As expected

The bags go in. Mia’s suitcase. The smaller one. Adam shuts the trunk. They get in the car, Mia in the front, Lana in the back, the airport already behind them, and Adam pulls into ordinary traffic toward home.

For a few minutes no one starts the conversation. The radio is low. Mia talks about the flight. The seat. How she did not sleep. Adam answers. Lana watches the city. Then the thing they came to say finds the space.

They tell her on the way. Not all of it. Not the kitchen counter. Not the shower. Not the ass. Not the last two nights or the tears. They tell her the decision, and they tell it clean.

“We talked this morning,” Lana says. “Before we came to get you. I can’t keep the arrangement. The first and the fifteenth. After the last stretch it isn’t fair. Not to you. Not to me. I don’t want to turn what this was into a schedule I have to survive.”

Adam keeps his eyes on the road. “And the rest of it. Remy. Kyler. Whoever would have been next. We stop. The fantasies had their run. You liked watching. I liked doing it. That’s real. It also had a season. The season’s over. Baby’s coming. We need to get our life back on a normal track. No more girls as furniture. No more sluts. Just us in the house.”

Mia listens. She does not interrupt. She watches the traffic and then looks at him, and at Lana in the mirror. Her hand rests on her stomach without thinking. The surprise, for both of them, is that she does not fight.

“Okay,” she says. “It was good while it lasted. I liked it. I won’t pretend I didn’t. The videos. The control. Remy in the hotel. All of it. But it’s time. Everyone moves on. I have come home. We have a kid to get ready for. Lana gets her own life back instead of living in ours. We stop using people to feed a scene. I’m in. Fully.”

Lana lets out a breath she has been holding since the airport curb. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Mia says. “For running it when I couldn’t. For ending it clean. Both of you.”

The car is quiet after that. A good quiet. Adam’s hand finds Mia’s on the console. She squeezes. Lana looks out the window and lets the ending be simple, the city going by, the arrangement shrinking in the rearview until it is just a thing they did.

They reach the apartment. Unload. Bags in the hall. They end up in the kitchen with coffee, the three of them, morning light ordinary again.

Mia sets her cup down. She reaches across the table and takes Lana’s hand in both of hers. Warm. Steady. Lana does not pull away.