Chapter 17
Of all the times I’d eavesdropped, this one was the worst.
“Fuck, Shannon,” Mikko groaned behind his closed door, and my heart practically leaped out of my chest.
The sounds I heard from the other side were enough that I knew exactly what was happening in there—the rhythmic creak of his bed, the wet slide of skin, his low, ragged breathing.
A bead of sweat dripped down between my breasts where I stood in the hallway, unable to move.
I should have felt guilty.
Mortified, even.
So what did it say about me that I wasn’t any of those things?
No, all I could feel was turned on because my husband had gotten off with my name on his lips.
My hands shook as I slowly backed down the hall toward my room.
I slipped inside and eased the door shut, heart hammering in my chest. My tablet was still open to the romance novel I’d started yesterday, the hero about to ravish a blushing virgin.
I was halfway through a filthy scene when Mikko had fled the living room with the outline of his dick practically etched into his sweats.
Now the book felt laughably tame.
I climbed onto my bed fully clothed, and my mind went to him—sweaty, spent, cum on his stomach after stroking himself to thoughts of me. Another wave of heat went to my core, and I pressed my palm between my legs over my leggings to ease the ache. But it wasn’t enough.
Before I could think better of it, I shoved the fabric down impatiently, kicking them off along with my underwear, and slid two fingers through my soaked folds. I was embarrassingly wet, all from listening to him jerk off.
A soft whimper escaped me as I circled my clit, imagining what would have happened if I’d pushed his door open. Climbed onto his bed. Replaced his hand with mine.
I pictured those big hands gripping my hips and pulling me down onto him while he groaned my name again, this time against my throat.
“Oh fuck,” I breathed.
My fingers moved faster, dipping inside, then back up to my swollen clit, but it still wasn’t enough. My other hand slipped under my hoodie to pinch a nipple, the sharp spark of pleasure making my back arch.
The apartment was quiet now. He’d finished, but I couldn’t stop. I kept going, chasing the high, thighs trembling as I got closer and closer—
Then I froze.
What the hell was I doing?
This wasn’t some fantasy man in a book.
This was Mikko.
Yes, he was my husband on paper, but we had rules. Boundaries. A careful co-parenting arrangement that didn’t include me getting myself off to thoughts of him.
Even thinking that statement confused my brain, not sure where any of this fell inside this agreement. Falling for my husband wasn’t part of the deal.
I pulled my hand away, chest heaving, body screaming in protest. My clit throbbed angrily, denied, but I rolled onto my side and curled into a ball, pressing my thighs together like that might soothe the ache.
Of course, it didn’t.
Sleep didn’t come. I lay there for hours, replaying every second: the way he’d looked at me on the couch, the thick ridge in his sweats, the desperate groan of my name through the wall. The easy laughter in the car. The way he’d watched me with Leena like we were a family.
My body stayed wound up, humming with unmet need, especially when every time I closed my eyes I saw him.
But I didn’t touch myself again. Not because I didn’t want to—I wanted to so badly it hurt—but because giving in felt like crossing a line we couldn’t uncross.
Instead, I looked up at the ceiling, wedding ring still heavy on my finger, and wondered how we’d ever go back to pretending this attraction between us didn’t exist.
I snuck out of the penthouse the next morning, too embarrassed to even make eye contact with Mikko after last night. He had the day off except for a team meeting later today, and I’d be home from my in-person clinicals before then.
A day in the office couldn’t have come at a better time—the perfect distraction from whatever was happening with my home life. All that positivity went down the drain the moment I walked into the office and Rebecca handed me a chart for the assisted living facility next door.
“There’s a Parkinson’s patient who might be a great fit for you. Want to go meet him?”
I bit back my answer because no, I didn’t want to do this, but what choice did I have?
“Sure,” I said instead. “Let’s go.”
The assisted living community looked more like a boutique hotel than a nursing home.
Stone fireplaces anchored the lobby, oversized windows flooded everything with sunlight, and fresh flowers sat on nearly every table.
Everything smelled like fresh-baked cinnamon rolls, the scent warm enough to almost disguise the antiseptic tinge lingering beneath it.
“A quick warning.” Rebecca tucked the chart under her arm, walking down the hall toward the resident rooms. “Mr. Mercer is a little on the grumpy side.”
“I don’t scare easily.”
She chuckled, then stopped outside room 303. “That’s what I figured.”
The door was slightly cracked, but she knocked before entering, announcing our arrival.
I listened to her brief introduction while I looked around the room.
The apartment was spotless, not so much because its occupant was a neat freak, but because it was kind of empty.
A beige couch, a brown table with two chairs, and a simple bed in the other room that looked more like a long-term hotel room than a home.
The only thing that had any personality was the brown leather recliner angled toward the TV with a Denver Yetis throw blanket over the back. And of course, the man who sat in it.
Walt Mercer had a deep scowl on his face while he watched ESPN on the TV, not even bothering to look at Rebecca while she talked.
From what I knew about Parkinson’s, relaxing face muscles gave a lot of patients this look, but something about Walt’s non-response made me wonder if he was always like this.
“This is my colleague, Shannon. She’s in her clinical fellowship year, so I’ll be stepping in to observe from time to time, but she’ll be the one making her weekly rounds to see you.”
This time, Walt finally looked at me, his eyes squinted. “Are you goth?”
Rebecca’s face turned bright pink. “Mr. Mercer, you can’t ask that.”
“Well, is she? What’s with all the black? And you’ve got more hardware in your face than a Home Depot.”
She opened her mouth to defend me, but I held out a hand.
“It’s fine,” I said, barely holding in my chuckle. “And no, I’m not goth. I like to scare away people before they get a chance to know me first. See who passes the test before I decide if I can trust them.”
Walt let out a little grunt, then turned back to the TV.
Rebecca turned to me, her expression hesitant, but I held out my hand for the chart. She gave it over, then whispered, “Call me if you need help,” before leaving the room.
I walked over to the kitchen table and sat down in one of the empty chairs. “Tell me about yourself.”
“No.”
“Okay.” I shrugged, not afraid to wait him out.
When he didn’t say anything else, I pointed at this morning’s newspaper still sitting on the table, open to the crossword puzzle. Shaky writing filled in some squares, but Walt’s tremors had made this a difficult task.
“Mind if I finish your crossword?”
His scowl deepened. “I like the crossword.”
“Awesome. Want to work on it together?”
Walt grabbed the remote from the arm of his recliner, his hand shaking hard enough that it took him two tries to find the volume button. Once the television was finally quiet enough to hold a conversation over, he dropped the remote back onto the cushion with an annoyed grunt.
I tried not to stare, but it was hard to look away. The tremor didn’t catch my attention as much as everything surrounding it. Every movement seemed delayed, like his body needed an extra second to remember how to cooperate.
Lori’s tremors weren’t quite this bad yet, but they would be.
“Thirteen across.” I forced myself to focus on Walt, not letting my mind spiral into thoughts of how Lori was doing without me these last few weeks. “You started this one already.”
Another non-word grunt I cataloged. Maybe it was part of his personality, or maybe this was a sign that words were getting hard for him.
“Mountain cat. Six letters.”
“Cougar,” Walt said.
I grinned, then wrote in the letters, having confirmed both the answer to the puzzle and my previous question.
“Twenty-six down. Capital of Kansas.”
“Topeka.”
Walt reached for the water on his end table, his hand trembling hard enough that the ice clinked against the glass before he steadied it.
I tried not to make my attention noticeable, but if he was going to make an evaluation hard to get through, I needed to make this feel like it wasn’t an evaluation at all.
He took one careful sip, swallowed twice, then set it back down.
Another mental note: swallowing was becoming work, too.
“Aren’t speech pathologists for toddlers?”
“Sure.” I looked up from the crossword. “Anything to do with swallowing or speech is in my wheelhouse. Sometimes that’s helping a toddler with their first words, and sometimes that’s helping grumpy old guys keep using the ones they already have.”
“Hmph.”
“I know. Not nearly as much of an insult as you were hoping.”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t turn the television back up either, so I took that as permission to keep going.
Over the next half hour, the crossword became less about finishing the puzzle and more about getting to know Walt. He answered every clue I threw at him with little hesitation, but I paid more attention to everything happening around the answers than to the answers themselves.
His voice rarely carried farther than the kitchen table unless I reminded him to speak louder.
By the end of longer sentences, it faded enough that I leaned in to hear.
His attention never wandered, though, and neither did his memory.
He was quick with answers, then followed up with anecdotes about each one.