The Breaking Point

The apartment felt smaller with him in it.

I sat on my couch, pretending to read a book I'd already forgotten the title of, listening to the sound of water running through pipes. Jamie was in the shower. In my shower. Using my soap, my towels, standing where I stood every morning.

The water stopped.

My fingers tightened on the pages.

Footsteps crossed the hallway. A door opened, then closed. Silence settled again, but it was the wrong kind—the kind that pressed against your ribs and made you count your own heartbeats.

I gave up on the book and went to the kitchen. Poured myself a glass of wine I didn't want. Poured another. Set it on the counter for him, then immediately second-guessed myself and poured it back into the bottle.

Too familiar. Too inviting.

Behind me, floorboards creaked.

"Can't sleep either?"

I turned. Jamie stood in the kitchen doorway wearing dark sweatpants and a white t-shirt that clung to his chest in ways his expensive suits never did. His hair was still damp, pushed back from his face. No armor now. No corporate polish.

Just a man who looked as wrecked as I felt.

"I don't usually go to bed this early," I said, my voice steadier than my hands.

"What do you usually do?"

"Work. Study. Pretend I have my life together."

His mouth curved, almost a smile. "How's that working out?"

"About as well as you'd expect."

He moved into the kitchen, and the space between us evaporated. Three feet. Maybe less. Close enough that I could see the water droplets still clinging to his neck, the shadow of stubble along his jaw.

"You shouldn't have let me stay here," he said.

"You shouldn't have asked."

"I know." His eyes traced my face like he was memorizing it. "But I did anyway."

The refrigerator hummed. Outside, a car alarm wailed and died. The world kept turning, indifferent to the way my pulse was trying to claw out of my throat.

"Why?" I asked.

"Why what?"

"Why did you really come here? Hotels aren't that hard to find."

Jamie's shoulders tensed, and for a moment I thought he'd lie. Thought he'd give me some polite excuse we could both hide behind.

"Because I haven't stopped thinking about you since that dinner," he said, his voice raw. "And I needed to know if I imagined it."

"Imagined what?"

"The way you looked at me when Aiden wasn't watching." He took a step closer, and my back hit the counter. "The way your breath caught when I touched your hand. The way you didn't delete my texts."

Heat flooded my face. "You don't know that."

"Don't I?"

I had no answer. No defense.

"This is wrong," I whispered.

"I know."

"He's your son."

"I know."

"So why are we still standing here?"

Jamie reached past me, his arm brushing mine, and picked up the wine bottle I'd left open. He poured two glasses with steady hands, passed one to me.

"Because some mistakes," he said quietly, "you make with your eyes open."

We drank in silence. The wine tasted like burnt decisions and copper pennies sharp and wrong and impossible to swallow without consequences.

"Tell me about him," Jamie said.

I blinked. "About Aiden?"

"Tell me why you love my son."

The question felt like a trap. Like no matter how I answered, I'd be confessing something I couldn't take back.

"He's kind," I said carefully. "Thoughtful. He makes me laugh."

"That's what you tell people at parties."

"What do you want me to say?"

"The truth." Jamie's eyes pinned me in place. "Do you love him, or do you love the idea of him?"

My chest tightened. "That's not fair."

"No," he agreed. "It's not."

He set his glass down, and I watched the way his fingers gripped the stem—controlled, deliberate, like he was holding onto something more fragile than glass.

"He worships you," Jamie said. "Talks about you constantly. Shows me pictures like you're some prize he won." His jaw worked. "And I hate him for it."

The words landed between us like stones in still water.

"You don't mean that," I said.

"I do." Jamie looked at me, and there was nothing cold about his eyes now. They were furnaces. "I hate that he gets to touch you. That he gets to hear you laugh, wake up to your voice, fall asleep knowing you're his." He exhaled through his teeth. "And I hate myself for feeling that way."

My heart was a drum, a war beat, something ancient and reckless pounding against bone.

"You should go to bed," I managed.

"Should I?"

"Yes."

"Will you sleep if I do?"

No. Not even close.

Jamie stepped back, giving me space I didn't want. "Goodnight, Lilith."

He turned to leave, and something inside me snapped.

"Wait."

He stopped, his back to me, shoulders rigid.

"I don't love the idea of him," I said. "I love who he is. He's good and decent and everything I should want."

"But?"

The word hung in the air, patient and merciless.

"But when you look at me," I whispered, "I forget how to breathe."

Jamie turned around slowly, and the expression on his face was a wildfire barely contained.

"Say that again."

"You heard me."

"I want to hear it again."

My hands trembled. "When you look at me, I forget how to breathe."

He crossed the kitchen in three strides, and suddenly his hands were on my face, tilting my head back, his thumbs pressing into my cheeks like he was trying to hold me together.

"Tell me to stop," he said, his voice hoarse.

"I can't."

"Tell me this is a mistake."

"It is."

"Then tell me to walk away."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

Nothing came out.

Jamie made a sound low in his throat , something between a curse and a prayer and then his mouth was on mine.

The kiss wasn't gentle. Wasn't sweet or tentative or any of the soft things kisses were supposed to be. It was hunger and fury and six months of watching his son touch me when all he wanted was this.

I kissed him back just as hard.

My hands fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer, needing him closer, and he responded by lifting me onto the counter. His body pressed between my knees, solid and warm and impossible to resist.

This was wrong. This was unforgivable.

I didn't care.

Jamie's hands slid into my hair, angling my head, deepening the kiss until I couldn't tell where I ended and he began. He tasted like wine and want and the kind of ruin you welcomed.

When he finally pulled back, we were both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together, my fingers still twisted in his shirt.

"We can't," I gasped.

"I know."

"Aiden....."

"I know."

But neither of us moved.

Jamie's thumb traced my bottom lip, his eyes following the motion like it was the most important thing in the world.

"Say the word," he murmured, "and I'll go back to that room. We'll pretend this never happened. Tomorrow I'll leave, and we'll never speak of it again."

"And if I don't say it?"

His hand curved around the back of my neck, possessive and sure. "Then I'm carrying you to your bed, and I'm not leaving it until morning."

Every rational thought I had left screamed at me to say the word. To end this before it destroyed everything. To think about Aiden, about consequences, about the life I'd built that was about to crumble.

But when I looked at Jamie really looked at him I didn't see Aiden's father. Didn't see a mistake or a moral failing or a sin I'd regret.

I saw a man who looked at me like I was oxygen, and he'd been drowning for years.

"Lilith." My name was a warning, a plea, a last chance to turn back.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him closer.

"Don't go."

Something in his expression cracked. Relief, maybe. Or resignation. The look of a man who'd been fighting a losing battle and had finally surrendered.

He kissed me again, slower this time, thorough, like he had all night to memorize the taste of me. His hands mapped my body—my waist, my hips, the curve of my spine—touching me like he was learning a language he'd only ever read about.

"Bedroom?" he asked against my mouth.

"Down the hall. Last door."

Jamie lifted me off the counter like I weighed nothing, my legs still wrapped around him, and carried me through the apartment. We kissed the entire way messy, desperate kisses that tasted like mistakes neither of us would take back.

He kicked my bedroom door open, crossed to the bed, and laid me down carefully, like I was something precious. Something worth breaking for.

The lamplight cast shadows across his face as he stood over me, his chest rising and falling with harsh breaths.

"Last chance," he said roughly. "Tell me to stop, and I will."

I reached up and pulled him down to me.

"Don't stop."

Jamie's control snapped.

His mouth found mine again, hungrier now, his hands sliding under my shirt, mapping bare skin. I arched into his touch, gasping, and he swallowed the sound with another bruising kiss.

Clothes disappeared, his shirt, mine, fabric hitting the floor in whispers. His hands were everywhere, learning me, claiming me, erasing every touch that had come before his.

"You're so damn beautiful," he muttered against my collarbone, his voice wrecked. "I've thought about this every night since I met you."

"Jamie...."

"Say it again."

"Jamie."

He groaned, his mouth trailing lower, and I stopped thinking entirely.

Time became meaningless. There was only heat and hands and the feeling of being consumed. Jamie touched me like he'd been starving, like I was the first meal after a lifetime of hunger.

And when he finally moved inside me, when our bodies found their rhythm, when everything else fell away except the two of us tangled together in sheets that smelled like lavender and lies—

I knew there was no going back from this.

We'd crossed a line that didn't have an eraser.

...............

Later, when our breathing had steadied and reality began creeping back in, Jamie pulled me against his chest. His fingers traced lazy patterns on my shoulder, and I let myself pretend this was normal. That we were normal.

"I should feel guilty," I whispered.

"But you don't."

"No." I tilted my head to look at him. "Should I?"

"Probably."

"Do you?"

Jamie was quiet for a long moment, his hand still moving across my skin.

"No," he said finally. "And that's what scares me."

I understood. Because lying there in his arms, I didn't feel guilty either. Didn't feel wrong or sinful or ashamed.

I felt right.

And that was the most dangerous thing of all.

My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Once. Twice. Three times.

I didn't look at it.

Didn't need to.

I already knew who it was.