The Things We Do in the Dark

October 12th

I saw him again today.

It’s stupid, really. The way my body reacts. A full-system reboot from a thirty-second interaction in a coffee line. It’s not even about the words. It’s about the space between them.

His name is Leo. He works in the building next to mine, or maybe he just frequents the same overpriced artisan coffee shack I’m addicted to. I don’t know. We’ve never gotten that far. Our entire relationship exists in stolen glances and the electric, wordless negotiation that happens when two people recognize the same wildness in each other.

Today, it was raining. A proper, gloomy downpour that turned the pavement into a black mirror. I was shoved inside the tiny shop, damp and smelling of wet wool, feeling frumpy and decidedly un-sexy. And then the bell above the door chimed, and there he was.

Water plastered his dark hair to his forehead, droplets clinging to the stubble on his jaw. He shook his head like a dog, a small, almost imperceptible spray catching the light, and then his eyes found mine. That’s all it ever takes. One look. It’s a punch to the gut, a sudden, visceral warmth low in my belly.

The line was slow. The air was thick with the scent of espresso and damp clothes. I could feel the heat of him behind me, not touching, but close enough that the space between his chest and my back felt charged, like the moment before a lightning strike. I stared straight ahead at the chalkboard menu like it held the secrets of the universe.

Then, a shift. The lightest brush against the back of my coat. I froze. It could have been an accident. The shop was cramped. But it didn’t pull away. It was the back of his hand, his knuckles, resting gently against the fabric. A deliberate point of contact.

My breath hitched. I’m sure he heard it. The whole world narrowed to that single point of pressure through my wool coat. I could feel the shape of each knuckle, the warmth of his skin seeping through. My heart was a frantic drum against my ribs. Don’t move. Don’t you dare move.

It lasted a lifetime. It lasted three seconds.

The line shuffled forward. His hand fell away, and the cold air rushed into the space he left behind, a cruel substitute. I ordered my latte, my voice a half-octave higher than usual. I didn’t look back.

But as I took my cup, my fingers trembling slightly, he leaned in. Not to me, but to the barista. His voice, low and gravelly from the rain or the morning or maybe just from being him, said, “Large black. Thanks, man.”

It was for the barista, but the words washed over me. I felt them on my skin. I practically fled into the rain, my coffee scalding my hand, my entire body humming.

And now, hours later, sitting in my quiet apartment, I can still feel the ghost of his knuckles against my back. That’s the thing about secret fucks. The best ones haven’t even happened yet. They live in the anticipation, in the space between a look and a touch, in the stories we write for ourselves in the dark.

I don’t know his last name. I don’t know what he does. But I know the weight of his silence. I know the language of his glances. And I know, with a certainty that aches, that we’re not done.

October 20th

It happened.

My hands are still shaking a little as I write this. The ink might smudge. I hope it does. I want the evidence to be messy, real.

It was after work. The sky was that deep, bottomless blue that comes just before black. I’d stayed late to finish a proposal, my brain fuzzy from numbers and screen glare. The office was empty, a ghost ship of rolling chairs and silent monitors. I took the elevator down, the loud hum of its descent the only sound.

I stepped out into the lobby, the marble floor echoing under my heels. And there he was. Leo. Standing by the main doors, looking out at the city lights as if he’d been waiting. As if he’d known.

He turned when he heard my footsteps. His smile was slow, a little crooked. “The coffee was better this morning.”

I stopped a few feet away, my heart doing that familiar, frantic tap dance against my ribs. “The oat milk wasn’t curdled for once,” I replied, my voice surprisingly steady.

He chuckled, a low, soft sound that seemed to vibrate in the empty space between us. “A high bar indeed.”

We just looked at each other. The lobby was vast and silent, a cathedral to corporate emptiness. The security guard was nowhere in sight. It was just us, under the sterile fluorescent lights.

“I live upstairs,” he said, his voice dropping. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. An offering.

I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t think about my unanswered emails, my leftover pasta in the fridge, the logical, sensible reasons to say no. I just nodded. “Okay.”

He didn’t live upstairs. He lived across the street. A modern high-rise with a doorman who nodded at Leo and ignored me completely. The elevator was all mirrors and soft music. We didn’t speak. We stood side-by-side, watching our reflections, the tension so thick I could taste it, metallic and sweet on my tongue.

His apartment was on the 14th floor. It was neat, minimalist. A couch, a large window framing the glittering skyline, a bookshelf. It smelled like him. Like clean laundry, cedar, and that faint, addictive scent of coffee.

The door clicked shut behind us, and the silence became a living thing.

He turned to me. “I don’t usually do this,” he said, his eyes serious.

“Do what?” I whispered. “Bring women up to your silent, terrifyingly clean apartment?”

A real smile broke through then. “Talk this little.”

He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingertips grazed my cheek, and I shuddered. It was such a simple, tender gesture amidst the roaring tension. It undid me.

“Then stop talking,” I said.

And he did.

He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me. It wasn’t gentle or exploratory. It was a claiming. A release of all the weeks of pent-up, silent wanting. His mouth was hot and demanding, and I met him with the same desperate energy. My hands came up, fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer. I could taste the coffee on his tongue, feel the slight scratch of his stubble on my skin.

He walked me backwards until my knees hit the edge of his sofa. We fell into it, a tangle of limbs and frantic hands. My blazer was gone, his suit jacket followed. His mouth left mine, trailing down my neck, nipping at the sensitive skin above my collarbone. A low moan escaped me, echoing in the quiet room.

“I’ve thought about this,” he murmured against my throat, his voice rough. “The sound you’d make.”

“What else?” I breathed, my fingers working at the buttons of his shirt.

“This.” His hand slid up my thigh, under the silk of my skirt. His palm was warm, rough against my skin. “I thought about how you’d feel.”

He found the edge of my underwear, his fingers tracing the lace. I arched into his touch, my head falling back. The city lights swam in my vision. He hooked a finger and pulled, the delicate fabric yielding with a soft tear. I gasped. It was the most erotic sound I’d ever heard.

“Leo…”

“Shhh,” he whispered, his mouth finding mine again. His fingers dipped lower, through my damp curls, and then he was touching me, really touching me. A long, slow stroke that had me seeing stars. I cried out into his mouth, my hips bucking against his hand.

He knew exactly what he was doing. His touch was confident, patient, utterly focused. He watched my face as he touched me, learning me, memorizing the way my breath hitched when his thumb circled a particular spot, the way I whimpered when he slipped a finger inside me.

“You’re so wet,” he groaned, his own control fraying. “All from a look in a coffee shop.”

“All from your knuckles on my back,” I gasped.

His eyes darkened. He withdrew his hand, and I almost sobbed from the loss. But he was just shifting, pulling me up, leading me to the bedroom. It was as sparse as the living room, just a large platform bed with a dark duvet.

He undressed me slowly then, under the ambient light from the window. Each button of my blouse was a tiny agony of anticipation. He pushed the fabric from my shoulders, his eyes drinking me in. He knelt to remove my shoes, my stockings, his hands smoothing up my calves, my thighs. He pressed a kiss to the inside of my knee, and my legs trembled.

When I was naked, he stood and undressed himself. I watched, my mouth dry. He was all lean muscle and smooth skin, a faint trail of dark hair leading down from his navel. He was already hard, and the sight of him, proud and wanting, made a fresh wave of heat flood through me.

He laid me back on the cool duvet and covered my body with his. The weight of him was exquisite. Skin on skin, finally. Every nerve ending was on fire. He kissed me deeply, and I could smell my own scent on his fingers, a primal, intimate perfume.

He reached over to the nightstand, fumbling for a condom. The rustle of foil was loud in the room. I took it from him, my hands steadier than I felt. I sheathed him, my fingers lingering on his length, feeling him pulse under my touch. A low growl rumbled in his chest.

He positioned himself at my entrance, his eyes locked on mine. The playfulness was gone. What was left was raw, stark need.

“Look at me,” he said, his voice strained. “I want to see you.”

And then he pushed inside me.

It was a slow, inexorable slide that stole the air from my lungs. I was so ready for him, so achingly open, but he was… a lot. He filled me completely, stretching me in a way that was just on the right side of pain. A broken sob escaped my lips.

He stilled, buried deep, his forehead pressed to mine. “Okay?” he breathed, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding back.

I nodded, unable to speak. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him closer, taking him deeper. The feeling shifted, the sharpness melting into a overwhelming, full sensation. “More,” I whispered. “Please.”

That was all he needed. He began to move, a slow, rolling rhythm that was utterly devastating. Each stroke was deliberate, deep, hitting a place inside me that made my toes curl. My nails dug into his back. The only sounds were our ragged breathing, the soft, wet slide of our bodies joining, the distant hum of the city fourteen stories below.

It felt less like fucking and more like a conversation we should have started weeks ago. A dialogue of gasps and moans and the language of skin. He would change his angle, and I would gasp. I would clench around him, and he would groan, a deep, guttural sound that vibrated through my entire body.

“Look at me,” he said again, and I forced my eyes open. His gaze was intense, unwavering. He was seeing all of me—the want, the vulnerability, the raw, unvarnished need. It was terrifying. It was the most turned on I’d ever been.

The coil of pleasure in my belly tightened, spiraling out of control. I was close, so close, teetering on the edge.

“Come for me,” he commanded, his voice thick with lust. “I want to feel you let go.”

His words, the possession in them, tipped me over. The orgasm ripped through me, violent and beautiful. I shattered around him, my back arching off the bed, a silent scream on my lips as waves of pure, electric pleasure coursed through me. He held me through it, his rhythm stuttering as my contractions milked him.

He followed me over the edge only moments later, his own release tearing a ragged cry from his throat. He collapsed on top of me, his weight a comforting anchor, his breath hot against my neck.

We lay like that for a long time, wrapped up in each other, sweat-slicked and boneless. The city lights twinkled outside, indifferent.

Eventually, he shifted, disposing of the condom before coming back to bed. He didn’t speak. He just pulled the duvet over us and drew me into his side, my head on his chest. I could hear the steady, slowing beat of his heart under my ear.

No words. It was our thing. And in that silence, curled against him, I felt a strange sense of peace. This wasn’t a beginning. It wasn’t an ending. It was just a moment, stolen from the universe, perfect in its completeness.

I must have fallen asleep. I woke up hours later, disoriented. The digital clock on his bedside table glowed 2:17 AM. He was asleep, his arm still slung over my waist, his breathing deep and even.

I slipped out from under his arm. He stirred but didn’t wake. I dressed in the dark, my clothes feeling like a costume from another life. I didn’t leave a note. What would it say? Thanks for the best fuck of my life? See you at the coffee shop?

I let myself out, the door clicking shut with a finality that echoed in the empty hallway. The elevator ride down was solitary. The doorman was gone. The street was quiet.

I walked home in the cool night air, the memory of his hands, his mouth, his body inside mine, playing on a loop. My skin still smelled like him.

October 21st

I went to the coffee shop this morning. My hands were steady. My voice was calm.

He was there. Of course he was.

Our eyes met. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. There was a new knowledge in his gaze. A secret.

The line was long. When I got to the front, the barista told me my order was already paid for. I looked at my cup. Scrawled on the side, next to my name, in a messy, masculine hand, was a room number. And a time.

I didn’t look back. I walked to my office, the warm cup in my hand, a different kind of heat spreading through me.

The best secret fucks aren’t one-time things. They’re a language. A rhythm. A story you keep writing, one stolen chapter at a time.

And I’ve never been much of a reader. I prefer to write.

October 28th

I’ve been trying to write this for days. The words wouldn’t come. They felt too big, too clumsy, too… definitive. How do you describe the moment the floor disappears from under you, not from passion, but from pure, unadulterated panic? How do you confess that the most electrifying connection of your life might have been a catastrophic mistake?

The room number was for The Weston, the stupidly chic boutique hotel two blocks from my office. 811. 8 PM.

I spent the entire day in a state of suspended animation. My computer screen was a blur of meaningless data. My coffee tasted like static. My skin was still a live wire from the memory of him, a low, constant hum of anticipation. This was our pattern now. A week of exquisite tension, a night of shattering release, a morning of silent acknowledgment over coffee. It was perfect. It was everything I’d written in this diary and more.

I showed up at 8:02, my heart hammering a drum solo against my ribs. I’d worn the black dress. The one that feels like a second skin, that dips just low enough in the back to be a promise. I didn’t knock. The door was unlocked.

The room was all dark wood and mood lighting, a cityscape of glittering lights framing the window. He was standing by the minibar, pouring a glass of whiskey. He looked up when I entered, and the look in his eyes… God. It was heat and hunger and a possessiveness that made my knees weak. It was the look I’d been replaying in my head for a week.

He didn’t speak. He never did, not at first. He just crossed the room in three long strides, took my face in his hands, and kissed me. It was deeper, more desperate than before. The whiskey on his tongue was smoky and sharp. This felt different. More intense. The silent agreement felt like it was cracking under the weight of whatever this was becoming.

We fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and tearing fabric. My dress was up around my waist, his belt buckle was cold against my thigh. It was faster, rougher than before. A week of deprivation making us frantic. There was an edge to it, a raw need that went beyond physical. I was drowning in it, in him.

He fumbled for his wallet, for the foil packet. I heard the tear, the rustle. The light was low, a single lamp casting long, dancing shadows. He was above me, his body a familiar, welcome weight. I was so ready for him, aching with it. I guided him to me, my head thrown back, my eyes closed, lost in the sensation of his first, world-altering thrust.

And that’s when it happened.

A sound. Not from him. Not from me.

From the bathroom.

The distinct, unmistakeable click of a door unlocking.

Leo froze. His entire body went rigid inside me. His eyes, which had been shut in concentration, flew open. They were wide. Not with pleasure. With pure, unadulterated horror.

The bathroom door swung open.

A woman stood there, backlit by the harsh fluorescent light. She was tall, willowy, dressed in a sleek hotel robe. Her hair was perfectly styled. And she was holding a phone, pointed directly at us.

My brain short-circuited. It refused to process the image. This was a dream. A nightmare. A sick, twisted joke.

“Ellie?” The name was a breath, a shattered piece of glass from Leo’s lips. He didn’t say it to me. He said it to her.

The woman—Ellie—lowered the phone, a slow, cruel smile spreading across her face. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Surprise, baby,” she said, her voice cold and smooth as ice. “I thought I’d come home early from my conference. Imagine my surprise when the front desk told me my husband had checked in.”

Husband.

The word didn’t compute. It was a foreign language. It was a bullet.

I shoved at Leo’s chest, scrambling out from under him, pulling the sheet up to my chin like a pathetic shield. The room, which had felt so sensual moments before, was now a crime scene. I was naked. He was exposed. She was the judge, jury, and executioner.

“Leo,” I choked out, my voice barely a whisper. “What is this?”

He didn’t look at me. He was staring at his wife, his face a mask of panic and guilt. “Ellie, Jesus, it’s not what it looks like.”

She let out a sharp, bitter laugh that cut through the room. “It looks like your dick is inside another woman in a hotel room I paid for with our joint account. What’s the version where it’s not that?”

I felt the world tilt. The hum of the minibar was deafening. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to disappear. I looked at Leo, really looked at him—the man whose silent glances I’d romanticized, whose touch I’d worshipped, whose body I knew better than my own. A stranger.

“You’re married?” The question was pathetic. Obvious.

He finally looked at me, and the shame in his eyes was the most confirming, devastating answer of all. “I was going to tell you,” he whispered, but it was hollow. A lie stacked on top of a mountain of lies.

Ellie took a step forward, her eyes raking over me with a look of utter contempt. “Let me guess. The coffee shop? The strong, silent routine? The ‘my place is being painted’ excuse?” She shook her head, a pitying look on her face that was worse than her anger. “He’s not mysterious, sweetheart. He’s a cheater. And you’re not the first.”

Each word was a lash. I felt stripped bare, humiliated in a way that went so far beyond physical nakedness. The entire beautiful, secret narrative I’d built—the stolen glances, the electric touches, the passionate nights—crumbled to dust, revealing the ugly, cliché truth beneath. I wasn’t a protagonist in a sensual novel. I was a side character in a tawdry affair. A secret fuck, indeed.

I moved. I don’t remember deciding to. My body just acted. I stumbled out of the bed, clutching the sheet, grabbing my dress from the floor where it lay, a puddle of black shame. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely pull it on.

“Wait,” Leo said, starting to get up.

“Don’t,” his wife and I said in unison. Our eyes met for a second—a flash of shared, furious understanding of the man in the bed—before her gaze turned back to stone.

I didn’t look back. I wrenched the door open and fled into the brightly lit hallway. I didn’t take the elevator. I ran down eight flights of concrete stairs, the sound of my own frantic footsteps echoing like gunshots. I burst out into the cool night air and vomited into a pristine hotel planter.

I walked home. The city lights, which had always seemed so romantic, so full of possibility, now felt mocking and cold. Every shadow held a judgment. I could still smell his cologne on my skin. I could still feel the ghost of him inside me. It made me sick.

I scrubbed myself raw in the shower, but the feeling didn’t go away. The humiliation was tattooed on me.

That was three days ago.

I didn’t go to the coffee shop. I couldn’t. I work from home, telling my boss I’m sick. Maybe I am.

This morning, my intercom buzzed. I never get buzzer calls. I thought it was a delivery. My voice was rough from crying. “Hello?”

A pause. Then, his voice. Not Leo’s. A woman’s. Cold. Clear.

“It’s Ellie. We need to talk.”

My blood turned to ice. She’d found my address. How? Did he tell her? Was this the part where she slashes my tires? Throws acid in my face? Serves me right for fucking her husband in a hotel room.

I was too stunned, too guilty, to say no. I buzzed her up.

I heard her heels click down the hallway. I opened the door before she could knock. She stood there, not in a rage, but perfectly composed. She was even more striking in the daylight. She held no weapon. Just a small, expensive handbag.

“Can I come in?” she asked, her tone unnervingly civil.

I nodded, stepping aside. My apartment, which I’d always thought was cozy and cool, suddenly felt small and shabby compared to her imposing presence.

She didn’t sit. She walked to my window and looked out, just as Leo had that first night in his apartment. The symmetry made me want to scream.

“I’m not here to scream at you,” she said, as if reading my mind. “I think we’re both past that.”

“Then why are you here?” My voice was a thread.

She turned to face me. Her eyes were sharp, intelligent. And tired. Deeply, profoundly tired. “Because I think you believe the story he sold you. The mysterious, brooding loner who can’t resist you.” She gave a dry, humorless smile. “I believed it once, too. Five years ago.”

She reached into her bag. My heart stopped. But she didn’t pull out a gun. She pulled out her phone. She tapped the screen a few times and held it out to me.

It was a notes app. A list. A long, long list of names. Some had dates next to them. Some had places. Coffee Shop - Maggie. Gym - Sarah. Conference - Jessica. My eyes scanned down, down, down. And there, about halfway, I saw it. My coffee shop. The date of our first real conversation in the lobby. And a name. Not mine. A fake one I’d given him on a whim that first night, a stupid, playful alias. Stella.

I stared at it. The air left my lungs. The list was a monument to his lies. I was just a line item. A conquest.

“He’s a collector,” Ellie said, her voice flat. “The silent, intense thing is his hunting strategy. It makes you feel chosen. Special. It makes you do the emotional work for him. And when he’s bored, or when you get too close, he disappears. He’s done it for years.”

The pieces slammed into place. The silence. The lack of personal details. The hotel rooms. It wasn’t mysterious. It was calculated. It was a system.

I sank onto my couch, my legs unable to hold me. The nausea returned. I had been such a cliché. Such a fool.

“Why stay?” I whispered, the question directed at the universe more than her.

She slipped her phone back into her bag. “The same reasons anyone stays. Denial. Money. Fear. Love, once.” She looked around my apartment, her gaze lingering on the books on my shelf, the photos of my friends. “I saw you run out of that hotel. You looked… destroyed. Not angry. Destroyed. The others… some knew. Some didn’t care. You looked like I felt the first time I found out.”

She walked toward the door. She stopped with her hand on the knob. “I’m leaving him. The lawyer is already hired. I just thought you deserved to know that it wasn’t you. And it wasn’t special. It was just his thing.” She looked back at me, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of something like empathy. “Don’t let his thing become your story.”

And then she was gone. The click of the door was softer this time, but it echoed just as loudly.

I sat there for hours. I cried. For my shattered illusion. For my own stupidity. For Ellie, who had to become a hardened detective in her own marriage.

Then, I got angry. A clean, burning, clarifying anger. He didn’t get to make me feel small. He didn’t get to make this my shame.

I went to my laptop. I opened a blank document. And I started to write. I wrote everything. The knuckles on my back. The night in his apartment. The hotel. Ellie. The list. I wrote it not as a secret, shameful confession, but as a story. My story. With me as the protagonist who got tricked, who got hurt, but who walked away with the one thing he never intended to give me: the truth.

I’ll go back to the coffee shop on Monday. I’ll hold my head high. If he’s there, I’ll meet his eyes. And I will see the fear in them. The fear of a man who has been found out.

The best secret fucks are a language, I wrote that. And I was right. I just didn’t know I was speaking a lie. Now I know the truth. And I’m fluent.

October 31st

Monday. Halloween. A day for masks. How fitting.

I dressed with a purpose. Not the black dress. Not something meant for his gaze. I wore my own armor: dark jeans, a simple white t-shirt, my favorite worn-in leather jacket. I looked like me. The me from before. The me who didn’t know his name.

The walk to the coffee shop was the longest of my life. Every step was a battle between the urge to flee and the burning need to stand my ground. My heart wasn’t hammering with anticipation this time. It was a steady, determined drumbeat. A war drum.

I pushed the door open. The familiar bell jingled, a sound that used to make my stomach flutter. Now it was just a bell.

And there he was.

In our spot. Leaning against the counter, waiting for his order. He looked… smaller. The broad shoulders that had felt like a sanctuary were just a man in a well-cut coat. The intense silence that had seemed so profound was just… emptiness. I saw it now. The void I had been so desperate to fill with my own meaning.

He hadn’t seen me yet. I walked toward him, my boots quiet on the floor. I stopped a few feet away. I didn’t speak. I just waited.

He must have felt the shift in the air, the change in the energy of the room. He turned.

His eyes met mine.

And I saw it. Just as I knew I would. The horror from the hotel room, but refined now. Filtered into a pure, unadulterated fear. His gaze flickered over my face, searching for something—forgiveness, anger, a crack in my resolve. He found nothing. Just a cool, flat calm.

“Listen,” he started, his voice low, rushed. It was the same voice that had whispered secrets against my skin. Now it just sounded cheap. “What happened… Ellie… it’s complicated. I never meant for you to get hurt.”

The cliché of it was almost breathtaking. I didn’t move. I didn’t blink.

“Complicated?” I said, my voice steady, quieter than his. It wasn’t a question. It was a dismissal. “It didn’t seem complicated. It seemed like a list.”

The blood drained from his face. The name ‘Stella’ might as well have been branded on his forehead. He understood that I knew. Everything. His entire pathetic, meticulous system was exposed.

He opened his mouth to speak again, to lie again, to spin another thread of his fragile fiction.

I held up a hand. A simple, gentle gesture that stopped him cold.

“Don’t,” I said. The same word we’d spoken in unison in that hotel room. This time, I owned it alone.

The barista called his name. Leo. The name I’d sighed in the dark. It was just a name now.

He stood frozen, trapped between the counter and my unwavering stare. He was a collection of tells: the slight tremor in his hand, the nervous dart of his tongue over his lips, the way he couldn’t hold my gaze for more than a second. He was a man who had been rendered invisible by his own exposure.

I didn’t need to say another word. There was nothing left to say to him. The conversation was over. It had been over before it began, because it was never a real conversation. It was a monologue I’d performed for myself, with him as a silent prop.

I turned my back on him. I walked to the other end of the counter. I ordered my coffee. My voice didn’t shake.

When I turned around with my cup in hand, he was gone. The space where he’d been standing was empty, already filling with the ordinary light of morning.

I took my coffee to a table by the window. I sat. I didn’t look at the door. I didn’t wonder where he went. I watched the people outside, living their complicated, messy, real lives.

The hum is gone. The live wire has been cut. The silence in my head is no longer something to be filled with fantasy. It’s just silence. And it’s mine.

He was a language I learned to speak fluently. A language of touch and illusion. But I’m not speaking it anymore.

November 7th

The silence lasted a week. A clean, empty week. I went to the coffee shop. I worked. I saw friends. I told one of them, Sarah, the abridged version. She called him a monster. I corrected her. “He’s not a monster. He’s a habit. A bad one. And I’m breaking it.”

I thought that was it. I thought the story was over. I had written my ending. Pride. Righteousness. Closure.

Then the email came.

It was late. The subject line was just my name. Not ‘Stella’. My real name. The one Ellie must have given him.

My first instinct was to delete it. To block the address. To continue my clean, silent victory.

But a hook, buried deep, set itself in my gut. The writer in me, the one who had chronicled every touch, needed to see the final page. The addict needed to see the drug one last time, to prove it had lost its power.

I opened it.

It wasn’t long. It wasn’t full of excuses. It was something far more dangerous.

I know I don’t have the right to ask for anything. I know what you must think of me. I deserve it. All of it.

But what we had… the moments in the dark, the silence… that was real. It was the only real thing I’ve had in years. You saw something in me that no one else has. Or maybe you made me into something I could be, if I were a better man.

I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m not asking for a second chance. I’m asking for one last time. Not for me. For you. So you can rewrite the ending. So the last memory isn’t of her, of the humiliation. So it can be of us, on our terms. You in control. You walking away from me, because you choose to, not because you were chased out.

The same hotel. Room 811. Tomorrow night. 8 PM. The door will be unlocked. I will be there. If you are not, I will never contact you again. This will be the last thing you ever hear from me.

Whatever you decide.

L

I read it five times. My hands were ice cold. It was the most exquisite, poisonous piece of writing I had ever encountered. Every word was engineered to bypass my anger and target my vanity, my narrative sensibilities, my lingering, raw nerve of desire.

So you can rewrite the ending.

God. He knew me. He knew the girl who lived in her head, who crafted stories out of glances. He was offering her the ultimate plot twist: to become the author of her own revenge fuck.

It was a lie, of course. A beautifully crafted one. It was just another move in his game. But the worst part? It was a lie I wanted to believe. The humiliation of that hotel room was a stain I couldn’t scrub out. The image of me, scrambling for a sheet, my face bloated with shock and shame… it played on a loop. He was offering me a chance to tape over it. To replace it with a memory of me, powerful and in control, using him and discarding him.

It was the stupidest, most self-destructive idea I had ever entertained.

I didn’t sleep. I stared at the ceiling, my body thrumming with a war between my mind and my blood. My mind screamed. My blood remembered. It remembered the weight of him, the exact pressure of his hands on my hips, the guttural sound he made when he came. My body, the traitor, was already voting yes.

By morning, the decision was made. Not by my higher self, but by the wounded, proud, furious animal underneath.

I would go. But not for him. For me.

I didn’t wear the black dress. I wore something else. A blood-red silk camisole and matching shorts under my clothes. My own secret. My own armor. I looked like a gift, wrapped for myself.

I arrived at 8:15. Making him wait felt like the first act of control.

Room 811. The door was, as promised, unlocked.

I pushed it open.

The room was the same. Dark wood. The glittering cityscape. The same lamp casting long shadows. He was standing by the window, his back to me, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He turned.

He looked like hell. Beautiful, ruined hell. There were shadows under his eyes. His usually perfect hair was slightly disheveled. He was wearing a simple grey t-shirt and dark jeans. He looked… human. Vulnerable. It was probably a calculated choice. It was working.

We didn’t speak. The silence was different now. It wasn’t full of unspoken promise. It was a charged, dangerous thing, crackling with everything that had been shattered between us.

He took a step toward me. I held up a hand, mirroring my gesture from the coffee shop.

“No,” I said, my voice low but clear. “You don’t speak. You don’t move unless I tell you to. This is my ending. You’re just a character in it.”

A flicker of surprise in his eyes, then something else… respect? Arousal? He gave a single, slow nod. He stayed where he was.

I let my bag drop to the floor. I toed off my boots. I walked toward him, a slow, deliberate prowl. I stopped inches from him. I could smell his cologne, the whiskey on his breath. The familiar scent made my knees weak. I locked them.

“This isn’t for you,” I whispered, my eyes locked on his. “This is for me. To forget the look on your wife’s face. To forget the sound of that door opening.”

I reached out and placed my hand flat on his chest, over his heart. It was hammering. A frantic, wild rhythm against my palm. Good. He was nervous. He wasn’t in control.

I leaned in, my lips brushing his ear. “You don’t get to kiss me.”

I felt him shudder.

My hand slid down his chest, over the hard plane of his stomach, to the waistband of his jeans. I popped the button. The sound was obscenely loud. I pulled down the zipper, my knuckles grazing the hard heat of him through his boxer briefs. He sucked in a sharp breath.

I pushed him. Just a gentle shove backward. He stumbled and sat hard on the edge of the bed, looking up at me with wide, dark eyes. I stood over him, looking down.

“Take off your shirt.”

His hands, which seemed clumsy, went to the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it over his head. He dropped it on the floor. His chest rose and fell rapidly. I let my eyes drink him in. The defined muscles, the dusting of dark hair. The body I had worshipped. Now it was just a tool.

I climbed onto the bed, kneeling over him, one knee on either side of his hips. I didn’t touch him yet. I just looked down at him.

“You lied to me,” I said, my voice cold.

“Yes,” he breathed, his voice ragged.

“You used me.”

“Yes.”

“I was a name on a list.”

He flinched. “Yes.”

I brought my hands to the hem of my own sweater and pulled it over my head. I wasn’t wearing a bra. His eyes dropped to my breasts, his gaze hot and hungry. I saw his hands twitch, wanting to reach for me.

“Don’t,” I warned.

He clenched his fists at his sides.

I leaned forward, bracing my hands on his shoulders, and finally, finally brought my mouth to his. But it wasn’t a kiss. It was a punishment. I bit his lower lip, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to make him gasp. I licked into his mouth, a brutal, claiming invasion. It tasted like whiskey and guilt.

I pulled back. “Now you can touch me.”

His hands came up to my waist like he’d been electrocuted. They were hot, almost feverish, gripping me as if I were the only solid thing in the world. He buried his face in my neck, his breath hot against my skin. “God, I’m sorry,” he mumbled into my skin. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Shut up,” I hissed, grinding down against the hard ridge in his jeans. “I don’t want your apologies. I want your dick. That’s all you have that’s worth anything.”

The vulgarity, coming from my mouth, seemed to shock us both. It broke something. The last pretense of romance. This was raw now. Primal.

A low growl rumbled in his chest. His hands slid down to my ass, gripping me, pulling me harder against him. The game was shifting. The control I’d held so tightly was starting to splinter under the sheer physical force of wanting him.

I pushed him back onto the bed, following him down. I yanked at his jeans and boxers, pulling them down his hips. He kicked them off. I did the same with my own, the red silk a stark contrast against the white hotel sheets.

And then there was nothing between us. Just skin and heat and a history of lies.

He rolled us over, pinning me beneath him. His eyes were wild, desperate. “Let me,” he pleaded, his voice raw. “Please. Let me give you this.”

It was the “please” that undid me. The crack in his armor. The real need in it.

I nodded, my own resolve crumbling.

And then he was on me. In me. There was no slow build, no gentle teasing. It was a frantic, desperate joining. A hard, deep thrust that stole the air from my lungs and tore a broken cry from my throat.

“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice a rough command I’d never heard before.

My eyes, which had squeezed shut, flew open. He was holding himself above me, his arms trembling with the effort, his gaze locked on mine.

“See who’s fucking you,” he gritted out, driving into me again, so deep I saw stars. “See me. It’s me. Leo. The liar. The cheat. The bastard who can’t get you out of his fucking head.”

He was fucking me like he was trying to exorcise a demon. Each thrust was a punishment, an apology, a confession. The headboard slammed against the wall in a steady, brutal rhythm. I clawed at his back, my nails digging into the skin I knew so well, my legs locking around his waist, pulling him deeper, taking everything he was giving me.

I was losing myself. The plan, the control, the rewrite… it was all burning up in the sheer animal intensity of it. I was just a body, his body, a mess of sensation and sound. The slap of skin, his ragged grunts in my ear, the smell of sex and sweat and him.

“You feel that?” he growled, his mouth against my ear. “That’s all for you. Every fucking bit of it. It was always for you.”

I knew it was a lie. Another perfect, beautiful lie. But my body believed it. It arched into his, meeting his thrusts with a ferocity that shocked me.

“I hate you,” I moaned, the words torn from me.

“I know,” he breathed, his hand tangling in my hair, pulling my head back. “Fuck, I know. Hate me harder.”

The coil in my belly tightened, unbearably tight. The pleasure was sharp, edged with pain and anger and a devastating grief for what we could have been if he hadn’t been so broken. I was crying, I realized. Tears were streaming down my temples into my hair.

He saw them. He stilled for a second, his face contorted in something like agony. “Don’t cry,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “Please, don’t cry. Come for me. Come on my cock and then never think of me again.”

His words, so crude and so tender, pushed me over the edge. The orgasm ripped through me, violent and seismic, a wave of pure, undiluted release that wiped out every thought, every memory, every ounce of pain. I screamed into his shoulder, my body convulsing around his.

The sound of my scream seemed to shatter him. With a guttural roar, he came, plunging into me one last, final time, his whole body shuddering as he emptied himself into me. He collapsed on top of me, his weight crushing me, his face buried in the crook of my neck. I could feel his heart slamming against my chest, a wild, frantic echo of my own.

We lay there for a long time, tangled together in the wreckage, breathing in ragged unison. The air was thick with the scent of us.

Slowly, the world came back. The sound of traffic eight stories below. The chill of the air on my sweat-slicked skin. The reality of what we’d just done.

He was the first to move. He rolled off me, onto his back, one arm thrown over his eyes. I lay on my side, facing away from him, pulling the sheet up over my nakedness.

The silence stretched. It was over. I had my ending. A raw, brutal, physically satisfying ending. I should have felt powerful. Vindicated.

I felt empty.

I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I started to gather my clothes from the floor. The red silk felt cheap now. Stupid.

“Wait,” he said, his voice hoarse.

I didn’t turn around. I pulled on my jeans, my hands shaking.

“That wasn’t a lie,” he said to my back. “In there. What I said. It was always you. It’s different with you.”

I buttoned my jeans and reached for my sweater. I pulled it over my head. When I emerged, I finally turned to look at him.

He was sitting up on the edge of the bed, the sheet pooled around his waist, watching me. He looked devastated. Beautiful and ruined. And I knew, with a cold, clear certainty, that he believed what he was saying. In this moment, he believed it was all real. That was his gift. His curse. He could make himself believe his own stories.

I walked to the door. I put my hand on the knob.

“This is my ending,” I said, not looking back. “You don’t get to write the postscript.”

I opened the door and walked out. I didn’t run this time. I walked down the hallway, my steps steady. I took the elevator. I nodded at the doorman.

Outside, the cold night air hit my face. I breathed it in. It was over.

I thought the hook was dislodged. I thought I was free.

But as I walked home, I could still feel the ghost of him inside me. And I knew, with a sinking heart, that some habits die harder than others. You can rewrite an ending, but you can’t erase the story.