Chapter 2: Blind Reunion
The grandfather clock in the hall marked the passing seconds with a throaty, rhythmic tick. Chase watched the long hand lurch forward, swallowing another minute. He’d been sitting in the same spot on the couch for an hour, a newspaper open but unread on his lap. The empty whiskey glass on the side table smelled of regret and oak.
He’d cleaned everything. Stripped the guest bed, laundered the sheets twice, opened every window to let the frigid, clean air scour the room until it smelled of nothing but pine and snow. He’d vacuumed, wiped down counters, returned Aubrey’s forgotten hair tie to a drawer in the bathroom, out of sight. The house was spotless, a museum of normalcy. His mind was a landfill.
The key turned in the front door lock. The sound was a gunshot in the quiet. He flinched.
“Honey, I’m home!” Megan’s voice, bright and carrying a trace of travel-weariness, echoed in the foyer. The suitcase wheels rumbled over the hardwood. She appeared in the archway of the living room, a silhouette of efficient elegance. Navy blazer, tailored pants, a silk blouse the color of cream. Her blonde hair was in a perfect, smooth knot. She looked like a solution. He felt like a problem.
“Hey,” he said, standing too quickly. The newspaper slid to the floor. “How was the flight?”
“Long. Turbulent. Full of men who think armrests are communal property.” She dropped her carry-on and crossed the room, her heels clicking a definitive rhythm. She kissed him. Her lips were cool, faintly glossed. She smelled of airplane air and her familiar, crisp jasmine perfume. It was a clean, foreign smell. It overpowered the ghost of coconut. “God, I missed you. This trip was a marathon.”
“I missed you too,” he said, the words automatic, sticking in his throat. He wrapped his arms around her, feeling the stiff structure of her blazer under his hands. He held her tightly, as if he could squeeze the deception out of himself.
She pulled back, her sharp, intelligent eyes scanning his face. “You okay? You look tired.”
“Just the quiet,” he said, forcing a smile. “The storm. The house felt big.”
“Well, I’m back to fill it up.” She unbuttoned her blazer, shrugging it off and draping it over the back of the armchair. Her movements were quick, practiced. She loosened the top button of her blouse, sighed. “I need to just not be in charge for five minutes. My brain is still in presentation mode.” She looked at him, a slow, familiar smile spreading. It was a look that usually sparked a low, warm buzz in his chest. Now it felt like an accusation. “Distract me.”
She walked to the couch, pushing his abandoned newspaper aside with her foot. She didn’t sit. Instead, she turned, her gaze holding his, and crawled onto his lap, straddling him. The worn leather creaked under their combined weight.
“Whoa, hello,” he said, a laugh bubbling up that sounded hollow even to him.
“No hello. Just hi.” She leaned in, kissing him again, deeper this time. Her hands were in his hair, pulling gently. Her urgency was different from Aubrey’s. It wasn’t a wild, breaking storm. It was a focused, pent-up energy, a need to reconnect and reclaim. It was possessive. “I thought about this,” she murmured against his mouth, her fingers working open the buttons of his shirt. “In the cab. In the dreary hotel bed. The entire miserable client dinner.”
Her words were a knife twist. He saw, for a flash, Aubrey’s dark room, the lightning, the sound of the bed frame. He pushed the image down, a mental hand shoving something beneath black water. He kissed Megan back, trying to lose himself in the known territory of her. The shape of her hips under his hands, the way she always bit his lower lip just so.
She made a small, pleased sound and leaned back, breaking the kiss to look at him. Her blouse was half-open, the lace edge of her bra visible. The lamplight caught the gold pendant he’d given her for their anniversary resting in the hollow of her throat. “I don’t want to go upstairs,” she said, her voice low and direct. “I want you right here. Right now.”
She shifted, her hand moving between them to unbuckle his belt. The efficient snap of leather. The rasp of his zipper. He helped her, his own hands fumbling, pushing his jeans down just enough. Her underwear was a delicate, practical black. She hooked her thumbs in the sides, sliding them off as she rose slightly on her knees. The intimacy was practiced, seamless. A dance they knew.
He was hard. Biology, a betrayal of its own. Guilt was a cold rock in his gut, but his body, stupid and hungry, responded to the heat and weight of her, to the familiar, eager look in her eye.
“I need you, Chase,” she whispered, and the raw need in her voice, so rarely voiced so plainly, undid him. It wasn’t just physical. It was Megan, his wife, offering a piece of vulnerability she usually kept locked away with her spreadsheets.
He guided himself into her. She was warm, ready. She sank down onto him with a sharp, gratified sigh, her head falling back. Her neck was a long, pale line. Different from Aubrey’s. Everything was different. The angle, the rhythm, the sounds she made—more controlled, bitten-off gasps rather than abandoned cries.
She set a fierce, driving pace immediately, her hands braced on his shoulders, her hips rolling in a way she knew he loved. Her blouse hung open, swaying with her movement. He held her waist, anchoring himself to the present, to the woman in his arms, to the life they’d built. He tried to focus on the details: the feel of her silk blouse under his thumbs, the tick of the clock, the clean scent of her perfume with the warmer note of her skin beneath it.
But his mind was a traitor. It flickered. The squeak of the guest bed. The taste of charcoal and coconut. The feeling of being watched by shadows. Megan rode him with a focused intensity, her eyes closed, lost in sensation. She was claiming him, marking her territory after her absence, completely unaware that the territory had already been breached.
Every deep, consuming thrust felt like a lie. Every moan he swallowed with his kisses was a theft. He was planting his seed in the same fertile ground his wife’s sister had already claimed, days before. The biological truth of it was a monstrous, silent scream in the room. Megan, on her birth control, safe and trusting. Aubrey, ovulating, calculating. And him, the conduit, the oblivious fertilizer for a potential catastrophe.
“God, yes,” Megan chanted, her voice tightening. Her nails dug into his shoulders through his shirt. “Right there. Don’t stop.” Her climax built, a predictable, powerful wave he knew how to surf. She tightened around him, a series of pulsing contractions, and cried out, a short, sharp sound of release that she muffled by burying her face in his neck.
Her satisfaction triggered his own. He tried to hold back, a pointless, guilt-driven instinct, but it was futile. Pleasure, dark and spoiled, ripped through him. He came inside her with a groan that was half anguish, clutching her to him as if he were falling. He spilled into the same essential space, a second, unwitting claimant.
For a long moment, they stayed like that, tangled on the couch, breathing heavily. The only sound was their ragged breaths and the implacable tick, tick, tick from the hall.
Megan finally stirred, nuzzling his neck. “Welcome home to me,” she sighed, contented. She lifted her head, her smile soft, satiated. She kissed his cheek. “I really did miss you. The bed’s too big without you.”
He couldn’t speak. He just nodded, his hands stroking her back through the silk.
She shifted off him, wincing slightly. “Okay, now I’m going upstairs to put on sweatpants.” She stood, pulling her underwear back on, re-buttoning her blouse with quick, efficient motions. The CEO reassembling herself. “You want a drink? I saw the bottle. Rough week?”
“Something like that,” he managed, pulling his own clothes back into order, a flurry of shameful activity.
She padded toward the kitchen, pausing to pick up her blazer. “Oh, before I forget,” she said, her tone light, conversational. “I talked to Aubrey this morning. She texted thanking us for letting her ride out the storm here. Said you were a perfect gentleman.” Megan laughed, a warm, trusting sound. “She’s such a flake. Said she left in a hurry and forgot her pills at her place, asked if she could borrow a few of mine from my bathroom stash until her prescription refill. I told her to just take the whole pack, I’ve got a new one.”
Megan hasn't realized that it was Aubrey's plan all along to swap out her birth control pills with a new experimental fertility pill that caused instant ovulation.