Chapter 4: Pretending It Didn’t Happen

I put one foot on the bottom step and started climbing. The wood was cool under my bare feet. Every step felt heavier than the last. Upstairs, Sarah moved around, quiet and careful. She thought I was still passed out in the spare room. She had no idea I had spent most of the night listening to the headboard slam and her voice climb higher and higher while Ryan fucked her, or that I had stood in the kitchen doorway this morning and watched her on her knees with his cock in her mouth while she touched herself.

Halfway up I stopped. My cock was half-hard again just from the memory. The clean boxers I had just put on were already damp at the front. I pressed my forehead against the wall and tried to breathe through my nose. Roxie’s voice was still in my head from the call. Be apologetic. Beg her forgiveness for ruining the anniversary. Don’t let her know you know what happened. The videos of Cindy and me. The videos Ryan had taken of Sarah. The whole trap I had walked us into because I had been too weak and too stupid to see it coming.

I forced myself the rest of the way. At the top of the stairs, the bedroom door was open. The smell hit me first—sex, sweat, semen, stronger than I expected even after she had tried to air the room out. Sarah stood by the open window in clean clothes, hair still damp from the shower. She looked small. Tired. Scared. When she saw me, she went still, one hand resting on the edge of the makeup table like she needed the support. She could not look at me; her eyes darted in every direction, but my face and I could see the guilt and pain in her expression. I could tell she was on the verge of falling apart.