It sucks.
It feels like I’m dying.
I pinch the little cheek of the baby in my hand. Jasper. He gurgles, his tiny fingers wrapping around my thumb. The little girl beside me jumps up and down, her sneakers squeaking on the polished floor. “Daddy, daddy, look! I’m a kangaroo!”
“I see you, Evie.” My voice is a low, measured thing. A calm surface over a dead sea.
Jasper gently twists the wedding band on my finger. The gold is warm from my skin. I sigh. The sound is swallowed by the chaos of the living room—a nice room, in a nice house, with a fucking chandelier Maya picked out during a manic, sober week two years ago.
Maya’s running in a tight circle, trying to corner Evelyn. Her long red hair is a wild banner, her freckles stark against her pale, flushed skin. She groans, a sound of genuine annoyance. “Evelyn Grace, I swear to god—”
Evelyn, five years old and fearless, darts past her mother’s grasping hands and skids to a halt beside my chair. She presses herself against my leg, grinning up at Maya with triumphant, devilish blue eyes. “Can’t catch me!”
Maya reaches for her. Her hand brushes my forearm as she grabs Evelyn’s shoulder.
I almost flinch.
My arm hurts.
She’d smashed a plate against it earlier, when Evelyn was at school and Jasper was sleeping. A white ceramic dinner plate, one of the set. She’d been furious about something—a missed call, a tone in my voice, the existential horror of a Tuesday afternoon. The impact wasn’t loud. It was a dense, sickening thud against the muscle. She’d looked at the shattered pieces on the floor, then at the red welt already rising on my skin, and her face had gone blank. Empty. She’d walked away without a word.
I sigh again, smiling down at Evelyn. “Alright, kangaroo. Time to listen to Mom.”
“But Daddy—”
“Now, Evie.”
My smile is a gentle, practiced lie. Jasper coos in my arms. Everything is normal. The sun slants through the big window onto the clean carpet. The clock on the wall ticks. A perfect, terrible diorama.
It’s not normal.
She didn’t get better. I didn’t get better. We got worse.
Married worse.
Maya hauls Evelyn up, settling the squirming girl on her hip. Her eyes meet mine over our daughter’s head. They’re the same pretty, devastating blue. They hold no apology for the plate. No recognition of the bruise she knows is there. They just… look. Assessing. Like I’m a piece of furniture that might be out of place.
“Bath time,” Maya announces, her voice bright and brittle. “Then stories. Say goodnight to Daddy.”
Evelyn blows me a dramatic kiss. Maya turns and carries her down the hall. The sounds of their retreat—Evelyn’s giggles, Maya’s forced, playful scolding—fade into the distance.
Silence descends, thick and heavy. Jasper’s weight is a warm, solid anchor in my lap. He’s chewing on his own fist, his crystal-white eyes, a mirror of mine, starting to droop. The wedding ring feels like a shackle. I run a hand through my hair, the curls tangling around my fingers. The movement pulls at the ache in my arm. A sharp, clean pain.
I should put the baby to bed. I should clean the kitchen. I should do a hundred things.
I just sit.
The house is too quiet. I can hear the hum of the refrigerator. The tap of a branch against the window. In this silence, the memory of that morning on her apartment floor rushes back, not as a fantasy, but as a symptom. The slow, grinding rhythm of her hips. The possessive gleam in her eyes as she stared down at me, marking me, reclaiming me. The drug-haze and the shame-haze blending into one thick syrup I’m still drowning in.
That was the addiction talking. This… this is the marriage. The hangover that never ends.
Footsteps pad back down the hall. She appears in the doorway, leaning against the frame. She’s shed the bright mom-energy like a costume. Her shoulders slump. Her gaze is tired, sharp, and entirely focused on me.
“He asleep?” she asks, nodding at Jasper.
“Nearly.”
She walks over, her movements fluid and athletic. She doesn’t take the baby. She sinks to her knees on the carpet in front of my chair, resting her elbows on my thighs. She looks up at me. This close, I can see the faint traces of old mascara under her lashes, the delicate spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Devastating beauty. A pain I can’t escape.
Her hand comes up. Her fingers, cool and precise, find the hem of my t-shirt sleeve. She pushes it up, slowly, revealing the ugly, swollen bruise on my forearm. It’s a riot of red and purple, the shape of a plate’s edge unmistakable.
She doesn’t speak. She leans forward and presses her lips to the center of the bruise. Not a kiss of apology. A kiss of ownership. Her mouth is soft, warm. The pressure sends a fresh, bright bolt of pain through the muscle, followed by a deep, confusing thrum of heat.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe.
She pulls back just enough to look at her work. Her tongue darts out, wetting her bottom lip. “Hurts?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Her hand slides from my arm, across my stomach. Her palm is flat and hot through the thin cotton of my shirt. She looks at Jasper, now fully asleep against my chest, his breath coming in soft puffs. “Put him down,” she whispers. It’s not a suggestion.
I stand, careful not to jostle the baby. I carry him to the bassinet in the corner of the living room, settling him down, tucking the blanket around his tiny form. My back is to her. I can feel her watching me. The silence is a live wire.
When I turn, she’s still on her knees. But she’s taken her shirt off. It’s discarded on the carpet beside her. She’s wearing only a simple black bra, her pale skin glowing in the evening light. Her red curls cascade over her shoulders. She looks like a fallen angel. A mean, beautiful, crazy angel.
“Come here,” she says. Her voice is low. It’s the voice from the apartment. The voice that owns me.
I walk back to the chair. I don’t sit. I stand in front of her.
Her hands go to the button of my jeans. Her fingers work it open, then the zipper. The sound is obscenely loud. She doesn’t look up at my face. She looks at what she’s uncovering. She pulls the denim and my boxers down just enough, freeing me.
I’m already hard. Of course I am. It’s a Pavlovian response to her, to this toxicity, to the way her nails scrape lightly against my hip bones. Shame coils in my gut, hot and familiar. It doesn’t matter.
She wraps a hand around the base of my cock. Her touch is firm, knowing. She studies me, her head tilted. I’m fully erect, aching, the tip already wet. Her thumb smears the bead of moisture, spreading it. “You always get like this,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “After I hurt you.”
She doesn’t wait for a reply. She leans in.
Her mouth is a revelation of heat and wetness. She takes me in slowly, her lips stretching, her tongue flattening against the underside. A low groan tears from my throat. My hand finds her hair, fisting in the red curls. Not to guide her. Just to hold on.
She works me with a devastating, unhurried focus. This is not foreplay. This is a ritual. Her tongue traces the thick vein, probes the slit, swirls around the head. She takes me deeper, until I feel the back of her throat, and then she pulls back, her cheeks hollowed, with a soft, wet pop. She does it again. And again. The rhythm is slow, deep, relentless. The sound of it—the slick, intimate noise of her mouth on me—fills the quiet living room.
My knees feel weak. My other hand grips the back of the chair. I look down at her. Her blue eyes are open, watching me watch her. There’s a challenge in them. A dare. This is her addiction, and she’s forcing me to feed it. To be it.
“Maya,” I breathe. It’s a warning. A plea.
She releases me with a final, lingering lick. A string of saliva connects her lips to my cock for a second before it breaks. She sits back on her heels, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her chest rises and falls. “I know,” she says. Her voice is rough. “I know it hurts.”
She gets to her feet. She’s so close I can feel the heat radiating from her skin. Her hands go to the clasp of her bra. It falls away. Then she pushes her jeans and underwear down her thighs, stepping out of them. She’s bare before me, in the middle of our nice living room, with our children asleep down the hall.
She reaches for me. Her hand wraps around mine, the one still tangled in her hair, and she pulls it down. She presses my palm against the thatch of red curls between her legs. She’s soaking wet. Slick heat coats my fingers instantly. She grinds against my hand, a slow, desperate circle, her eyes locked on mine.
“It hurts me too,” she whispers, and for a fraction of a second, her face cracks. The mean girl vanishes. All I see is the lost, terrified eighteen-year-old who just wants to be held. Then it’s gone, sealed behind a wall of need. “So fuck me. Make it stop hurting.”
She turns, bending over the arm of the plush chair. She presents herself to me, arching her back. The freckles dust the backs of her thighs. She looks over her shoulder, her hair a messy curtain. “Do it.”
I step forward. My hands settle on her hips, my thumbs pressing into the bruises I gave her a lifetime ago on a dirty apartment floor. The old marks beneath the new. I guide myself to her entrance. The head of my cock nudges against her, slipping easily through her wetness.
She gasps. Her fingers claw into the upholstery.
I push inside.
The fit is perfect, familiar, and devastating. She’s so tight, so hot, so willing. She takes every inch, a low, broken moan escaping her as I sink in to the hilt. I stop, buried fully inside her, my body pressed against the back of her thighs. We’re both trembling.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. We’re just joined. Connected in the worst, most necessary way. I can feel her heart pounding, or maybe it’s mine. The clock ticks. The baby sighs in his sleep.
This is it. This is the marriage. This is the addiction. Not the frantic, drugged fucking of before, but this slow, sober ruin. This is the wave of pain, and we’re both going to drown in it.
Her hand reaches back, groping blindly until it finds my thigh. Her nails dig in. “Move,” she begs, her voice shattered. “Please, Leo. Move.”