Chapter 12: The Unwelcome Discovery
The week passed in a series of faint digital pulses. A text reading ‘Landing was a nightmare, jetlag is a beast.’ Another, two days later: ‘Hope you’re well.’ Dee had crafted careful, breezy replies that sat in their thread like museum pieces—preserved, examined, devoid of life. The silence between them had taken on a new quality. It wasn’t the quiet of mutual busyness anymore. It was the hollow echo of a skipped beat, a conversation abandoned mid-sentence.
So when Sofia, their mutual friend from catering, texted—‘Saw a certain movie star buying out whole foods. Looks like someone’s back from eastern europe xo’—Dee moved before she could think.
She drove across town with a bottle of Barolo rattling in the passenger seat footwell. Her heart was a frantic bird against her ribs. She’d just see him. She’d use her key, like she always had. She’d say something sarcastic about his radio silence. She’d break this terrible, polite distance with the blunt force of her presence.
The hallway to his penthouse was silent, lit by discreet sconces. She slid her key into the lock, the metallic snick loud in the quiet. “Matt?” she called out, pushing the door open. “Don’t shoot, it’s just your hairstylist, here to assess the Budapest damage.”
No answer. The great room was pristine, the city a glittering diorama beyond the windows. But the air was different. It was warm, thick. A faint, familiar scent underneath the lavender and leather. Expensive perfume, sweet and sharp. And another smell, musky and animal.
A sound. From down the hall leading to the master suite. A low, guttural groan. Then a high, breathy gasp. The wet, rhythmic slap of flesh on flesh.
Dee’s feet carried her forward, the bottle heavy in her hand. Each step was a betrayal of her own sanity. She knew. Some deep, primal part of her already knew, but she had to see it, had to sear it into herself so she’d never hope again.
The bedroom door was ajar.
The scene inside was lit by the ambient glow of the en-suite bathroom. Matt was on his knees on the disheveled bed, his back a tense, sweat-sheened landscape of muscle. He was driving himself deep, his powerful hips pumping with a brutal, focused rhythm. Beneath him, or rather, taking him from behind, was Elara Vance. Her pale blonde hair was tangled across his pillows. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her mouth a perfect ‘O’ of pleasure. One of her hands was fisted in the duvet, the other reached back, her nails digging into the hard curve of Matt’s ass, urging him deeper.
“Oh god, right there,” Elara moaned, her voice slurred with sex. “Don’t stop, fuck, just like that.”
Matt’s head was bowed, a low curse rumbling from his chest. “You take it so fucking well.” His voice was ragged, foreign.
The crude word, in his voice, in this room, was a physical blow. Dee watched, frozen, as his hand snaked around Elara’s hip, his fingers finding where they were joined, rubbing rough, urgent circles. Elara cried out, her body bowing. “Yes! Matt, yes, I’m gonna—”
He fucked her through it, his thrusts becoming shorter, harder, more desperate. The bedframe knocked a relentless tattoo against the wall. The sounds were obscene, wet and private and violently alive. Dee saw the exact moment his control shattered. His back corded, his entire body seizing as he buried himself to the hilt with a raw, throaty shout that was pure, undiluted release.
He collapsed forward, his weight on his forearms, his head hanging between Elara’s shoulder blades. They were both panting, slick and joined in the aftermath.
Then Matt’s head turned. His profile, blissful and satiated, aimed toward the door.
His eyes, hazy with pleasure, found hers.
They focused. The blue went glacial, then wide with a horror so absolute it was almost comical.
“Dee.”
Her name wasn’t a shout. It was a breath, a puncture.
He jerked back, pulling out of Elara with a slick, obscene sound. He scrambled off her, his erection, still glistening with her and him, stark and shocking in the dim light. “Dee, wait—”
The room held its breath. Elara gasped, rolling over and clutching the sheet to her chest, her pleasured haze sharpening into bewildered alarm. The humid air, thick with the pungent scent of their sex, seemed to congeal around Dee.
Dee’s gaze didn’t waver from his face. It traveled slowly, deliberately, from his horrified eyes, down his sweat-slicked chest, to his still-hard cock, shiny with another woman’s arousal. A museum exhibit of her own betrayal. The Barolo was impossibly heavy in her hand, the glass cool against her palm.
Her heart wasn’t beating. It was vibrating, a high-frequency hum that threatened to shatter her teeth.
“Oh no, I wouldn’t impose, Mr. Bomer. Enjoy the wine.”
Her voice was a stranger’s—light, polished, perfectly cordial. The smile she shaped with numb lips was a twisted, ghastly thing. She let the bottle drop. It didn’t shatter immediately. It hit the plush rug with a dense thud, then rolled, a dark arc of liquid gushing from its neck onto the pale wool like a hemorrhage.
She turned.
“Dee, for god’s sake—” Matt’s voice was raw, cracking.
She was already moving. Her legs carried her, automaton-stiff, back down the hall where the perfume smell was now a taunt. The city lights blurred into streaked galaxies beyond the windows. The front door seemed miles away.
Behind her, a commotion. A thud, a curse, the rustle of frantic movement. “Stay here,” she heard him growl, not to her.
Her hand found the door handle. It was brass, smooth, real. She yanked it open just as his footsteps pounded down the hall. “Dee, stop! Please!”
She stepped into the cool neutrality of the hallway, pulling the door shut behind her with a soft, final click. It cut off his pleading. The silence of the corridor was absolute, antiseptic.
She heard the door wrench open again behind her. He called her name, desperate now. She didn’t look back. She walked, her heels clicking a steady, metronome beat on the marble tiles toward the elevator. He was in the hallway now, she could sense it, barefoot and half-naked, but he didn’t follow further. The image of him, exposed and frantic in a public space, held him like a cage.
The elevator doors slid open mercifully. She stepped inside. As they closed, her last glimpse was of him frozen in the dim light of his doorway, a hand outstretched, his face a mask of utter devastation. The world narrowed to the descending numbers, the Muzak, the coppery taste of blood where she’d bitten her cheek.
Her car was a crypt. She sat inside, hands clamped on the steering wheel, seeing nothing. The smell of the wine, of his apartment, of them, was trapped in her nostrils. She started the engine. The headlights cut two swathes through the dark garage.
She drove. Streets melted into freeway, a river of red taillights. The vibration in her chest finally broke into a sound—a single, dry heave that brought no tears. Her phone, in the passenger seat, buzzed once. Then again. And again.
She didn’t look. She knew the screen would be a constellation of pleas, of explanations she could carve her heart out with. The lipstick on his bathroom mirror, a secret she’d left for him, flashed in her mind. It was erased now, she was certain, fogged over by the steam of a shared shower.
She took the off-ramp toward her neighborhood, the streets familiar and suddenly alien. She pulled into her driveway, cut the engine, and sat in the profound quiet. The silence in her own car was different from the silence in his hallway. This one was inside her, vast and cold and complete.
Upstairs, her dark apartment waited. She would go in. She would not break. Not yet. The momentum of sheer survival carried her up the path. Her key slid into the lock. Behind her, the city glowed, indifferent. The chapter of her life that had contained him was over, ripped out at the spine. She crossed the threshold and closed the door on the world.