Chapter 3
I reached his office building near midnight and told myself I was only checking whether he was alive.
The truth was less generous.
Part of me wanted to see evidence of his suffering. I wanted proof that I possessed the same power over him that he had always held over me.
The satisfaction I felt when the doorman confirmed that he had been living at the office disturbed me.
I had become a woman who found pleasure in another person’s pain.
That woman had been created the moment I discovered him with someone else and learned that love could be used as a weapon.
Inside the elevator, mirrored walls reflected a person harder and sharper than the one who entered the building months earlier.
I wore black, a fitted dress ending high above my knees, the perfume he loved, and heels selected to emphasize every line of my body.
If I was returning to the site of my humiliation, I intended to resemble every fantasy he had lost the right to touch.
Dark instrumental music played from his office.
He stood at the window holding whiskey, wearing suit trousers and an unbuttoned shirt. His tie was gone.
Even from behind, exhaustion was visible. He had lost weight, and the fabric no longer rested properly across his body.
“I said I did not want to be disturbed,” he said without turning.
“Since when have I obeyed your orders?”
He spun around quickly enough to spill some of the drink.
His expression contained shock, hunger, and desperate hope.
He tried to recover his control, but his hands trembled.
“You are here.”
It sounded like a prayer and a curse.
I entered farther, heels striking the wood.
“I heard you were destroying yourself. I came to determine whether the reports were true.”
He laughed bitterly.
“You are concerned now. How generous.”
The old edge had returned—the man who took rather than pleaded.
That version was easier for me to confront.
“Not concerned. Curious.”
I approached until I could see the dark circles beneath his eyes and the stubble across his jaw.
He looked ruined.
Part of me found it beautiful.
He placed the glass on the desk where I had discovered him with her.
The memory should have forced me to leave.
Instead, it created a desire to reclaim the room, to erase her from every surface.
“Why are you truly here?” he asked.
His voice became lower and more dangerous as he tried to reestablish control.
“Perhaps I missed you. Perhaps I wanted to determine whether your decline was genuine or designed to make me feel guilty.”
Anger crossed his face.
“You think I am performing?”
He indicated the condition of his body and clothing.
“I lost 15 pounds. I sleep approximately 2 hours each night. I cannot concentrate on anything except where you are, who is beside you, and whether you allow them to touch you.”
His honesty was deliberate, a weapon aimed at my defenses.
I moved closer rather than retreating.
“Good. I want you to suffer. I want you awake at night imagining me with someone else, exactly as I imagined you with her.”
His jaw tightened.
“Are you sleeping with the artist? That harmless man who paints you as though you are something precious?”
The jealousy in his voice created heat inside me.
“Would it matter? You no longer possess the right to object.”
He invaded the remaining space.
“I will always be jealous. I will always want to kill a man who touches you. That does not disappear because I failed you.”
We stood inches apart, surrounded by the electricity that had always existed between us.
“You do not own me.”
“I never owned you. You are not something capable of being owned.”
His voice broke slightly.
“But you were mine, and I was yours. I destroyed that, and I will regret it throughout the rest of my life.”
He lifted a hand toward my face and stopped before making contact.
I saw the need in him and enjoyed his struggle more than I wanted to admit.
“You want to touch me.”
“More than I want to breathe.”
I moved close enough for our mouths nearly to meet.
“Too bad.”
I began withdrawing.
His control ended.
He caught my hair and kissed me with desperate force.
I should have pushed him away. Instead, months of hunger overpowered reason, and I answered with equal anger and need.
The kiss held nothing of what existed before. It was made from teeth, rage, and the desire we had both suppressed.
His other hand tightened around my waist and drew me against him. I bit his lip until I tasted blood.
He responded as though pain from me was another form of pleasure.
His hands moved across me with frantic urgency, trying to recover every part of what he had lost at once.
I drove him backward until he struck the desk.
The same desk remained beneath us, carrying the memory of the other woman.
I pressed against him, moved my hand down his chest and lower, and felt his breath change.
“You miss this. You miss me. You miss having me.”
“Every second of every day.”
“You possessed all of this and chose someone else.”
“The greatest mistake of my life.”
For the 1st time, I heard him plead.
“Please.”
The word gave me an intoxicating sense of power.
I kissed him again, more slowly, allowing myself to remember the feeling of being consumed by him.
His hands became gentle around my face.
That tenderness nearly erased the reason I had come.
I stepped away.
Confusion and panic moved through him.
“Do not leave.”
I repaired my dress and hair.
“I came to see whether you were suffering. You are.”
I looked at him.
“That should satisfy me. Instead, it only makes me tired.”
He reached forward, and I moved farther away.
“I am tired of the game, tired of hurting you, and tired of injuring myself. But I am not prepared to forgive, forget, or trust that this will not happen again when the next opportunity appears.”
He looked destroyed.
“What do you want? Tell me how to repair this, and I will move heaven and earth.”
“I want change proven through time rather than language or grand gestures.”
I held his eyes.
“I need consistency. I need you to choose me every day, including the difficult days and the moments when easier options exist.”
May you like
“I can do that.”
“We will see.”
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