Chapter 2

Laurel's POV

The transition from Professor Leonard to Laurel the wife always felt like stepping off a cliff.

By 4:30 p.m., my lectures on behavioral adaptation were finished. I had spent the day standing tall at the podium, my five-foot-eleven frame wrapped in a structured camel-hair blazer that Amanda had insisted made me look "untouchable." On campus, I was a force. Students listened; colleagues deferred.

But the moment my voice or key-card sometimes turned in the lock of the penthouse door, the armor evaporated.

The apartment was unnervingly loud with the sound of movement, I walked into the master bedroom and froze.

Two expensive travelling bags lay open on the king-sized bed. Leonard was moving between the walk-in closet and the mattress with practiced, efficient speed, tossing silk ties and pressed shirts into the luggage.

"Leonard?" I closed the door behind me, my briefcase slipping from my fingers to the hardwood floor. "What's going on?"

"I have a flight in an hour," he said, not looking up as he folded a charcoal suit jacket. "A situation came up with the logistics acquisition in Chicago, I’ll be gone for three days."

"Three days?" My voice sounded smaller than I wanted it to. "You didn't mention this morning that you'd be leaving."

"It was a sudden development," he replied, his tone as sterile as a corporate email. He zipped the first bag with a sharp, definitive snap.

I stood there, watching his large, capable hands move.

The rejection from this morning was still a fresh bruise on my soul, but looking at him now, so commanding, so physical, the familiar, desperate hunger flared back to life in my lower abdomen. It was an ache I couldn't quiet, a biological dependency on a man who had ghosted his own marriage.

Stepping closer, I tried to bridge the ocean between us. I reached out, my fingers trembling slightly as I pressed my palm flat against his chest, right over his heartbeat, I could feel the heat of his body through his crisp white shirt.

"Leonard, please," I whispered, leaning into him, letting my hourglass frame brush against his.

I hated how much I was begging with my eyes, but I couldn't stop. "Don't go yet. Or... let me come with you, we haven't spent an evening together in…"

Leonard stopped packing, he didn't wrap his arms around me, instead, his hands came up to wrap around my wrists, firmly but coldly peeling my touch away from his chest. He stepped back, breaking the contact entirely.

"Laurel, stop, I'm tired," he muttered, turning back to his suitcase. "I've been in back-to-back board meetings all day, and I don't have the energy for this right now."

Something snapped inside me. The dam that had held back two years of absolute deprivation simply gave way.

"Tired?" The word burst from my throat, a ragged, ugly sound. "You're tired, Leonard? Is that the excuse we're using today?"

He paused, his shoulders stiffening, but he didn't turn around. "I don't have time for a scene."

"It has been a year and six months!" I shouted, the volume of my own voice startling me, vibrating against the high ceilings of our pristine prison. "Eighteen months since we lost our son, since you have looked at me as a woman, since you have touched me. Do not dare stand there and tell me you are just ‘tired’."

Leonard finally turned around, his six-foot-three frame towering over me, his jaw clenched into a hard, dangerous line. "That is enough, Laurel."

"No, it isn't enough!" Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, hot and furious, but I refused to let them fall. I took a step toward him, forcing him to look at the hunger and the wreck he had made of me.

"You are punishing me. You have weaponized a tragedy to freeze me out of my own life. Why? Why are you doing this to me? I lost a son too, Leonard! My body broke, my heart broke, and your response was to leave me to rot in this bed alone!"

"I said, that is enough," he hissed, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly quiet, venomous register. His eyes flashed with a cold fire. "You want to talk about what we lost? You want to talk about responsibility? I am doing what I have to do to keep this family afloat while you indulge in your hysterics, I have a plane to catch."

He grabbed his bags, his large frame brushing past me so roughly his shoulder clipped mine.

He didn't look back, didn't apologize, a moment later, the heavy front door of the penthouse clicked shut, leaving me standing in the center of the room.

The silence that followed wasn't just quiet; it was deafening, It clawed at my skin.

A heavy, burning wave of pure, unadulterated frustration coiled deep in my belly. My skin felt too tight.

The rejection hadn't killed my desire; it had mutated it into something angry, violent, and desperate. I was forty years old, at the absolute peak of my womanhood, and I was starving.

I couldn't stay in our bedroom, the scent of his cologne still lingered in the air, a cruel mockery of what I couldn't have.

Moving like a woman possessed, I walked down the long hallway to the isolated guest room at the very back of the apartment. I locked the door behind me, the click of the deadbolt sounding like a declaration of war.

The guest bed was cold and unmade, I didn't care. I stripped off my camel-hair blazer, threw it to the floor, and tore at the buttons of my blouse until I was sitting in nothing but my black lace bra and underwear.

My breath was coming in short, ragged gasps.

I pulled out my phone, my fingers flying across the screen with a practiced, shameful familiarity.

I opened a hidden browser tab, searching for something raw, something heavy with explicit, overwhelming desire, scenes of women being held tightly, consumed, and devoured by men who couldn't keep their hands off them.

The audio filled the quiet guest room. The heavy breathing, the friction of skin against skin, the low moans of a woman being thoroughly wanted.

Closing my eyes, I arched my back against the mattress and slid my hand down past the waistband of my underwear. My fingers were shaking, but as soon as I touched myself, a soft, pathetic sob escaped my lips.

I closed my eyes and forced Leonard's face out of my mind. Instead, I let myself dissolve into the rhythm of the video, imagining hands that didn't reject me, hands that found my five-foot-eleven frame intoxicating instead of exhausting.

I moved softly, chasing the heat, desperate to ease the burning ache that Leonard had left inside me. Every stroke was a rebellion. Every quiet gasp into the empty room was a reminder to myself that I was still alive, still capable of feeling, even if I had to find my salvation in the dark, completely alone.

The friction of my own touch became a blurred, desperate rhythm, pushing me closer and closer to the edge. My breath caught in my throat, a ragged sob dissolving into a low moan as the tension coiled tight and finally broke, a sharp wave of relief crashing through my body. I let out a long, trembling exhale, my hand falling limp against the sheets as the explicit audio from the phone beside me continued to echo in the quiet room.

For a few minutes, I just lay there in the dim light of the guest room, staring at the ceiling, my chest heaving. The burning desire was managed, replaced by a hollow, familiar ache. It was a temporary band-aid on a bullet wound, a reminder of how deeply starved I truly was.

Slowly, I reached out to close the browser tab, desperate to wipe away the evidence of my loneliness.

But before my finger could touch the screen, the video abruptly cut out.

The screen turned black, replaced by a flashing incoming call screen that lit up my face in the dark room. The sudden, loud vibration of the phone rattled against the nightstand, making my heart leap violently into my throat.

My breath hitched.

It wasn't Leonard's name on the caller ID. It wasn't Lilibeth's, or even Amanda's.

It was an unknown number, but as the phone continued to ring, a strange, prickling sensation washed over my skin. I stared at the flashing digits, a sudden, inexplicable wave of nervousness tight in my chest as I slowly reached out to pick it up.