CHAPTER 6
CAMILA
I didn’t have time to change out of my nightgown.
I threw a pink satin robe over it, stepped into flat sandals, and stood in the middle of our stateroom holding the note and looked around at the breakfast tray and the flowers and Jason’s note still propped against the coffee cup.
I intend to spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret choosing me.
I folded the other note carefully, put it in the pocket of my robe, and left.
The corridor on the far side of Deck 4 was a different world from the rest of the ship.
Up above, I knew, the Celestia was already awake and celebratory — the breakfast buffet would be full, couples on the upper decks watching the island grow larger on the horizon, children running the length of the pool deck in the early sun.
Today was docking day. Today was CocoCay.
Today was supposed to be the day Jason had been planning for weeks, the anniversary celebrations on the island he’d refused to give me any details about because he liked surprises.
Down here, the light was dim and the corridor was quiet and narrow, and the sounds of all of that felt very far away.
I walked slowly. There was no urgency in my body — just a kind of suspended stillness, like the moment between lightning and thunder when you’re not yet sure how close the storm is.
Maybe it was a surprise. He was extraordinarily good at surprises. The freesias that kept appearing. The pianist last night. The breakfast this morning that was laid out with Jason’s signature precision.
Maybe I would open this door and find — a room full of flowers? A private breakfast, a gift, some elaborate anniversary gesture that would make me laugh at myself for the cold, heavy feeling that had been sitting in my chest since I read those words?
Want to know what your dear husband has been up to?
I stopped in front of room 546.
The door looked the same as every other door on the deck. Unremarkable. Closed.
From somewhere inside came the muffled throb of music, something heavy and discordant, entirely wrong for a cruise ship anniversary morning.
I put my hand on the handle.
Something in my chest said: don’t. Not the anxious, self-silencing voice I’d been using on myself since last night — the one that said stop looking for things that aren’t there.
This was quieter and more certain than that. This was the part of me that already knew.
I pushed the handle down and opened the door.
The room was dark, blackout curtains drawn against a morning that was bright and golden everywhere else on the ship. I stood just inside the doorway and let my eyes adjust, the heavy metal music washing over me in waves, too loud for this small space, too loud for this hour.
Then the shapes resolved.
A naked woman lay on the edge of the bed, her knees bent and her feet up.
She was blindfolded, and her hands were tied up over her head.
A man had his head lowered, and his face was in between her legs.
He was sucking on her. The girl managed to grab his hair with her bound hands. Her head fell back.
“Yes, please, please, more, more.” She begged.
He kept sucking on her. His shoulders moved with a focused, unhurried purpose that told me this was not new, that whatever this was between them had a rhythm and a history. That they knew each other.
Then he moved — turned her over, her cheek flat against the mattress, her bound hands now behind her back, her knees spread wide. He reached up and pulled the blindfold away. She shook her dark hair out of her face, straight and black, falling in a sheet over one shoulder.
He turned his head slightly, and the dim light caught his profile, and I saw his face.
Jason.
I stood frozen.
He looked intoxicated with lust and desire.
Something like a spasm took over my entire body, and I remained standing there, transfixed at what I was seeing.
I pressed my back against the wall and felt its cold surface against my shoulders, and it felt like an ice dagger going through my back.
I gripped the doorframe with one hand because my knees had buckled in.
I couldn’t move my body, although every atom of me was telling me to run away from there.
I was having a sensation of somehow being outside myself, watching my husband face-fuck another woman from a small distance.
This is not real. The thought was very clear and entirely useless. This is not real, this is not happening, this is not Jason.
It was Jason.
He slipped a condom on his hard cock, and slapped her ruthlessly on both her ass cheeks. She winced in pain, and cried out like an injured puppy.
His big hands took hold of her hips, and with one push, he plowed into her. The girl bit her own lips and whimpered with each thrust.
“Fuck, Jason, yes, yes, call me your dirty whore.”
Jason started cursing as he kept slamming into her.
“How does this feel, you little whore?”
The girl’s ass kept bouncing with each thrust of his.
“It feels so good. Fuck me, fuck me harder. Fuck me until I’m a mess.”
I was shaking. I realized I was shaking the way you shook when you were very cold, that deep, involuntary tremor that starts in your core. I pressed harder against the wall. The note had fallen from my fingers somewhere. I hadn’t noticed.
She looked like a ragdoll as he kept pounding into her with a relentlessness that was methodical and complete, and she came with a high, sharp cry, and I watched Jason shiver and I knew he had also come.
As soon as he was done, Jason turned his head.
For a moment he didn’t register what he was seeing. I watched it happen — the lag, the confusion, and then the blood draining from his face in a single, awful moment as he understood.
He pushed away from her. “Camila—” His voice came out wrecked. “Camila. Oh god. It’s not—”
He was moving toward me, naked, with his cock still a bit hard, his face a devastation of panic and something that looked horribly like grief.
I looked past him at the woman on the bed.
She had made no move to cover herself. She lay on her back, completely naked, her hands still bound, her legs still slightly parted. She had long poker straight black hair, and a beautiful angular face. She kept her big, pretty eyes focussed on me, and all I could see in them was hatred.
Pure hatred and disgust. Towards me.
She had a smirk on her face, which gave way to a slight, calculated smile, as if telling me: He likes fucking me more than he likes fucking you.
The flight instinct came suddenly and completely.
I turned. I found the door. I ran out.
Behind me I could hear Jason saying my name — Camila, Camila, please, Camila listen — his voice getting louder as he followed me into the corridor, but my legs were moving really fast now and I could not make them stop.
I ran fast and then I ran faster and the tears came without warning, streaming down my face in hot, silent rivers, and I kept running.
The last thing I heard, before the corridor turned and the music faded and the sounds of the waking ship swallowed everything else, was Jason.
“Camila.”
My name in his mouth, the way he’d said it a thousand times.
I kept running.