Broken Juliet(39)

Erika calls them over. “Might I suggest you both take a moment to close your eyes and recall a person with whom you’ve shared a strong emotional or sexual connection? Picture that person in your mind. Let the way they made you feel invade your body, stir your emotions, boil your blood.” Both men close their eyes and breathe. Their postures relax a little. “Do you feel that?”

They nod.

“Stay in that moment. Let the sense memory of that connection infuse you.”

I feel a hand on my shoulder, and turn to see Jack leaning forward. He whispers, “How weird would it be if they were both thinking about you? Like, seriously?”

He smiles and sits back, and I try to squash the rush of flutters in my stomach.

Yeah, that’d be too weird.

Erika preps the boys for a few more minutes, then gets them to start the scene again.

Ethan closes his eyes and breathes, and when he opens them, his whole demeanor has changed. His expression softens. His voice lowers. As he speaks, he slowly moves closer to Connor.

“You want me, Ty. You can deny it all you like. Doesn’t make it not true.” He’s calm. Self-assured.

Connor counters his calm with barely suppressed panic. “I do deny it.”

“I can see it in your eyes.”

As Ethan closes in, Connor crosses downstage to put distance between them. “We’re not just mindless animals.” “We control our actions. Our actions don’t control us.”

Holt isn’t deterred. He maintains his slow pursuit. “You can tell yourself that, but it doesn’t change the fact that you watch me.”

Even now, Connor watches him. Mesmerized. “I don’t.”

“Everything about me turns you on. It scares the hell out of you, and so you yell, and rage, and push me away, but it doesn’t change anything. You could live a hundred lifetimes and never find what you have with me.”

They’re really inhabiting the scene. Becoming their characters. Ethan has transformed. He’s incandescent. It’s good. So good, a whole mess of emotions I can’t grasp or stop wells up. My heart kicks into overdrive, and there’s a roaring sound in my ears.

“Rage all you want,” Ethan says. “Curse my name. Pretend all of this passion is coming from a place of hate, but I know better. Your passion for me is strangling you. Telling you that you’re someone different than who you thought you were. Urging you to be bigger and braver than the tiny box you’ve shoved yourself into for all these years.”

Then he touches Connor. Lovingly. Reverently. Connor is vibrating with indecision. Terrified by their obvious connection.

The way Ethan is, the words he’s saying … it’s too much. Something primal stirs inside me, low and snarling. It wants what it sees. That Ethan. The strong and brave one. The one staring at Connor and speaking words that resonate through all of my layers.

“It’s not working, is it?” he says as he strokes Connor’s face. “You’re miserable. Unfulfilled. Hollow and aching for the one thing that’s going to make all the whispers of longing shut up, once and for all. Me.”

“No—” He touches Connor’s lips, and Connor closes his eyes and sighs.

“Yes. And the sad thing is, you know the more you deny it, the more miserable you’ll become, and still you’re desperate to continue pretending.”

“Mark—”

Then Ethan steps in and cups Connor’s face before he leans down so their lips are almost touching.

I can’t breathe. Jealousy fires in my belly, blasting outward until there’s a firestorm under my skin.

“Ty, what we feel for each other isn’t the enemy. Why do you insist on continuing to fight it?”

“I know how to fight. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

“Isn’t it time you found some peace?”

“I—”

Ethan leans down. “I’m going to kiss you now. If you don’t want me to, say stop.”

“This isn’t who I am.” Connor squeezes his eyes shut.

“No excuses. Just one word.”

“You’re asking too much.”

“You’re expecting too little. Say it.”

“I … can’t.”

“Good.”

They seem to go into slow motion as they move closer while gripping each other. Then Ethan kisses Connor. They both inhale, and I want to look away but can’t. Ethan’s jaw tenses as he kisses Connor again, and my lungs are burning from lack of oxygen.

I clench my hands painfully around the armrests. I can’t see this. I really, really can’t.

I stand and stumble out into the aisle. People berate and shush me as I squeeze past, but I ignore them.

I all but run for the exit, and as I throw open the door, the class bursts into applause. I can still hear the cheering and whistling as I sprint toward the bathroom.




Music thumps straight into my bones as I throw back the shot and then slam the glass onto the table.

“Another!”

Usually at these weekend parties at Jack’s place, I spend the night trying to avoid getting drunk. Tonight, it’s my only mission.

Ruby holds the tequila bottle just out of reach. “Cassie—”

“Shut up, Ruby. You’re forever trying to get me drunk and handsy, and the one night I want it, you tell me to ease up? Just pour me another damn shot.”