Kiss me 2.1

ClaraThe sky is low, heavy like my tired eyelids. A fine rain traces gray veins on the windows of the French door, blurring the view of the impeccably manicured garden that I myself planted over the years. Every flowerbed, every bush has a story. Hours spent digging, watering, shaping… to make this house a cocoon. My cocoon.Nothing is left to chance here. Not the cushions rigorously aligned on the pearl-gray sofa, not the white linen curtains I wash every fortnight, not even the scent of cinnamon and smoked wood lingering in the air since I relit the candle near the fireplace. Everything here speaks of me. Of us. At least, that's what I believed.I glance at the wall clock. 6:47 PM. Éric is late. Again. The little second hand seems to dance with a mocking grin. I've stopped asking him questions. I know the answers: "a meeting that ran late," "the ring road was jammed," "a colleague in trouble." Always something. Always a reason. And yet… this slow drift between us, I feel it, like y

ÉricI can't sleep.The silence in the bedroom is almost oppressive. You hear nothing, except Clara's steady breathing, lying beside me. Or maybe she's pretending. Clara has this way of retreating without a sound, of slipping away without shouting, but her absence is felt like a silent slap. The sheet between us becomes a wall. An invisible frontier. A barrier I haven't crossed for weeks. Since her.Jade.Always her.She haunts me. In my insomnia, in the corridors of my mind, in every vacant space of my body that Clara no longer touches. She's there, like a persistent echo. I close my eyes, and it's not memories of my marriage that come back. It's hers. Her laughs, her hands, her voice deep, slightly husky, that grain in her intonations that drills into my memory.I let her in, worse: I called her.And it all started eight months ago.In Lyon.A legal conference like so many others. Three days of flat presentations, unreadable PowerPoints, limp discussions on case law. I came out of o

ÉricIt's almost four in the morning when I leave the hotel.The corridor is silent, covered in thick carpet, muffling my steps as if even the place was ashamed of me. The elevator descends slowly, too slowly. My reflection in the metal panels sends back a troubled image: red eyes, crumpled shirt, mouth marked by another's kisses. With a swipe of my sleeve, I try to erase what I've become. Pointless.The city sleeps.Lyon stretches in a spectral calm. The rare cars cross my path without stopping. The shop windows are dark. The trees tremble softly in the night wind. Dead leaves slide on the sidewalk like confessions you try to flee.I walk fast, hands in pockets, coat collar turned up. Not to warm myself. To hide.I didn't take a taxi. I don't want to go home too fast. I want to feel my legs burn, my heart pound under my ribs. I want to deserve some of the pain I should feel. But everything is confused. What I feel is something else. A damp torpor, a tension between shame and desire.

ÉricI knew it would happen.I knew it from the moment I left her, five days earlier, still trembling, still marked by her. It wasn't a flight, nor a deliverance. It was only a reprieve.Since then, everything has lost its taste.Coffee.Conversations, Clara's skin.Even the daylight.I wandered through my daily life like a ghost, promising myself I would hold on. But I was already lying. I was lying to everyone. Especially to myself.And last night, I cracked.Two words sent without thinking:"Where are you?"The answer fell like a guillotine blade."Still within reach of a mistake."Then an address.A discreet hotel, almost hidden in an anonymous alley, two metro stops from my place.Room 608.I didn't reply.I didn't confirm.And yet, tonight, I'm here.In front of this door.My hand suspended.My breath suspended.The world suspended.I knock. Once. Twice.And the door opens.She didn't ask any questions.More beautiful than in my memories.But it's not her beauty that overwhelms

ÉricI stayed on my knees for a long time, even after she had drawn back, even after she had disappeared into the bathroom again. The floor is cold, my back is tense, my thighs burn. But I didn't move.Because in that moment, something inside me gave way. A thread. A line.A thought that I was still clinging to an illusion of control.It's over.Jade doesn't just take me.She penetrates me. She devours me. She dissolves me until I am nothing but an echo of a man, a reflection in her eyes, a breath hanging on her lips.Until tonight, there was still a part of me that resisted. Tiny. Stubborn. A voice that said: You can pull back. You can end this.But it has fallen silent. It is dead. Erased by the touch of her fingernails, by the bite of her silence, by that gaze that never wavers.When she returns, she's wearing a black silk robe, her hair casually pinned up, a few strands falling at her temples as if she were sculpted from defiance.She walks barefoot across the carpet, calm, poised