HOUSEWIVES OF MIDDLEBROOKE-3

“You’re staring again.”

Elise blinked, the champagne glass pausing halfway to her lips.

Across the room, Doris didn’t even try to hide her smile.

“I’m not,” Elise said quietly.

“Mm.” Doris tilted her head, watching her the way one studies a bruise…gently, but with interest. “Then why do you look like someone might walk in and read your thoughts off your face?”

Elise forced herself to sip. The bubbles tasted sharp, almost bitter.

The house was loud with laughter, music, the soft clink of expensive glassware. Middlebrooke perfection wrapped in warm lighting and polite conversation, normal, safe and suffocating.

Her gaze drifted anyway…past the familiar wives in silk dresses, past the businessmen already red with drink, past Richard speaking smoothly near the staircase..to the front door.

It was closed and armless. And still her pulse wouldn’t settle.

“You keep expecting him to appear,” Doris murmured.

Elise’s fingers tightened around the stem of the glass. “Don’t.”

“Relax,” Doris said softly. “No one followed you home. No one knows anything. You look more guilty than you are.”

Guilty?

The word felt wrong, too clean and too simple for the heat still coiled low in her body, the memory she hadn’t been able to wash away no matter how long she’d stood under the shower.

She shifted her weight. The fabric of her dress brushed her skin in a way that made her breath catch…subtle, constant, impossible to ignore.

Doris noticed. Of course she did.

“Still thinking about it?” she asked.

Elise didn’t answer.

Doris’s smile deepened, slow and knowing. “You are.”

“Lower your voice.”

“No one’s listening.”

Everyone was listening. That was the problem with places like this…nothing was ever truly private. Every glance meant something. Every whisper traveled.

Elise scanned the room again, her heart beating too fast for someone simply holding a drink at her own party.

Richard laughed at something one of his partners said. He looked confident, controlled and unaware.

A strange, sharp emotion twisted in her chest…something close to resentment, edged with something darker she didn’t want to name.

Fifteen years. Fifteen careful, predictable years and one night had cracked it open.

“You’re different,” Doris said quietly.

Elise let out a slow breath. “Stop analyzing me like I’m one of your hobbies.”

“You are one of my hobbies.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

Elise turned to look at her fully then.

Doris’s expression had softened, the teasing edge gone, replaced by something more observant. Almost protective, almost possessive.

“You can still walk away,” Doris said. “Pretend tonight never happened. Go back to being… comfortable.”

Comfortable. The word felt smaller than it used to.

Like a dress she’d outgrown without noticing.

“And if I don’t want to?” Elise asked.

Doris’s eyes flickered…quick, bright satisfaction. “Then you don’t.”

Simple as that. Except nothing felt simple anymore.

Across the room, Richard’s gaze lifted suddenly.. and landed on her.

Elise’s stomach dropped. For a moment, neither of them moved.

Just distance and noise with too many people between them.

He started toward her, slow and purposeful.

“Smile,” Doris murmured.

Elise did. It was instinct, training. Years of performance settling perfectly onto her face like nothing inside her had changed.

By the time Richard reached them, she looked effortless.

“There you are,” he said warmly, sliding an arm around her waist. “I’ve barely seen my own wife tonight.”

His touch felt… familiar, not unpleasant. Just known, predictable.

Her body reacted out of memory, not desire.

“I’ve been here the whole time,” she said lightly.

“Hmm.” His hand lingered at her hip a second too long, grip subtly tightening…as if confirming she was real, present, still his.

Doris watched the gesture with quiet interest.

“Stealing her for business already?” she teased.

“Always,” Richard replied smoothly. Then, softer to Elise, “Can we talk? Just a minute.”

Something in his tone made her pulse jump.

“Of course.”

Doris’s gaze met hers as Richard guided her away..sharp, curious. Almost warning but Elise ignored it.

They moved toward the hallway, the noise fading slightly with each step until the music became muffled behind walls and polite laughter turned distant.

Richard closed the study door behind them. The click sounded louder than it should have.

Elise’s heartbeat climbed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked carefully.

He didn’t answer right away.

Just looked at her…really looked.

Slow and searching…Like he was trying to solve something that didn’t make sense.

“You’ve been distracted all night,” he said at last.

Her stomach tightened. “It’s a party. I’m allowed to be tired.”

“That’s not it.”

Silence stretched between them, too quiet and too close.

“You seem…” He hesitated, frowning slightly. “Far away.”

The words landed harder than they should have. Because they were true..Just not in the way he thought.

“I’m standing right here,” she said softly.

“I know.” His voice dropped. “That’s what worries me.”

A chill slid down her spine and for one dangerous second, she wondered if he could see it…

the memory still written across her skin, the secret humming under her pulse.

Impossible…he couldn’t. Could he?

“You’re imagining things,” she whispered.

“Am I?”

He stepped closer…not aggressively, not angryly… Just close enough that she could feel the warmth of him, smell the familiar scent of his cologne, the life she’d lived for years wrapped quietly around her.

And suddenly…her mind betrayed her.

Not with Richard’s touch, not his voice.

Blue eyes…A different breath,a different kind of closeness that had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with losing control.

Her pulse spiked and Richard noticed.

His gaze sharpened. “See? That.”

Panic fluttered low in her chest. “You’re reading too much into nothing.”

“Maybe,” he said quietly. “Or maybe something’s changing.”

The room felt smaller, the air thinner, like dangerously thin.

“Nothing’s changing,” she said.

The lie came easier than expected.

He studied her a long moment more…then exhaled slowly, tension leaving his shoulders.

“Alright,” he murmured. “Maybe I’m just tired.”

Relief hit her too fast, too strong.

He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead…gentle, affectionate, painfully familiar.

“Come back to the party,” he said. “Everyone keeps asking for you.”

She nodded..He opened the door and the noise flooded back in. Light, voices and..safety.

Before stepping out, he paused.

“Elise?”

“Yes?”

There was a beat of silence.Then, quietly…

“I don’t want to lose you.”

Her throat tightened…not with guilt…With something far more complicated.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

Another lie.

He smiled, satisfied, and walked back toward the guests.

Elise stayed in the doorway a moment longer, heart pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with her husband’s fear.

Across the room, Doris watched her…And slowly, very slowly…

Doris smiled like she knew something irreversible had already begun.

Elise’s phone vibrated softly in her hand.

Unknown number.

But somehow… she already knew who it was.

Her pulse quickened as the screen lit her face in the dim hallway.

She hesitated only a second…before opening the message.

MISS ME?

Her breath hitched in her throat...

And out in the crowded, respectable glow of Middlebrooke society…

Elise felt the night beginning all over again.