For Lucy

We rediscover each other and every inch of the bed, every position like it must be reclaimed.

I love hovering above her while she writhes beneath me, moaning my name.

I love when she rolls on top of me, her hair cascading down her back and over her breasts while she moves at her own pace.

And I love when she traps her lip between her teeth and crawls up my body, holding my gaze to hers until she’s straddling my face. And while I don’t want to think about Josh or him having sex with my wife, I know in my gut that she never did this with him.

It’s Tatum at her most uninhibited, at her most vulnerable. It’s something she only does with me because we have spent years in this bed feeding each other’s fantasies and building what I now know, without a doubt, is a truly unbreakable trust—an unbreakable bond.

“Emmett …” She grips the headboard and watches me, her mouth agape, her eyelids heavy.

“I love you,” I say with my lips pressed to her inner thigh on one side. Then I angle my face against her other leg and kiss along that thigh. “I’ve always loved you.”

With a new round of unshed tears pooling in her eyes, she nods. “I love you too. Always …”

When my tongue slides against her, she arches her back and she grips the headboard tighter. I’m sure there’s a special place in hell for us, but I’ll deal with that when I’m dead. Right now, I’m alive … so very much alive.

By the time we’re nothing but two limp bodies tangled in the sheets and with each other, I start to see the blinding light of reality cutting through our dark little bubble. She’s supposed to marry Josh in two weeks. Lucy could come home any minute. Is this cheating? Can this kind of intimacy with my wife be wrong?

“If you don’t tell Josh, I’m telling him,” I murmur in her ear from our weird, legs-tangled version of spooning.

“I’ll tell him,” she whispers.

“Tell. Not confess. Right?”

“What’s the difference?” she asks.

“You confessed the s’mores in the garage, and apparently you confessed to a little bit of what happened the day of the Royals game. But then you agreed to marry him. So … I don’t like your version of confession. I’d rather you just tell him very matter-of-factly.”

“You want me to tell him we had sex? Are you going to tell your new friend that we had sex?”

“Sure. She’s imaginary, so I can basically tell her now. ‘Hey, random woman, we can’t have sex anymore. Okay? Great. Good talk.’”

Tatum elbows her way out of my hold and jackknives to sitting. “Are you kidding me? You’d better be kidding. And it’s not funny. Not one bit. You had Lucy lie to me?”

I reach for her waist, and she bats my hand away. “No. I didn’t have Lucy lie for me. She did it on her own. I just found out about it.”

“Bullshit.” Tatum untangles herself from the sheets and jumps out of bed, but before she can take one single step, I swing my legs over the edge and hook her waist with my arm.

“It’s not bullshit.”

“Let go of me!”

“I will not.” I lift her off her feet and carry her to the kitchen.

“Emmett! Goddammit, let go of me.”

Retrieving my phone from the table next to my dinner, I turn and haul her back to the bedroom, shutting the door behind me and tossing her onto the bed. She skitters to sitting and pulls the covers over her chest like my confession has banned me from seeing her naked body.

“Before I show you this, I need you to tell me why this woman, imaginary or not, means anything beyond being a catalyst that brought you to your senses?”

With her signature pouty face and hair an absolute fucked-up mess, she glares at me. “I won’t be lied to.”

“I didn’t lie to you. Lucy did. I may have played it a little bit because I had to know why you were so enraged at the idea of me being with another woman when your wedding is in two weeks. And I knew it wasn’t because of the idea of Lucy being in the house.”

“Emmett …” My name is a warning.

“I’ll show you the messages after you tell me that you love me.”

“Emmett …” She tightens her grip on the sheets she’s holding over her breasts.

I sit on the end of the bed with my back to her. “My love for you has never wavered. Not for a second. And I wasn’t going to stop you from marrying Josh because I love you. Because I care more about your happiness than my own. I know I promised to love our children more, but my love for you has always been so tightly interwoven with my love for them that loving them more just simply means loving you more.”