“I shouldn’t be here,” he said, voice rough. “I’ve already made too many mistakes.”
Jasmin’s hand brushed his arm. Her touch was light, but it set his skin alight with fire.
“I’m not asking for anything,” she said softly. “Not a future. Not a vow. I just... I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Nic took a step back. But the room didn’t grow cooler. His thoughts didn’t clarify.
“I have someone,” he said, more to himself than to her. “Someone I...”
But the sentence ended before he could name it—what he had, what he wanted, what he was breaking.
Jasmin didn’t push. She simply stood there, eyes open and waiting.
He could leave. He should leave. He could apologize, say thank you for lunch, finish her porch, and never come back.
But instead—
He touched her cheek.
And the guilt surged, immediate and hot, not because the touch was wrong—but because it felt like relief.
Her eyes fluttered closed.
He kissed her.
Not out of impulse, but from a slow, trembling need that had been rising in him like a tide. The kiss was hesitant at first—gentle, searching. But when she leaned into it, when her hands slid up around his shoulders and her breath caught against his lips, the knot inside him gave way.
The kiss deepened, grew hungrier.
She moaned his name softly, and the sound wrecked him like an earthquake rising from the bottom of his heart’s lake. He tangled his fingers in her hair and kissed her again—harder this time, drowning out the voice that kept whisperingnowith the weight of want.
Her fingers slid beneath his shirt, palms finding the curve of his spine. He gasped against her mouth.
“Tell me to stop,” he whispered.
She didn’t.
She backed toward the table. He followed.
Their clothes came off in uneven stutters, hands clumsy with urgency. She guided him to her, breathless, trembling, eyes wide. The table trembled as he lifted her up.
“I kept thinking about you,” he said against her throat. “I tried not to—but I couldn’t stop.”
Her reply was a low whimper of want as she pulled him closer.
He buried his face in her shoulder, guilt pounding like a second heartbeat.
Even as he gave in.
Day after day, Nic returned to Jasmin’s cottage. At first, he clung to the illusion—it was the porch, after all, that needed him. He told himself it would be dishonorable to leave it half-finished, that she deserved a proper job done well. But even after the last nail was driven, the last board sanded smooth, he kept going back. Tools in hand, purpose in name only.
By summer, he’d stopped pretending.
Their trysts were wordless and uncomplicated. Jasmin, adrift in her husband’s absence. Nic, stranded between guilt and longing. He found in her a quiet hunger—nothing romantic, nothing permanent. Just need. Physical and undemanding, a salve for hearts worn down by neglect and disappointment. He told himself they were helping each other. As she’d once dragged him free from the weight of the tree, they now pulled each other from the crush of loneliness.
But the shame didn’t soften—it sharpened.
His walks home were always long, silent punishments. Each step weighed heavier than the last, as if the mountain trails knew what he had done. Thoughts of Helen twisted like tangled roots in his chest. He imagined confessing, imagined her face,the fracture of trust, the devastation. It would destroy her gentle heart.
