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“It’s not that easy,” I object, but she continues walking. I watch as she puts Cece into the pram on the porch and heads for the road, and then I look toward the fields, steeling myself. What am I supposed to say to him? What would I have said to him before? I can’t even recall who we were, and the discomfort isn’t entirely one-sided. The truth is that before I left, if I walked into the fields to find him, he’d have wrapped his arms around me before I could say a word. Now, most likely, he’ll wait with a pained look on his face, or ask me how Cecelia is.

I take a quick glance in the mirror and then walk out the door and head through the fields. It’s unusually warm, as far into the fall as it is, and when I finally spy him in the last row, I find him stripped down to a t-shirt, which clings to his chest and shoulders and abs in a way that would make any female stare. His head raises and when our gaze locks, he has that look on his face once more—hungry, desperate, restrained.

He begins to move toward me and I toward him, so scared and so needy I feel sick with it.

I mentally comb through all the mundane topics to discuss with him—the weather, how much Cecelia ate this morning—anything to put us in a normal place, a place where he isn’t looking at me the way he is right now. My brain is empty today.

“It’s a nice—” I begin, and the words are stopped short as he grasps my face in his hands and kisses me. Kisses me hard, with a low moan of need.

That sound. My God. When he makes that noise it’s all I can do to stay on two feet. I cling to him, under the sway of my desire, hands clawing at his shirt, desperate for purchase, desperate for the feel of his skin after these months apart. His mouth is on my jaw as I untuck his shirt and slide my hands beneath it. My palms press flat, wanting to savor him, but I can’t hold still long enough. I want more, everything, as fast as possible and when his lips move to my neck, every nerve ending seems to light up. I arch against him as I gasp, wordlessly begging for more.

“I can’t wait another moment,” he says, tugging at my dress, too reckless and needy to stop for buttons. “My God I’ve wanted this for so long.” I hear the back tear and it matters not at all.

We pull each other to the ground, his mouth on my breasts as I reach for his belt. My fumbling hands are too slow. He shoves the pants down on his own and lays me back in the dirt, kneeling between my parted thighs. My panties still separate us. He tears them in half and pushes inside me.

My God.

I’d remembered it, and yet I hadn’t. The feeling of being stretched by him, being so impossibly full.

If either of us had hoped to go slow, I realize now we’re not capable of it. The moment he slides out I’m jerking my hips to meet his again. We are gasping and senseless, teeth and tongues, swallowing the other’s sounds greedily. He’s too desperate to be gentle with this. His belt hits my thighs with each thrust, the rough canvas of his pants abrading my skin. I’m not gentle with him either. I rut against him, hard and frenzied, wanting to somehow drive out the agony of the last year.

My back sinks farther into the lumpy ground beneath me, my legs wrap around him tighter and tighter and his murmurs, entirely in French, grow frantic and barely intelligible. He tells me he’s missed me and that he loves me. I feel a sharp pang in my gut, as if my body is opening, preparing for flight. His words change, grow filthy and desperate, things I never dreamed I’d hear him say. I clamp down around him and cry out. He jerks inside me once, and again, and a final time, but slower.

My eyes open. I’m a little shocked to find us in the dirt, with the sun overhead. To find my dress in ruins and most of his clothes still on. He blinks, and his eyes are wide, alarmed, when they meet mine.

He slides out of me, averting his gaze. He’s still hard, and the old version of Henri would have stayed where he was, would have told me he’d be ready again in a moment, but this one is uncertain. He looks at me like someone he just fucked by mistake.

“Are you…okay?” he asks haltingly. My thighs are sticky now and the bottom of the dress is wet with us, which hardly matters since it’s too ripped to be salvageable.

“Yes,” I say, sitting up, staring at my hands. “I’m fine.”

His fingers trail along a point just above my collarbone. “I bruised you. I’m sorry.”

He sits back, pulling up his pants. I pull my knees together and try to hold the dress around myself. “I didn’t notice. It was fine.”

How can it be so gruelingly awkward between us now? I want to fix it, but the girl I was before everything happened would have launched herself in his arms—would have demanded he tell her every thought in his head no matter what it was—and I’m not her anymore. That girl didn’t have to ask if he was comparing her to his wife, didn’t have to wonder if she had, by comparison, failed.

He runs a hand over his face. “I—” he begins.

“I need to get back to the house,” I cut in, terrified of whatever is about to come out of his mouth. “Marie will be back soon. I don’t want her to see my dress.”

He nods, shoulders hunched as if defeated somehow, and no wonder. I’m sure he never thought sleeping with me could possibly make things worse, but it definitely has.

* * *

For the rest of the afternoon I stay inside with Cecelia. It’s unnecessary since Marie is home, but the truth is I’m scared to run into Henri again. I’m scared of how uncomfortable things are between us. I’m scared of the weight of my desire, which even as I sit here burping Cece, has me feeling like I might come out of my skin with wanting him again. I think of it every time my bruised back hits the chair, every time my thighs—abraded by friction—rub together. I’m a disaster and I only want more and more, with someone who could barely look at me when it was over.

Yvette. Does he miss her? She was a conniving little bitch, but men are stupid about things like that. She certainly didn’t enter into a relationship with him quite as innocently as I did, and maybe I’m just not…enough. I don’t have tricks. The little I know about sex I learned from Henri. Maybe he’s come to appreciate the value of an experienced partner.

I think of the things he said to me just before he came, filthy things that shocked me and probably could have made me come even if he were just whispering them over the phone, and wonder if he said them to her as well. Did he get carried away at the end and forget who he was with?

My stomach drops. “Of course he did,” I whisper aloud, horrified. “Of course, of course, of course.” I’m embarrassed for myself, for the way I reacted…thinking I’d somehow elicited that reaction from him. Mostly, I’m just sickened by the fact that he had that kind of relationship with her. That they were so open with each other, so filthy. So unlike us.

When he comes in, I busy myself with Cecelia, and after dinner is cleaned up, I fake a big yawn and announce I’m turning in for the night, Cece pressed to my chest like a shield.

He follows me to the bottom of the stairs, while Marie busies herself in the kitchen as if she doesn’t notice. “I’m sorry,” he says tentatively, “if I was too…rough. I got carried away.”

It all feels like a euphemism now. Like he’s really saying I’m sorry I confused you with my wife.