Chapter 4: Confessions at 120 Kilometers Per Hour
The train cut through the darkness like a blade, steel on steel, a rhythm that had become the pulse of Jordan's existence over the past six hours. The sleeper cabin smelled of old leather and stale coffee, and the single lamp above the fold-down sink cast a weak yellow glow that made everything look like a photograph from another era.
He'd been dozing against the window, his forehead pressed to the cold glass, watching the occasional flicker of lights from towns he couldn't name. The Schubert book sat on his lap, still wrapped in its brown paper. He hadn't been able to open it yet. Something about Fritz's gift felt sacred, too heavy to unwrap in the harsh fluorescent hum of a moving train.
The whiskey was half gone. He'd bought it at the station—a cheap bottle of something Austrian that tasted like gasoline and burned all the way down. It was the first alcohol he'd ever purchased for himself. The first time he'd ever understood why people drank alone.
The door to the cabin slid open with a soft rattle.
Jordan looked up. A woman stood in the doorway, mid-thirties, wearing a faded denim jacket over a black t-shirt. Her hair was dark and pulled back in a messy knot, and there were shadows under her eyes that looked permanent—not from one bad night, but from years of them.
She carried a duffel bag that smelled like cigarette smoke and something else, something floral that had long since faded.
"You're in my seat," she said.
Jordan blinked. "What?"
"The sleeper cabins. They're assigned. This is mine." She held up a crumpled ticket as if it were proof of a crime. "Unless you're some kind of train bandit. Are you a train bandit?"
"No."
"Good. I don't have the energy to fight a train bandit tonight." She stepped inside and dropped her duffel bag on the floor. The cabin was small—barely big enough for two seats facing each other, with a fold-down bed that was currently stowed against the wall. She looked at the bottle of whiskey, then at Jordan, then at the bottle again.
"Are you going to share that?"
He handed her the bottle without thinking. She took a long pull, winced, and handed it back.
"Jesus. That's terrible."
"I know."
"Why did you buy it?"
"It was cheap."
She laughed. It was a dry sound, rusted from disuse. "That's the best reason I've ever heard." She sat down across from him, and her knees almost touched his. The cabin was too small for distance, too cramped for anything but intimacy or hostility. She chose neither. She just leaned back and closed her eyes.
"I'm Maren," she said.
"Jordan."
"Jordan." She tested the name like it was a piece of fruit she was deciding whether to bite. "Are you running from something or toward something?"
"Both."
"That's the best way to travel." She opened her eyes and looked at him. Really looked. Her gaze was direct in a way that made him want to flinch, but he held it. "What's in the package?"
"A book. A gift."
"From who?"
"A friend. An old man in Berlin who plays piano and feeds stray cats."
Maren nodded slowly. "That sounds like the kind of friend everyone needs but no one deserves." She reached for the bottle again. He gave it to her. She drank, and this time she didn't wince. "I'm leaving my husband."
The words landed between them like stones in still water.
"I'm sorry," Jordan said.
"Don't be. It's overdue." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Twelve years. Can you believe that? Twelve years of waking up next to someone and feeling nothing. Not hatred. Not resentment. Just—nothing. Like sleeping next to a piece of furniture."
Jordan didn't know what to say. He'd never been married. He'd never even been in a relationship that lasted longer than a semester. The idea of twelve years with anyone felt like a foreign language.
"What about you?" Maren asked. "What are you running from?"
"Nothing. Everything. I don't know." He picked at the label on the whiskey bottle. "I took a semester off from college. I thought I'd figure out who I am. Instead I've just been—wandering. Making mistakes. Falling for people I shouldn't."
"Falling for people is never a mistake."
"It is when they leave."
Maren looked at him with something that might have been recognition. "They always leave. Until they don't. And by then, you're so used to being left that you don't know how to stay."
The train lurched. The bottle tipped, and Jordan caught it before it spilled. Their hands touched—brief, accidental, electric. She didn't pull away.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Twenty-one."
"God. You're a baby."
"I'm not a baby."
"You look like a baby. A sad, handsome baby with terrible taste in whiskey." She smiled, and it transformed her face, made her look younger, less haunted. "I'm thirty-six. That's old enough to be your mother."
"Only if you had me at fifteen."
"Stranger things have happened." She took the bottle from his hands and set it on the floor. Then she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and studied him like he was a map she was trying to read. "I'm going to ask you something, and I want you to be honest. Don't say yes because you think it's what I want to hear. Don't say no because you think it's what you should say. Just tell me the truth."
"Okay."
"Do you want to fuck me?"
The question hung in the air between them. The train rattled. The lamp flickered. Jordan's heart hammered against his ribs like it was trying to escape.
"Yes," he said.
Maren didn't smile. She didn't look triumphant or relieved or any of the things he expected. She just nodded, slow and deliberate, like she'd been expecting that answer all along.
"Good," she said. "Because I don't want to be alone tonight. I don't want to think about my husband or my empty apartment or the fact that I have no idea what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I just want to feel something. Something real. Something that isn't grief."
She stood up. The cabin was so small that she was already close, and when she stepped forward, her knees pressed against his. She looked down at him, her eyes dark and unreadable, and then she reached out and touched his face.
Her hand was cold. Her palm was rough. She traced the line of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbone, the hollow beneath his eye.
"You're beautiful," she said. "In a sad, lost way. Like a painting of a shipwreck."
"That's the worst compliment I've ever received."
"It wasn't a compliment." She leaned down and kissed him.
Her lips were chapped and tasted like whiskey and cigarettes. She kissed him hard, without hesitation, her tongue pushing into his mouth like she was trying to consume him. Jordan felt the wall press against his back—when had he moved? When had she pushed him?—and then her hands were on his belt, working the buckle with practiced efficiency.
"You don't have to—" he started.
"I know I don't have to." She pulled his jeans down, her fingers hooking into the waistband of his boxers. "I want to. Is that okay?"
"Yes."
"Good."
She dropped to her knees.
The cabin floor was grimy, covered in years of scuff marks and spilled coffee. Maren didn't seem to notice. She pulled his cock out—already hard, already aching—and wrapped her hand around the base. She looked up at him, her eyes locked on his, and then she took him in her mouth.
Jordan's head fell back against the wall. His hands flew to her hair, not pushing, just holding on. Her mouth was hot and wet, and she worked him with a rhythm that was almost brutal—no teasing, no hesitation, just deep, steady strokes that made his legs tremble.
"Fuck," he breathed.
She pulled back just long enough to say, "That's the idea." Then she took him again, deeper this time, her throat working around him, her tongue pressing against the underside of his cock. He could feel the edge of her teeth, just barely, and the sensation sent a jolt of electricity straight to his spine.
"Jesus, Maren—"
She didn't stop. She sucked him like she was trying to prove something—to him, to herself, to the husband she'd left behind. Her free hand cupped his balls, rolling them gently, and her other hand pumped the base of his shaft in time with her mouth.
The train rocked. The world outside was a black blur. And Jordan was falling, losing himself in the wet heat of her mouth, the obscene sounds her throat made, the way she looked up at him with those tired eyes that said nothing and everything.
"I'm close," he gasped.
She pulled off with a wet pop. "Not yet."
She stood up and turned around. The fold-down sink was right there—tiny, barely big enough for a pair of hands—and she bent over it, her palms flat on the porcelain, her hips pushing back toward him.
"Fuck me," she said. "From behind. Hard. I don't want to think."
Jordan didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, pulled her jeans down over her hips, and pushed into her in one motion.
She was wet. Soaking. And tight—tighter than he expected. She gasped when he entered her, her fingers curling against the sink, her knuckles going white.
"Yes," she breathed. "Just like that. Don't stop."
He didn't stop. He grabbed her hips and drove into her, hard and fast, the way she'd asked. The cabin rattled around them—the bottle on the floor, the mirror above the sink, the thin walls that separated them from the rest of the train. He didn't care. She didn't care. The whole world could have been watching, and neither of them would have noticed.
"You feel so good," he said. "Fuck, you feel—"
"I know. I know. Harder."
He fucked her harder. The slap of skin against skin filled the cabin, punctuated by her gasps and the rumble of the train. He could see her face in the mirror—partially, through the smudges and the movement—her cheek pressed to the glass, her mouth open, her eyes squeezed shut.
"Look at me," he said.
She opened her eyes. Their gazes met in the mirror.
"Don't look away," he said.
She didn't. She watched him fuck her, watched the way his hips moved, watched the way his face twisted with pleasure and something closer to pain. And then she came—a shudder that rippled through her body, a breath that caught in her throat, a sound that was almost a sob.
"Fuck," she whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
Jordan was close. Too close. He pulled out, his cock slick with her, and stroked himself twice before he came—spilling across her lower back, her ass, the curve of her spine. He watched the white streaks land on her skin, watched her body tremble beneath him, and for a moment he felt nothing but the raw, animal satisfaction of release.
Then the moment passed.
Maren straightened up slowly. She reached for the tissues on the tiny shelf above the sink and handed him a few without looking at him. She cleaned herself up with the same efficiency she'd used to unbutton his jeans—no shame, no awkwardness, just the practical movements of someone who'd done this before.
They didn't speak.
Jordan pulled up his jeans. Maren pulled up hers. She sat down on the seat, and he sat across from her, and the bottle of whiskey was still on the floor between them, half-empty and forgotten.
The train hummed. The night stretched on.
"I'm sorry," Maren said after a long silence.
"For what?"
"I don't know. For using you. For not knowing what I want. For being a mess." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I used to be someone who had her shit together. I used to be someone who knew what she was doing. And now I'm just—this."
"You're not just anything," Jordan said. "You're—"
"Don't." She held up a hand. "Don't try to make me feel better. I don't deserve it, and you don't owe it to me."
He didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. So he just sat there, watching her, and she watched him back, and the silence was heavier than any words could have been.
After a while, she leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes.
"I'm getting off in Nuremberg," she said. "Dawn."
"Where are you going?"
"To my sister's. She lives in a small town outside the city. She said I could stay as long as I need." She opened her eyes and looked at him. "She's the only person in my life who didn't tell me I was making a mistake. She just said, 'Come. I'll make tea.'"
"That's a good sister."
"She's the best." Maren smiled, and it was real this time. Small and tired and real. "What about you? Where are you going?"
"Rome."
"Why Rome?"
"I don't know. It was the first train I could book."
"That's as good a reason as any." She reached down and picked up the bottle. She took a sip, then handed it to him. "To running away."
"To running toward."
"Same thing, in the end."
They passed the bottle back and forth as the hours bled away. Sometimes they talked—about nothing, about everything. About her husband, who had never hit her but had never really seen her either. About Jordan's parents, who called every Sunday and asked when he was coming home. About the people they'd been and the people they were trying to become.
Sometimes they just sat in silence. The comfortable kind. The kind that didn't need to be filled.
At some point, Jordan fell asleep. When he woke, the sky outside was gray with the first hint of dawn, and the train was slowing. Maren was standing by the door, her duffel bag over her shoulder, her hair loose around her face.
She looked different in the morning light. Softer. More human.
"We're here," she said.
Jordan sat up. His neck ached. His mouth tasted like regret and whiskey. "Maren—"
"Don't." She shook her head. "Whatever you're going to say—don't. Let's just leave it here. Whatever this was. Let it be enough."
She walked over to him and leaned down. Her kiss was soft this time—almost chaste—just a brush of lips against his, a whisper of contact that was somehow more intimate than everything they'd done the night before.
"Thank you," she said. "For being here."
"Thank you for—" He stopped. There were no words for what he wanted to say.
She smiled with half her mouth, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor. Jordan watched her walk away—watched her disappear into the fog that hung over the platform like a secret.
The train lurched forward. Nuremberg vanished into the gray.
Jordan sat alone in the cabin, the bottle empty, the tissues crumpled on the floor, and he thought about Maren and Lena and all the women he'd ever known, all the brief connections that flared and faded like matches in the dark.
His journal was still open on the seat. The page he'd written on was full now—sprawling handwriting that covered every inch of white space. He didn't remember writing it.
He picked up the pen and turned to a fresh page.
The train rolled south. The sun rose over the mountains. And Jordan started, finally, to write about something other than himself.
The pen hovered over the page. His hand was shaking—not from cold, not from exhaustion, but from something else. Something that felt like honesty, raw and unfamiliar.
Berlin to Rome. Fourteen hours and thirty-five minutes. He'd been on the train for nearly nine of them, and he'd fucked two women in the space of a month, and he'd held a stranger's hand while she cried about a husband she no longer loved.
His handwriting looked different. Looser. Less controlled. He wrote about Maren's hands—the way they'd gripped the sink, the way they'd touched his face like she was memorizing him. He wrote about the sound she made when she came, that broken gasp that wasn't quite a sob.
He wrote about Lena, too. The way she'd looked at him in the bar, counting her money like it was the only thing she could trust. The way she'd said goodbye without saying it, because saying it would have made it real.
He didn't write about the alley. Not yet. Some things were still too sharp to touch.
The train rattled through a tunnel, and the cabin went dark. When the lights flickered back on, Jordan realized he'd been writing for over an hour. His fingers ached. His eyes burned. But the page was full—truly full, not just words to fill space, but something that felt like it mattered.
He closed the journal and set it aside.
The whiskey bottle was empty. Maren's duffel bag was gone. The only trace of her was the faint smell of cigarette smoke that clung to the air, and the box of tissues still sitting on the tiny shelf above the sink.
Jordan pulled the fold-down bed from the wall. It creaked and groaned, a metal frame covered in thin, scratchy blankets that smelled like disinfectant. He lay down and stared at the ceiling, watching the shadows shift as the train passed through a station he didn't bother to identify.
Sleep didn't come.
He thought about Rome. About what he'd do when he got there—where he'd stay, what he'd see, whether any of it would matter. He thought about Lena, somewhere on a train to Copenhagen, probably staring out a window just like this one. He thought about Maren, who was probably already at her sister's, drinking tea and trying not to think about the twelve years she'd just walked away from.
He thought about himself. The version of himself that had boarded a plane in Boston three months ago, terrified and hopeful and so fucking naive. That version of him would never have fucked a stranger in an alley. Would never have let a married woman suck his cock on a night train. Would never have written honestly about any of it.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe the person he was becoming was someone he didn't recognize yet.
He closed his eyes. The train rocked him like a lullaby, and somewhere between one station and the next, he finally slept.
When he woke, the sky outside was the color of dishwater—gray and flat and endless. He didn't know what time it was. He didn't know what country he was in. The train had stopped at some point during the night, and new passengers had boarded, their voices a low murmur through the walls.
Jordan sat up. His neck was stiff. His mouth tasted like something had died in it.
He needed coffee. He needed a shower. He needed to stop thinking about all the ways his life had spiraled out of control in the past month.
He pulled on his shoes and slid open the cabin door. The corridor was empty—just the long, narrow stretch of carpet and the rhythmic clatter of wheels on tracks. He walked toward the dining car, following the smell of something that might have been coffee, might have been burnt toast.
The dining car was nearly empty. An old man sat in the corner, reading a newspaper in a language Jordan didn't recognize. A couple shared a plate of pastries near the window, their heads bent together in quiet conversation. And behind the counter, a young woman in a train attendant's uniform was wiping down the espresso machine.
She looked up when he entered.
She was blonde—platinum, almost white—with it pulled back in a tight ponytail that showed off the sharp angles of her face. Her eyes were pale blue, the kind of blue that looked almost colorless in certain light, and there was a smattering of freckles across her nose that seemed out of place against her otherwise severe appearance.
"Morning," she said. Her accent was German, clipped and precise. "Coffee?"
"Please."
She poured him a cup without asking how he took it. Black. No sugar. He didn't correct her.
"You look like shit," she said.
"Thanks."
"Not an insult. Just an observation." She leaned her elbows on the counter and studied him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. "Rough night?"
"You could say that."
"Night train'll do that to you. All that rocking. All those strangers." She smiled, and it was a sharp smile, knowing. "I've seen it all. People fucking in the sleeper cabins. People crying in the corridors. People writing in journals like they're the first person who ever felt something."
Jordan's hand tightened around his coffee cup. "How do you know I was writing in a journal?"
"Lucky guess." She straightened up and started wiping down the counter. "You've got ink on your fingers. And that look. The look of someone who's been trying to make sense of things that don't make sense."
"And what do you do? When you're not serving coffee to strangers?"
"I watch. I listen. I mind my own business." She tossed the rag into a bucket and turned back to him. "But I also get bored. And when I get bored, I make bad decisions."
"Is that a warning?"
"It's an invitation." She tilted her head, and the fluorescent light caught the curve of her jaw. "My shift ends in twenty minutes. I have a cabin at the end of the car. It's bigger than yours. And I have whiskey that's better than the shit you were drinking last night."
Jordan stared at her. His heart was doing something complicated in his chest—a mix of arousal and exhaustion and a strange, hollow sadness that he couldn't name.
"You don't even know my name," he said.
"I know you're American. I know you're running from something. I know you fucked someone on this train last night and you're still thinking about her." She reached across the counter and took his coffee cup, her fingers brushing his. "That's enough."
"What's your name?"
"Sofia."
"Sofia." He said it slowly, testing the shape of it. "I'm Jordan."
"I know." She smiled again, and this time it was almost kind. "I checked the passenger manifest."
She walked out from behind the counter and headed toward the door at the far end of the car. She didn't look back. She didn't need to.
Jordan followed.
Sofia's cabin was at the end of the carriage, tucked behind a door marked with a faded sign that read "Personal." The room was twice the size of his—a narrow bed against one wall, a small table bolted to the floor, and a window that looked out onto the gray morning landscape.
She closed the door behind him and turned the lock.
"Rules," she said.
"What rules?"
"My rules." She shrugged off her uniform jacket and draped it over the chair. "No kissing on the mouth. No staying after. No asking questions about my life or why I'm here. And when we're done, you leave, and you don't come back."
"That's a lot of rules."
"Take it or leave it."
Jordan looked at her. She was younger than he'd thought—maybe twenty-five, maybe younger. Her body was lean under the thin white shirt, and there was a tattoo on her collarbone, something in German that he couldn't read.
"Take it," he said.
"Good."
She pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor. No bra. Her breasts were small and pale, her nipples hard from the cold. She kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned her trousers, sliding them down over her hips with a practiced efficiency that made Jordan's mouth go dry.
"You're staring," she said.
"You're naked."
"I noticed." She stepped out of her underwear and stood there, hands on her hips, watching him. "Your turn."
Jordan undressed. His hands were clumsy on the buttons of his shirt, his jeans. He felt exposed in a way he hadn't with Lena or Maren—not because of the nudity, but because of the way Sofia looked at him. Like she was cataloging every flaw, every uncertainty.
She didn't touch him. Not yet.
"Lie down," she said.
He lay on the narrow bed. The sheets were rough against his back, and the ceiling was close enough to touch. Sofia climbed on top of him, her knees on either side of his hips, and looked down at him with those pale, colorless eyes.
"I'm going to ride you," she said. "And you're going to lie there and take it. Understand?"
"Yes."
"Good."
She reached between them and wrapped her hand around his cock. He was already hard—had been since she'd undressed—and she stroked him slowly, almost lazily, spreading the precum over the head with her thumb.
"You like that?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Too bad." She positioned herself above him and sank down in one motion.
Jordan gasped. She was tight and wet—so fucking wet—and she didn't pause, didn't give him time to adjust. She just started moving, riding him with a rhythm that was almost mechanical in its precision.
Her hands were braced on his chest. Her nails dug into his skin. She didn't make a sound—not a moan, not a gasp, not a whisper. Just the wet slap of their bodies and the rumble of the train.
"You're not going to last long," she said.
"No."
"Good. I don't want you to."
She rode him harder. Faster. Her ponytail had come loose, and her hair fell around her face in a platinum curtain. Jordan reached up to touch her, but she caught his wrist and pinned it to the mattress.
"No touching," she said. "Not until I say."
"Fuck—"
"Shut up."
He shut up. He lay there and let her use him—her hips grinding against his, her cunt clenching around his cock, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts. He watched her face—the way her eyes closed, the way her lips parted, the way her brow furrowed like she was concentrating on something complicated.
"Are you close?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Not yet." She slowed down, circling her hips in a way that made him groan. "I want to come first."
She leaned back, her hands on his thighs, and started moving differently—grinding instead of bouncing, her clit rubbing against his pelvis with each rotation. Her breath hitched. Her thighs trembled.
"Fuck," she whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—"
She came with her eyes open. Staring down at him. Her body shuddered, and a low sound escaped her throat—not a moan, but something closer to a growl. She kept moving through it, riding the waves, until her muscles finally relaxed and she slumped forward, her forehead pressed to his chest.
"Now," she said. "Come now."
Jordan grabbed her hips and thrust up into her. Three strokes. Four. And then he was coming, his orgasm ripping through him like a current, his fingers digging into her skin hard enough to bruise.
She didn't move. She lay there on top of him, her breath slowly returning to normal, her hair sticking to his sweaty chest.
Then she sat up.
"Time's up," she said.
Jordan blinked. "What?"
"Time's up. You said you understood the rules."
She climbed off him and walked to the tiny sink in the corner. She wet a cloth and wiped herself down with quick, efficient movements. Then she pulled on her underwear, her trousers, a fresh shirt from a small cupboard.
Jordan sat up. His body felt hollowed out, wrung dry like a rag.
"That's it?" he asked.
"That's it." She didn't look at him. She was tying her hair back, her movements precise and practiced. "You should go. I have another shift in an hour."
Jordan stood. He found his clothes on the floor and dressed in silence. His hands were still shaking—from the sex, from the exhaustion, from something deeper that he couldn't name.
"Sofia—"
"Don't." She finally turned to face him. Her expression was unreadable. "Whatever you're going to say—don't. We had a deal. You leave, I stay, and neither of us has to think about it again."
"That's not—"
"It's exactly what I said." She opened the door and held it for him. "Goodbye, Jordan."
He walked past her into the corridor. The door clicked shut behind him.
Jordan stood there for a long moment. The train rattled around him. The gray light filtered through the windows. Somewhere down the carriage, a baby was crying.
He walked back to his cabin. He sat on the edge of the fold-down bed and stared at the journal on the seat. He didn't open it. He didn't write anything.
He just sat there, watching the world blur past, and wondered what the fuck he was doing.