Chapter 4 — The Direct Line #4
It was the most normal, connected conversation I’d had in years. Ben and I talked, but our conversations were about logistics, about our shared life, about his work. We didn’t talk about who we were as individuals anymore. We were a unit.
With Leo, I was just Talia.
He reached across the table, his fingers tracing the back of my hand. “I want to take you home,” he said, his voice low.
“Your home?”
“Yes.”
The directness was a balm. No subtext, no hidden agenda. Just want. “Okay,” I said.
We took separate cars again, a farce of discretion. I followed his taillights through the city, back to the converted warehouse. The familiarity of the route was a shock—my body knew the way.
In the elevator, he pushed me against the wall and kissed me, deep and hungry. It was a reclaiming of the night, a shift from the polite public sphere back to the private, carnal world we’d created. I kissed him back, my hands in his hair, my body arching into his.
The loft was dark, lit only by the cityscape through the windows. He didn’t turn on the main lights. He led me straight to the bedroom.
This time, there was no pizza, no small talk. The pretense was gone. He turned me to face him, his hands on my shoulders. “Last chance,” he said, his eyes searching mine. “To go back to being just a show.”
“It never was,” I said. And I knew it was the truth.
He kissed me, and it was like striking a match.
Our clothes came off in a frantic, messy pile by the bed.
He laid me back on the sheets, his mouth and hands everywhere at once, as if he were memorizing me.
He kissed the inside of my wrist, the hollow of my throat, the sensitive skin behind my knee.
It was worshipful and desperate all at once.
When he entered me this time, it was with a slow, aching certainty that made me cry out.
We moved together in the dark, a rhythm we were creating from scratch.
There were no instructions, no performances.
Just the slick, hot slide of him inside me, the gasp of his breath in my ear, the dig of my heels into his back.
He rolled us over so I was on top. I sat up, straddling him, taking him deeper.
The city lights painted his chest in streaks of gold and shadow.
I rode him, my head thrown back, my hands braced on his stomach.
I watched his face, the pleasure there raw and undefended.
He reached up, his thumbs brushing my nipples, sending jolts of sensation straight to my core.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice strained.
I looked down, meeting his gaze. In it, I saw my own reflection: wild, free, claimed. I came with a sob, my body clenching around him, the pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. He followed me over the edge, his hands gripping my hips, his shout muffled against my thigh.
I collapsed onto his chest, our hearts hammering against each other. We lay like that for a long time, sticky and spent, our breathing slowing in unison.
It was in that quiet, in the perfect, sated stillness, that my phone, buried in my jacket pocket in the other room, began to ring. The sound was faint, muffled by layers of fabric and distance, but I heard it. The generic ringtone I’d never bothered to change.
Leo heard it too. His body tensed beneath mine.
The phone rang and rang, then stopped. A moment later, it started again.
Ben. It had to be Ben. He never called twice unless it was important, or unless he was worried.
The spell shattered. The real world, with its promises and its consequences, came crashing back in.
I slid off of Leo, the loss of contact feeling like a physical wound. “I have to go,” I said, my voice flat.
“Talia…”
“I have to go,” I repeated, more firmly. I got out of bed, my legs unsteady, and began gathering my clothes.
He sat up, watching me dress in the dark. I could feel his eyes on me, but I couldn’t look at him. If I did, I might stay. And I couldn’t stay.
“Tell him,” Leo said quietly from the bed.
I paused, my dress half over my head. “What?”
“Tell him. It’s killing you, this lying. It’s going to kill whatever this is between us, too.”
I pulled the dress down, my movements jerky. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand that you’re living two lives. And I don’t think you’re built for it.”
His words were a slap. They were also true. I finished dressing, not bothering with my makeup, running a hand through my tangled hair. I was a mess. I looked exactly like what I was: a woman who’d just been thoroughly fucked by someone who wasn’t her husband.
I walked to the bedroom door, then turned back. He was still sitting there, the sheet pooled around his waist, a silhouette of disappointment and resolve.
“I’ll call you,” I said, the promise weak.
He just nodded.
I drove home too fast, my mind racing. What would I say? He’d called twice. Was he hurt? Angry? Did he know?
The house was brightly lit when I pulled up. Every window glowed. My heart hammered against my ribs.
I walked inside. Ben was in the living room, not on the couch, but standing in the middle of the room. He was still dressed in his work clothes. He held his phone in his hand.
“You’re home,” he said. His voice was calm. Too calm.
“You called,” I said, dropping my keys on the table. “My phone was on silent. I’m sorry.”
“Where were you?” He didn’t move.
“I told you. With Megan. Dinner and a movie.” The lie was ash.
“Megan called here,” he said, each word measured. “About an hour ago. She was wondering if you’d left your jacket at her place last week.”
The bottom dropped out of my world. I stared at him, my mouth dry.
“I told her you were out with her tonight,” Ben continued, his eyes never leaving mine. “She was… confused.”
I had nothing. No words, no excuse, no clever story. The web of lies had just collapsed under the weight of a single, casual phone call.
He took a step toward me. “So I’ll ask you again, Talia. Where were you?”
The silence stretched, thin and lethal. I could see the hurt in his eyes now, sharp and bright beneath the calm. He knew. He’d known, maybe from the moment I’d walked in the door days ago smelling of someone else’s soap. He’d just been waiting for proof.
I opened my mouth. I didn’t know what would come out—a confession, a defense, another lie.
But he spoke first, his voice cracking on the edge of the calm. “Were you with him?”
And there it was. The question hanging in the air between us, the truth of it already answered by my silence, by my disheveled hair, by the scent of sex and wine I’d brought home with me like a trophy.
I looked at my husband, at the front-row seat he’d insisted on, now standing empty and accusing in the center of our living room. I thought of Leo, waiting in his quiet loft. I thought of the direct line of his want, a line that had no junction box for a spectator.
The watcher was finally, truly, outside the frame. And he was waiting for an answer I didn’t know how to give.