He loved Sarah. He adored Sarah. Sarah was his wife. She was the one he wanted to wake up to, the one he wanted to buy a vacation home with, the one who understood his jokes.
Emily? Emily was a drug. Emily was a convenient, high-octane distraction from the stress of work and the routine of marriage. She was available. She was dirty. She let him be selfish.
But he didn't love her. He didn't even really like her.
"It’s just sex," he whispered, more to himself than to Emily. "Why couldn't she just let me explain? I just... I needed to get it out of my system."
"You are unbelievable," Emily scoffed, crossing her arms. "You weren't wearing a condom, Harrison. That’s not 'getting it out of your system.' That’s intimacy."
"That’s stupidity!" Harrison countered. "It was the heatof the moment. It doesn't mean I want to leave my wife for you. It means I wasn't thinking."
He squeezed his eyes shut, picturing Sarah standing in the living room. The shattered glass. The way she had looked at his crotch, then at his face, with that devastating realization.
He felt a surge of indignation. I wasn't leaving her, he told himself firmly. I come home to her every night. I pay the bills. I listen to her stories. This... this thing with Emily, it’s just a separate compartment. It has nothing to do with us. Sarah is blowing this up. She’s throwing away a marriage over friction. Over a physical mistake.
He reached into the center console for his phone. His lock screen was a picture of him and Sarah in Cabo. His stomach twisted.
"What are you doing?" Emily asked, her voice shrill.
"I have to text her. I have to explain that this isn't what she thinks it is."
"She caught you balls deep in her sister, Harrison. I think she knows exactly what it is."
"Shut up!" Harrison roared. "Just shut your mouth. You don't know her. You don't know us."
He tapped out a message, his fingers clumsy.
Sarah, please. You’re misunderstanding everything. It was a mistake. It meant nothing. I love YOU. Please pick up.
He watched the bubbles appear, then disappear. No Read Receipt. She had blocked him. Or she was staring at the phone, hating him.
"Where are we going?" Emily asked, her voice smaller now, sensing the volatility radiating off him. "I can't go back there. And I don't have my wallet."
Harrison stared at the phone, waiting for a reply thatwasn't coming. The reality of the night began to settle on him like a lead blanket. He wasn't sleeping in his bed tonight. He wasn't waking up to the smell of Sarah’s coffee.
He looked at Emily and felt nothing but resentment. She was the wreckage of his life sitting in the passenger seat.
"A motel," Harrison said, his voice dead. "We're going to a motel. And in the morning, you're finding somewhere else to go."
"Harrison—"
"Don't," he cut her off, starting the car. "Just... don't speak to me. I need to figure out how to fix this."
He pulled the car onto the main road, driving away from the only place he wanted to be. He replayed the scene in his head—Sarah’s shattered face—and clung to his delusion like a life raft.
It’s just sex, he thought again, desperate to believe it. We can come back from this. She just needs to understand the difference between a body and a heart. My heart is hers. My body just... wandered.
He truly believed that if he could just make her see the logic, she would forgive him. He had no idea he had already broken something that logic couldn't fix.
Chapter Three
Harrison
The room at the Highway Inn smelled of lemon industrial cleaner and stale cigarette smoke that had seeped into the drywall decades ago. It was a stark, fluorescent-lit purgatory compared to the warm, cedar-and-vanilla scent of the home Harrison had just been exiled from.
He paced the narrow strip of carpet between the two double beds, his phone clutched in his hand like a lifeline.
Message Not Delivered.
