He Said a Female Bestie Is Fine—So I Got a Male One Chapter 06

He Said a Female Bestie Is Fine—So I Got a Male One Chapter 06

stared at his arm, blocking my path, then slowly raised my eyes to meet his. My voice was eerily calm.

True heartbreak wasn’t about screaming and fighting.

It was this. This cold, empty nothing where everything just lost its meaning.

My expression must have scared him, because his tall frame went rigid. His face was flushed from all the alcohol he’d had, and a dark, ugly scowl settled over his features.

“Do you have to be so goddamn stubborn about everything?” he snarled.

“Ethan,” I asked him. “Would you be okay with it if I did that with Lucas? Sat on his lap just like that?”

He froze.

I let out a humorless laugh and took a step toward him.

“You wouldn’t. And you know it. You iced me out for days just for sitting in the backseat with him. So what

makes you think I should just look the other way?”

“That’s completely different!” he shot back without a second’s hesitation.

“I’m a guy, Grace. It’s different. Nobody’s out there trying to feel me up!”

I felt like the ground had just shifted under my feet. It was like I was looking at a complete stranger for the

first time.

A tremor ran through my body, and I could barely get the words out.

“So you knew,” I said, my voice trembling with disbelief. “You knew. All of you. You knew it was wrong. You knew it was trashy. It was disgusting. But you didn’t care. Because she’s a girl, right? So it was fun. You liked it. You liked that she threw herself at you. Made you feel like a big man.

Ethan couldn’t say a single word in his own defense.

It was like I’d ripped a bandage off a festering wound. His face cycled through shades of white and red, and

he couldn’t even look me in the eye.

I’d nailed it and he knew it.

A cold smile touched my lips.

“Lucas was on purpose.” I just looked at him. “I wanted to see how you liked it.”

Hope flared in his eyes.

Then I continued.

“I thought, maybe you just didn’t get it. Boundaries. Men and women. All of that. So I figured, let him feel it. Maybe then he’d understand. But I was wrong.” I looked at him. “You understood just fine. You just liked it

“too much.”

I shoved him. Hard.

A grown man of over six feet stumbled backward and landed on the floor with a treavy thud.

I didn’t even look at him.

“I want a divorce, Ethan. If you drag this out, I’ll only think even less of you than I already do.”

Ethan refused to sign the papers. He even went crying to my parents.

He’d always been the perfect son-in-law in their eyes, good-looking, a degree from a good school, parents who were both respected academics, a successful business he’d started right out of college,

He’d pulled out all the stops for our wedding.

So naturally they took his side and tried to talk me out of it.

But their tune changed pretty quickly.

Because Ethan became famous, and not in a good way.

Someone at the bar had filmed the whole thing on their phone and posted it online. Within a day, the entire internet had seen Chloe Bennett straddling a married man and trying to do a body shot off his mouth before

his wife stormed over and slapped the taste out of both of them.

Public opinion was swift and merciless. It was all directed at Chloe and Ethan.

[What a cheap, desperate move. She knew he was married and still went for it?]

[She doesn’t just go for married guys, she goes for anyone. Did you not see her bra hanging around that

other dude’s neck?]

[Wow. Anyone got a bus pass?]

[The guy’s just as gross. Surrounded by all those people and not a single one of them had a shred of

decency.]

At first Chloe tried to fight back in the comments, saying people were just dirty-minded and that it was nothing more than a pure, innocent friendship between people who’d grown up together.

The internet was not buying it.

They tore through her social media accounts, digging up everything they could find.

And they found a lot.

Photos of her wearing her guy friends’ hoodies, sleeping in their beds, sharing a milkshake with two straws, licking the same ice cream cone, holding hands with her fingers faced through theirs.

But the one that really blew up? Her in nothing but a towel. She’d snuck into the men’s sauna at their country club to “hang with the boys.”

She’d documented it all like it was some kind of adorable, quirky lifestyle. The captions just oozed with

smug satisfaction.

Chloe was done. Ethan was done. His whole crew? Done.

Any of them with a girlfriend got dumped. Immediately. And the single ones? Their reputations were shot.

Completely.

Some gossip site ran a piece calling them “Snow White and the Seven Frat Boys.”

The comments were brutal. Most disrespectful thing to happen to Snow White. Ever.

Watching it all unfold, I won’t lie, there was a deep, satisfying sense of vindication.

Chloe had been like a cancerous tumor on my marriage, and Ethan had always refused to see it, let alone

remove it.

Now the tumor was about to be excised, and I had already walked away long before it could take me down

with it.

I just hadn’t expected Ethan to lose.