Chapter 20
Sin
“Where in the hell have you been?”
I close the door behind me and look up at Jenna, who’s standing on the stairs.
She has every right to be angry with me.
I’ve been gone for two days taking care of Laurel.
Two days on her couch, then in her bed, then back on the couch when her fever spiked again.
Two days making soup, forcing medicine into her hand, checking her temperature, and pretending I wasn’t memorizing the soft, vulnerable sounds she made in her sleep.
The only reason I came home was because I needed a change of clothes.
And maybe because some cowardly part of me thought if I stepped into this house again, I could still pretend I belonged here. But I don’t. Not anymore.
“I don’t want to do this right now,” I say.
Jenna laughs once. It’s sharp enough to cut.
“Oh, really? You don’t want to tell your wife why you haven’t been home in two days?
” Her voice gets louder with each word. “Mason, this is so messed up. You’re the one who said you wanted to work on things.
You’re the one who said we needed to try, and now you disappear for two days without even a believable lie? ”
I drag a hand down my face. “Jenna.”
“No. Don’t Jenna me like I’m being unreasonable.”
“You’re not.”
That stops her for half a second. She deserves the truth of that, at least.
“You’re not being unreasonable,” I say again. “You’re angry. You should be.”
Her eyes flash. “Then where were you?”
The answer is right there.
Laurel.
With Laurel.
Taking care of Laurel.
Loving Laurel.
My throat tightens around the words.
I’ve lied so many times by now I should be better at it. But standing in my foyer, looking at my wife on the staircase with hurt written across her face, I suddenly can’t find another one.
“I can’t do this,” I say.
Her expression crumples with disbelief. “You can’t do this?”
“I can’t keep pretending.”
“Pretending what?”
I look around the house. The polished floors. The expensive art. The staircase Jenna chose because she said it made the entryway feel dramatic. Everything in this house is beautiful.
Everything is cold.
“Pretending this marriage is something it hasn’t been in a long time.”
She goes still. The words hang between us, ugly and overdue.
“You don’t get to do that,” she says quietly.
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” She comes down two steps, one hand gripping the banister. “You don’t get to disappear into work for years, make me feel like a ghost in my own marriage, then decide we’re both equally responsible because you found some pretty employee who makes you feel alive again.”
My body goes rigid.
“Oh,” she says, voice dropping. “So there is someone.”
I say nothing.
A humorless smile twists her mouth. “Wow.”
I breathe once. Then again.
“Jenna,” I say.
“No.” Her voice breaks on the word, but she holds herself together. “No, don’t soften your voice now. Don’t look at me like you’re sorry. I’m sick of sorry. I’m sick of living in this house with a man who looks through me until he needs me to play wife for appearances.”
The accusation lands because it’s true. Maybe not all of it but enough.
“I’m going to stay with my parents,” she says. “When I get back, you had better have figured out your shit, or I’ll do it for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her eyes harden.
“It means Blaze told me he stopped by your office a few weeks ago and caught us inside fooling around.” Her mouth curves without humor. “Except I know I wasn’t there. And I have a pretty good idea who was.”
“Don’t.”
The word leaves me before I can stop it and Jenna’s head tilts. There it is. The line. Not don’t say her name because I’m guilty. Don’t say her name because she’s mine and I won’t let you put her in your mouth like a weapon.
Jenna sees that too. Her face changes. Pain first. Then fury.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “You’re protecting her. You unbelievable bastard.”
“I’m not going to discuss her with you.”
“Her.” Jenna descends the last few steps. “Let me guess. It’s Laurel Cross.”
My jaw locks. She smiles like she hates that she was right.
“And I’m sure the board would love to know you’re fucking an employee.”
The sentence hits exactly where she aims it. Not because of me. Because of Laurel.
My hands curl at my sides.
“Don’t threaten her.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
Jenna stares at me, stunned. “I just told you I know you’re sleeping with another woman, and that’s what you care about?”
“No.” My voice is low. “I care that you’re hurt. I care that I did that. I care that I’ve been a coward and a liar, and you didn’t deserve it.”
Her eyes shine.
Then I add, “But I won’t let you use the board to punish Laurel.”
The softness disappears.
“Wow.” She blinks fast. “There it is.”
“Jenna—”
“No.” She holds up a hand. “Don’t. I think I finally understand.”
She looks me over like she’s seeing me clearly for the first time in years. Maybe she is.
“This isn’t just sex, is it?”
I should deny it. I should protect some final piece of this house, this marriage, this woman I once promised to love better than I did. But I’m out of lies.
“No,” I say.
The word is barely more than breath.
Still, she hears it. Her face collapses for half a second before she pulls it back together with a strength I don’t deserve.
“You love her.”
I don’t answer fast enough. That is also answer enough.
Jenna turns away, pressing a hand to her mouth. The sound she makes is small and devastated. It guts me.
“Jenna.”
“Don’t touch me.”
I stop before I realize I’ve taken a step toward her.
She drops her hand and faces me again. “Say it.”
My chest tightens.
“Say it, Mason.”
I look at my wife. I look at the woman I married when I was nineteen, when I was too young and scared and damaged to tell her the truth about the one choice I had already made with my body.
I look at the woman I lied to for ten years about children.
The woman I stayed with out of guilt, habit, history, fear.
The woman I hurt because I was too afraid to admit we were already over.
And for the first time, the truth is crueler than silence.
“I love her,” I say.
The words do something to me too. They crack my ribs open. Because once they’re out, I know. I’ve known for weeks. Maybe longer. Maybe from the moment Laurel stepped into my lab bossing me around.
I love her.
And I am standing in front of my wife while she has to hear it. The guilt of that should kill me. It doesn’t. That may be the worst part.
Jenna opens her eyes, and there is nothing left in them but hurt.
“Then we’re done.”
I nod once. Not because it doesn’t hurt. Because it’s true.
“I’ll call my attorney,” she says.
“I’ll call mine.”
Something ugly flickers across her face. “Already thinking like a businessman.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Thinking like someone who has done enough damage by pretending things could stay undefined.”
She looks like she wants to argue, then maybe she realizes I’m right. She walks past me toward the front door.
I turn. “Jenna.”
She stops with her hand on the knob.
“I’m sorry.”
For once, I don’t say it to make myself feel better or to fix anything. She looks back at me.
“Me too,” she says.
Then she leaves.
I stand in the foyer for a long time, listening to nothing. My first instinct is to call Laurel. That tells me everything. My phone is already in my hand before I stop myself.
No.
Not yet.
I won’t drag her into this while the dust is still in the air. I won’t make her responsible for the end of my marriage, no matter how much Jenna wants to put that weight on her and no matter how much I have earned every consequence coming my way.
This is mine to handle.
I scroll past Laurel’s name with effort that feels almost physical and call someone else instead.
My attorney answers on the third ring.
“Sin,” Richard says, voice alert despite the hour. “Everything all right?”
I look toward the front door.
Then at the bare space on my left hand where a ring used to sit before I left it upstairs weeks ago and never put it back on.
“No,” I say. “I need to discuss a divorce.”
A beat of silence. Then Richard’s tone changes. Professional. Careful. “All right. Are you safe? Is Jenna safe?”
“Yes.”
“Is this mutual?”
I think of Jenna’s face when I said I loved Laurel.
“No.”
“Do we need to move quickly?”
“Yes.”
“For financial reasons?”
“Partly.”
“And the other part?”
I close my eyes. The board. The company. Laurel’s offer from Sex Activity Pro. The power imbalance. The affair. Every reckless choice I made because wanting her felt easier than doing the right thing in the right order.
“There’s exposure,” I say.
Richard is quiet for a second. “What kind?”
“I’ve been involved with someone at the company.”
“An employee?”
“Yes.”
Another pause. This one heavier. “Is it consensual?”
“Yes.”
“Documented?”
The question makes my stomach tighten. “No.”
“We’ll need to be careful.”
“I know.”
“You need to stop all contact outside professional necessity until we put a plan in place.”
Everything in me rejects that. Immediately.
“No.”
“Sin—”
“I won’t abandon her in the middle of this.”
“I’m not asking you to abandon anyone. I’m telling you that your personal choices now have legal, financial, and corporate consequences.”
“I’m aware.”
“Then act like it.”
The words hit hard because they’re exactly what I’d say to someone else.
I walk into the living room and lower myself into a chair. The house does not feel like mine. Maybe it never did.
“What do I need to do?” I ask.
“First, you do not discuss the relationship with the board, your brothers, or Jenna until we decide strategy. Second, you preserve all communications. Do not delete anything. Third, we need to talk through your company’s policies regarding workplace relationships, reporting structures, and conflict of interest.”
I think of Owen. Owen is going to murder me.
“Fourth,” Richard continues, “if this woman reports to you directly or indirectly, we need to remove that conflict immediately.”
My chest tightens.
“She has an offer from a competitor,” I say.
Richard exhales. “That complicates things.”
“It may solve them.”
“Or make them look worse.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “I don’t want her harmed by this.”
“That may not be entirely within your control.”
The truth of that lands like a stone. For weeks, I have acted like control was the one thing I still had. In reality, I lost control the first time I looked at Laurel and wanted more than I was allowed to have.
“No,” I say quietly. “But I can stop making it worse.”
“Come in tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And Sin?”
“Yes?”
“Do not make any dramatic declarations tonight.”
My laugh is short and humorless. “Too late.”
Richard sighs. “Of course it is.”
We end the call. I sit there with the phone in my hand, staring at the dark screen.
Laurel’s name is still there under recent messages. I shouldn’t text her. Richard is right. Owen would agree. Every responsible person in the world would tell me to stay quiet for one night and let the attorney do his job.
I last thirty-seven seconds.
Laurel Cross
Are you awake?
The reply comes almost immediately.
Feverish, not dead.
My chest loosens in a way it has no right to.
How are you feeling?
Like I was hit by a truck driven by germs.
Despite everything, I smile. Then the smile fades. I stare at the message box. I could tell her.
Jenna knows and left.
I called my attorney.
I love you.
The words crowd my throat. I don’t send any of them. I don’t want to tell her like this. Not in a text sent from the house where my wife just left me.
Rest. Drink water. Take the medicine.
Bossy.
Always.
Three dots appear.
Are you okay?
I close my eyes. No. Not remotely. My marriage is over. My wife knows. My brother suspects. My company may become a battlefield. And the only thing clear in all of it is the one thing I am least entitled to want. Her.
I will be.
I almost add, because of you but don’t. Instead, I send one more message.
I’ll check on you tomorrow.
Night.
I set the phone down.
Then I sit alone in the house I no longer know how to live in and let the truth settle fully into my bones.
I love Laurel. Not because she’s easier. Nothing about her is easy. Not because she’s an escape. She’s become the one place I can no longer hide.
I love her because when I am with her, I want to be honest.
Better.
Braver.
And tomorrow, for the first time in a long time, I am going to start acting like it.