Overcome

The second his back met the plaster the heat in me curdled.

All of it - Constance’s fingers, the bite still throbbing on my breast, the way I’d dropped to my knees like some eager little slut for the man who’d already broken us - rose up sour and black. I stared at Ben’s flushed face, at the wet shine still on his cock, at the dazed, grateful look in his eyes, and something ugly cracked open behind my ribs.

“You absolute bastard,” I said, voice low and shaking. “You think this fixes anything?”

His mouth opened. I didn’t let him speak.

“You fucked some student in our bed while I was still bleeding from the baby we lost. You let me find you. You dragged us across the country to this rotting house like a change of scenery would make me forget the way you looked at her. And now - what? I put my mouth on you in the dark and suddenly we’re healed?” I laughed, sharp and humorless. The sound scraped my throat. “You’re still the same selfish prick. You just got off. That’s all this was. Another transaction. Another way for you to take what you want and leave me holding the mess.”

Ben’s face tightened. Shame, anger, the beginning of that careful psychiatrist voice he used when he thought I was being irrational. I hated him for it.

“Viv, that’s not…”

“Don’t.” I shoved his chest harder, pinning him. My nightgown hung open; I didn’t care. The wetness between my thighs felt like evidence now, not pleasure. “Don’t you dare analyze me. Don’t tell me the house is doing something to us or that we’re both broken or any of the soft shit you’ve been practicing upstairs. You cheated. You destroyed what we had. And I just got on my knees for you like none of it mattered. That makes me sick. You make me sick.”

My voice cracked on the last word. Tears burned but didn’t fall. The bitterness was too thick for crying. I could still taste him. I wanted to spit it out onto the floorboards.

Ben’s hands came up, tentative, like he might touch my shoulders. I slapped them away.

“Stay the fuck away from me tonight. Sleep in your precious office. Jerk off to whatever fantasy you’re building about us starting over. But don’t touch me. Don’t look at me like I’m going to forgive you just because I was weak for five minutes in the dark.”

I stepped back, yanking the nightgown closed with trembling fingers. The house watched, silent, neither approving nor condemning. Only waiting.

Ben stayed against the wall, pants still around his thighs, expression wrecked. For once he had nothing clinical to say.

I turned and walked out of the music room without looking back, the taste of him and Constance and my own self-loathing thick on my tongue. The stairs felt steeper than they had an hour ago. Behind me I heard him finally move - soft, defeated sounds of clothing being pulled up - but I didn’t stop.

In the bedroom I locked the door.

The sheets still smelled like the distance between us. I lay down on my side, staring at the dark ceiling, the mark on my breast pulsing in time with the anger that refused to cool.

Somewhere in the house a floorboard creaked.

I closed my eyes and dared it to come closer.