Chapter 1: The Cheating Husband Who Can't Stop Thinking About His Ex
The room was dark, save for the thin blade of streetlight cutting between the blinds. It painted a pale stripe across the rumpled white duvet, over the curve of Jovie’s spine as she moved beneath him. Nate’s hands gripped her hips, the bones sharp under his palms, his own rhythm a steady, driving punctuation to the quiet of the house. The air smelled of their sweat, of her coconut shampoo, of the faint, clean linen scent of the sheets.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing her in. Her skin was damp and hot.
“God, right there,” she gasped, her voice a tight thread of sound. Her fingers clawed at the mattress. “Don’t stop.”
He wouldn’t. He never did. This was the contract, unspoken but ironclad. He was good at this part. The mechanics were easy, a language his body spoke fluently. He adjusted his angle, watched the muscles in her back tense, heard her breath hitch into a soft, broken cry. He knew the map of her, every peak and valley. He could navigate it in the dark.
Which was why his mind was free to wander.
Today it went to Misha.
Not to her face, not immediately. First, it was the memory of weight. A perfect, devastating fullness in his hands, a softness that yielded and yet seemed to defy gravity. The sheer scale of her breasts. The way his hands, which now spanned Jovie’s slender waist, had barely been able to contain her. The sensation was less a visual and more a tectonic shift in his blood, a deep, visceral pull that had nothing to do with thought.
Jovie shuddered, her climax building. Her cries were getting louder, more rhythmic. He pushed the memory deeper, trying to anchor himself in the woman under him, in the heat, in the duty of her pleasure.
But it flooded back, unstoppable. Misha’s moan, throaty and unguarded, not this careful, melodic sound Jovie made. The reckless look in her eyes, a challenge and an invitation. The way she’d pull her legs up and push her breasts together at the same time for him, all surrender and demand, no silent contracts, just a raw, shouting hunger that mirrored his own. Their sex hadn’t been a language; it was a war, beautiful and devastating, and every time he’d walked away feeling sacked and sanctified.
Jovie was peaking now. Her body clamped around him, a series of tight, fluttering waves. She chanted his name, a sweet, ascending prayer. He focused on the feeling, using her pleasure as a ladder to climb toward his own release. He was almost there, the pressure coiling low in his gut.
In the final, lightning-strike second before the fall, as his vision whited out at the edges, the image crystallized. Not just the memory of her body, but of her face afterwards, flushed and peaceful, a stray curl stuck to her damp temple. A look of such uncomplicated possession. His.
“Nate… oh, God,” Jovie whimpered, collapsing forward into the pillows.
He followed, his own climax tearing through him with a force that felt like rupture. For a few pulsing seconds, it was blissful emptiness. Then, as he slumped over her, spent and breathing hard, the truth landed in the center of his chest, cold and heavy as a stone.
It wasn’t just the sex. It wasn’t just the memory.
He was still wanted that brown whore.
The realization was so absolute, so quiet and certain, it left no room for argument. It simply was. The foundation of the carefully constructed life around him—this room, this bed, this woman breathing softly beneath him—seemed to groan under the weight of it.
He rolled off, the cool air hitting his sweat-slicked skin. He stared at the ceiling, at the familiar shadow of the ceiling fan.
“Wow,” Jovie breathed into the pillow. She shifted, turning onto her side to face him. Her dark hair was stuck to her cheek. In the dim light, her smile was soft, satiated. “You were on fire tonight. What got into you?”
He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. Her eyes, always so kind, so trusting. A bolt of guilt, sharp and nauseating, shot through him. He forced a smile, the one that felt like his face was made of clay. “Just you,” he said, his voice rough.
She reached out, tracing a finger down the center of his chest. “Liar.” But she said it playfully. Her hand drifted lower, over the flat plane of his stomach. “Whatever it was, I’m not complaining.”
Her touch, usually a welcome comfort, felt like a brand. He caught her hand, lacing his fingers with hers to still its movement. He brought it to his lips and kissed her knuckles, a gesture that felt both like an apology and a betrayal.
“You’re amazing, you know that?” he said. The words tasted like ash.
She snuggled closer, tucking her head against his shoulder. Her small, perfect body fit against his side with practiced ease. “Mmm. You’re pretty okay yourself.”
He held her, listening to her breathing even out into the slow, deep rhythms of sleep. The streetlight blade had moved, now cutting across their tangled feet. He watched it, his mind a silent, screaming static.
He thought of Misha’ laugh. He thought of the last time he’d seen her, the door closing with a final, soft click that had echoed for five years.
He was a husband. He had a good job, a beautiful home, a beautiful wife who adored him and submitted to him. He had everything he was supposed to want.
And lying there in the dark, with the ghost of another woman’s body imprinted over his own, Nate understood, with a chilling clarity, that it was all just a very convincing set. A stage he walked every day, saying lines he’d memorized, while the real story, wild and unfinished, played on a continuous, desperate loop somewhere else entirely.
Jovie sighed in her sleep, a contented little sound.
He didn’t sleep at all. The stone in his chest grew heavier, minute by minute, until he could barely breathe.