Chapter 5
Simon
The walk-in floral cooler at Lumière Events was kept at a brisk thirty-eight degrees, smelling sharply of eucalyptus and cut stems. It was usually Simon’s sanctuary when the bullpen got too loud.
On Wednesday afternoon, three days after he had given Audrey the anniversary bracelet, it became a trap.
Simon was standing in the back corner, checking the inventory tags on a row of white hydrangeas, when the heavy glass door clicked shut, sealing out the hum of the office.
He didn't even have to turn around to know who it was.
He could smell the sweet, floral perfume that had haunted his nightmares for the last two weeks.
"You've been avoiding me, boss," Emily said softly.
Simon closed his eyes, his jaw clenching. He set his clipboard down on the metal shelving unit and turned to face her. "Emily. I told you, we are keeping things strictly professional. We have no business in here together."
"Are we really doing this?" Emily asked, a slow, confident smile spreading across her lips.
She stepped deeper into the cooler, unbothered by the chill.
She was wearing a tailored crimson blazer, looking sharp and entirely predatory.
"Are we going to play pretend? Because I can see how tense your shoulders are.
I see the way you look at me in the morning briefings before you remember you're supposed to be playing the repentant husband. "
"I'm not playing anything," Simon said, his voice hard. He took a step sideways, trying to keep distance between them, but the narrow aisle of shelving boxed him in.
Emily closed the gap. She stepped directly into his personal space, her hands reaching out to rest flat against his chest. Even through his shirt, her palms felt burning hot in the freezing air of the cooler.
"You can lie to her," Emily whispered, her voice dropping to that breathless, intimate register she had used at the hotel.
She tilted her chin up, her eyes locking onto his.
"You can buy her all the diamonds you want to buy off your guilt.
But you can't lie to me, Si. I know what you want. I know what you need."
She slid her hands up, her fingers grazing his collarbone, attempting to recreate the exact touch that had unspooled his self-control two weeks ago.
Simon didn't freeze this time. He didn't lean in.
He reached up, clamped his hands firmly around her wrists, and physically pulled her hands off his body. He stepped back, putting a solid two feet of cold air between them.
"Do not touch me," Simon said. His voice was low, deadly, and completely devoid of warmth.
"I am not lying to anyone except myself for letting things go as far as they did.
It was a mistake, Emily. The biggest, most destructive mistake of my life, and I will never, ever repeat it.
My marriage is the only thing that matters to me. "
Emily stood frozen, her wrists still hovering in the air where he had released them. The confident, seductive smile vanished, replaced by a flash of genuine shock that rapidly morphed into something ugly and vindictive. Her ego, fragile beneath the polished exterior, shattered completely.
"Right," Emily spat, her eyes flashing with pure fury. She crossed her arms, shivering as the cold finally seemed to register. "So you're just the tragic hero now. The devoted family man."
"I'm done having this conversation," Simon said, grabbing his clipboard. He moved to step past her toward the glass door.
Emily blocked his path, her voice rising, echoing sharply off the metal walls.
"Go ahead and run back to her, Simon!" she sneered, dropping all pretense of sweetness.
"Play house. But we both know the truth.
Soon enough, this little good guy mask of yours is going to fall right back off.
The pressure is going to hit, the boredom is going to set in, and you're going to come right back after me. "
Simon stopped, staring at her with profound disgust. "You're delusional."
"Am I?" Emily stepped closer, her voice dropping to a harsh, mocking whisper right by his ear. "Because I remember exactly who you really are. I give it a month before you're in my room, pinning me to a mattress, moaning in my ear and begging me not to stop."
The words hit Simon like a physical blow to the stomach. The cold air of the cooler suddenly vanished, replaced by a suffocating, phantom heat. The smell of eucalyptus faded, entirely overpowered by the memory of her cloying perfume and the harsh tang of hotel soap.
He squeezed his eyes shut as the sickening rush of memory invaded his mind, dragging him violently backward in time.
∞∞∞
Two weeks earlier
The floral warehouse in the industrial district was freezing, smelling aggressively of damp earth, crushed stems, and impending failure.
It was 2:15 AM on a Tuesday. Simon sat on the concrete floor, his back against a pallet of dying hydrangeas, staring at the invoice in his hands.
He was operating on three hours of sleep and pure, corrosive adrenaline.
The vendor had mixed up the delivery dates.
Three hundred centerpieces for the Lumière Gala were currently sitting on a cargo plane somewhere over the Midwest instead of in this warehouse.
His career wasn't just flashing before his eyes; it was actively burning to the ground.
"Okay. Breathe, boss."
Emily dropped down onto the cold concrete beside him. She was wearing leggings and an oversized college sweatshirt, her hair in a messy bun, holding two lukewarm containers of lo mein they had ordered an hour ago. She didn't look panicked. She looked entirely in her element.
"I can't breathe, Emily," Simon said, dropping his head into his hands. He felt a stress headache driving a spike behind his left eye. "David is going to slaughter me. Audrey... Audrey is going to ask why I wasn't on top of this. I'm drowning."
Emily set the food down and bumped her shoulder gently against his. "Audrey isn't here. David isn't here. I am." She handed him a pair of cheap wooden chopsticks. "And I already fixed it."
Simon lifted his head, staring at her through bloodshot eyes. "What?"
"I called the secondary wholesaler in the garment district," Emily said casually, popping a piece of chicken into her mouth.
"Woke the guy up. Told him if he didn't pull every white orchid and calla lily he had in his greenhouses by 6:00 AM, Lumière would blacklist him for the next decade. His trucks will be here at dawn."
Simon just stared at her. The relief that washed over him was so intense it actually made him dizzy. He felt a sudden, profound rush of gratitude for the woman sitting next to him on the dirty floor. She saw how hard he was working. She was in the trenches with him.
"You're a lifesaver," Simon breathed, letting his head thump back against the wooden pallet. "Seriously, Em. I don't know what I would do without you."
Emily turned to him, her expression softening. The harsh overhead fluorescent lights caught the warmth in her eyes. "You carry too much, Si. You take care of everyone else—the firm, the clients, your family. Who takes care of you?"
It was exactly the right thing to say to a man who was utterly starved for validation. It slipped past every defense Simon had built.
By 3:30 AM, they were in the back of an Uber heading back to the boutique hotel downtown where Lumière had booked a block of rooms for the senior staff during gala prep. The adrenaline crash had hit Simon hard. He was physically exhausted, his limbs feeling like lead.
They rode the elevator up to the sixth floor in a heavy, companionable silence. When they reached Emily's door, she slid her keycard into the slot. The little green light flashed, but she didn't push the handle down.
Instead, she turned to face him in the quiet, carpeted hallway.
"I have a mini-bottle of Macallan in the room," Emily said, her voice dropping to a softer register. Her eyes locked onto his, dark and intentional. "You look like you need a drink before you try to sleep."
Simon knew exactly what that invitation meant. He was thirty-six years old; he wasn't naive. Every alarm bell in his head, every vow he had made ten years ago, screamed at him to say goodnight, walk down the hall to his own room, and call his wife.
But he was so incredibly tired of being the responsible one. Just for one night, he wanted to be the center of someone's attention. He wanted to escape the suffocating pressure of his own life.
"Just one drink," Simon heard himself say. His voice sounded hoarse, completely foreign to his own ears.
The door clicked shut behind them, plunging the room into the dim, amber light of a single bedside lamp. Emily didn't go to the minibar. She dropped her purse on the floor, turned around, and stepped directly into his space.
She reached up, her hands sliding over his shoulders, her fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.
"You don't always have to be perfect, Simon," she whispered.
When she kissed him, Simon didn't pull away.
He closed his eyes and leaned into it, letting the sheer, undeniable reality of the mistake wash over him.
It wasn't about love. It was about the desperate, selfish need to feel alive, to feel desired without the heavy baggage of a ten-year marriage weighing it down.
He kissed her back, his hands dropping to her waist, pulling her flush against him. The kiss turned frantic, fueled by the lingering adrenaline of the night and the intoxicating, destructive thrill of crossing a line he could never uncross.
His hands moved over her, rougher than he intended, the pent-up stress of the last six months pouring into the physical connection.
He grabbed the hem of her oversized sweatshirt, pulling it up and over her head.
She helped him strip it away, tossing it carelessly aside.
Her skin was hot under his palms, and her scent—something sweet, floral, and aggressively young that smelled absolutely nothing like Audrey—filled his senses, a constant, dizzying reminder of exactly what he was doing.
She pushed his jacket off his shoulders, her hands mapping the tense muscles of his chest through his shirt, her touch leaving trails of fire in its wake. The air in the room felt thick, heavy with the weight of the betrayal.
Emily broke the kiss just long enough to reach down to her discarded purse on the floor. She pulled out a small foil square. Without breaking eye contact, her gaze dark and challenging, she caught the edge of the wrapper between her teeth and tore it open.
The sound of the foil tearing was deafening in the quiet room—the final, irrevocable severing of his vows.
She pushed him back until he was sitting on the edge of the mattress, stepping into his space and straddling his lap. Simon closed his eyes, his head falling back with a ragged exhale as she guided him, the breath leaving his lungs in a rush as she sank down and took all of him.
He was completely lost to it now. The heat and the sheer urgency of the physical sensation obliterated the mounting dread in his mind. He let her take control, the desperate adrenaline drowning out the voice in his head that sounded exactly like his wife.
"Is this what you need, Si?" Emily whispered against his jaw, her breath hot against his skin as the pace shifted, the friction growing sharper and more urgent. "Do you like it like this?"
"Yes," he ground out, his hands gripping her hips tightly, holding her flush against him. He was drowning, and the reckless pleasure was the only thing in the room.
"Do you want it faster?" she asked, a breathless, triumphant edge to her voice as she moved against him, perfectly attuned to his reaction.
"Yes," Simon answered, the word torn from his throat. The guilt was completely, temporarily eclipsed by the raw, desperate high of the moment. "God, yes. It's so good. Just... don't stop. Please."
He buried his face in her neck, his eyes squeezed shut as he completely surrendered to the worst decision he would ever make, letting the intoxicating darkness of the hotel room swallow him whole.
When Simon opened his eyes, the room was bathed in the flat, gray light of early morning.
For three seconds, his brain didn't process his surroundings. He felt the heavy cotton duvet, the unfamiliar softness of the pillows, and the warmth of a body pressed against his back.
Then, memory crashed into him like a physical blow to the chest.
Simon stopped breathing. He stared at the wall papered in a trendy geometric print, his eyes wide with a terror so pure it tasted like copper in the back of his throat.
What have I done? He moved with painstaking slowness, peeling the duvet back and sliding out of the bed.
The cool air of the hotel room hit his bare skin, making him shiver violently.
He looked back at the bed. Emily was sleeping soundly, her bare shoulder exposed, her dark hair scattered across the pillow. She looked peaceful.
Simon felt violently ill.
He scrambled for his clothes, pulling his pants on with shaking hands. He found his shirt tangled near the leg of a chair. Every rustle of fabric sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room.
He grabbed his phone from the nightstand. The screen lit up. 6:14 AM. There was one text message from Audrey, sent at 11:30 PM the night before.
Don't work too late. Left some dinner in the fridge for you. Love you.
A ragged, choking sound escaped Simon's throat. He slapped a hand over his mouth to muffle it, stumbling backward away from the bed. The text message wasn't angry. It wasn't demanding. It was just Audrey, being his wife, taking care of him while he was blocks away, actively destroying their family.
He didn't put his shoes on. He carried them, slipping silently out the heavy wooden door and letting it latch shut behind him.
He stood in the empty, silent hotel hallway, leaning his forehead against the cool wallpaper, and squeezed his eyes shut as the first sob tore through his chest. He had traded his marriage, his daughter's intact home, and the woman he loved for twenty minutes of validation and a desperate attempt to outrun his own burnout.
And now, he had to go home, look his wife in the eye, and figure out how to live with the monster he had just become.