Chapter Eleven
The click of the front door closing is still echoing in the house when I wake. I immediately look around the living room, sitting up on the couch.
Saint is gone.
I walk to the living room window and watch, hidden behind the curtains, as his dark car pulls out of my driveway and disappears down the street. A strange mix of relief and an unsettling emptiness settles in my chest. He always leaves.
I wait. One minute. Then two. The urge to know, to see, to understand who he is and where he comes from gnaws at me. It’s an intriguing itch, one I know I shouldn’t scratch, but I can’t help myself. And if I stand here long enough to talk myself out of this, it’ll be too late.
I hurry to my room and pull on the one sundress I packed, throw on some flip-flops, and then grab my keys, my heart thrumming a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
The sun is low as it rises in the east, painting long golden shadows across the street. This is a bad idea, my logical brain screams. He’ll see me. But the other, more insistent side, the one that’s been captivated by Saint since he first walked into my life, pushes me out the door.
My car feels like a glaring beacon as I back out of the driveway.
I drive quickly down the road, assuming he turned left to go toward town.
I drive quickly still, another minute, until I spot what looks like his car.
I keep a good distance behind him as we travel, trying to blend in with the sparse morning traffic.
My grip on the steering wheel is tight, knuckles white.
Every passing car is a mini panic attack, every turn a potential reveal.
I just want to know where he goes, where he lives.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ll catch a glimpse of her, the wife.
The woman who holds the other, real part of his life.
Fifteen minutes creep by. He’s taking a route I don’t recognize, leading me farther away from the sanctuary of my cabin. My stomach churns with a mix of anticipation and dread when he turns onto a county road. What will I see? What will I learn?
Will I regret it?
Then, as soon as I make the turn, the brake lights of his car catch my eye, bright red against the green of the trees. He is already pulled over.
He’s already outside his car.
He’s waiting for me.
My breath hitches. How did he know? How did he even see me? I’m scrambling for a plausible reason for being on this street, in this neighborhood.
He’s standing by the driver’s side, looking directly at my car with crossed arms as he leans against his own. There’s no mistaking the stern set of his jaw, the narrowed eyes. My heart sinks. He definitely knows.
He gestures for me to pull over. It’s just a quick motion of his head, but I feel like a small child caught with my hand in the cookie jar.
I pull over and shift into park as he pushes off his car and begins walking toward mine. I press the button to roll down my window, and the whirring sound of the glass descending seems impossibly loud in the sudden quiet.
“Get out, Petra.” His voice is low, commanding. Not angry, not yet, but with an undeniable sternness.
I hesitate, frozen by a potent cocktail of shame and fear. My cheeks burn. He sees my reluctance, and with a sigh, he opens my car door and reaches for me.
Before I can protest, he has me. One strong arm loops behind my back, the other under my knees.
He lifts me, effortlessly, as if I weigh nothing.
The suddenness of it, the unexpected intimacy, steals my breath.
My hands instinctively grip his shoulders.
My body feels surprisingly light, almost buoyant, as he carries me to the front of my own car.
With a practiced ease that makes my stomach flip, he sets me down on the hood, my legs dangling, the bottoms of my thighs sticking to the metal, warm from the heat of the engine.
His hands brace against the car on either side of my legs, trapping me between his arms. He leans in, his face close, his eyes dark with an unreadable intensity. The scent of him fills my senses.
“You better stop digging.” His voice is a low rumble, a warning.
I can feel the heat radiating off him, the solidness of his chest so close to mine. My pulse quickens. “I . . . I just . . .” I stammer, my voice thin, pathetic.
“You already know I’m married.” It’s not a question. It’s a statement, a reminder, heavy with unspoken implications.
My gaze drops, unable to meet his. Shame washes over me, a hot tide. “I was just curious about you,” I whisper, the words barely audible. They sound hollow, even to my own ears. A lame excuse for something far more complicated.
He sighs, a slow, deliberate exhalation that stirs the hair at my temples. “I thought we had an agreement.” His words are firm, a boundary drawn in the air between us.
My eyes flicker up to his. “I wasn’t going to do anything. I just wanted to see where you go when you aren’t with me. Where you live.”
“It’s not your business,” he says.
“I know. I just . . .” I can’t articulate myself right now. Men rarely, if ever, leave me speechless and nervous like Saint does.
I look back at his face and ask the one question I’m most curious about. “I just want to know things. Things that will help my book.”
“Like what?” he responds, his voice flat.
“Are you happy?” The question slips out before I can stop it, a desperate plea for some crack in his carefully constructed facade.
His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “Yes.” The word is clipped, definitive.
A bitter taste floods my mouth. “Then why are you cheating on your wife with me?” The accusation hangs in the air.
His eyes narrow. “You asked me to.” The bluntness of his reply stings. It’s a cold dose of reality. And it’s true. I did, maybe not outright. But I definitely initiated it, fueled by a reckless desire for something I knew I shouldn’t want.
“But do you feel guilty?” I press, my voice rising slightly, desperate to find a chink in his armor, a flicker of guilt, anything.
“Are you really asking these things because of your book? Or should I be worried you’re about to cross a line?” His tone is bordering on condescending. It makes me feel small, insignificant, just another secret to be kept among so many other secrets that he tucks away.
“It’s not fair to her,” I argue, a sudden fierce protectiveness for the woman I don’t even know rising within me. “I feel guilty and I don’t even know your wife.” I don’t even know what I’m doing or why I’m saying this. I just want to know what he feels, I guess.
He pushes back from the car slightly, enough to break the intense physical contact, but not enough to release me from his gaze.
“Then I’ll stop coming over if that’s how you feel.
” The words are delivered without emotion, a simple statement of fact, but they hit me like a physical blow.
The thought of him not coming to the cabin, not filling that space in my life with his presence, sends a cold dread through me.
My breath hitches. He sees the reaction in my eyes. His gaze softens, a fleeting moment of something akin to understanding, or perhaps pity. He leans in again, closer than before, his voice dropping to a near whisper.
“I’m a good husband outside of what she doesn’t know. But if you’re starting to question doing the things she doesn’t know we’re doing, then maybe we should stop doing those things.”
His hands, which have been bracing him while we speak, now move.
Slow, deliberate. They slide from the hood of the car, over the thin material of my dress, and settle on my thighs.
A jolt, electric and potent, shoots through me.
My skin prickles under his touch. My breath starts to come in short, shallow gasps.
His fingers move, a light, teasing caress, up my inner thighs.
My body responds before my mind can even process it, a familiar warmth spreading through me, a primal ache.
“Would you like to stop doing these things my wife doesn’t know we do?”
His eyes, dark and heavy lidded, meet mine. I shake my head. “No. Not yet.” I can see the desire there, mirroring my own. The air between us thickens, charged with an undeniable tension. Our breathing grows heavier, ragged, almost synchronized.
“If you want to know the truth, I feel like a complete asshole,” he murmurs, his voice rough with suppressed emotion as he continues to caress me, moving up my thigh.
“Maybe you are,” I whisper back, my own voice hoarse, barely recognizable. The shame is still there, a dull throb, but it’s being eclipsed by a different, more urgent sensation.
“My wife deserves better,” he says, his voice a low thrum against my skin as his hands continue their slow, intoxicating dance on my thighs, moving higher.
“Petra deserves better,” I counter, the words surprising even me. A flicker of defiance, a quiet reclaiming of my own worth, even in this messy, complicated situation.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touches the corner of his lips. It’s not a happy smile, more of a weary acknowledgment. “Petra. You deserve so much better.” His fingers slip inside my underwear, and then into me.
I gasp.
His other hand, strong and sure, spreads my legs wider on the hood of the car. My dress rides up, exposing my skin to the cool air, but I barely register it. My senses are consumed by him, by the intoxicating pull of his presence.
I gasp again, my back arching off the hood and into his hand. He leans down, his mouth finding mine, silencing any protest, any sound, with a deep, consuming kiss.
It’s raw, it’s urgent, it’s everything I shouldn’t want but crave with a desperate intensity. The fact that we’re outside on an open road, the shame of a potential approaching car, it all fades away, replaced by the sounds coming from me.
Saint watches me, exposed on the hood of my car, as I completely come apart in front of him. His eyes remain dark, but as I tremble against his hand, there’s a flicker of something new there. Something he only wishes he were pretending.
When my breathing slows, Saint pulls his hand away, never breaking eye contact with me.
My legs are aching and my body is still tingling.
My mind is a whirlwind of emotions. Shame, desire, confusion, a surprising surge of defiance.
“Where will you tell her you’ve been all night?
” The question tumbles out, breathless, a desperate attempt to grasp at some tangible piece of his other life, to understand the woman who shares him.
He sighs, a deep, heavy sound. He pushes off the car, creating a small distance between us. “Stop asking questions about her. I don’t like thinking about her when I’m with you.”
“Do you like thinking about me when you’re with her?” I ask, my voice small, vulnerable.
He looks away, staring out into the middle distance, his jaw tight.
“No. But I do it anyway. And it doesn’t feel good to feel good about someone who isn’t my wife.
” His voice is flat, yet the words themselves carry a profound weight.
He turns back to me, his gaze direct, unyielding.
“Go back to the cabin, Petra. Don’t follow me. You won’t like what you find.”
Then, he turns and walks away. He doesn’t look back. He gets into his car, starts the engine, and drives off, leaving me alone, exposed on the hood of my car, the morning sun casting long, lonely shadows around me.
I do what he says. I go back to the cabin and I write.