2. Karlie
— ? —
Karlie
I can’t sleep.
The bed is too big and too cold and too empty. William is down the hall in the guest room, probably asleep already, and I’m lying here staring at the ceiling with Helen’s perfume still in my nostrils.
I threw the scarf away. I should have kept it, maybe. Evidence. Proof. But proof of what? That my husband is close to another woman? I already knew that. Everyone knows that.
I roll onto my side and pull the blankets tighter around me. The sheets smell like laundry detergent, not like William. He hasn’t slept in this bed in weeks.
I try to force my eyes closed, try to will myself toward unconsciousness, but my brain won’t cooperate. It keeps spinning, cycling through every missed dinner and every unanswered text and every time he looked through me like I wasn’t there.
And then it drags me back instead. Year one. Before Logan disappeared, before Helen became a permanent fixture in our lives, before everything went wrong.
It’s a Saturday afternoon and I’m standing at the kitchen counter, flipping through a cookbook I have no intention of actually using. William is supposed to be at work, some dinner with investors that he’s been dreading all week, but twenty minutes ago he called to say he was canceling.
“You’re canceling?” I’d repeated, sure I’d misheard. “The investor dinner?”
“You have a fever.”
“I have a cold. It’s not even a bad cold.”
“Your temperature is a hundred and two. I’m coming home.”
“William…”
He’d already hung up.
Now he’s in the kitchen with me, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, frowning at the stove like it personally offended him. He’s making soup. Actual soup, from scratch, because apparently that’s what you do when your wife has a minor cold.
“You know we have canned soup,” I say, watching him dice vegetables with more intensity than the task requires. “Mrs. Potts keeps the pantry stocked.”
“Canned soup is garbage.”
“Canned soup is convenient. And it doesn’t require you to, quote,” I peer at his phone screen, where a recipe is pulled up, “sauté aromatics in olive oil until fragrant, three to four minutes.”
“Go sit down. You’re sick.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re swaying.”
I am, actually, a little. The fever is making everything feel floaty and unreal, including the sight of my billionaire husband murdering an onion on our kitchen counter.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” I say, hopping up onto the counter beside his cutting board. “In the year we’ve been married, I have never seen you make anything more complicated than coffee.”
“I can cook. I just don’t usually see the point.” He scrapes the onions into a pan and they sizzle on contact. “We have staff. We have restaurants. I don’t need to cook.”
“So why are you cooking now?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He’s focused on the pan, adjusting the heat, stirring the onions so they don’t burn. I watch him add celery, then carrots, then garlic, each addition precise and deliberate.
“You’re going to burn that garlic if you don’t turn the heat down,” I say.
He looks at me, eyebrows raised. “I thought you couldn’t cook.”
“I can’t. But I can read.” I tap his phone screen. “It says medium-low heat. That burner is on high.”
He adjusts the heat without comment, but I catch the corner of his mouth twitching.
“You’re supposed to be resting,” he says.
“I’m supervising. It’s completely different.”
“You’re being a nuisance.”
“That’s basically the same thing as supervising.”
He shakes his head, but he’s almost smiling now.
This is what I love about him, these moments when the mask slips and I get to see the person underneath.
The person who cancels important dinners because his wife has a fever.
The person who learns to make soup from a recipe on his phone because he wants to take care of me.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “Really?”
He’s quiet for a moment, stirring the vegetables. When he speaks, his voice is softer than before.
“Because you’re sick. And I wanted to do something for you.” He glances at me, then away. “Is that allowed?”
I feel warmth spread through my chest that has nothing to do with the fever.
“It’s allowed,” I say softly. “It’s very allowed.”
He nods once, and goes back to his soup. He adds broth, then herbs, then a bay leaf. He tastes it, frowns, adds more salt. The whole time, I sit on the counter and watch him, and he doesn’t tell me to leave.
This is intimacy, I realize. Not the sex, though that’s good too, but this. Sitting in a kitchen on a Saturday afternoon, watching my husband make soup. Existing in the same space without needing to fill it with words.
“You keep looking at me,” he says without looking up.
“I’m admiring. There’s a difference.”
“Admiring what?”
“You.” I tilt my head, studying him. “You know, when we first got married, I thought you were this cold, closed-off robot. All business, no feelings. But you’re not, are you? You just hide it.”
“I don’t hide anything.”
“You hide everything. But then you do things like this, cancel important dinners, make soup from scratch, and it’s a little glimpse of the real William.”
He stops stirring. Turns to look at me.
“You want to see the real William?”
“I do.”
“He’s not that interesting.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
He takes a moment. Then he sets down the spoon, wipes his hands on a dish towel, and crosses to where I’m sitting on the counter. He plants his hands on either side of my hips and leans in close.
“The real William,” he says, his voice low, “hasn’t been able to stop thinking about you since that first night.”
My heart stutters. “Is that so?”
“The real William wanted to kiss you on that terrace, but he was too much of a coward to try.”
“William…”
“The real William lies awake at night wondering how he got lucky enough to have you, and whether you’re going to wake up one day and realize you could do better.”
I reach up and touch his face. His jaw is rough with stubble, and he turns into my palm, eyes falling half-closed.
“The real William sounds like he needs to give himself more credit,” I say softly.
“The real William doesn’t deserve you.”
“Maybe let me decide what I deserve.”
His eyes open, dark and intent and focused entirely on me.
“You should be in bed,” he says. “You’re sick.”
“I feel fine.”
“You have a fever.”
“So cool me down.”
His breath catches. I see it, the way his chest stops moving, the way his grip tightens on the counter.
“Karlie.”
“William.” I hook my fingers in his collar and pull him closer. “Stop being noble and kiss me.”
He kisses me.
It’s not gentle and it’s not tentative. It’s hungry, his hands sliding into my hair and tilting my head back so he can get deeper, and I moan into his mouth and feel him shudder at the sound.
“Fuck,” he breathes, pulling back just far enough to look at me. “I’m supposed to be making you soup.”
“The soup can wait.”
“You’re sick.”
“I’m fine.” I wrap my legs around his waist and drag him in until there’s nothing between us but a few layers of cotton. “I promise you, I am very, very fine.”
His control snaps.
He shoves my shirt up and gets his mouth on my breast, sucking my nipple hard enough that my head falls back against the cabinet, and his teeth scrape it before he moves to the other one and does it again.
The fever has already turned my skin up too loud, and every pull of his mouth lands twice, once where it happens and once between my legs.
I fumble with his belt and can’t manage it because my hands won’t cooperate, so I give up and grab his hair instead.
He hooks his fingers in the waistband of my shorts and my panties together and yanks them down my legs and tosses them somewhere behind him, and then his hand is between my thighs, two fingers dragging through how wet I already am, and he groans against my collarbone like it hurts him.
“You’ve been sitting up here like this the whole time?”
“You were busy with your bay leaf.”
He pushes two fingers inside me and curls them, and the rest of that sentence disappears.
He fucks me with his hand slow and deep while his thumb finds my clit, and he watches my face the whole time, the stove hissing behind him and my heels digging into the small of his back, until my hips are chasing his hand right off the edge of the counter and I’m making sounds I’d be embarrassed by if I had any room left for embarrassment.
Then he goes down on his knees on the kitchen tile, pushes my thighs wide with both hands, and puts his mouth on me, licking up through my pussy in one slow pass before he closes his lips around my clit and sucks.
His fingers stay inside me, curling in time with his tongue, and I fall back onto my elbows on the counter and stare at the ceiling and lose the ability to do anything but say his name.
He doesn’t let up. He works me with his mouth and his hand together, relentless and focused the way he is about everything, until I come against his face with my thighs locked around his head and my whole body shaking on the counter.
He stands, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and gets his belt open in one motion where I failed.
“Here?” he asks against my throat, shoving his pants down just far enough. “You want…”
“Here. Now. Please.”
He doesn’t ask again. He drags me to the very edge of the counter, lines himself up, and pushes into me in one long stroke, and we both make a sound. He’s big enough that it steals my breath even wet like this, and I hook my ankles behind him and pull him deeper anyway, needing all of it.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “You feel…”
“Move,” I gasp. “God, William, please move.”
He moves, and he doesn’t ease into it. He fucks me on the kitchen counter with single-minded intensity, hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise, quick deep strokes that rattle the pan on the stove, his mouth hot on my neck.
I brace one hand behind me on the counter and wrap the other around his shoulder and hold on.
“You’re mine,” he growls against my ear. “Say it.”
“Yours.”
“Again.”
“I’m yours, William, I’m yours.”
He reaches between us and presses his thumb to my clit and I shatter a second time, harder, clenching around him so tight that he curses and follows me over within a few strokes, buried deep, his cock pulsing inside me and his face pressed into my hair.
We stay like that for a moment, breathing hard, foreheads together. Then he pulls out carefully and lifts me off the counter, carrying me toward the stairs.
“What about the soup?” I ask, my voice drowsy.
“Later.”
He carries me up to our bedroom and lays me down on the bed. I expect him to leave, to go back to his soup, or check his phone, or retreat to his study. But he doesn’t. He strips off the rest of his clothes and climbs in beside me, pulling me against his chest.
“Sleep,” he says, his mouth against my hair. “I’ll wake you when the soup’s ready.”
“Stay with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I drift for a while, warm and safe and thoroughly satisfied. His hand traces slow lines on my back, and his heartbeat is steady under my ear. This is what I wanted, I think. This is what I signed up for.
“William?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you. For the soup. For staying home. For…” I gesture vaguely. “All of it.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then his arms tighten around me.
“You’re the only thing in my life I didn’t inherit,” he says quietly. “The only thing I chose for myself.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Good.” He pulls back just enough to look at me. “It’s the only good thing.”
The soup is ruined. Neither of us cares.
The memory fades, and I’m back in the present.
I’m alone and cold, staring at the ceiling of a bedroom my husband hasn’t slept in for weeks.
The man who canceled investor dinners and made soup and held me like I was precious. Where did he go?
My mother withered away in a marriage just like this. Silent house, absent husband, love that existed only in memory. She smiled through it for twenty years, and then she died, and I swore I wouldn’t end up like her.
I swore I would fight.
And I will. I’m going to fight for this marriage. I’m not going to just lie here and let it crumble around me. I’m not going to wait for William to come back to me on his own. I’m going to go get him.
Tomorrow. I’ll go to his office. Bring him lunch. Remind him that he has a wife who’s still here, still fighting, even when he’s not.
The decision calms me down enough that I finally feel tired. I close my eyes.
And then I remember the scarf. The trash. The perfume.
My eyes fly open.
I need water. That’s what I tell myself as I throw back the covers and pad out of the bedroom. I need water, and that’s why I’m walking down the stairs at 4 a.m., not because I’m hoping to catch my husband doing something, not because I can’t stop thinking about it.
I stop outside his study door.
There’s light seeping out from underneath. He’s awake. Of course he’s awake. My husband doesn’t sleep anymore. He just works.
I raise my hand to knock, and then I freeze.
Because I can hear his voice through the door. Low and soft, in a way I haven’t heard in months.
“Don’t cry, Helen. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I stand there, my hand still raised, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
Don’t cry, Helen.
I’m here.
I’m not going anywhere.