perilous - e.d | book 2

chapter seven

REN

"So what's up with your wife?" I ask, taking a small sip of my hot chocolate. A faded lipstick stain from my constant sipping making its way onto the edge of the cup. I slowly trailed my eyes up to eye Ethan, he looked reasonably stressed, a familiar crease always along his forehead, as he looked at me with confusion.

"What do you mean?" It was the only thing he asked about my odd question, so I rephrased it. "I mean, how does she feel about you going out with me?"

"How do you know I'm married?"

"Dude you're famous, a literal model that walks– well catwalks, it's everywhere. And even if you weren't I saw her at the hospital that night. Why are you always surprised when I know something about you that most of the population would know?"

"Didn't peg you for a fan." He looks up from his food, his lips upturned in amusement at the fact that my face was definitely reddening.

"I'm not." I growl back, slightly irritated by the smug smirk playing on his lips. It was always the famous ones that are way too arrogant for their own good.

"Sure seems like you did your research then." He raises an eyebrow, kind of like he was suspicious of me, this boy sure does have his guard up.

"But to answer your question its not like it matters anyway, I won't be with her much longer." He adds picking at the bits of his cake in front of him, shrugging off his answer like it was just nothing to break up with your wife.

"Why are you getting a divorce?" I press on without meaning to, it force of habit honestly, i never really knew when to and when not to talk and it came out a little desperate unintentionally. But i did ask because of valid reasons he didn't know of yet, but damn could I have been any more obvious.

I had to be careful, there was no room for mess ups.

"Listen, Ren." He pauses. "You're cool but I don't really know you at all, and I get the no filter thing but I'm not comfortable sharing the details of my failing marriage." He laughs slightly uncomfortably.

"You're right I'm sorry for prying it's none of my business." I wave it off and shrug setting down the now empty cup of hot chocolate.

It was silent until he spoke up. "A hot chocolate? in this scorching hot weather?" He questions with a raised brow again, he did do that a lot.

"You're acting like you aren't drinking a hot cup of coffee." I retort with a raise of my own eyebrow.

He pauses, a small shine in his eye as he laughs a little. "Touché." Until he speaks again. "So tell me about yourself, what do you do?"

"Just an assistant at JACOB&MAY Corp." I say.

"Wow really? Just for a higher working employee or the actual owner?" He questions seeming genuinely interested.

"The owner." I say not bothering to bore him with the details of my nine to five.

"Alright so basically what I've gathered about you so far is that you don't have fun."

"Hey I have fun." I answer back defensively with my arms crossed. He looked at me with a sense of playfulness in his tone.

"Not with that uptight attitude." He answers back, with a small laugh. He did it so often I was beginning to think it was fake, maybe it was? maybe all of this was a facade.

"Who do you think you're talking to?" I narrow my eyes looking at him as if he were crazy, no one talked back to me unless they wanted to get socked, and boy was he asking for it.

"An uptight, no filtered, know it all." He says with a low whisper, no hesitation in his words

"And you're a jock that peaked in high school and still acts like a seventeen year old heartthrob playing with girls like they're an object."

"What can I say? I'm young at heart." The outer side of his right lip upturns a little, almost throwing a little smirk at me, completely unaffected by my words.

I knew he was gonna be a little harder to break. and I couldn't wait till the day I would.

"Come on let's get out of here, we can do something fun." He giggles opening the door of the cafe for me.

"Oh shut up Grant." I say with a roll of my eyes.

"So she knows everything about me." He gasps exaggeratedly.

"You could say that." I smile slightly, putting my hands into the back pockets of jeans, kicking the small rock ahead of me as we walked down the street.

"And I'm guessing you've seen everything else that's linked with my name, so I'm just gonna say that possibly some day I'll tell you but I don't think now's the time and I hope you can respect that."

A glimmer of sadness flashed through his eyes, a small flutter in my stomach making its way up as he looked at me with such guilt and grief. I looked away quickly and back at the sky in front of me, my silence and small smile of acknowledgement being the response towards him. The sky was getting darker, a mix of purple and pink out showing the annoying busyness of the streets.

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"So what'd you get out of him?"

"Nothing, he won't talk about it. He doesn't trust me yet, might be some time before he'll say something worth while." I respond with a small huff of my breath. "But don't worry, I'll find everything out soon, just trust me on this."

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omg i'm sorry for not updating in a hot minute i've been real lazy to do anything since this quarantine started, this ones a short one so I'll try to post again asap, but i hope u enjoyed the chapter anyway! until the next one (: