Sharing My Hotwife for Life (The Cabo Arrangement #3)

Chapter 1 New City

Marcus stood on the narrow balcony of their twelfth-floor apartment, the mug of coffee warm against his palm.

The early morning air carried the sharp bite of a city still waking up—diesel from the street below, the faint metallic tang of the elevated train a few blocks over, and something floral he couldn’t name drifting from the rooftop garden of the building across the street.

The skyline was wrong. Not bad, just wrong.

No familiar stretch of ocean meeting desert hills like in Cabo.

No familiar sprawl of their old hometown.

Instead, glass towers caught the rising sun at unfamiliar angles, and a wide river glinted in the distance like a dark ribbon someone had forgotten to straighten.

He took a slow sip. The coffee was strong, black, exactly how he liked it.

Three months here and he still measured time by small rituals that had survived the move.

Coffee on the balcony. Simone sleeping late on weekends.

The way her bare foot would eventually find his calf under the sheets when she finally stirred.

Behind him, through the half-open sliding door, their bedroom was dim and quiet.

Simone lay tangled in the white duvet they’d bought specifically for this place—something neutral and clean to mark the fresh start.

Her dark hair spilled across the pillow, one arm stretched toward the empty side of the bed where he had been.

Even asleep she reached for him. That hadn’t changed.

Marcus leaned his forearms on the railing and let the city noise wash over him.

Horns, distant construction, the low hum of lives restarting.

Simone’s promotion had come with strings: relocate or lose the opportunity.

Head of Strategy for the Midwest division.

A real leap. He’d seen the pride in her eyes when she told him, the way her fingers had tightened around his across the kitchen island back home.

His own firm had a growing office here—architecture partners chasing the same urban revitalization boom everyone else was.

It made sense on paper. They had made the decision together, the way they made everything now.

Still. Three months in and the disorientation lingered like jet lag that refused to lift.

He thought about their old house—the one with the creaky third stair and the backyard where they’d hosted too many barbecues with friends who now sent polite text messages checking in.

Those friends didn’t know the full shape of what had happened in Cabo, or what had continued afterward with Rafael.

No one did. That part of their life had stayed sealed, a private continent only the two of them had mapped.

What had traveled with them was simpler and deeper: the marriage itself, sturdy in ways it hadn’t been before.

The honesty that had become their new default.

And the arrangement—its outline, at least. The understanding that desire didn’t have to be locked away.

That “what happens in Cabo stays in Cabo” had been a starter key, not the final lock.

But here? No Rafael. No shared history with anyone who might notice the way Simone’s eyes sometimes lingered on a certain kind of man—confident, attentive, a little dangerous in the way he moved through a room.

No quiet network of friends who understood without words.

Just the two of them in a gleaming new apartment with a view that still felt borrowed.

Marcus finished his coffee and set the mug on the small iron table. The metal was cool under his fingers. He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the knot that had settled between them since the moving truck had pulled away from their old driveway.

The loneliness of starting over in your mid-thirties was its own specific animal.

They had thrown themselves into routines—Simone’s early mornings at the sleek new office downtown, his own days at the partner studio where younger architects looked at him like he might have answers.

Weekends spent exploring neighborhoods, trying restaurants, joining a gym that overlooked the river.

They laughed more than they probably should have about how adult it all felt: color-coordinated moving boxes, setting up the Nespresso machine like it was a sacred rite.

It had been good, those three months. Closer, in some ways.

Mornings like this one, where he could stand here and feel the steady pulse of their life without the static of old patterns.

Nights when they stayed in, cooked together, talked about nothing and everything.

Sex that felt rediscovered—slow, focused, sometimes laughing, sometimes fierce with the knowledge of everything they had already survived.

They had talked about the arrangement, of course. In the car during the long drive across states. In the hotel room halfway here, wine from plastic cups. On the first night in this apartment, surrounded by boxes, sitting on the bare floor.

“It continues in principle,” Simone had said, leaning back against his chest. Her voice had been soft but certain. “When we’re ready. When it feels right.”

He had kissed the top of her head and agreed. Three months later they still hadn’t acted. Just them. And it had been good.

But this morning the question sat heavier than usual.

Was he waiting for the right person to appear in this new city?

Or was he waiting because some part of him still wondered whether they truly wanted to keep going?

The fantasy had been his originally. The vacation rules.

The careful container. Then Rafael had cracked it wide open, and they had chosen—together—to let the pieces fall where they might.

They had survived it. Grown from it. But now, in this clean slate of glass and steel and unfamiliar streets, the choice felt different. Sharper.

Marcus heard the soft pad of bare feet behind him. He turned just as Simone stepped onto the balcony, wrapped in the silk robe he’d given her for their anniversary last year. The one that slipped off one shoulder too easily. Her eyes were still sleepy, hair tousled, but she smiled when she saw him.

“You’re thinking loud enough to wake the neighbors,” she said, voice husky from sleep.

He opened his arm and she stepped into it without hesitation, fitting against his side like she’d been designed for that exact space. She smelled like warm skin and the faint trace of her nighttime lotion—something vanilla and expensive.

“Just taking in the view,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“Liar.” She tilted her head up, studying his face with that particular focus she’d perfected over the last two years. The one that said she saw him—all of him. “What’s on your mind, Marcus?”

He hesitated only a moment. They didn’t do that anymore—hesitate with the important things.

“The usual new-city stuff. And… us. The arrangement. Whether we’re waiting for something specific here or just… seeing if it still fits.”

Simone was quiet for a long beat. She turned in his arms so her back rested against his chest, both of them looking out at the skyline. The sun had climbed higher; light glinted off windows in patterns he was still learning to read.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” she admitted. Her fingers traced idle circles on his forearm. “It feels different here. Cleaner, maybe. No baggage. No one who knows our story. Just us deciding what we want it to look like now.”

Her voice carried no tension. Only thoughtfulness. That was new too—the ease with which they could talk about this without the old landmines of jealousy or fear exploding beneath them.

Marcus rested his chin on her head. “Three months of just us has been… really good.”

“It has.” She squeezed his arm. “I don’t regret any of it. But I also don’t want us to keep it in a drawer like something we’re afraid to look at again.”

He nodded. The river traffic had picked up below—barges and tour boats moving with purpose. People building their days.

“I keep asking myself if I’m protecting us by not pushing,” he said quietly, “or if I’m hesitating because part of me still expects it to break something.”

Simone turned again, this time facing him fully. She reached up and brushed a thumb across his cheekbone. “And what does the analytical part of your brain say, architect?”

He huffed a small laugh. She always knew how to call him on his own patterns.

“It says we’re in a new city with new rules to write. That what we built—honesty, choice, trust—traveled with us just fine. The rest… we figure out as we go. Together.”

Her smile was slow and warm. “I like that answer.”

She rose onto her toes and kissed him. It started soft, morning-soft, but deepened the way it often did now—full of knowledge and history and deliberate want. Her body pressed against his, the silk of the robe sliding under his hands as he cupped her waist. Not rushing. Just connection.

When they parted, her eyes were brighter. “Come back to bed for a little while? The city can wait.”

Marcus let her pull him inside. The balcony door slid shut behind them, muffling the sounds of the new city. Their city now.

As they moved toward the bed, he felt the familiar pull of desire mixed with something steadier—gratitude, maybe. Or pride. They had done the hard work already. Survived the fantasy becoming real. Now they got to decide what came next, without anyone else’s map.

Simone shrugged the robe off her shoulders.

It pooled at her feet like liquid. Sunlight from the window painted her skin in warm strokes.

Marcus watched her, letting the moment stretch.

The curve of her hip, the way her breasts rose with each breath, the small scar on her ribs from a childhood fall she’d told him about years ago.

He knew every inch of her. And still, every time, it felt like discovery.

They made love slowly, without urgency. Hands and mouths mapping what words couldn’t quite reach. Afterward, tangled together with the sheets kicked down, Simone traced patterns on his chest.

“We should talk more about it,” she said softly. “Not today. But soon. What we actually want here. Not Cabo rules. Not Rafael rules. Our rules.”

Marcus kissed her forehead. “Yeah. Soon.”

She fell back asleep against him, trusting and warm. He lay awake a while longer, listening to the city move beyond the walls.

The loneliness of the new place was real. The disorientation too. But beneath it, something solid had taken root. They weren’t visitors here. They were architects—literally, in his case—designing the next version of their life.

He didn’t know yet if the arrangement would find new life in these streets. He didn’t know who might walk into it when they were ready. But for the first time since the plane had touched down, the uncertainty felt less like a threat and more like open space.

Room to build.

Marcus closed his eyes, Simone’s breathing steady against his side, and let the new city keep moving without him for a little longer.