Chapter 3
Greg's flight landed at 6:47. Tessa waited near the exit doors in a pale yellow dress she had packed for their anniversary dinner, hair down, lipstick careful, the picture of a wife glad to see her husband.
When he came through with his carry-on, sun-tired and smiling, something in her chest pulled tight enough to hurt.
He dropped the bag and lifted her off her feet. "God, I missed you."
"I missed you too," she said into his shoulder, and for a moment it was true in the simplest way. He smelled like airplane coffee and the cologne she had bought him last Christmas. Familiar. Safe. The opposite of wet stone and shutter clicks.
In the taxi back to the resort he held her hand and talked about the closed deal, the bonus, the fact that they could start looking at a bigger house if they wanted.
She nodded and watched the darkening road.
Every so often he kissed her knuckles. She let him.
She even leaned into it. Under the yellow dress her body felt like a secret she was smuggling through customs.
At the hotel he showered while she stood on the balcony and watched the last light leave the water. When he came out in a towel, hair damp, he wrapped his arms around her from behind.
"Dinner," he said against her ear, "then I am not letting you out of bed until morning."
She smiled because he expected it. "Sounds perfect."
Dinner was good. Fresh fish, cold wine, a table near the open air where the sea air moved through.
Greg was attentive in the way he always was after long absences, as if he could make up for missed days by focusing harder now.
He asked about her alone time. She told him about the beach, the pool, a spa visit.
She did not tell him about Andre. She did not tell him about Harris.
The omissions sat between the salt and the lime like a third plate.
Back in the room he kissed her before the door fully closed.
His hands were eager, affectionate, a little clumsy with want.
She kissed him back and tried to pour herself into it.
When he undressed her, he made the soft astonished sounds he always made, as if her body still surprised him.
When he laid her down and moved into her, she held him close and matched his rhythm.
It was loving. It was warm. It was not enough.
She felt the difference with a clarity that frightened her.
Greg filled her the way he always had, familiar and dear, and still her body kept searching for a deeper stretch, a heavier weight, a pace that did not ask permission from tenderness.
She came only after she put her own hand between them and thought, for one shameful second, of Andre's hands on her hips at the waterfall.
The orgasm was real. The reason for it made her turn her face into the pillow afterward so Greg would not see her eyes.
He fell asleep quickly, satisfied, one arm across her waist. Tessa stared at the ceiling fan and listened to his breathing until it evened out. Then she slipped free, put on a wrap, and went down to the beach barefoot.
The sand was cool. The resort lights fell away behind her after a few minutes of walking. She told herself she was only clearing her head. She told herself a lot of things.
Near the darker stretch beyond the last row of loungers, a figure sat on an overturned cooler with a camera bag at his feet. She knew him before he turned.
Andre looked up. For a second neither of them spoke. The ocean filled the space.
"I was not sure you would want to see me," he said.
"I was not sure either."
He stood, careful not to come too close. "I still have the photos. The real ones and the ones after. I have not shown them to anyone. I can wipe the card in front of you."
Tessa folded her arms across her chest. The wrap fluttered against her thighs. "Why did you take those last ones?"
"Because you looked like something I would never see again," he said simply. "And because I am a photographer who sometimes forgets to be a better man. I am sorry for that part."
The apology landed cleaner than she expected. She nodded once. "My husband is upstairs."
"I figured."
Silence again. Then, because honesty had become the only currency she had left with herself, she said, "I slept with him an hour ago and thought about you."
Andre exhaled through his nose, not quite a laugh. "That is a hell of a thing to tell a man on a public beach."
"I know."
He studied her face in the half light. "What do you want, Tessa?"
The question was dangerous because she had an answer. Not a moral one. A bodily one. She wanted the waterfall back. She wanted the full, ruthless stretch of him. She wanted to stop pretending that one more good marriage night would overwrite what her nerves had learned.
"I want the card," she said. "And I want one more hour that belongs only to me. Then I go back upstairs and figure out how to be his wife again."
Andre was quiet long enough that she thought he might refuse. Finally he picked up the bag. "My place is ten minutes from here. No cameras this time unless you ask. You say stop, everything stops."
"Yes," she said.
His apartment was small and clean, one room above a local cafe, windows open to night air and distant music. He set the camera bag on the table, ejected the memory card, and held it out on his palm.
"Yours."
She closed her fingers around it. The plastic edges bit lightly into her skin. Proof. Choice. Both.
Then she set it on the table and untied her wrap.
Andre did not rush her. He watched as the fabric fell, as she stood bare in the warm room, as she walked to him and put her hands on his chest.
When she kissed him it was not accidental.
It was deliberate. His mouth opened under hers and his hands settled at her waist with a restraint that made her ache.
"Tell me you want this," he said.
"I want this."
He lifted her onto the table edge and knelt.
The first stroke of his tongue through her made her grip the wood.
He licked her slowly, thoroughly, until her thighs shook and she came with a broken sound she tried and failed to keep quiet.
Before the tremors finished he stood, freed himself, and rubbed the thick head of his cock against her wetness.
"Look at me," he said.
She did. He pushed in by degrees, giving her body time to remember and open. The stretch stole her breath. When he was finally seated deep, she dropped her forehead to his shoulder and laughed once, helpless.
"That," she whispered. "That is what I could not find."
He made love to her there first, steady and deep, the table knocking softly against the wall.
Then he carried her to the narrow bed and put her on her back, knees high, and took her harder.
She clawed at his arms and begged in half words.
When he turned her onto her stomach and entered her from behind, the angle made her cry into the sheets.
He reached under her and rubbed her clit in time with his thrusts until she came so hard her vision whited out.
He did not finish inside her right away.
He pulled out, rolled her over, and let her take him into her mouth.
She tasted herself on him and moaned around the thickness she still could not fully manage.
When he was close he asked where she wanted him.
She pulled him back down, guided him into her again, and wrapped her legs around him.
"In me," she said. "I want to feel it."
He came with a low groan, pulsing deep, and the heat of it triggered another smaller climax that left her limp and shaking beneath him.
For a long time they only breathed.
Later, in the shower stall that barely fit them both, he washed her back with surprising gentleness. Water ran over the places he had held too tightly. She rested her forehead against the tile and let him.
"You are going back to him," Andre said. Not a question.
"Yes."
"And the card?"
"I am keeping it." She turned under the spray to face him. "Not to use against anyone. Not to share. I need to decide what those pictures are. A mistake. A gift. A door I should have left shut. I cannot decide if you erase them for me."
He nodded. "Fair."
She dressed in the damp wrap and refused his offer of a ride. The walk back to the resort took twenty minutes. Each step cooled her skin and clarified nothing. At the hotel she rinsed again in her own bathroom as quietly as she could, brushed her teeth, and slipped into bed beside Greg.
He stirred. "You were gone."
"Could not sleep," she whispered. "Went for air."
He pulled her against him, already drifting. "Love you."
"I love you," she said, and that, too, was true. Love had not protected her from hunger. Hunger had not erased love. She lay awake a long time with both facts pressed against her ribs.
Their last full day in Jamaica was the kind of day they had planned for months.
Breakfast on the terrace. A boat to a quieter cove.
Snorkeling until her shoulders pinked and Greg made her sit under an umbrella.
She laughed at his jokes. She let him rub lotion into her back.
From the outside they looked exactly like what they were supposed to be.
Only once did the day crack.
They were walking the main beach toward lunch when she saw Andre under a palm with a young couple, camera raised, directing a pose with easy professionalism. Greg followed her gaze.
"You know him?"
Tessa's pulse jumped. "He offered photos earlier in the week. Beach portraits."
Greg squinted, then smiled. "We should get some. Anniversary proof that we were actually here and not just working."
"Greg..."
"Come on. It will be fun."
Before she could build a clean refusal, Greg was already waving. Andre looked over, recognized her in a flash he hid almost well enough, and walked across the sand with his portfolio smile in place.
"Afternoon," he said. "Looking for a session?"
"For my wife and me," Greg said, extending his hand. "Greg. This is Tessa."
"Andre." Their hands met. Tessa watched the contact and felt slightly sick. "I can do a short set right now if you like. Light is good."
They posed near the water. Greg behind her with his arms around her waist. Tessa leaning into him with a smile that almost reached her eyes. Andre gave directions in the same calm voice he had used at the waterfall, and if the words hit her differently now, only she could hear the echo.
"Closer. Chin up. Perfect."
When he showed them a few previews on the camera screen, Greg whistled. "These are excellent. Can you send a full gallery to the room?"
"Of course."
Greg paid him on the spot and tipped well. Andre thanked him, glanced at Tessa one last time, and said only, "Enjoy the rest of your stay."
After he walked away, Greg kissed her temple. "See? Now we have something better than phone pictures."
"Yes," she said. "We do."
That night, their actual anniversary night, Greg booked a private cabana dinner and later made love to her with a sweetness that made her throat ache.
She stayed present for all of it. She kissed him like she meant it, because she did.
When he slept, she took the memory card from her makeup bag and held it up to the balcony light.
On that card were two versions of her life. One was the woman in a yellow dress smiling for her husband. The other was bare on wet stone, eyes dazed, body open to a man who was not him.
She could destroy it. She could keep it.
She could confess everything tomorrow on the flight home and let the marriage become whatever truth made it.
Or she could go back to Tampa, file the week under a fever she never named, and spend the rest of her years wondering when the hunger would rise again.
Tessa closed her fist around the card.
She did not destroy it.
In the morning they packed, checked out, and rode to the airport with their fingers laced on the seat between them.
Greg talked about work next month and whether they should host his sister for Thanksgiving.
Tessa answered in all the right places. When the plane lifted over the blue water, she watched Jamaica shrink until it was only a green edge against the sea.
Greg dozed against the window. Tessa opened her carry-on just far enough to see the small plastic square tucked into the lining, then closed it again.
She loved her husband.
She had not finished wanting more.
Somewhere between those two sentences, the rest of her life was waiting to be written.
For now she only knew this: the photos existed, the week had changed her, and no amount of ocean between her body and that waterfall would make her forget how completely she had come apart in a stranger's hands, or how carefully she had chosen, more than once, not to stop.