The Unhoneymooners(61)

“You don’t think he’ll appreciate my dark humor?” I ask. “I mean, my dilemma really is whether I give it to him before or after we tell him we’re sleeping together.”

Shrugging, he pulls the suitcase off the bed and looks over at me. “He’ll either laugh or give you the pouty silent treatment.”

“Frankly, I could deal with either of those options.”

I’m shoving things into my carry-on, so it takes me a few seconds to realize that Ethan hasn’t immediately shot something back at me.

“I’m kidding, Ethan.”

“Are you?”

I’ve been able to push this out of my thoughts for the majority of this trip, but reality is poking at our blissful vacation bubble much sooner than I’d like. “Is Dane going to become a thing between us?”

Ethan sits on the edge of the mattress and pulls me between his knees. “I said it before . . . It’s clear you don’t really like him, and he’s my brother.”

“Ethan, he’s fine.”

“Fine. He’s also your brother-in-law.”

I step back, frustrated. “My brother-in-law who was essentially cheating on my sister for two years.”

Ethan closes his eyes, sighing. “There is no way—”

“If he was seeing Trinity with the Mango Butt two years ago, then he was definitely cheating on Ami.”

He takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. “You can’t just go in like a bull in a china shop and throw all this at Ami as soon as we get home.”

“Have some faith in my ability to be subtle,” I say, and when he fights a smile, I add, “I did not choose that bridesmaid dress, for the record.”

“But you did choose the red bikini.”

“Are you complaining?” I ask, grinning.

“Not at all.” His smile fades. “Look, I know you and Ami and your entire family are close in a way that Dane and I aren’t—sure, we travel together, but we don’t really talk about this kind of stuff. I don’t know if it’s our place to get into this. We don’t even know if it’s true.”

“But for argument’s sake, how would you feel if it was, and he was lying to Ami for years?”

Ethan stands, and I have to tilt my head to look up at him. My first instinct is to think he’s annoyed with me, but he isn’t, I guess: he takes my face in his hands and bends to kiss me. “I’d be disappointed, of course. I just have a really hard time thinking he’d do that.”

As usual, my fuse for the Dane conversation has reached its fiery end. Things are already bittersweet today—I don’t want to leave the hotel, but I’m excited to see where things go between us back home—and bringing in the stress of Ami and Dane isn’t going to make anything easier.

I hook a finger under the waistband of his shorts, feeling the warm skin of his navel, tugging him even closer to me. With a smile of understanding, his mouth comes back over mine, urgent now, like we’ve both just become hyperaware of the brutal end to this fairy tale. The way he’s touching me with such familiarity gives me as strong a rush as the sensation of his kiss. I love how smooth and full his lips feel. I love how he spreads his hands when he’s touching me, like he’s trying to feel as much of my skin as he can. We are already dressed and ready to go, but I don’t protest for a single second when he roughly pulls my shirt over my head and reaches back to unhook my bra.

We fall back onto the mattress; he’s careful to not land directly on top of me, but I’ve already grown semi-addicted to the sensation of his weight, to the heat and solidity and sheer size of him. The clothes we’re planning to wear on the plane land in a pile beside the bed and he comes over me, hovering on straight arms propped near my shoulders. Ethan’s gaze roams across every inch of my face.

“Hey, you,” I say.

He grins. “Hey.”

“Look at this. Somehow we ended up naked again.”

A tanned shoulder lifts and drops. “I can see this being a regular problem.”

“Problem, perfection. Tomato, tomahto.”

His flash of a laughing grin fades quickly, and the way his eyes search my face looks like he’s going to say something more. I wonder if he can read my thoughts, how I’m silently begging him to not bring up Dane or everything that could screw this up back home, and thankfully he doesn’t. He just carefully lowers over me, groaning quietly when my legs come up along his sides.

He knows what I like already, I think, skirting my hands down his back as he starts to move. He’s been paying attention this entire time, hasn’t he? I wish I could go back in time and see him through these new eyes.

? ? ?

THRIFTY JET SEEMED HORRIFYINGLY LOW-BUDGET on the way here, but on the flight home, the tight quarters are a convenient excuse to wrap my arm around Ethan’s and spend several hours huffing the lingering smell of the ocean on his skin. Even he seems calmer on this flight: after being tense and monosyllabic at takeoff, once we’re in the air, he wraps a big hand around my thigh and falls asleep resting his cheek against the crown of my head.

If, two weeks ago, someone had shown me a photograph of us right now, I think I might have died of shock.

Would I have believed the look on my face—the giddy, sex-sated grin I can’t seem to wipe clean? Would I have trusted the calm, adoring way he watches me? I haven’t felt like this before—this type of intense, free-falling happiness that doesn’t carry with it any unease or uncertainty about me and Ethan and what we’re feeling. I’ve never adored someone with such heated abandon, and something tells me he hasn’t, either.