled off him in a panic, dropping to my knees to gather the scattered buttons.

One by one, I shoved them back into the box.

The hard edges cut into my palms. The pain was a burning coal, and it seared straight through to something deeper — chasing me off the bed in blind, mindless flight.

I went to jump down from the edge—

My foot slipped.

The world spun. Pain exploded at the back of my neck.

Everything went dark.

When I came to, I was lying in Ethan's bed.

He was sitting on the edge, laptop open, working.

"You're awake?"

The moment our eyes met, he leaned toward me, face full of worry.

"How are you feeling? Does anything hurt?"