“What? You’re not coming with me again?” Her voice wavered, the hurt slipping through, but Logan cut her off before she could argue.
“I’m sorry. I can’t,” he said, his voice cracking ever so slightly. He stepped closer, cupping her face in his hands, feeling the warmth of her skin, but it did nothing to thaw the coldness inside him. His thumb traced the curve of her cheek, a gesture so familiar yet so foreign. “But I want you to go. You deserve it. You’ve been alone so much... Go and enjoy. We have a lifetime to be together.”
His lips brushed hers, soft as remembrance, yet heavy with the taste of treachery he had long since learned to bear. The kiss carried no warmth, only the ghost of what love had once been, trembling like a dying ember in the hollow of habit. It tasted of sorrow, of rusted promises and quiet rot, of a tenderness that had forgotten its name.
He kissed her the way a man confesses; not out of devotion, but out of duty to the life he built upon his own undoing. Each touch was an echo of pretending, an act of survival disguised as affection. Her mouth was familiar, yet foreign, a landscape he wandered without belonging.
And beneath it all, he felt the tremor of another truth. The one he could not speak, the one that burned behind his ribs. A longing for the man whose name he never dared whisper in the dark. That kiss was not love, but a requiem for it: a ritual of guilt and yearning, of trying and never arriving, of reaching for a dream that dissolved at the edge of his own shame.
“You told me last week you were ready to launch your clothing line, but you needed to finalize some last details. Use this time for that. Take sometime off to get everything in order and finish the things you need before it all happens.”
Sandy nodded, her eyes soft with understanding, but there was something else—something too sad to name. She lay her head against his chest, her arms wrapping around him, and for a moment, Logan wished he could feel something.
Anything.
“Missed you, Logan,” she murmured, her words breaking something inside him. “So, so much.”
“Me too,” he lied, his own voice like a whisper in the dark.
“I’m so lucky to have such an amazing husband,” she whispered, her voice so soft, so full of love.
But Logan knew, deep down, he wasn’t the husband she thought he was. He wasn’t the man who could love her the way she deserved.
She let go of him and walked toward the kitchen, placing the envelope on the counter. And not for the first time, Logan stood there, feeling like a stranger in his own life.
“It smells like you’ve made something special.”
“Oh, you don’t know. I’m just getting started,” she looked back at him, her eyes seductive, as she pulled her robe up, exposing a tiny lace thong, and a suspender belt. Biting her lips. “I think you will like the other things I planned for us tonight.”
Logan swallowed hard and hated himself, knowing that move should have made him throbbing in his pants, going over to her and tearing that robe. But he could not feel anything other than panic to have to go through it again. Even before meeting Adrian, he wasn’t a very sexual person; sexhad been tolerable, and he had it with women, Sandy among them, but it was never the fuss people made it to be.
The only thing that had ever unraveled him, that had shattered his carefully built control, wasAdrian.Only Adrian had ever made him reckless, made him storm through a room without a second thought, driven by nothing but raw need. Only Adrian had ever made his blood burn, his breath hitch, his bodydemand—every nerve alight, every inch of him aching, throbbing with something deeper than desire. With Adrian, restraint had never stood a chance. He was fire in Logan’s veins, a pull too strong to resist, a gravity that had always drawn him in.
No, he should go to her, kiss her like a man, claim what was his, and then lead her to the bedroom.
And that’s exactly what he did. In a single motion, reckless and void of thought, he crossed the space between them. He spun her around, his lips crashing against hers with the force of a lie, a kiss that tasted like regret.
It felt wrong—so wrong—and yet he clung to her, his arms tight around her, suffocating himself in the bitter taste of self-loathing. The more he pressed into her, the more he drowned in the hollow space between his body and his soul.
“Let’s eat later,” he said and started walking her to the bedroom. Once they reached the stairs, he put his hands around her hips, and she jumped up, clinging to him. With one hand on Sandy, and the other holding the railing, Logan climbed up the stairs, kissing his beautiful wife.
Once they reached the bedroom, Sandy took a step away from him and slowly started undoing her robe, taking it off as her eyes picked up beneath her lashes and her white teeth biting her lips. The satin robe fell to the floor, leaving her in just a tiny lace black bra that revealed more than it covered,and a thong that tantalized with the view of her pussy through the sheer fabric.
She moved her hand on the suspended belt, the move slow and her fingers seductively touching her skin and the belt. Her hand drifted lower until her thin fingers rubbed on her pussy through the fabric.
Logan mentally prepared himself for what was about to happen; he had done it before, and he could do it again. He took off his suit jacket, then his shoes, his pants, and by the time he was opening the buttons of his shirt, Sandy was in front of him, her hands on the front of his boxers’ briefs. Her hands grazed his soft member.
Then she lowered herself to her knees and pushed the boxers down. Logan shrugged off his wrinkled white shirt, letting it fall to the floor. Across from him was the vanity mirror and the stranger that looked at him took his breath away: hollowed cheeks, ribs jutting sharply under his skin, the once-toned lines of his abs faded into shadows. Every ounce of joy he’d ever known had vanished with Adrian, leaving behind only the hollow ache, a silhouette of the man he once was.
He shut his eyes, letting his brain rest and trying desperately to focus clearly on the warmth his dick was enveloped in, the moving hand on his base, and the soft moans Sandy made.
Nope. Nothing.
He gazed down at Sandy as she took his soft cock to her mouth, and he wailed his body to start responding. His body remembered—achingly, vividly—the time before the hollow ache, when every touch felt electric, setting his skin on fire. Once, he was alive under another’s hands, a breathless mess of want, where even the graze of fingers on his arm would send sparks spiraling through him. The air around them had pulsed withsomething thick, charged, so that each breath felt like too much and not enough. He remembered the weight, the warmth pressed against him, the slow burn that built with each passing second. His body knew, even now, what it was to be cherished, and it mourned for that lost spark. He thought of whisky-colored eyes locked on him as he deep-throated him, and then his cock stirred in Sandy’s mouth.
He cracked open the hidden box within him, releasing memories he had buried so deep he’d nearly forgotten the weight of them. These were memories tinged with salt and sun, wrapped in the scent of ocean air and held close by the rhythm of waves crashing endlessly against the shore. In those memories, there was only him and another, the silent sea their only witness. They moved together, timeless and unbound, every moment searing, every laugh stolen against a backdrop of fading light. In that place, he’d felt endless, weightless, filled with a kind of joy he barely dared to remember.
He recalled the moment vividly: his fingers had gripped Adrian’s long hair tightly, the silky strands slipping through his fingers like water, and the intensity of the memory held him captive. As he stood there, his hand instinctively moved toward Sandy’s hair. He felt the soft waves brush against his skin, and he tangled his fingers in different strands. Though his mind was aware of the distinction between the two, in that moment, he sought comfort and connection, embracing whatever familiarity he could grasp amidst the confusion.
