“Okay, honey. Be careful and have fun,” Ceci says softly, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
He kisses Alicia on the forehead, ruffles her hair, and walks right past me like I’m a piece of furniture.
“Ethan,” I call out as he reaches the doorway. “Enjoy your day, son.”
“Sure.”
He doesn’t look back. He just keeps walking.
The weekend was more of the same.
Ethan barely spent a minute in the house, Ceci kept “working”and avoiding me, and Alicia was the only one who seemed genuinely excited that I was home.
On Saturday, I let her take the lead. We spent the entire day out, picking new stationery for her journaling and a dozen little things that made her whole face light up. We had lunch at her favorite place and ended the day at the movies, closing it exactly the way she likes.
Ethan spent almost the entire weekend out with his friends. He barely spoke to me when he was home. Ceci kept telling me to be patient, to give Ethan time.
“He’s just being protective, Colin. You weren’t here to see how Alicia reacted when I told her you weren’t coming. Ethan might be turning seventeen soon, but deep down he’s still just a boy.Our boy.”
None of it helped.
My frustration wasn’t just with Ethan, it was with her, too.
Last night, when I reached for her, she brushed me off without hesitation, claiming she needed more time to “polish the article.” But tonight… tonight I’m done waiting.
And she knows it. She saw the storm brewing in my eyes all day, felt it in the unspoken tension at dinner.
In the privacy of our bedroom, I don't give her the room to hide behind excuses. As her hand drifts toward the tablet on the nightstand, I close the distance. I capture her lips in a kiss that isn't a request. It’s a demand, pulling her back to me until the article is nothing but a ghost of a thought.
Her breath hitches, a sharp, jagged hitch of air that breaks into a soft sound of surrender as her body finally goes soft and pliable under my touch.
I sink to my knees before her, peeling away her jeans and panties. I worship her there, my mouth hot against her pussy, lingering over her sweetness until she trembles with release.
After that, she gives in entirely.
With a determined, fluid grace, she sheds her blouse, and together we make quick, frantic work of my clothes. Once I’m naked, Ceci urges me down onto the bed.
I lean back against the headboard as she straddles me, her gaze fixed on mine while she guides me inside her.
Slowly. Purposefully. Her expression shifting, overtaken by pleasure as she takes me fully inside her.
We lose ourselves in the friction and the heat. Pressure builds behind my ribs, and I fight the urge to finish—desperate to see her break first.
“Don’t close your eyes. Look at me. That’s it, baby,” I murmur, my voice low and rough. My fingers tangle in her hair as I tilt her head back, holding her gaze, making sure she sees exactly what she means to me. “Tell me you love me.”
With a breathless, broken cry, she shatters. The tremors of her release wrap around me, taking me with her. I empty myself inside her, a raw, pulsing surge that leaves me hollowed out.
“God, I love you so much, Colin,” she gasps, her voice trembling in the sudden stillness of the room.
“I love you,” I say, my voice thick with a deep, clawing desperation. I pull her down, burying my face in the crook of her neck. “Only you, Ceci.Alwaysonly you.”
I hold her too tight, like I’m trying to fuse our skin together, trying to prove the words were true even as the weight of my secrets sits heavy in my gut.
We stay intertwined, a tangled wreck of limbs and cooling skin, until her breathing evens out and she drifts off. I clean us both, then draw her back into my arms, cradling her against my chest as I pull the covers over us.
But even with Ceci warm against me, her heart beating a steady rhythm against my own as it has for nearly two decades, my mind refuses to go quiet.
All I can see is the conversation waiting for me tomorrow. With Maya.
