Lying on this couch, beneath Adam, him still buried deep inside me, basking in the afterglow, so many feelings, so many thoughts, so many impulses were battling, warring inside.
The weight of his body, the safety of his arms, the simplicity of this intimacy was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, and I knew it was unlike anything I’d ever have with anyone else. With Adam, there was just a shortcut, an unspoken knowledge that no one else would ever understand. We had a foundation, one look, one touch, one word, and we connected in a way that I never had with another human and knew I never would. That was what made being with him so special, so different, so exceptional.
It was our souls. From the moment he sat down beside me when I was crying about my mom, my soul recognized him. I didn’t believe in reincarnation, but if I did, I would swear we had spent lifetimes together before, hundreds of lifetimes, and that in every one we were meant to find one another. That was what meeting him that day felt like.
Being with him, having sex with Adam, was more than just physical, it was like my soul was home.
He shifted up onto his forearms and looked down at me. I stared up at him, and he cupped my jaw, his thumb ran along my cheek, then his finger swiped just below my eye.
When he presented his fingertip to me, I saw that one of my eyelashes was balancing on it.
“I saved your life,” he joked.
I smiled, but really, I wanted to cry. This man was everything I wanted and more, and I knew now without a shadow of a doubt that his back was better. I needed to move out of the house nextweek, go back to my normal life. We’d get a divorce in a couple months, and we’d go back to being friends.
Some other woman would come in, raise his daughters, and would make him happy. They would be basking in his afterglow. Which was what I wanted. I didn’t want kids. That was my one and only rule breaker.
“Make a wish,” he said.
I wanted to say, “I wish we could stay married.”
That’s what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t. We couldn’t stay married. And it was my fault.
“I wish we could stay like this…” I stopped myself from saying forever, but that’s what I wanted to say. I wanted to stay like this forever.
“Me too,” Adam agreed, his breaths coming in short pants.
I blew the eyelash from his fingertip, and I saw heat flash in his eyes as his nostrils flared. He leaned down and kissed my mouth gently, then moved to my forehead, my eyes, my cheeks. They were the softest, barely there brushes of his lips. This was not sex, this was making love.
My head was telling me to stop this, to go upstairs and go to bed, alone, before more damage was done to my already broken heart. Too bad my body wasn’t listening.
35
BILLIE
I putthe wedding ring back in my purse, which was my daily ritual, and made the drive to the school the highlight of my day. It was the only time I was alone and knew I would not be caught pretending to be Mrs. Knight, so I would play dress-up, aka wear my wedding ring. I knew it was a bad habit, one I’d stupidly gotten into, but I always removed it as soon as I got in the pickup lane.
Which is where I was now, I’d pulled up with ten minutes to spare. I tried to fall into my routine, windows cracked, scrolling through work emails and definitelynotreminiscing about how I’d just spent twelve uninterrupted hours having sex with Adam Knight over the weekend.
We’d basically had sex until we picked up the girls from their sleepover. We had sex twice more on the couch. Once more in the kitchen, and then in the shower. I should have been laser-focused on ROI metrics for next quarter, but instead my mind kept replaying the way he’d said my name—no, growled it—the way he took my body to places I didn’t even know it was capable of going when I’d finally stopped overthinking and let myselfsurrender completely to something, to someone, just because it felt good.
A horn startled me out of my reverie.Shit. I’d totally spaced and was not aware of my surroundings, a huge faux pas in the pickup line.
“My bad.” I did the obligatory wave in the rearview as I released the brake and eased forward.
The familiar gaggle of elementary school parents, siblings, and over-caffeinated nannies populated the front of the school. I spotted Joey first, which was odd, standing on the painted footprints assigned to her class, arms crossed, a scowl in place. Typically, she was being Miss Congeniality and socializing anywhere but her assigned footprints. Andi stood behind her, basically on the same set of footprints, face partially hidden under the hood of her fleece jacket. The second Joey spotted me, she grabbed Andi’s hand, and they made a beeline for my car. Before they shut the doors, I knew something was off. The air in the cabin was suddenly thick with whatever unspoken doom hovered between them.
I put the car in park, twisted around in my seat, and gave Joey my best “Talk to me” look.
“What’s up, munchkins?”
Joey shrugged and looked out the window. Andi just stared at her knees, clutching her backpack so tight her knuckles were white. Neither of them said a word. Okay. Time for plan B.
“Did something happen at school?” I tried, voice light, as if this was nothing, just a casual check-in between school and home.
Andi didn’t reply, but I saw that her eyes were red-rimmed, as if she’d been crying, and it broke my heart. Joey chewed on her sleeve, a sure sign she was either about to confess something or was plotting someone’s demise.
“Girls?” I said, softer. “You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”
