All Chapters of I Slept With My Best Friend's Son: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

79 Chapters

Chapter Twenty One:Don't Fight It

I broke the silence first. "You said you weren't coming back tonight." "I know what I said." "So why are you here?" He set his bag down on the floor by the doorway. Slow. Deliberate. Like a man clearing his hands for something. He crossed the kitchen. "Evan —" He kissed me. No warning. No buildup. One moment he was walking toward me and the next his hand was at my jaw and his mouth was on mine and the counter was solid behind me and there was nowhere to go and honestly — honestly — I did not immediately try to find somewhere. Because it was nothing like I had spent two weeks pretending I hadn't been thinking about. It was quieter than that. More certain. His mouth was steady and warm and he kissed me the way he did everything else — without rushing, without performing, like he had thought about this and decided and was now simply doing it, and the hand at my jaw was gentle in a way that made something in my chest come completely undone. I kissed him back. God help me, I kiss

Chapter Twenty Two:Anniversary

"You're too young for me." I said it clearly. No hesitation. Looking directly at him so he understood this was not a deflection or a redirect or another version of me avoiding the question. This was my answer. "That's what this is," I said. "That's the whole of it. You're nineteen years old and I'm thirty-eight and there is no version of this that makes sense. Not in this house, not outside of it, not anywhere." He looked at me. "Prove it," he said. "What?" "Prove you don't want me." Simple. Level. Like he was asking me to confirm an address. "Evan, I just told you —" "You told me I was too young. You didn't tell me you don't want me." He tilted his head slightly. "Because you can't. Can you." I opened my mouth. He stepped forward and kissed me again. And God — I fought it. I want to be clear about that. I put both hands on his chest and I kept them there and I turned my head and I said his name with the full weight of everything I meant behind it. I fought it with the part

Chapter Twenty Three:Midnight

I didn't tell him to leave the kitchen. That was as much as I gave him. No warmth, no conversation, no acknowledgment that the last two days of silence had been anything other than normal. I handed him tasks and he did them without commentary and we moved around each other in that kitchen like two people who had learned the geography of a shared space and were using it carefully. He cracked the eggs without breaking the yolks. I noticed that and said nothing about it. The cake went into the oven. I set the timer. While it baked I put together a proper dinner — the kind I had not made in a while, more than one course, the good plates that Evan had found on the first try the night Rhett walked in and stood at the head of the table like he had always planned to. I set three places. Evan looked at the third setting and looked at me and said nothing. Smart of him. --- The cake came out even. I iced it simply — white, no decoration, the way I had always made it before I stopped maki

Chapter Twenty Four:Rhett's Car

I don't remember exactly when it shifted from the kitchen to somewhere else. I remember the table. The cake stand still on it. His hands and the way everything I had been holding for six years came loose all at once like a knot that had been pulled too tight for too long. I remember the hallway. I remember my bedroom door. After that I stopped taking notes. --- The alarm went off at six forty-five. I reached for my phone on instinct and silenced it and lay there for a moment looking at the ceiling. The room was bright with early light and quiet in the specific way rooms are quiet when they have recently held more than one person and now only hold one. I turned my head. His side — I was already calling it his side, which was a problem I would deal with later — was empty. Pillow slightly displaced. The sheet pulled back with the neatness of someone who had gotten up carefully and not wanted to wake anyone. He was gone. I lay there for a moment longer than I needed to. Not with r

Chapter Twenty Five:Don't You Dare

Evan took one step back. "Stay," I said. Quietly. Not looking at him. My eyes were on the car door opening and Rhett stepping out in yesterday's suit with his jacket over his arm and the particular look on his face of a man who had not slept and was not in a mood to manage himself. "Nicole —" "Stay where you are." Evan stopped moving. Rhett saw us. He stood beside his car and took in the full picture — me in the blazer I had changed into, Evan one step behind me, both of us on the threshold of his building at eight in the morning going somewhere that was clearly not work — and something moved across his face that started as surprise and became something considerably darker by the time it finished. He walked toward us. Slowly. The deliberate pace of a man choosing not to run because running would mean he had lost something and he was not ready to admit that yet. He stopped at the bottom of the steps. "Where are you going?" he said. "Out," I said. "With him." "With Evan. Ye

Chapter Twenty Six:Do It Again

Rhett laughed. Not a real laugh. The short, hard kind that meant he had decided something was beneath him. He looked at my phone and then at me and shook his head like I had said something almost impressive in its stupidity. "You're not calling anyone," he said. I called. He watched me do it. Watched my thumb move and my phone go to my ear and my eyes stay on his face the entire time, and something shifted in his expression when the line connected and I started speaking — calm, clear, the address, what had happened, yes I would like someone to come — the shift of a man who had miscalculated and was only now understanding by how much. "You think this is smart?" he said when I lowered the phone. "Calling the police on your own husband?" "I think it's accurate," I said. "You assaulted someone on this property. That's what happened. I reported it." "I will not forget this Nicole." "Add it to the list." He took a step toward me. "You have no idea what you just started." "I have a

Chapter Twenty Seven:Old Enough

"It's never happening again." I said it the way I said things I meant — straight across the table, no softening, no room for a second interpretation. "It was a mistake the first time. Both times. And it won't be a third time." Evan looked at me. "I don't believe that," he said. "You don't have to believe it. It's still true." "Which part? That it was a mistake or that it won't happen again?" "Both." He tilted his head slightly. "If it was a mistake you wouldn't have let it happen twice." "People repeat mistakes. That's practically the definition of one." "Nicole —" "It was a mistake, Evan." I kept my eyes level and my voice flat and my hands still on the table. "I was alone on my anniversary and I was angry and I made a choice I should not have made. That's the whole story." He said nothing. "I don't have feelings for you," I said. "Not the kind you're implying. You're staying in my house. I've been — there's been proximity and tension and a difficult week and it happened.

Chapter Twenty Eight:Glass

He leaned in. I pulled back. "Don't." He stopped. Close enough that I could see the exact moment he read my face and understood that this was different from the other times I had said stop — different from the corridor and the living room and the kitchen. Those times I had meant it and then not meant it. This time I meant it and my face said so and he saw the difference. He sat back. "I'm sorry," he said. Quietly. No argument attached. No question underneath it trying to reopen the door. Just sorry. I turned back to the road. --- The drive home was the quietest twenty minutes I had spent in recent memory and I had spent a lot of quiet twenty minutes in this marriage. Not uncomfortable exactly. More like two people who had run out of the version of conversation that was safe and were sitting with the version that wasn't and choosing, for the length of a car journey, not to open it. I drove. He looked out the window. I kept my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel and m

chapter Twenty Nine: His Name From The Living Room

Afterwards the room was quiet. The kind of quiet that has weight to it. That sits on your chest and asks you questions you are not ready to answer. I lay there for a moment staring at the ceiling and let the quiet ask them anyway. My husband was in police custody. I had called the police on my husband this morning and he was sitting somewhere being processed and I was in our bedroom with his wife's best friend's son and we had just — twice now. Twice in the same week. And I had spent the entire day telling myself and him and anyone who would listen inside my own head that it was not going to happen again and here I was on the other side of it again looking at the ceiling of the room I shared with Rhett Anderson. I sat up. Evan was beside me, not quite relaxed, watching me the way he watched me when he knew something was coming. "This was a mistake," I said. "Nicole —" "I just had my husband arrested." I said it plainly. Out loud. The full sentence. "He is in a police station r

Chapter Thirty:Vase

Evan moved fast. The moment we hit the bottom of the stairs and Rhett's eyes went to me I felt Evan peel off to the left — one smooth movement, no noise, using the angle of the staircase wall as cover. By the time Rhett's gaze shifted right he was gone. The study door clicked shut quietly. Rhett looked back at me. "You had me arrested," he said. "You assaulted someone on our property." I kept my voice even and walked past him toward the kitchen. "Would you like water? You look like you need water." He followed me. "You called the police on your own husband." Each word landing separately. Deliberately. "Do you have any idea what that does to my reputation? To the IPO? Do you have any idea —" "You hit someone, Rhett." "He is a boy living in my house —" "He is a guest in my house." I turned around. "There is a difference." He crossed the kitchen in four steps and the argument that followed was not clean or quiet or the kind that resolves itself. It was six years of everything th

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