CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ETHAN
I LEANED DOWN TO KISS her again when a sound cut through the night, not from her or me.
I paused to listen; she started to speak.
My hand clamped over her mouth to shut her up.
Silence stretched and all that remained was the falling rain, her breathing, and how my ears caught only the thrum of my blood.
Lila’s hands moved slowly, deliberate fingers sliding to my belt. As I searched to see if anyone or anything moved around us, her hand slid lower, dipping inside my boxers, cupping me.
"You're bigger than I imagined," she whispered.
I grit my teeth as she stroked me, her hand making a fist. “Fuck.”
I could still turn and walk away. In five minutes, I’d be back at the car with Eric, the heater blasting, the familiar scent of stale coffee and worn leather seats filling the space between us.
An hour after that, I’d be turning my key in the front door lock, stepping into the quiet dark of my own house.
Julia would be asleep in our bed, her body curled into the hollow I’d left behind on my side, one hand tucked under her cheek like she does when she’s dreaming.
My wife.
My girls, their crayon drawings still taped to the refrigerator door, their small rain boots lined up neatly by the mat. My entire fucking life was sitting right there at the other end of that dark, wet drive home.
Somehow, knowing exactly what I was walking away from made it worse that my feet stayed planted on this grimy trailer floor.
Lila hadn’t trapped me. Her eyes were clear and waiting. She wasn’t offering anything I didn’t understand. I wanted it. Maybe that was the fucking problem, all those weeks of pretending not to see her. Every time I caught my eyes drifting toward the line of her throat when she turned away.
Every fucking time her perfume, something like night-blooming flowers and clean sweat—hit me a second before she spoke. Every moment I became aware of how close she was standing in the break room, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off her skin and immediately hated myself for noticing.
I’d made it bigger than it was by refusing to name it. The condom sat pinched between her fingers of the hand not slowly jerking me off, a small foil square in the dim light.
A choice.
Fine. I was done wondering what her skin felt like. Done replaying every look she ever gave me across a conference table. Done letting this fucking woman live inside my head like she’d paid rent.
Maybe the fastest way to kill this thing was to finally touch it. To peel back every layer of mystery and see it for exactly what I knew it had to be: nothing special. Just skin and bad judgment wrapped in a shitty trailer and darkness.
This was what she wanted, and some sick part of me wanted it too.
So, I’d finish it. Once. I’d fuck every question out of my system until there was nothing left to wonder about.
Then I’d go home, shower her off my skin, and bury this next to every other stupid thing I did before Julia decided to love me.
Somehow, taking ownership made it easier to stand there for another thirty seconds. I wasn’t losing control. I was ending something. At least, that was the lie I chose to swallow.
I took the packet and tore it open with my teeth, never taking my eyes off her.
She stopped stroking me and helped roll the latex down my dick in one practiced motion, the kind of muscle memory that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with being a man who'd learned to dress himself for protection before he'd learned to love someone worth protecting.
The moment it was on she was sliding her jeans down her hips.
I roughly helped shove them the rest of the way, past her thighs, past her knees.
Then I turned her. Not gently. My hand between her shoulder blades, pressing her forward until her palms met the wall.
She was already leaning, already arching her back, her sweater riding up to expose the dip of her spine.
I positioned myself behind her.
The first thrust was hard enough to drive the air from her lungs and send a shock of cold, bright sensation through my own body. She was wet, impossibly wet, slick around me in a way that made my jaw clench.
But loose.
Too loose.
Something about that registered before I could stop it.
Her body didn't grip me the way Julia's did.
Didn't tighten around me like it had been built for exactly that.
This was different. Open. Used. The realization landed somewhere ugly and I pushed through it anyway because that was the point, wasn't it?
To find out there was nothing here worth wanting.
Lila let out a sound that bordered on pornographic. A moan that ripped through the trailer's silence like something torn from her chest. My hand shot over her mouth before the second one could follow.
"Shut the fuck up," I growled against her ear.
Her body clenched around me involuntarily, the threat, the roughness, something turning her on. I fucked into her again deeper. My free hand slid around her hip, fingers finding the swollen ridge of her clit.
My thumb pressed down, and her moan vibrated against my palm, muffled but still too loud for a place where sound could carry through aluminum walls and across an empty construction site to whatever ears might be listening.
Eric was out there somewhere. The thought flickered and died because I'd already made the choice that made Eric's proximity irrelevant.
I circled her clit harder than she probably wanted, and her body began to change around me.
The looseness tightened incrementally. Then more.
Her thighs trembled against mine and I felt the shift happen—felt her body finally grip me the way it hadn't moments before.
My hand stayed over her mouth. Her breath came hot and damp against my palm, each exhale accompanied by a sound she was trying and failing to swallow.
I drove into her harder. Hard enough that the trailer wall shuddered. My hips slammed into the backs of her thighs and the sound of skin against skin filled the cramped space like a second heartbeat.
My hand stayed clamped over her mouth. I stopped thinking. That was the only way to kill this and never do it again. She was moaning intelligible shit, how good I felt, how close she was.
I fucked into her with everything I had. Each thrust punishing. Her moans vibrated hot and wet against my palm and I pressed harder, felt her jaw under my fingers, felt her breath coming in short bursts against my hand.
Her thighs went rigid, and her spine arched, something flooded from her pussy. The sharp intake of breath against my fingers came a half-second before the rest of her and a sound tore through my palm like it had claws.
"Ethan."
My entire body locked. Not Mr. Marcelli with the careful professional distance she'd been performing for years across every conference table and break room and job site.
My name. My actual fucking name, in her actual fucking voice, landing somewhere I had not thought to armor because I hadn't believed I'd let it get this far.
I couldn’t come hearing it. I closed my eyes and fucked faster.
My jaw clenched until my back teeth ached.
I stayed buried inside her, still hard, her body still shuddering through the aftershocks, each one pulling her tighter around me—finally.
I felt the heat of her skin against my stomach where my shirt had ridden up.
I finally thrust one last time and came.
It arrived like a door closing in another building, distant and dull. A heavy pulse that registered somewhere below the noise of my own breathing. There was no goddamn relief, only the body crossing a finish line the mind had already abandoned.
I pulled out of her without ceremony. The condom stayed where it was. I couldn’t ditch it here. I couldn’t look at it either. I didn’t want to see it. Didn't want evidence.
Lila leaned forward against the wall, both palms flat, her breathing ragged. Her jeans were still half down over her ass. The sweater had ridden up past her ribs. Her hair had fallen across her face, dark strands sticking to the sweat along her jaw.
I turned away from the narrow trailer doorway, my heart still hammering against my ribs.
In the dim light, my fingers fumbled for the buckle of my belt, cinching it in one smooth motion after I tucked in my shirt without even daring to look.
A hush settled around me for a heartbeat, then reality crashed back in, merciless and whole. Not in shards. All at once.
The life I’d abandoned hours ago, convinced I lacked the strength to reclaim it, only to prove myself wrong in the most unforgivable way.
I glanced down at my left hand. The black band was still there, unchanged, heavy with betrayal.
I hadn’t stopped being Julia’s husband these past few minutes.
The ring hadn’t slipped. Hadn’t even turned on my finger.
It lay there as I’d kissed Lila. As I’d slid inside her.
As I heard my name fall from someone else’s lips.
I hadn’t forgotten any of it, and that truth would haunt me all night. Behind me, the trailer floor creaked.
“Ethan.” Her voice was low.
My jaw snapped shut. “Don’t.” I kept my gaze fixed ahead, on the latch of the door.
Then, almost too casual. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Good.” My fingers itched to grip the doorknob; my back felt taut as a drawn bow. The lie was already splintering. My phone buzzed, and I snatched it up without thinking.
ERIC
Where the fuck are you?
My thumbs hovered, numb, then tapped.
Heading out.
I pocketed the device before curiosity could poke at me further. “This will never happen again.”
“You sure about that? You’ve said it three times now.”
A cold, corrosive dread coiled in my gut.
I forced myself to look at her. She was smoothing the creases from her shirt collar, running slender fingers through hair still damp with sweat.
Her cheeks were flushed, eyes bright, and she looked every inch the opposite of the woman I’d betrayed.
The sight turned my stomach and ignited something angrier inside me.
“I have a wife,” I rasped, voice brittle.
Lila’s lips twitched, not in triumph, but in a knowing, sorrowful curve. “You had one four minutes ago too.”
I opened my mouth, closed it. There was no answer to that. “Whatever you think this was,” I warned, lowering my voice to the measured register I used in courtrooms, “don’t.”
Her smile was slight, almost unreadable. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
I stepped toward the door, then paused. “Get yourself together. I’m leaving.”
“Ethan.”
I looked back. No mockery slanted her features, no triumphant spark in her eyes, but there was calm appraisal, as if she were weighing every desperate scrap of me.
“You can keep telling yourself you did that because of me, but I wasn’t the one who needed convincing.”
I spared her one more glance, then turned and pushed out into the humid night. The air clung to my skin along with the drizzle. Gravel crunched under my boots, each step tightening the cage around my guilt.
Headlights whipped through the darkness ahead. Eric’s silhouette materialized by the parked car, arms folded, shoulders rigid. The pulse in my throat drummed so loud I could hardly hear the crickets. He didn’t move as I approached, he just watched, standing in the damn rain.
I reached for the driver’s side door.
“What the fuck happened to you?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” I replied, keeping my hand on the handle.
“Great.” He pushed off the car, stepping closer. I glanced at him; his eyes narrowed behind his glasses. Then he gestured at me from head to toe. “Explain this then.”
“Get in the car,” I ordered.
“No.”
We stood in the glare of the headlights. Eric knew me too fucking well. Grew up with me as a kid. He’d been at my wedding. He’d held my daughters before they could even speak. There were few people alive I couldn’t lie to. Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of them.
His stare drifted over my rumpled shirt, the sweat-dark hair plastered to my forehead. Then he glanced lower, and my stomach twisted. Finally, he met my eyes.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with,” I answered, voice flat. I opened the car door. “Anything from Knox?”
“No.”
I slid behind the wheel. Eric lingered in the halo of the open door before folding into the passenger seat. The door slammed, a gunshot in the hush. Eric clicked his seat belt into place, then turned to study me. “
What?”
“Just deciding.”
“Deciding what?” I asked with a sigh.
His voice was low, rough as gravel. “Whether I want to know why you smell like a perfume counter fucked a winery.”
My fingers clenched the steering wheel’s cool leather. Fuck. My mouth opened, closed. Blaming Lila would mean admitting I wasn’t just a bystander. I wasn’t.
“I handled something,” I volunteered instead.
Eric turned slowly. “Handled what?”
“That’s the only answer you’re getting.”
Suspicion hardened his face, a frost creeping into his eyes. He wasn’t a man to stop digging when he sensed something buried.
“Fine,” he said at last.
“Fine?” I echoed.
“Yep.”
The abandoned site dissolved in our taillights until nothing remained but black road and the hush of night. I didn’t look back, Lila was behind me, Julia waiting ahead. Home, for the first time in years, felt like the witness stand. I already knew my testimony: “Nothing happened.”
Because tomorrow needed to be yesterday all over again.