The door clicks shut behind me and I'm already counting the seconds before the lock settles, before I'm caught. The living room is dim, one lamp burning low, and the air is thick with stale takeout and Ethan's cologne — familiar, safe, wrong. He's on the couch, phone in hand, the blue glow washing his face in a pale mask. His head lifts when I step in, and there's a beat where I see him register me — bare feet, tank top, the flush I can't scrub off my skin.

"Hey," he says, and it's soft, almost sleepy. He stands, phone slipping into his pocket, and crosses the room in three strides. His arms find me before I can brace, pulling me into a kiss that's gentler than I deserve.

His tongue sweeps in like he's searching for something. Like he can taste the night on me — Derek's sweat, Derek's cum, Derek's claim. I kiss him back, mouth moving on autopilot, and my body goes rigid when his hand slides down to my hip.

Right over the bruise.

I flinch. It's small, barely a twitch, but he feels it. His mouth pulls back, brow furrowing, and his eyes scan my face like he's reading a document he doesn't understand.

"You okay?" He asks it like he's checking a box, like he's already moving past it. "Where've you been? I thought you were at your sister's."

My sister's name is already on his lips, waiting for me to catch it. "Yeah," I say. "Just... lost track of time."

He nods, accepting it without a fight, and my stomach twists. He's so easy to lie to. He's so easy, period. His hands find my waist again, thumbs rubbing circles through the thin cotton of my tank top, and I feel his body shift toward me — the familiar weight of him, the familiar rhythm of his desire.

"I missed you," he murmurs, and his mouth finds my neck, lips trailing down the column of my throat. I tilt my head back on reflex, but all I can feel is the ghost of Derek's teeth, the ache of his bite marks hidden beneath my clothes.

"Ethan—" I start, but I don't know how to finish it. I don't know what I'd even say.

His hand slides lower, fingers curling into the waistband of my shorts, and I feel his erection press against my thigh. It's familiar, this — the way he pulls me toward the couch, the way he's already unbuttoning his jeans with one hand while the other keeps me close. It's a checklist, a routine, a habit he's never once thought to break.

And I let him. Because I don't know how to say no to something I used to want. Because saying no would mean explaining the why, and I can't explain the why without telling him everything.

He lays me back on the couch, the leather cool against my bare skin, and I watch him hover over me, his face soft with that familiar, half-present tenderness. "You're so beautiful," he says, and it sounds rehearsed, even though I know he means it. He always means it. That's the worst part.

His mouth finds my collarbone, hands pushing my tank top up, and I close my eyes and let my body go where it's wanted. But my mind is somewhere else entirely — in a storage room behind a garage, on a bus, in the back row where a stranger's hand covered my mouth and his cock filled me until I couldn't breathe.

Ethan's fingers find the edge of my underwear, and I feel myself go dry. I feel my body close up like a door swinging shut, and I know — I know — that when he pushes inside me, I'll be tight and tense and he'll think it's just fatigue, just the late hour, just another night where he fucks me like I'm a task on his to-do list.

His hand pauses. "You're tense," he says, pulling back to look at me. There's a flicker of something in his eyes — concern, maybe, or just confusion. "You want to just... sleep?"

And I should say yes. I should say yes and roll over and let him hold me and pretend the night never happened. But the words that come out of my mouth are not the ones I planned.

"No," I hear myself say. "No, I want you."

It's a lie. It's the truest thing I've said all night. I want someone — I want Derek — and Ethan is the only one here. So I pull him down and let him take what I'm offering, and I close my eyes and pretend his hands are rougher, his grip harder, his scent oil and sweat instead of fabric softener and stale cologne.

He pushes inside me, and I'm dry enough that it burns, but I don't make a sound. I just lie there, his weight on top of me, his breath in my ear, and I count the seconds until it's over — until he collapses with a soft grunt and rolls off me, spent and satisfied, oblivious to the fact that I didn't feel a thing.

"I love you," he says, his voice already thick with sleep.

I stare at the ceiling and feel Derek's cum drying on my thighs, feel the ghost of his fingers on my hip, feel his scent still clinging to my skin like a promise.

"I know," I whisper, and it's the closest I can get to the truth.

I slip off the couch before Ethan's breathing evens out, my bare feet finding the cold hallway tile. The bathroom door clicks shut behind me, and I lean against it, pressing my palms flat against the wood like I can hold myself together. The mirror catches me — flushed cheeks, lips still swollen from the kiss I didn't feel, the thin strap of my tank top slipping off one shoulder. My fingers find the bruise on my hip, pressing down until I feel the dull ache radiate through me.

Derek's mark. Claimed. Mine.

I lock the door and drop onto the toilet lid, then slide to the floor, the cool tile against my bare thighs. I should feel guilty. Minutes ago Ethan was inside me and I felt nothing but the burn of being dry and the impossible weight of pretending. Minutes ago I said "I know" when he whispered love like it meant nothing. And now I'm hiding in this bathroom with my face sore from faking too many smiles, sure that any second I'll start crying.

Instead, my own hand slides up my thigh. Slow, like it's not mine anymore. Like it belongs to someone else.

The first touch traces the outline of the bruise — Derek's fingers on my hip, that exact shape. I bite my lip and slide my hand up my skin, over my inner thigh, and when I touch the edge of my underwear, I'm shocked. Wet. Somehow, despite everything, I'm soaked dripping down past the fold, soaked through the thin cotton. Ethan touched me earlier and my body closed like a door, and now I think of a grease-stained voice and I'm this ready. I'm this wet.

The thought shouldn't turn me on. It does. It makes me burn.

I slip my underwear aside. Two of my fingers find my clit, slippery and aching, and they start circling fast until smaller, softer moans catch in my throat when I get it right. There's no hesitation in him — no tenderness meant as for-me. Derek's hands raw, inside me, a darkness I begged for while pretending I merely allowed it.

My fingers move faster, circling that aching spot until my hips lift off the tile, chasing the pressure. The bathroom light hums above me, and I can almost hear Derek's voice — low, rough, that gravel tone that made my knees weak in the storage room. *Say my name where it matters.* I bite down on my lip hard enough to taste copper, and my other hand grips the edge of the bathtub, knuckles white.

The first wave hits me like a punch, and I have to clamp my thighs shut to keep from crying out. But I don't stop. I push through it, fingers slipping in my own wetness, and I imagine it's his hand between my legs instead. His calloused fingers. His grease-stained knuckles. The way he looked at me like I was something he'd been starving for.

"Derek," I whisper into the empty bathroom, and my body clenches around nothing.

I press deeper, two fingers sliding inside myself, and I'm so wet that they go in easy. I curl them the way I like, the way Ethan never quite manages, and I think about the bus. The way his hand clamped over my mouth. The way he didn't ask, didn't wait, just took what he wanted like I was already his.

The second wave builds faster, and I shove the heel of my palm against my clit, grinding down as my fingers pump into me. I'm making sounds now, small, desperate whimpers that I can't swallow fast enough, and I don't care. I don't care if Ethan hears. Let him hear. Let him wonder what his girlfriend does in the bathroom at midnight with her fingers buried inside herself and another man's name on her lips.

I want it to be Derek. I want his hands on me, his weight pinning me down, his cock filling me the way it did in that storage room. I want to feel him come inside me again, that hot flood of him claiming what he said was his.

My thighs start to shake, and I know I'm close. I pull my fingers out and press them flat against my clit, rubbing in tight, fast circles, and I let myself fall into it. I let myself think about his mouth on my neck, his teeth on my shoulder, the way he said *mine* like it was a promise and a threat all at once.

It hits me so hard I see white. My back arches off the tile, and I bite down on my own fist to muffle the sound that tears out of me. My whole body clenches and releases in waves, and I'm grinding against my own hand like I'm trying to get something I can't reach. Something that isn't here.

I ride it out, trembling, until the last aftershock fades and I slump against the cold bathtub, breathing hard. My hand is slick between my legs, and I can smell myself on my fingers — musky, wet, familiar. But underneath it, I swear I can still smell him. Motor oil. Sweat. That something else I can't name.

I sit there for a long moment, my heart hammering, my skin flushed and damp. The bathroom light hums. The floor is cold against my bare thighs. And somewhere in the other room, Ethan sleeps, oblivious to the fact that his girlfriend just came on her own fingers thinking about another man.

I should feel guilty. I should feel something other than this hollow ache that's already starting to build again, this hunger that won't be satisfied by my own hand.

I bring my fingers to my nose, and the scent is there — faint, but there. Derek. I close my eyes and breathe it in, and I swear I can feel his hands on me again, rough and certain.

I don't want to wash it off. I want to keep it.

I stand up on shaky legs and reach for the shower knob, but I don't turn it on. Instead, I catch my reflection in the mirror — flushed cheeks, swollen lips, the bruise on my hip dark against my pale skin. I trace it with my fingertip, pressing until it aches, and I smile. It's not a nice smile. It's the smile of someone who's found something she didn't know she was looking for.

I pull my underwear back up, feeling the wetness soak through the cotton, and I unlock the bathroom door. The hallway is dark, and I can hear Ethan's soft snores from the bedroom. I don't go to him. I pad into the kitchen instead, my bare feet silent on the tile, and I look out the window at the street below.

Vance Auto is just a dark shape on the corner, the garage doors shut, the sign dim. But I know he's in there. I can feel him, like a thread pulling taut between us, and I know — I know — that tomorrow I'll get on that bus again. Same time. Same stop. And this time, I won't pretend I'm just going to my sister's.

The buzz cuts through the kitchen's stillness like a needle through silk. I freeze with my hand halfway to the faucet, and for a second I tell myself it's Ethan's alarm, his phone, anything but mine. But the glow on the counter belongs to my phone—screen lit, face-up, waiting.

I don't want to look. I'm already looking.

One word, unsaved number, no name. *Mine.*

My heart slams against my ribs so hard I feel it in my throat. The kitchen tilts around me—the humming refrigerator, the hollow tick of the clock, the dark window where Vance Auto sits like a held breath at the corner.

He knows my number. He knows my name, my routine, what time I take the bus and which row I sit in. Of course he knows this too. He's been watching me for two years—he told me that in that storage room, told me like it was a gift, like it was the most natural thing in the world to know my shape from a distance.

My thumb hovers over the screen. The word glows up at me, simple, absolute, a brand pressed into the dark.

And I feel him—the weight of him, like he's standing right behind me in this kitchen, grease under his nails, that lazy confidence rolling off him in waves. I can almost smell it, the motor oil, the sweat, that something else I've been chasing since the bus. I can almost feel his hands on my hips, his breath at my ear, that low voice telling me I'm *his.*

I type a reply, fast and stupid, before I can think better of it.

*You're not here.*

My finger hovers over send, and I read it again. The words look wrong—petulant, childlike, a door I'm trying to shut that was never really closed. He didn't ask a question. He didn't invite conversation. *Mine* isn't a message. It's a claim, a reminder, a hound slipping under the fence to lie down at my feet.

I delete it.

I type again. My fingers move like someone else's is doing the thinking—the part of me that gets on buses at 8:40 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the part that let a stranger take her with a hand over her mouth and came moments later in a storage room behind a garage.

*Tomorrow. Same time.*

I read it twice. Three times. My thumb hovers over send, white-knuckled, and I can hear his voice in my head, rough and certain, telling me I'm doing the right thing by betraying myself—*say my name where it matters.* This isn't a text. This is a test. A promise that routes straight up my spine and settles between my legs.

The screen glares at me, and the word *Mine* sits there like an unopened door—waiting for me to decide if I'm walking through or walking away.

But the thing is, my body already decided hours ago, on a couch with Ethan on top of me and my eyes closed to turn his hands into someone else's. It decided days ago, on a bus, when a stranger's hand clamped over my mouth and my hips rose to meet him before my mind could catch up.

I send it.

The little whoosh sound is tiny, swallowed by the dark kitchen, but it lands in my chest like a heartbeat. Sent. The message leaves my phone, crosses that impossible dark between the fourth-floor window and the dim shape of Vance Auto on the corner, and I think—I swear I can feel him receive it, like a wire pulled taut that just tightened around my throat—and my lungs fill on something deeper than air.

I wait.

The silence hums. The clock ticks. Refrigerator chugging its low motor. I hold the phone in both hands now, watching that dark screen like it's a living creature, coiled and patient.

The three dots appear. A breath, a full-body held moment where the kitchen abandons me completely.

I don't catch the reply. My thumb moves too slow, and the screen blinks to black—not the reply fading, but the message swallowed, my screen going dark in a way it shouldn't, leaving me with a single word that I had to read standing up in the dark to get.

It starts with laughter, I find myself grinning, that terrible lit smile I gave the mirror earlier. This—waiting for his text like a kid in a lightning storm, holding a phone that's too heavy with meaning—this is more of a life than anything else I've felt in months.

And then the worst part, the naked and stupid truth: I'd forgotten, just for those seconds, to hold my breath.