Chapter One: Julian
Briana is already in my office when I return from the client call.
Of course she is.
She’s claimed my chair like it belongs to her—legs crossed in nylon stockings, a pen clenched between her teeth, sharp eyes scanning the project deck on my laptop with the focused quiet of someone who has never once doubted her right to be somewhere. Her hair is twisted up, half-escaping. She has her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing the translucent skin of her inner arms and the blue map of her veins.
She looks like someone who bleeds deadlines, someone who hasn’t slept properly in days and doesn’t particularly care. Someone who belongs exactly where she’s sitting.
Someone who should know better.
Someone I should never have touched.
Her eyes find mine the instant the door clicks shut. The pen slides out from between her teeth slowly. A smile follows—the one that knows too much.
“You’re late,” she says, and makes no move to leave my chair.
“The call ran long.” My voice comes out huskier than I intend. The room feels smaller, the air heavier. “You could have waited outside.”
“And risk someone seeing me loiter by your door?” She rolls her eyes—practiced, unhurried. “Relax, Julian. Half the building’s at lunch.”
The right thing would be to pull her out of my seat.
The professional thing would be to take my laptop back.
The safe thing would be to put the desk between us and keep it there.
My body pulls me forward anyway.
She turns as I stop before her, the fine wool of her trousers whispering against mine—barely a touch, barely anything. The guilt comes first, the way it always does. Then the heat, and it burns the guilt into fine, colourless ash.
Three months.
Three months of this. Three months of her hands finding mine in the dark, of waking up with her perfume clinging to my collar, of her touch slowly, methodically, erasing the memory of the gold band on my finger.
“I updated the timelines,” she says, turning the laptop toward me. Her voice is crisp, professional. “We need to cut either the client review or the comps next week, or we’ll miss the deadline. Your call.”
I should be looking at the screen.
Instead, I’m looking at her mouth. My hand finds the back of the chair without asking permission, my body already leaning over hers, already closing the distance before my conscience can catch up. The screen glows silver between us. Full of tasks. Deadlines. Things that matter.
I can’t look at any of it.
“Julian.” Briana’s voice drops—that low, familiar warning she’s never once followed through on. Her chin tilts up, her piercing eyes steady on mine. “Door’s not locked.”
“Fuck it,” I murmur.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t look away. Just holds the moment open between us like a dare she already knows I will take.
What I find in her eyes isn’t warmth, softness, or anything that can be mistaken for it.
It’s hunger. The same stripped, unashamed hunger she brings to a negotiation, to a closing, to every room she walks into with the expectation of a win. It doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t offer any tenderness in return. It’s the part of her that looks at me—married, meant to know better—and doesn’t hesitate.
The part of her that found the worst part of me, and called it home.
When her mouth finds mine, there is no guilt.
There is no wife, just a phantom, a shapeless memory evaporating into mist, a stranger whose name is gone before I can reach for it. No marriage of five years, no promises made in a damp church while her small hands shook in mine. No vows. No text waiting on my phone about dinner.
