Chapter 3 — The Permission #4
I woke to the feeling of the bed shifting. Leo was getting up. The room was darker; he must have turned off the last of the lights. I saw his silhouette moving quietly, gathering his clothes from the floor. My heart clenched.
“You’re leaving?” My voice was sleep-roughened, small.
He came to the side of the bed and knelt down. In the faint light from the window, I could see his face. It was serious, but not cold. “I should. This part…” He gestured vaguely toward the door. “This part isn’t for me.”
He was right. The aftermath was a private cell, meant for two. He had been the instrument of its creation, but he didn’t belong in the wreckage.
He leaned forward and kissed me, a soft, final press of his lips against mine. “You know how to find me,” he said quietly. Then he stood, dressed quickly in the dark, and let himself out of the bedroom door.
I lay still, listening. I heard the soft click of the suite’s main door opening and closing. Then, silence.
I was alone. Well, not alone. Ben was in the living room. But I felt alone in a vast, hollow way. The space beside me in the bed was cooling rapidly. I sat up, pulling the duvet around my shoulders. The room smelled of sex and hotel linen and him.
I had to face it. I had to face Ben.
Moving felt like wading through cement. I found my discarded dress and slipped it on over my nakedness. I didn’t bother with underwear. My body felt used, thoroughly claimed, and strangely sacred. I padded barefoot to the bedroom door, my heels abandoned like relics of another person.
I took a deep breath and turned the handle.
The living room was dim, lit only by the city lights bleeding around the edges of the curtains.
Ben was sitting on the sofa, in the same spot he’d occupied hours before.
He wasn’t in the armchair, the front-row seat.
He was as far from the bedroom as the room allowed.
He had a fresh drink in his hand, the ice mostly melted.
He didn’t look up as I entered.
I stood there, just inside the doorway, waiting. The silence was a living thing, thick and suffocating.
Finally, he spoke, his eyes fixed on the amber liquid in his glass. “Did you have a good time?” The question was flat, stripped of all inflection.
It was the worst thing he could have asked. Anger or tears I could have handled. This sterile curiosity was a blade.
“Ben…”
“No, really.” He finally looked at me. His eyes were red-rimmed, empty. “I’m interested. Was it everything you hoped for?”
“Stop it.” My voice was weak.
“Stop what?” He set his glass down on the coffee table with a precise click. “I watched. I saw it all. The way he looked at you. The way you looked at him. The way you came for him.” He said the last word like it was poison. “It was very… instructive.”
“You wanted this!” The words burst out of me. “You set this up! You needed to see!”
“I did,” he admitted, his voice cracking for the first time. “And I saw.” He stood up, but didn’t come toward me. He seemed anchored to the spot, a man marooned. “I saw you find something with him that you don’t have with me. I saw you… come alive in a way you haven’t in years. For me.”
The truth of it hung between us, ugly and undeniable.
“So what now?” I whispered.
He let out a long, shaky breath. “I don’t know, Talia. I honestly don’t know.” He ran a hand over his face. “He’s gone?”
I nodded.
“Good.” He picked up his glass and drained the watery whiskey. “We should go home.”
The ordinariness of the statement was surreal. Go home. To our house. To our bed. To our life.
He collected his jacket, his movements mechanical. I found my heels, my clutch. We didn’t speak as we rode the elevator down, as we walked through the hushed lobby, as the valet brought Ben’s car around.
The drive home was a study in silence. The jazz station was off.
There was only the sound of the tires on the pavement and the low whir of the heater.
I stared out the window at the passing lights, feeling split in two.
One part of me was still in that hotel bed, wrapped around Leo, feeling his breath on my skin.
The other was here, in this car, next to this shattered man I loved.
We pulled into our driveway. The familiar sight of our porch light should have been a comfort. It felt like a mockery.
Inside, the house was cold and still. We went upstairs, our footsteps loud on the hardwood. In our bedroom, the bed was neatly made, just as we’d left it. A lifetime ago.
Ben went into the bathroom and closed the door. I heard the shower start.
I stood in the middle of our bedroom, the same place I’d stood a week ago when I’d agreed to this. The walls hadn’t reshaped. They’d solidified into a new, permanent configuration. A prison of our own making.
The front-row seat was empty because the watcher had finally seen the truth. And the truth was, he didn’t belong in the scene at all.
I peeled off the silk dress, letting it pool on the floor. I didn’t get into our bed. I sat on the edge of it, in the dark, waiting for the water to stop running, waiting for the next impossible thing to begin.