Chapter Fifty-Three - Daniel
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Daniel
DANIEL SAT SLUMPED in the armchair.
Dr. Ellis folded one leg over the other, her notepad resting quietly in her lap. She didn’t ask anything at first. Just waited.
The silence stretched. And stretched.
Then Daniel exhaled. Rough, unsteady.
“I had sex with Hannah,” he said flatly, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “I humiliated myself.”
Dr. Ellis didn’t blink.
He huffed a broken laugh, leaned his head back against the chair.
“She came over. I thought—hell, I don’t know what I thought. She said it was just sex. That she didn’t want anything from me. No emotions. Just…” He trailed off, jaw clenched. “Just my body, I guess.”
Dr. Ellis waited.
Daniel’s voice dropped. “It wasn’t casual for me.”
Silence.
He swallowed. “I was so desperate to make it good for her. I kept thinking about Tristan. The way she looked at him. The way he made her laugh. I couldn’t stop hearing his voice. I wanted to be better. Younger. Stronger. I wanted to fuck her so well she’d forget he ever touched her.”
His hands were clenched between his knees now, knuckles pale. “But the second she let me touch her, I—I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. I’d spent months remembering what if felt like, and then she was there. Right fucking there. Skin on skin. And I—” His throat worked, shame flooding every word. “I came the second I got inside her.”
Dr. Ellis didn’t flinch. “And then?”
“I wanted to disappear.” His voice cracked. “She hadn’t even come yet. She hadn’t even had a chance to feel it. I pulled out, started apologizing like an idiot. Like she didn’t already know how pathetic I am.”
Dr. Ellis tilted her head slightly. “Did she say that?”
Daniel blinked. “What?”
“That you’re pathetic. Or a fuck-up. Did she say that?”
“No,” he admitted, quietly. “But she didn’t have to.”
Dr. Ellis scribbled something on her notepad. Then looked up. “And then what?”
Daniel swallowed hard. “I… gave her my hands. My mouth. Everything I had. Because I couldn’t—because she asked me for one thing, and I couldn’t even give her that.” His voice thinned. “But even then, I failed her. It was supposed to be for her , but I liked it. I loved it. And it shouldn’t have been about me.”
Dr. Ellis’s tone was careful. “Are you just ashamed of your body’s reaction, Daniel. Or are you ashamed of touching her at all?”
“I didn’t deserve to touch her,” he said, voice thin and raw. “Not after what I did. It was like—like I was staining her by being there.”
His breathing was uneven now. His voice dropped. “And it still wasn’t enough. It won’t ever be.”
“Daniel,” Dr. Ellis said gently. “You’re not a performance. You’re a person.”
“No,” he said sharply. “I’m a fucking punchline. The cheating husband who can’t even fuck right.”
Her silence wasn’t absence. It was restraint. Space.
Dr. Ellis leaned in slightly. “Let me ask you something.”
He looked up.
“Were you trying to prove something last night? Or were you trying to give something?”
Daniel blinked, confused. “I—I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
He exhaled. “I wanted Hannah to have whatever she wanted from me. I want to give her everything, anything she asked from me.”
She spoke softly now. “Daniel, you can’t heal her by hating yourself. That’s not how love works.”
His throat tightened. But he did hate himself, how could he not?
“She’s the one who decides what she wants from you now. If anything. Your job—if you truly love her—is to respect that. And not step on her future trying to rewrite the past.”
Daniel stared at the floor, the shape of her words slicing into him, clean and surgical.
He nodded. Once. Tightly.
“I’m trying,” he whispered.
“I know,” she said. “That’s why you’re here.”
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Daniel sat on the edge of his bed, phone in hand, thumb hovering over the text box that had been blank, filled, and wiped clean more times than he could count.
He stared at the screen like it might tell him what to do.
Hey. Are you okay?
You left so fast last night. I just wanted to say—
I miss you.
Delete.
Re-type.
Delete again.
He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say anymore. Everything felt selfish. Every word rang with the same pitiful frequency: Give me a reason not to hate myself.
But she hadn’t asked for his guilt.
She hadn’t asked for anything.
She’d shown up. She’d touched him. She’d let him come undone with her— inside her —and then she’d walked away with the kind of silence that screamed: this isn’t about you.
So Daniel stared at the blinking cursor and thought: I would die to hold her again.
But I won’t break her boundaries just to feel better.
He tossed the phone onto the mattress and stood up too fast, like movement could outrun the ache low in his gut.
He was hard again.
Had been, off and on, since the second she’d left. Since the second she’d pulled her shirt over her head and turned her back on him—like she could just step back into the world and pretend nothing had happened. Like it hadn’t cracked him in half.
His body didn’t care that it was nothing to her. That it wasn’t love. That it was transactional.
His body just remembered the heat of her skin. The taste of her on his tongue. The way she moaned when she came—like her voice had cracked open against his mouth.
He groaned and dragged a hand down his face, then slid his sweatpants off with too much force. His cock sprang free, flushed and aching. He hissed through his teeth, wrapping his hand around himself, already too far gone. Already needing.
This wasn’t slow.
This wasn’t soft.
This was desperate.
He gripped tighter, pumping hard, hips twitching, his jaw clenched as if that could hold something in—something monstrous, pathetic, helpless. His mind flooded with images: Hannah’s thighs over his shoulders. His fingers in her hair. The way she whispered fuck, Daniel like she meant it.
He remembered how wet she’d been for him. How easily she took him, how she opened for him even after months of hating him. And worse—how she let him touch her, like she hadn’t sworn she was done.
He moaned low, sharp, jerking his hips up into his fist as the tension coiled hot in his spine.
She’d felt so fucking good.
She’d smelled like lavender and sweat and something his , something before , something he’d been stupid enough to think he could ever deserve again.
He came with a rough, strangled breath, head bowed, hand slick, chest heaving.
It didn’t help.
It didn’t clear anything.
The ache stayed. Gnawed.
Daniel collapsed back against the bed, forearm over his eyes, stomach tight, guilt thick in his throat.
He should be grateful for the time she gave him. For the hour she let him pretend they still fit.
Instead, he was hard again.
And already missing her like he’d lost her twice.