The Man I Shouldn't Want

My fiancé was in his bedroom with my cousin when I arrived to surprise him. I had spent the entire afternoon imagining Ethan's reaction when he saw me. I had pictured his smile, the way he would pull me into a hug, and the stupid little celebration we would have after I graduated from the police academy. I had even stopped at a wine shop on the way to his apartment because Ethan had promised we would open something special that night. Instead, I stood outside his bedroom with the bottle still in my hand and listened to the sounds coming from inside. At first, I convinced myself I was hearing things. Then Ethan said my cousin's name. Aria. My stomach turned. I pushed the bedroom door open, and whatever hope I had left disappeared instantly. Ethan, the man I had been engaged to for eight months, was standing beside the bed with his shirt open and his belt hanging loose around his waist. Aria was sitting on the edge of the mattress wearing Ethan's shirt, her dark hair falling over one shoulder. Her FBI badge had been tossed onto the floor beside his belt, as casually as if neither of them had anything to hide. Neither of them spoke. I looked from Ethan to Aria and felt something inside me go strangely quiet. "Madison, wait," Ethan said, reaching for his shirt. "This isn't what it looks like." I stared at him, almost offended by how predictable the sentence was. "Then tell me what it looks like, Ethan, because from where I'm standing, it looks like you forgot that I'm your fiancée." His face tightened, but Aria remained composed. She had always been good at that. Even when we were children, she could walk into a room after causing a disaster and somehow make everyone else look responsible for it. "There really isn't much to explain," Aria said as she slid off the bed and adjusted Ethan's shirt. Her voice was calm, almost clinical. "It happened." I looked at her in disbelief. "You slept with my fiancé, and that's your explanation?" "What do you want me to say?" "I don't know, Aria. Maybe start with why the hell you're wearing his shirt." She glanced down at herself before looking back at me. There was no shame in her expression, only irritation. "Because Ethan and I were together. I don't see how making this uglier is going to change anything." I almost laughed. I had graduated from the academy that morning. For years, people had told me I wasn't built for this. I was too emotional. Too stubborn. Too quick to anger. During training, every mistake had been treated like proof that I didn't belong. So I worked harder than everyone who doubted me. I stayed late, trained until my muscles burned, studied until my eyes hurt, and earned every inch of that badge. And now my own cousin was standing in front of me, telling me I was too emotional because I had caught her sleeping with the man I loved. "Ethan," I said, keeping my eyes on him, "how long?" He looked away. That was answer enough. I felt the tears building, but I refused to give either of them the satisfaction of watching me fall apart. "How long?" I asked again. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this," he said quietly. My throat tightened. "That's not what I asked." He finally met my eyes. "A few months." The bottle slipped slightly in my hand, and I caught it against my palm. "A few months?" "Madison, things between us weren't good." I stared at him. "Things between us weren't good because you were sleeping with my cousin." "You were never around," he snapped. "Everything became about the academy, your career, your badge. You were always chasing the next thing." "I was chasing the career you said you were proud of." "I know," Ethan said. "You were supposed to be at my graduation." His expression faltered for a second. "I had work." I nodded slowly. "Of course you had work." He had work when I needed him. He had work when I was studying for exams. He had work when I was exhausted after twelve-hour training days. Apparently, he never had work when Aria was involved. Aria crossed her arms. "Ethan was unhappy, Madison. You can't pretend everything was perfect." I turned toward her. "You don't get to tell me what my relationship looked like." "I'm telling you what Ethan told me." The room seemed to shrink around us. "What exactly did he tell you?" Aria hesitated. Ethan's eyes hardened. "Aria, don't." She ignored him. "He said marrying you was just a formality." For a moment, I couldn't breathe. I looked at Ethan, waiting for him to deny it, but he didn't. The word settled between us with a cruelty that cheating alone hadn't managed to achieve. ***Formality. ***"Is that what I was to you?" I asked. "Madison—" "Was I just a f*****g formality, Ethan?" He rubbed his forehead, already looking exhausted by me, as if I were the trouble instead of the woman whose life he had just shattered. "You've always been so intense," he said. "Everything with you becomes a fight. Aria understands me." I looked at Aria. She gave me the smallest shrug. Something inside me finally stopped fighting for him. I set the wine bottle on the dresser and wiped the tears from my cheeks before they could fall any further. "Then you made your choice." Ethan stepped toward me. "Madison, don't make this dramatic." I laughed bitterly. "You cheated on me with my cousin, and somehow I'm the dramatic one?" "Just calm down," Ethan said, lifting his hands as if he were trying to contain a dangerous situation. His jaw tightened, and the irritation in his eyes made it clear he was more concerned with controlling me than understanding what he had done. "Don't tell me to calm down," I snapped, my cheeks burning as I clenched my fists at my sides. "I'm trying to talk to you," he insisted, his voice sharpening while his brows drew together in frustration. "No, Ethan. You're trying to make yourself feel better." He reached for my arm when I turned toward the door. "Madison, wait." I pulled away. "Don't touch me." His expression changed. "Stop acting crazy." The slap came so quickly that my mind needed a second to understand what had happened. My cheek burned. I stared at him. Ethan looked almost as shocked as I felt, but whatever apology might have come never reached his mouth because I raised my hand and slapped him back. The sound echoed through the room. He turned his face toward me slowly. "Don't ever put your hands on me again," I said, my voice trembling despite how hard I tried to steady it. "You already took enough from me tonight." I pulled the engagement ring from my finger. For eight months, I had worn it like a promise. Now it felt like something that belonged to a stranger. I placed it in his palm and closed his fingers around it. "Keep the wedding invitation too. You can give it to whoever you actually want to marry." Ethan stared at me. I opened the bedroom door. "Madison." I stopped but didn't turn around. "I'm done," I said. Then I walked out. Twenty minutes later, I was sitting alone at the back of an underground bar with a shot of tequila between my fingers and my graduation certificate stuffed inside my leather jacket. The rain outside had turned Los Angeles into a smear of headlights and neon, but I barely noticed it. I had spent the entire drive replaying Ethan's voice in my head, and by the time I reached the bar, I had decided that if I couldn't make the thoughts disappear, I could at least make them harder to hear. I pushed my empty glass toward the bartender. "Another." He glanced at the row of empty glasses in front of me before looking back at my face. "You've already had four." "I can count." I spat. A faint smile pulled at his mouth. "I wasn't questioning your mathematics." Despite myself, I smiled. He poured the shot, and I picked it up. "He was supposed to marry me," I muttered, staring at the amber liquid. The bartender leaned in. "The guy who made you want to burn this place down?" "My ex-fiancé," I replied. "Ah." He studied me for a moment. "Then maybe tonight isn't such a bad night after all." I swallowed the tequila and coughed when it burned all the way down. "You're not very good at comforting people." "I work in a bar, not therapy." I laughed under my breath and reached for the next glass. Before my fingers touched it, a man's voice came from the stool beside me. "I think you've had enough." I turned. The stranger looked completely out of place in the bar. He wore a charcoal suit that fit his broad shoulders perfectly, his dark hair brushed back with a few strands of silver at the temples. A heavy silver watch rested against his wrist, and the scotch in his hand looked almost as expensive as the suit. But it was his eyes that held me. Gray, steady, and far too observant. I raised an eyebrow. "Did I ask for your opinion?" "No." He took another slow sip of his scotch. "That's probably why I'm still alive." I stared at him for a second before a reluctant smile touched my mouth. "You always this annoying?" "Only when someone is about to order a fifth shot." "I've had a bad night," I admitted. His expression softened slightly. “I figured.” His gaze dropped briefly to my bare ring finger, then returned to my face. "What's his name?" He asked. I frowned. "Why do you assume there's a he?" "Because you're wearing a graduation certificate, you've been staring at your missing ring finger for the last five minutes, and you're drinking as if you'd rather forget the man's name than remember it." I looked at my hand. Damn him. He was right. "Ethan." The stranger nodded. "Ethan sounds like an idiot." That earned him another laugh. "He is." "Good. We agree on something." I studied him over the rim of my glass. "You don't look like you belong here." "Neither do you." "Actually, I was here first." "Fair point." There was something infuriatingly calm about him. Ethan had always filled silence by talking. This man seemed perfectly comfortable letting it sit between us. "What do you do?" I asked. His eyes narrowed slightly, amused by the question. "Why?" "Because men who look like you usually have an answer." "And what do I look like?" "Like you own something expensive." He glanced at his watch. "That narrows it down." I laughed, shaking my head. For the first time that night, my chest didn't feel quite so tight. The bartender returned to collect the empty glasses, and the stranger reached into his jacket and placed a hundred-dollar bill on the counter. "I'll take care of it." I looked at him. "I can pay for my own drinks." "I know." he nodded. He stood, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Come on." I blinked. "Where?" "Somewhere you can sleep off the tequila without waking up tomorrow and wondering why you trusted a bartender with your life story." I glanced toward the rain outside. Then back at him. "You could be a serial killer." His mouth curved slightly. "And you could be a professional black widow who lures unsuspecting men out into the rain." I blinked. "I'm holding a glass of cheap tequila, not a hit list." "That's exactly what a professional black widow would say to lower my guard." "Paranoid," I said, narrowing my eyes at him. "Experienced," he replied, his expression shifting into a dry, faint smile. I leaned back slightly against the bar. "In what?" "Surviving bad decisions." He took a slow sip of his drink, his eyes holding mine over the rim of the glass. "Starting with this one." I should have walked away. Every sensible thought in my head told me that following a stranger after four shots of tequila and the worst night of my life was exactly the kind of decision people regretted. But I was tired of sensible decisions. I was tired of being the girl who always had to prove she could handle everything alone. I wanted one night where I didn't have to be Madison Hayes, the stubborn rookie who had fought her way into a career nobody thought she could survive. I just wanted to stop thinking about Ethan. So when the stranger held out his hand, I stared at it for a long moment before finally placing mine in his. His fingers closed around mine, warm and steady. He looked down at me. "You're sure?" "No," I admitted, and the honesty made something soften in his expression. "But I want to leave." He gave my hand a gentle squeeze. "Then let's go." Outside, the rain had grown heavier. He walked beside me toward a black Range Rover parked beneath the streetlights, shielding me from the worst of the rain with one hand as we crossed the pavement. When he opened the passenger door, I hesitated. I didn't know why a man like him had noticed me in a crowded bar when I had done everything possible to disappear. But I knew how I felt when he looked at me. For the first time all night, I didn't feel broken. I climbed into the passenger seat. As he closed the door and walked around to the driver's side, I watched his reflection disappear behind the rain-streaked window. I thought I was leaving the worst mistake of my life behind that night. I didn't know I had just trusted the stranger who would make me question every rule I had ever lived by.