CAMILA
I didn’t have time to change out of my nightgown.
I threw a pink satin robe over it, stepped into flat sandals, and stood in the middle of our stateroom holding the note and looked around at the breakfast tray and the flowers and Jason’s note still propped against the coffee cup.
I intend to spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret choosing me.
I folded the other note carefully, put it in the pocket of my robe, and left.
The corridor on the far side of Deck 4 was a different world from the rest of the ship.
Up above, I knew, the Celestia was already awake and celebratory — the breakfast buffet would be full, couples on the upper decks watching the island grow larger on the horizon, children running the length of the pool deck in the early sun. Today was docking day. Today was CocoCay. Today was supposed to be the day Jason had been planning for weeks, the anniversary celebrations on the island he’d refused to give me any details about because he liked surprises.
Down here, the light was dim and the corridor was quiet and narrow, and the sounds of all of that felt very far away.
I walked slowly. There was no urgency in my body — just a kind of suspended stillness, like the moment between lightning and thunder when you’re not yet sure how close the storm is.
Maybe it was a surprise. He was extraordinarily good at surprises. The freesias that kept appearing. The pianist last night. The breakfast this morning that was laid out with Jason’s signature precision.
Maybe I would open this door and find — a room full of flowers? A private breakfast, a gift, some elaborate anniversary gesture that would make me laugh at myself for the cold, heavy feeling that had been sitting in my chest since I read those words?
Want to know what your dear husband has been up to?
I stopped in front of room 546.
The door looked the same as every other door on the deck. Unremarkable. Closed.
From somewhere inside came the muffled throb of music, something heavy and discordant, entirely wrong for a cruise ship anniversary morning.
I put my hand on the handle.
Something in my chest said:don’t.Not the anxious, self-silencing voice I’d been using on myself since last night — the one that saidstop looking for things that aren’t there.
This was quieter and more certain than that. This was the part of me that already knew.
I pushed the handle down and opened the door.
The room was dark, blackout curtains drawn against a morning that was bright and golden everywhere else on the ship. I stood just inside the doorway and let my eyes adjust, the heavy metal music washing over me in waves, too loud for this small space, too loud for this hour.
Then the shapes resolved.
A naked woman lay on the edge of the bed, her knees bent and her feet up. She was blindfolded, and her hands were tied up over her head. A man had his head lowered, and his face was in between her legs. He was sucking on her. The girl managed to grab his hair with her bound hands. Her head fell back.
“Yes, please, please, more, more.” She begged.
He kept sucking on her. His shoulders moved with a focused, unhurried purpose that told me this was not new, that whatever this was between them had a rhythm and a history. That they knew each other.
Then he moved — turned her over, her cheek flat against the mattress, her bound hands now behind her back, her knees spread wide. He reached up and pulled the blindfold away. She shook her dark hair out of her face, straight and black, falling in a sheet over one shoulder.
He turned his head slightly, and the dim light caught his profile, and I saw his face.
Jason.
I stood frozen.
He looked intoxicated with lust and desire.
Something like a spasm took over my entire body, and I remained standing there, transfixed at what I was seeing. I pressed my back against the wall and felt its cold surface againstmy shoulders, and it felt like an ice dagger going through my back. I gripped the doorframe with one hand because my knees had buckled in. I couldn’t move my body, although every atom of me was telling me to run away from there. I was having a sensation of somehow being outside myself, watching my husband face-fuck another woman from a small distance.
