The Weight of Want #4
She wiped down the table, methodical and focused.
As she leaned forward to scrub a stubborn spot, her blouse shifted—subtle, unintentional.
Nic’s gaze caught on the slope of her breasts, the soft lines of her back flowing into hips.
He swallowed hard and sat back in his chair, but the distance offered only a different view—no less dangerous.
He turned his head, but it was already too late.
The scrape of his chair startled him. He stood too quickly, breath shallow, heart pounding. Jasmin rose too, and for a beat, they simply faced each other. She seemed to see everything in his expression—there was no disguising it now.
Heat flared in his cheeks. “I should get back to the porch,” he muttered, brushing past her.
“Wait,” she said gently, touching his arm. “You have cream—"
Before he could protest, her fingertip brushed the corner of his mouth. The touch lingered.
His pulse roared in his ears.
She stepped closer, her voice a whisper. “Have you thought about me, Nic?”
He froze.
The warmth of the cottage, the smell of herbs and roasted chicken, the softness of her voice—everything narrowed around him like a noose. His heartbeat kicked at his ribs.
“Jasmin...” he began, but couldn’t finish. Her question still rang in the air, and he hadn’t answered.
Yes. He had thought about her. Not just the day she saved him, but the quiet after. The way she tied back her curls. The steady competence. The gentle way she listened.
But he had also thought about Helen. Her voice. Her eyes. The way she looked at him when she was trying to stay angry but couldn’t. The promises they hadn’t figured out how to keep.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said, voice rough. “I’ve already made too many mistakes.”
Jasmin’s hand brushed his arm. Her touch was light, but it set his skin alight with fire.
“I’m not asking for anything,” she said softly. “Not a future. Not a vow. I just... I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Nic took a step back. But the room didn’t grow cooler. His thoughts didn’t clarify.
“I have someone,” he said, more to himself than to her. “Someone I...”
But the sentence ended before he could name it—what he had, what he wanted, what he was breaking.
Jasmin didn’t push. She simply stood there, eyes open and waiting.
He could leave. He should leave. He could apologize, say thank you for lunch, finish her porch, and never come back.
But instead—
He touched her cheek.
And the guilt surged, immediate and hot, not because the touch was wrong—but because it felt like relief.
Her eyes fluttered closed.
He kissed her.
Not out of impulse, but from a slow, trembling need that had been rising in him like a tide. The kiss was hesitant at first—gentle, searching. But when she leaned into it, when her hands slid up around his shoulders and her breath caught against his lips, the knot inside him gave way.
The kiss deepened, grew hungrier.
She moaned his name softly, and the sound wrecked him like an earthquake rising from the bottom of his heart’s lake. He tangled his fingers in her hair and kissed her again—harder this time, drowning out the voice that kept whispering no with the weight of want.
Her fingers slid beneath his shirt, palms finding the curve of his spine. He gasped against her mouth.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispered.
She didn’t.
She backed toward the table. He followed.
Their clothes came off in uneven stutters, hands clumsy with urgency. She guided him to her, breathless, trembling, eyes wide. The table trembled as he lifted her up.
“I kept thinking about you,” he said against her throat. “I tried not to—but I couldn’t stop.”
Her reply was a low whimper of want as she pulled him closer.
He buried his face in her shoulder, guilt pounding like a second heartbeat.
Even as he gave in.
Day after day, Nic returned to Jasmin’s cottage.
At first, he clung to the illusion—it was the porch, after all, that needed him.
He told himself it would be dishonorable to leave it half-finished, that she deserved a proper job done well.
But even after the last nail was driven, the last board sanded smooth, he kept going back. Tools in hand, purpose in name only.
By summer, he’d stopped pretending.
Their trysts were wordless and uncomplicated.
Jasmin, adrift in her husband’s absence.
Nic, stranded between guilt and longing.
He found in her a quiet hunger—nothing romantic, nothing permanent.
Just need. Physical and undemanding, a salve for hearts worn down by neglect and disappointment.
He told himself they were helping each other.
As she’d once dragged him free from the weight of the tree, they now pulled each other from the crush of loneliness.
But the shame didn’t soften—it sharpened.
His walks home were always long, silent punishments.
Each step weighed heavier than the last, as if the mountain trails knew what he had done.
Thoughts of Helen twisted like tangled roots in his chest. He imagined confessing, imagined her face, the fracture of trust, the devastation. It would destroy her gentle heart.
It would destroy them.
So he said nothing. And kept returning to Jasmine.
The lies began to fray him. To friends, to family, to Helen most of all.
The weight of deceit seeped into his sleep, his work, a shadow always over his pounding heart.
He told himself he would end it soon—tomorrow, maybe, or next week—but he didn’t know how to let go when Jasmin’s door remained slightly ajar.
Then, on a midsummer afternoon, he arrived and knocked, and it wasn’t Jasmin who answered.
The man in the doorway was younger than expected. Tall, sun-worn, with kind eyes and a confident ease. He smiled warmly, extended his hand, asked about the porch. Thanked Nic for his craftsmanship. He was polite. Gracious.
He knew nothing.
And that, somehow, was the worst part.
If he’d been cruel or careless, Nic might have wrapped the affair in some self-righteous excuse. But this man—decent, open, possibly even likeable—left Nic staring into a mirror he didn’t want to face. In another life, they might have been friends. In this one, Nic had trespassed in the worst way.
He left after a short exchange, never even asking to see Jasmin. And for the first time since the porch was rebuilt, he didn’t come back.