CHAPTER 16
The Drive Home
They did not speak for six blocks.
Daniel drove with both hands on the wheel, eyes fixed on the wet shine of the road ahead.
Elise sat beside him, shoes off, bare feet tucked beneath the hem of her dress from the night before because she had insisted on wearing it again.
The choice had seemed impulsive when she came downstairs. Now he understood it as confession.
The dress remembered Marcus.
So did he.
"Are you angry?" Elise asked finally.
Daniel kept his eyes on the road. "No."
"Disappointed?"
"No."
"Scared?"
He laughed under his breath. "Yes."
She nodded as if that was fair. Streetlights slid across her face, gold and shadow, gold and shadow. "I was proud of you tonight."
That surprised him enough to make him glance over. "Proud?"
"You said things most men would bury and punish me for later."
Daniel's throat tightened. "I do not want to punish you for being wanted."
Elise looked out the window. "I liked being wanted by him."
The words struck hard, but not like a blow. More like the first pull of a fire alarm: warning, urgency, heat rising somewhere unseen.
"I know," Daniel said.
"But I liked that you knew."
He turned onto their street too fast, then slowed.
Their house appeared at the end of the block, porch light on, ordinary and patient.
He did not want to go inside yet. Inside had routines.
Inside had bills on the counter and laundry in the machine.
Inside would try to make tonight sound ridiculous.
He parked at the curb instead of the driveway.
Elise looked over. "Daniel?"
"Say it again."
She understood immediately. He saw the nervous pleasure move through her before she lowered her eyes. "I liked being wanted by him."
His hands tightened around the steering wheel.
"And?" he asked.
Her voice grew softer. "I liked that you watched me know it."
The car seemed to hold its breath. Daniel reached for her hand, not gently but not roughly, needing the proof of her pulse against his. She let him take it. She always let him take her hand, but tonight the gesture felt different, charged by what they had not done and might someday choose to do.
"Does that make you think less of me?" he asked.
Elise turned in her seat, the hem of her dress shifting over her knees. "No."
"Do not say it quickly."
"I am not." She lifted his hand to her mouth, kissed his knuckles, and held them there. "It makes me think you are braver than I knew."
The porch light flickered in the rain. Daniel imagined Marcus standing at the edge of that light, not entering, not touching the door, simply waiting until invited.
The image should have humiliated him. Instead, it made him pull Elise closer across the console and kiss her with the force of every feeling he had been too civilized to admit.
She answered immediately, one hand at his collar, the other still holding the card Marcus had given them. The kiss was not about another man replacing him. It was about Daniel returning to his own marriage with a match in his hand.
When they finally broke apart, Elise rested her forehead against his. "Together," she whispered.
Daniel nodded, breath unsteady. "Together."
The card lay between them on the seat, dark and quiet as a locked gate.