Epilogue
ANDERSON
I used to tell myself that I’d lost sight of Lily. That I got too busy, too tired, too focused on everything that wasn’t her . . . but that was a lie.
I didn’t lose sight of her, I realize now that I simply stopped looking. I was too wrapped up in my own success, my own ego, to notice that the woman beside me slowly started to disappear into the quiet.
I heard her though. Every sigh. Every flicker of disappointment she tried to swallow. Every time she looked at me like I was the man she wanted to believe still existed.
I cared that I hurt her. I really did. But clearly, I cared about me more in those moments. The moments that became more and more about me and my ego than her and her needs.
And after one too many letdowns, I did what I thought would fix it. I gave her what she wanted—danger, passion, and the kind of surrender she reads about in those books of hers.
Yes, I bit the bullet and skimmed through her kindle paying particular attention to the bookmarked pages. The ones filled with sex and intimacy and that fine line between where trust was paramount and pleasure was the goal.
Did it make me feel inadequate because my wife was wanting things I didn’t exactly have the desire to give her? That maybe intimidated me some? Bet your ass it did.
Even worse, what if I tried to give her those things and couldn’t? What if I tried and she laughed at me or saw me in a different light?
So it was easier to bury myself in work. In the one place I knew where I was more than adequate.
I wasn’t oblivious to the space growing between Lil and me. More like it was blaringly obvious but I’m a fucking guy. Burying my head in the sand is so much easier than fixing it.
But my inability to communicate and her growing discontent felt like a ticking time bomb.
So I did what I thought might fix it. I gave her what she wanted—danger, passion, and the kind of surrender bookmarked in that Kindle of hers.
I researched. I reached out to people I had no business talking to in online groups.
I found vetted sources for people who did something like this and scrutinized every recommendation.
And then, I did one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life—I hired a man to pleasure my wife.
I built the fantasy for her.
I told myself this was an act of love, not desperation.
But sitting in that penthouse suite, watching him touch her, sitting there as Marco, I realized how fucking blind I’d been.
I watched Lily fight, then surrender, then rise again as this fierce, defiant woman who no longer needed saving. I saw the strength I’d spent years dimming in the name of protection and control.
God help me, I was proud of her.
And I’d never been more turned on in my life.
Watching him unravel that tight hold on her sexuality and then joining in with them? Fucking her while she’s being fucked by someone else? Hearing the gasps and groans and feeling her come so goddamn hard? Knowing I helped do that to her? Knowing I could do that for her?
It will forever be seared in my mind.
But in the same fucking breath, I feared I’d traumatized her. Maybe I still do and that risk will haunt me. But what I didn’t expect was what came after. The way she came home different. Grounded. Alive.
I wasn’t looking for her to be grateful to come home to a husband like me who clearly had failed her. What I was hoping for was more that she stood her ground. That she held on to the experience—all of it—and then demanded more of me once again as both a man and a husband.
And she did.
That night didn’t break us.
It stripped us down to something real.
Something raw.
She might not exactly know that it did—that I am affected by it—but I was. I am. And I intend to show that to her from every day here on out.
Will I tell her one day that it was me? That I orchestrated all of it to give her what she wanted? What I can now see she truly needed?
I don’t know.
Deep down, I think she already knows.
Maybe telling her will ruin the fantasy.
Some things are better left unsaid.