Chapter Two
Harrison
Harrison’s hands were shaking so hard he couldn't get the key into the ignition. He jammed it in on the third try, the metal screeching, mirroring the noise in his head.
"Drive," Emily snapped from the passenger seat. She was pulling her shirt on over her head, her hair a chaotic mess of static and sweat. "Just drive, Harrison. She’s probably calling the cops right now. She’s dramatic like that."
Harrison didn't look at her. He couldn't. He stared through the windshield at the front door of his house. The door Sarah had just slammed. The door to the life he had built, the life he wanted.
He slammed the car into reverse, tires squealing on the asphalt as he backed out of the driveway. He drove two blocks down and pulled over under the shadow of an oak tree, killing the engine. Darkness swallowed the cabin.
He slammed his palms against the steering wheel. "Fuck!"
"God, relax," Emily said, adjusting the rearview mirror to look at herself. She wiped a smudge of mascara from her cheek. "Ideally, this isn't how I wanted to tell her, but at least it’s out now. No more sneaking around."
Harrison whipped his head toward her. The sight of her—the woman he had just been inside of, the woman whose skin he had been desperate to touch ten minutes ago—suddenly made bile rise in his throat.
"Tell her?" Harrison’s voice was ragged. "There was nothing to tell her, Emily. This wasn't a 'we' thing. This isn't a relationship."
Emily froze, her hand pausing near her face. She turned slowly to look at him. "Excuse me? You just told me I was the best you ever had. You said—"
"I was having sex!" Harrison shouted, the confines of the sedan amplifying his voice. "It was just sex! It’s dopamine. It’s... it’s a release."
He ran a hand through his hair, gripping the roots. His heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Sarah didn't understand. She had looked at him with such absolute horror, as if he had murdered someone.
She’s confusing things, he thought, his mind racing to rationalize the catastrophe. She saw the physical act and thought it erased the emotional truth. She thinks because I fuck Emily, I don't love her. But that’s not true.
He loved Sarah. He adored Sarah. Sarah was his wife. She was the one he wanted to wake up to, the one he wanted to buy a vacation home with, the one who understood his jokes.
Emily? Emily was a drug. Emily was a convenient, high-octane distraction from the stress of work and the routine of marriage. She was available. She was dirty. She let him be selfish.
But he didn't love her. He didn't even really like her.
"It’s just sex," he whispered, more to himself than to Emily. "Why couldn't she just let me explain? I just... I needed to get it out of my system."
"You are unbelievable," Emily scoffed, crossing her arms. "You weren't wearing a condom, Harrison. That’s not 'getting it out of your system.' That’s intimacy."
"That’s stupidity!" Harrison countered. "It was the heat of the moment. It doesn't mean I want to leave my wife for you. It means I wasn't thinking."
He squeezed his eyes shut, picturing Sarah standing in the living room. The shattered glass. The way she had looked at his crotch, then at his face, with that devastating realization.
He felt a surge of indignation. I wasn't leaving her, he told himself firmly. I come home to her every night. I pay the bills. I listen to her stories. This... this thing with Emily, it’s just a separate compartment.
It has nothing to do with us. Sarah is blowing this up.
She’s throwing away a marriage over friction. Over a physical mistake.
He reached into the center console for his phone. His lock screen was a picture of him and Sarah in Cabo. His stomach twisted.
"What are you doing?" Emily asked, her voice shrill.
"I have to text her. I have to explain that this isn't what she thinks it is."
"She caught you balls deep in her sister, Harrison. I think she knows exactly what it is."
"Shut up!" Harrison roared. "Just shut your mouth. You don't know her. You don't know us."
He tapped out a message, his fingers clumsy.
Sarah, please. You’re misunderstanding everything. It was a mistake. It meant nothing. I love YOU. Please pick up.
He watched the bubbles appear, then disappear. No Read Receipt. She had blocked him. Or she was staring at the phone, hating him.
"Where are we going?" Emily asked, her voice smaller now, sensing the volatility radiating off him. "I can't go back there. And I don't have my wallet."
Harrison stared at the phone, waiting for a reply that wasn't coming. The reality of the night began to settle on him like a lead blanket. He wasn't sleeping in his bed tonight. He wasn't waking up to the smell of Sarah’s coffee.
He looked at Emily and felt nothing but resentment. She was the wreckage of his life sitting in the passenger seat.
"A motel," Harrison said, his voice dead. "We're going to a motel. And in the morning, you're finding somewhere else to go."
"Harrison—"
"Don't," he cut her off, starting the car. "Just... don't speak to me. I need to figure out how to fix this."
He pulled the car onto the main road, driving away from the only place he wanted to be. He replayed the scene in his head—Sarah’s shattered face—and clung to his delusion like a life raft.
It’s just sex, he thought again, desperate to believe it. We can come back from this. She just needs to understand the difference between a body and a heart. My heart is hers. My body just... wandered.
He truly believed that if he could just make her see the logic, she would forgive him. He had no idea he had already broken something that logic couldn't fix.