CHAPTER 0018- Mom?

I didn’t know my mom was coming until her car pulled into the driveway.

Chloe and Nate had already left for the party. Elias and I were in the kitchen, the air still thick from everything we hadn’t finished upstairs. One second I was thinking about tonight — about him finally fucking me properly — and the next my mom was knocking on the front door like the universe had a sick sense of humor.

Elias answered it.

I watched from the hallway as they introduced themselves. My mom, late forties, still pretty in that put-together way she always was, hair done, lipstick perfect. She laughed at something he said. The sound of it made my stomach turn. Elias smiled back — the polite version, the one he used with strangers — but his eyes flicked to me over her shoulder for half a second.

“I was in the area,” she told him. “Thought I’d surprise Riley. Hope that’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay. Nothing about this was okay.

We all sat in the living room for twenty minutes. My mom asked about Chloe, about school, about how I was sleeping. Elias answered when the questions drifted toward him. He was charming. Measured. The same man who’d had his fingers inside me that morning now discussing the weather with my mother like he hadn’t been seconds from burying his cock in me.

Eventually my mom stood and said she needed to use the bathroom. Elias pointed her down the hall. The second she disappeared, he looked at me.

“I didn’t know,” he said under his breath.

“I know.”

“Riley—”

The bathroom door opened again before he could finish. My mom came back, smiling, and asked if she could trouble him for a glass of water. Elias nodded and walked into the kitchen. She followed.

I stayed on the couch.

Five minutes passed. Then ten.

I told myself they were just talking. That it was nothing. That the low murmur of their voices in the kitchen didn’t mean anything.

Then it went quiet.

Too quiet.

I stood up. My legs felt unsteady. I walked toward the kitchen and stopped just short of the doorway.

They were against the counter.

My mom’s hands were in his hair. His mouth was on her neck. One of his hands was under her blouse, the other gripping her hip the same way he’d gripped mine a hundred times. She made a soft sound when he kissed her properly — open, hungry, the kind of kiss that wasn’t polite anymore.

I couldn’t move.

Elias turned her around and bent her over the island. The same island he’d fucked me against. I watched him shove her skirt up, yank her underwear to the side, and push into her in one thrust. My mom gasped. Her fingers scrabbled against the marble. He started moving — deep, steady strokes that made her bite her own wrist to stay quiet.

The same rhythm he’d used on me.

The same low sound in his throat.

I stood there in the hallway and watched my best friend’s father fuck my mother on the kitchen counter. Watched the way her body took him. Watched the way his hand reached around to touch her like he already knew how she needed it. She came first, shaking, muffled against her arm. He followed a minute later, buried deep, forehead pressed between her shoulder blades.

Neither of them saw me.

I stepped back before they could.

I walked upstairs on numb legs, went into the guest room, and locked the door. My hands were cold. My chest felt too tight. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall until I heard the front door open and close downstairs — my mom leaving, her car starting, the sound of it fading down the street.

A few minutes later there were footsteps on the stairs.

The doorknob turned. Stopped against the lock.

“Riley.” His voice was quiet. Careful. “Open the door.”

I didn’t move.

“Riley. I know you’re in there.”

Still nothing.

He was silent for a long time. Then I heard him lean against the doorframe.

“It didn’t mean anything,” he said.

I laughed once, sharp and ugly, and didn’t answer.

Eventually his footsteps moved away.

I sat in the dark with my knees pulled up to my chest and the image of them burned behind my eyes — my mother bent over the same counter, taking the same cock, making the same sounds.

The anger sat in my throat like something I couldn’t swallow.

And under it, worse than the anger, was the sick, jealous heat that refused to die.