10. Elise #2
We spring apart so fast I nearly fall over. By the time Simon emerges, rubbing his eyes, we’re on opposite sides of the kitchen again, me by the sink, Rowan by the doorway, both of us looking innocent as hell despite the fact that we just fucked on the counter where he eats his breakfast.
Simon looks at us suspiciously but doesn’t comment. Just shakes his head and shuffles back toward the stairs.
“Night,” he mutters.
“Night,” we chorus.
His door closes.
The silence stretches between us, thick with everything we’re not saying. I can feel Rowan watching me, can feel the weight of his gaze on my skin.
“That was close,” I finally manage.
“Too close.” But he’s grinning. “Same time tomorrow night?”
“You’re going to get us caught.”
“Maybe I want to get caught.” He crosses the kitchen toward me, stopping close enough to touch but not quite touching. “Maybe I’m tired of sneaking around. Maybe I want everyone to know you’re mine.”
The possessiveness should annoy me. It doesn’t.
“I’m not yours,” I say, but it comes out weaker than I intended.
“Not yet.” He leans down, brushes his lips against my ear. “But you will be.”
Before I can respond, he disappears down the hallway toward his room, leaving me alone in the dark kitchen with my heart still racing and my body still thrumming and his words echoing in my head.
You will be.
The scary part is how much I want that to be true.
***
The next morning, Simon corners me in the hallway.
“We need to talk,” he says, stepping into my path when I try to walk past him.
“I don’t think we do.”
“Something’s going on with you and Rowan.
” He moves closer, using his height to try to intimidate me.
It doesn’t work. I’ve faced him down too many times now to be scared of his posturing.
“I’m not stupid, Elise. I see the way he looks at you.
The way you two keep disappearing at the same time.
The sounds I hear at night when I’m trying to sleep. ”
“What sounds?” I keep my voice flat, bored. “The sound of me getting water? Truly scandalous.”
“Don’t bullshit me.” His face is reddening. “You’re fucking him, aren’t you? My brother. You’re fucking my brother in my family’s cabin.”
“First of all, you’re the one who insisted I come on this trip. You dragged me up here, so you don’t get to be precious about what happens in it.”
“You’re still my wife…”
“Being your wife didn’t stop you from fucking around, did it?
” I meet his eyes without flinching. “Over a year, Simon. You spent over a year screwing my best friend behind my back. You let her comfort me about your affair while she was the one causing it. So you don’t get to stand there and lecture me about loyalty. ”
“That’s different…”
“How? How is it different?” My voice is rising, but I don’t care. Let him hear exactly how I feel. “Because you’re a man and you can fuck whoever you want, but I’m supposed to stay faithful to a husband who never gave me the same courtesy? Because the rules only apply to me?”
“I made a mistake…”
“You made a choice.” I step closer, close enough to see the sweat beading on his forehead. “We did this part already, the night I found your phone. If you didn’t hear it then, repeating myself won’t help. Call it whatever lets you sleep at night. The lawyers will be calling it adultery.”
Simon’s jaw works, but no sound comes out. He looks like a man who’s just realized he’s brought a knife to a gunfight.
“We’re done,” I continue. “We’ve been done. The only thing left between us is paperwork and property division. So unless you want to discuss the divorce settlement, I have nothing to say to you.”
“This isn’t over…”
“It’s been over for a long time, Simon. You just didn’t notice because you were too busy with Lilia to pay attention.”
I push past him and head for the front door. I need air. I need space. I need to not be in the same room as him for at least five minutes before I do something I’ll regret.
The porch is cool and damp, the morning mist still clinging to the trees. I stand at the railing, breathing deeply, trying to calm the rage still churning in my chest.
The door opens behind me. I don’t have to turn around to know it’s Rowan.
“I heard,” he says, coming to stand beside me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking.”
I look down at my hands. He’s right. The adrenaline from the confrontation is still coursing through me, making my whole body vibrate.
“I’m just so angry,” I admit. “At him. At Lilia. At all of it. He has the nerve to act outraged about us when he’s been cheating on me for over a year. When he let my best friend comfort me about the affair she was having with my husband.”
“I know.”
“He looked at me like I was the one who broke this,” I say. “Like he’d caught me stealing.”
“He needs it to be your fault.” His hand comes up to cup my face, his thumb tracing my cheekbone. “It’s the only version of the story he can live in.”
“And what if he never stops telling it? What if I spend the rest of this divorce being the villain in every room his mother walks into?”
“Then you’ll feel that way, and I’ll be here.” He steps closer, his other hand finding my waist. “Reminding you that you’re not doing anything wrong. That wanting this doesn’t make you him. That you deserve to be happy, even if it doesn’t look the way you expected.”
I stare at him, this man who has been patient and present and unflinchingly honest through the worst week of my life. Who wants me openly, without games or conditions. Who’s offering me something real and asking for nothing in return except a chance.
“Why?” I ask. “Why are you so sure about this? About me?”
“Because I’ve been sure about you for a while now.
Because I watched you disappear into a marriage that was killing you by inches, and I couldn’t do anything about it, and it was the worst kind of torture.
” His voice is quiet but intense. “And now I get to watch you come back to life. Watch you fight for yourself, stand up for yourself, demand what you deserve. And it just makes me more certain that I was right all along.”
“Certain about what?”
He doesn’t answer. Just leans down and kisses me, soft and deep, right there on the porch where anyone could see.
When he pulls back, I’m breathless.
“We should probably go back inside,” I manage.
“Probably.”
Neither of us moves.
“Tonight,” he says, his voice dropping low enough that only I can hear. “After Simon goes to bed. Meet me in the study.”
“What are we going to do in the study?”
His smile is wicked. “I have a few ideas.”
It works, whatever he means by it. It always works.
“Okay,” I say. “Tonight.”
He kisses me once more, quick and hard, a promise of things to come, and then heads back inside.
I stay on the porch a few more minutes. Inside I can hear Simon moving around, drawers going harder than they need to. The tension in this cabin is stacking up toward something, and I can feel it coming the way Mabel said you can feel the weather.
But that’s tomorrow’s problem. Tonight there’s the study, and Rowan, and a door that locks.