Still, tonight she’s on her tablet, and I’m out here, alone.
TheSightUnseenintro music blares. It’s dramatic, synth-heavy, and entirely too loud. Then, the screen cuts to the pods.
I see myself sitting in that small, dimly lit pod in Vegas. I look younger. Not in years, but in spirit. My shoulders aren’t yet heavy with the weight of the Strikers’ PR mess or the constant, throbbing ache in my knee. I look like a man who actually has a life worth protecting.
Then, her voice cracks through the speakers.
“Forgive me for burping,” she says.
I find myself smiling at the screen, instantly transported back to the second those words hit me. The producers are playing our “meet-cute” in fragments, threading the conversation between the main show segments and commercial breaks, teasing the audience with the slow-burn of how Aspen and me began.
Watching it back, I can see the exact moment the shift happened. I went from being an uptight, brooding athlete to a man who was suddenly, intoxicatingly captivated. It wasn’t the polish or the “proper” behavior my mother always insisted a woman must have that got to me. Aspen wasn't like the girls from boarding school who were groomed from birth to be some rich man’s trophy.
It was just her. Her being entirely too much and exactly enough at the same time. And I’m the asshole who let her get away, even though she’s sitting right in the next room.
I take a slow sip of the bourbon, leaning back as the burn settles in my chest. I’m struck by how much I was letting her take the wheel. Me. The man who micromanages every meal, every training session, and every public statement was just...going along with whatever she wanted. And I was loving every fucking minute of it.
I remember the heat behind that wall in the pod, thinking about how I’d let her take the lead in the bedroom just long enough to let her think she was in charge before I showed her what real domination felt like. I remember holding so much of myself back that first time we made love because I was arrogant enough to assume I’d have a lifetime to taste her and tease out every hidden part of myself.
And fuck, what I would give to taste her right now. What I would give to have her for just one night in my suite at the Supper Club, with no cameras, no contracts, and no walls between us.
I watch her banter with me. She’s quick. She’s sharp. She’s down-to-earth in a way that makes the high-society women my mother tries to set me up with look like cardboard cutouts.
And that mouth. Fuck, I miss that mouth.
On the screen, we’re talking about nothing and everything. We’re arguing over the best way to peel a mango and then suddenly, we’re talking about the fear of being truly seen.
I remember that moment in the pod. I remember the air feeling like ice and my heart hammering against my ribs. Not from cardio, but from the sheer magnetism of a woman I couldn’t even see.
“You’re a lot, you know that?” Aspen’s voice says from the TV.
“And you’re exactly enough,” I respond.
I cringe slightly at the line, but my chest still tightens. Watching it back, the chemistry isn’t just visible, it’s visceral. On screen, I’m smiling like a man who hasn't a care in the world. I look happy. I look like I’m being hunted, and I’m enjoying every second of the chase.
The segment transitions, the mood on the screen shifting as our conversation drifts into deeper territory. We start talking about sex. The wildest places, the fantasies, the history. That was the moment I first realized she wasn't as experienced as she seemed. Her answers were guarded, but curious. It was right then that I decided I’d take it easy with her. I wanted to be the one to guide her, to be the architect of every new level of ecstasy she discovered, but I also wanted to take my time. I wanted to savor the slow burn of her awakening, peeling back her inhibitions layer by layer until there was nothing left but us.
When the world eventually erupted between us—when I made the idiotic choice to walk away—I’d only just begun. I had only just started to open her up to me, and myself to her.
Now, the silence of the apartment feels like a lead ball.
I want to see her.
The need is a dull roar in my blood, louder than the television, louder than the logic telling me to stay on this sofa. Then, a dark, dangerous thought takes root. One I’ve spent every second since she moved in trying to kill.
This is a smart home. I have a state-of-the-art security system with high-definition cameras in every room except the bathrooms. Out of some archaic sense of respect for my wife, I haven’t touched the app. I haven't looked. I’ve been the disciplined athlete and behaved.
But I am a starved man. I haven’t visited the Supper Club toindulgein ages, and a man can only survive on breadcrumbs for so long before he turns into a predator. And my need to feast is primal.
My fingers tremble slightly as I pull out my phone and open the security interface. My heart is hammering harder now than it ever has on the pitch. I bypass the living room feed, the kitchen, the hallway. I tap the icon for the primary suite.
The feed flickers to life on my phone, and with a swipe of my thumb, I cast the image onto the seventy-five-inch screen.
At first glance, she looks peaceful. Infuriatingly so. She doesn't look like a woman who misses me. She doesn't look like she’s being tortured by the few inches of drywall that separate us or the heavy silence of the things we aren't saying. I can only see the soft silhouette of her body beneath the heavy duvet, a mountain of white linen that I suddenly want to rip away just so I can see my wife bare.
I know I’m being a voyeur, a pathetic peeping Tom who’s traded his dignity for a digital feed. She’d be scandalized if she knew what I was doing, and yet, I can’t bring myself to look away. I’m hungry. And this grainy image is the only indulgence I’m allowed.
But then, the stillness breaks. I notice a rhythm beneath the covers.
