He considers it for a long moment, his eyes scanning the horizon, his expression unreadable. Then he turns to me, his gaze direct, unflinching, honest to a brutal degree. “I wish it wasn’t an affair, Petra,” he says, his voice low, tinged with a quiet regret that surprises me. “But no. I don’t regret being with you. Not for a second.”
The words hit me with a jolt. He wishes it wasn’t an affair. That implies a desire for something more, something legitimate. And that, in turn, makes me think of his wife, the woman he’s still married to, still talks to daily. It feels like more of a compliment to me, a heady rush of validation, but simultaneously, a profound insult to her, to his marriage. It’s a cruel, delicious irony.
A different kind of question forms on my tongue, one that feels even more intimate, more intrusive than the last. “Do you ... do you have kids?” I ask, my voice soft, almost hesitant, crossing a line I’m not sure he wants me to cross.
He doesn’t answer immediately. He just looks at me, his gaze suddenly shuttered, almost cold, like I’ve asked something deeply inappropriate, like it’s crossing a sacred boundary to ask him these things. The sudden shift makes my heart sink.
“You knowIhave kids,” I press, the quiet desperation in my voice betraying my need to know, to understand him beyond the passion. “I want to know more aboutyou.”
He finally breaks eye contact, looking out at the glittering water again. His voice is flat, devoid of emotion, almost dismissive. “I didn’t ask about your family. They just showed up. It’s different.” His implication is clear: My life, my family, my circumstances, were simply presented to him. He didn’t seek them out, didn’t intrude. But his, his are off limits.
A knot of frustration tightens in my stomach, but I bite back the retort, sensing a fragile barrier I shouldn’t push. I go back to reading my book, pretending to be absorbed in the plot, but the words feel like staring at a blank page.
Then, just when I’ve given up, when the silence feels like it will stretch forever, he starts to open up, his voice barely audible above the gentle lapping of the water against the hull. “We tried for years,” he says, his gaze still fixed on the horizon, his face a mask of distant pain. “To have kids. Failed IVF cycles, false positives, miscarriages ... it washell.” His voice cracks, just slightly, on the last word. “Turns out, after all the testing, it was me. Not her.Icouldn’t have kids.”
I sit up straight, startled, my book sliding unheeded from my lap to the boat deck with a soft thud.Shock.The vulnerability in his tone, the depth of that revelation, takes my breath away. “Oh, Saint,” I whisper, my hand instinctively reaching for his arm, a gesture of comfort.
He flinches, just slightly, at my touch, then continues, his voice softer now, tinged with a deep sadness. “She started to resent me. I could feel it. The quiet anger. The unspoken blame for taking her dreams away. We separated six months ago.”
My mind reels. Six months? So recent. My heart aches for him, for the quiet devastation of that dream. And then, another thought, a more selfish one, emerges.
Why did he let me believe he was in a happy marriage?
“You didn’t tell me any of this,” I say, my voice trembling with the revelation.
He turns to me, his dark eyes meeting mine.
“I still wear my wedding ring. I still feel married. Where, in the space between you needing a muse who is a married man and me explaining my messy break, could I have fit all that in? Besides, you needed the full experience, Petra,” he says. “And I’ve had fun with it. The guilt, the secrecy, the forbidden thrill. You needed to feel it all, to live it, so you could feel better about your writing. To get the fuel you needed for Reya.”
A cold dread washes over me, mixing with a strange, dark understanding.
“Do you want the marriage to work?” I ask, the question tumbling out before I can stop it in a desperate need for clarity. I’m searching for a shred of normal human emotion in this chaotic game.
He looks back at the water, his gaze distant. “Of course,” he says, simply, quietly. “But I don’t want to tie her down. Or prevent her from having other children. From pursuing that dream with someone else.”His voice holds a profound sorrow, a selflessness that’s almost unbearable, given what he’s just admitted to me.
“Do you still live together?” I ask, pressing for more details, trying to piece together the shattered fragments of his life, to understand the man behind the persona.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “We don’t. But we talk almost daily.” He pauses, then turns back to me, his eyes searching, vulnerable in a way I haven’t seen them before. “She’s having trouble moving on. But so am I.” He shifts, his knee brushing mine. “Do you ... do you have any advice?”
The sudden vulnerability, the genuine plea, takes me by surprise. And for a moment, I see him not as Saint, the intriguing, manipulative muse, but as a man in pain. But the answer is automatic. “No,” I say, shaking my head, my voice flat. “I don’t. I don’t know how to move on, either, even though sometimes I want to.” The words are true, agonizingly so. “But you don’t have kids,” I add, almost without thinking, a reflexive defense, a way to diminish his pain in comparison to mine, to make mine somehow more valid. “So maybe it isn’t as hard for you.”
The moment the words leave my lips, I regret them. His face hardens instantly, a subtle but profound shift. His jaw clenches, his eyes darkening, and he pulls away from me, the distance suddenly vast between us. It’s like I took his infertility, his deepest wound, and diminished it, trivialized it with a careless, thoughtless comparison to my own self-inflicted marital woes. The accusation, though unspoken, hangs heavy in the air.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my voice filled with immediate, genuine contrition. “Saint, I didn’t mean it like that. I just ...” I trail off, unable to find the words.
He holds up a hand, stopping me, his expression still etched with pain, but softened slightly now. “It’s okay,” he says, his voice strained.“I’m not going tit for tat about this, but not being able to have kids at all is a hell of a lot harder than divorcing someone you have kids with.”
He’s right. His pain is immense because his dreams were shattered by something beyond his control. Mine ... mine would be shattered by my own hand, simply because of boredom. It’s difficult to leave any relationship if there’s not a huge betrayal, especially when children are involved. Boredom and annoyance are likely not grounds for a divorce, but I’m worried that’s where it starts. The thoughts of escape. This glimpse of what my life could be like without Shephard.
It used to feel like his presence was air, lifting me up and making me lighter. Now, for whatever reason, he just feels more and more like a weight. Something else I have to carry to keep us all moving forward.
Saint looks out at the water again, his jaw working. Then, his voice lowers, almost to a confession, chilling me to the bone even in the warm sun. “When I was watching you say goodbye to your girls, when Shephard was there ...” He pauses, and I hold my breath. “I was angry, Petra. So angry.” He turns his eyes to me, and they burn with an unsettling intensity. “I wanted you to get caught, so you’d leave him, so I could have what he takes for granted. What he barely sees anymore.”
The confession is a dark, dizzying plunge into his psyche, revealing a level of calculated malice that should repel me. But instead, a perverse thrill shoots through me. He wanted to destroy my life, to claim it for himself. And he almost did.
He leans in, his hand cupping my cheek, his thumb tracing my jaw. His eyes, burning with a mix of fury and desire, lock onto mine. And then, his lips descend, hard and hungry, claiming me completely. The kiss is fierce, a primal embrace of chaos. And then, right there, on the open water, beneath the broad, indifferent gaze of the afternoon sun, we have open sex, or maybe it’s the beginnings of making love, unashamed,a defiant act of rebellion against everything we’ve just confessed and every boundary we’ve shattered.
We pull into the small cove, the water lapping gently against the hull as Saint expertly maneuvers the boat toward the rickety wooden dock. The sun, lower now, casts long, stretching shadows across the water, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple. We don’t speak, the quiet after our intense coupling thick and heavy.
