Chapter 29
The Wrong Place to Run
T he house felt different. Nate noticed it the moment he stepped inside. The kids' shoes were lined up neatly by the door. The kitchen counters were spotless. A faint scent of lavender and medication clung to the air. But it wasn’t the tidiness or the quiet that unsettled him.
It was the absence of something he couldn’t name. He set down his keys, loosened his tie. Normally, Lila would be in the living room, curled up under that old blanket, her head tilted toward the fire even if it wasn’t lit.
But tonight, the couch was empty.
A strange tension coiled in his chest as he moved down the hallway. Her door was partially closed, the light inside dim. He paused, knocked once.
No answer.
He pushed it open slowly.
She was asleep. Or pretending to be. Her back to the door, the covers pulled up to her shoulders like armor. He wanted to say something. Ask how she was feeling. Tell her the kids missed her at dinner. Tell her he missed her.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he stood there, watching the shape of her. Thin. Still. Dimming. And something cracked in him.
Not loudly. Not all at once. But a hairline fracture. The kind that would spread.
He closed the door gently. Went back to the kitchen. Poured a drink and stared at his reflection in the black glass of the oven. He hated himself in that moment. Hated the way he’d grown so good at justifying the worst parts of him.
The way he could compartmentalize his marriage like it was a job he clocked into, and Camille like a secret he could press against when everything else turned to ash.
Lila was slipping and he didn’t know how to hold on. He didn’t know if he even deserved to so he did the only thing he knew how to do.
He called Camille.
She answered on the second ring.
“Are you alone?” she asked, her voice soft, warm, dangerous.
“Yes.”
There was a pause, like she was already picturing him. Already waiting.
“My place,” she said.
“Now.”
Camille opened the door in a silk robe.
Barefoot.
Wine in hand. The scent of vanilla and something darker clung to her.
He walked in without a word.
She took one look at him—his disheveled hair, the pain in his eyes, the hollowness beneath his skin—and reached for him.
“I missed you,” she whispered, guiding his coat off.
He kissed her.
Rough.
Desperate.
Like he wanted to erase the night. Like he needed to punish himself with the pleasure of forgetting. Her hands slid under his shirt, her fingers digging into the tension in his shoulders. She pulled him toward the bedroom without hesitation.
“You’re not talking,” she murmured against his neck, biting lightly.
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Then don’t talk.”
Clothes were shed between gasps.
Nate pushed Camille against the bed, his mouth devouring her, his hands urgent and brutal. She welcomed it—this version of him. She thrived on the way he used her, needed her, let his control unravel inside her skin.
He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t kind. But he was hers and that was enough. Their bodies moved together with a kind of violence that didn’t ask permission.
Every thrust was a refusal to feel. Every kiss was a betrayal. He gripped her hips like he was trying to break something open, and she clung to him like he was the only thing keeping her alive.
When it was over, they lay tangled in sweat and silence. Camille curled against his chest, fingers trailing along his ribs.
“She’s getting worse, isn’t she?”
He flinched.
Didn’t answer.
“You’ll lose her,” she whispered.
“And I’ll be here.”
He didn’t look at her.
Because part of him wanted to believe it. That when everything else collapsed, Camille would still be there.
Waiting.
Willing.
But another part—deep and sick with guilt—wondered what kind of man he’d become if that was true and whether he’d already lost everything that mattered.