CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Saint, Saint, Saint. He is a beautiful specimen.
The sun beats down, a warm, benevolent weight on my skin, as I watch him navigate the boat across the glittering expanse of the lake. He’s a natural, his movements fluid and strong, utterly at ease behind the wheel.
He’s shirtless, his back a canvas of lean muscle, glistening with a fine sheen of sweat. Every flex, every shift of his shoulders, is a stark, captivating display of power, a visual rhythm that makes my breath catch in my throat.
He’s so undeniably sexy out here, untamed and free.
And in return, I, too, feel free. I lean back against the cushions of the boat, the worn fabric warm beneath me, and try to lose myself in the pages of my book, a psychological thriller that feels far less unsettling than my own life right now. But my eyes keep drifting, drawn inevitably to Saint. He glances my way often, his gaze a hot brand on my skin, and occasionally, as he moves past me, adjusting a line or checking a gauge, he leans down to press a quiet, lingering kiss to my hair, my temple, the corner of my mouth.
Each touch is a silent claim over me.
“Need any help?” I ask, my voice a little breathless, as he passes by again, his hand brushing my arm. The words are automatic, a reflex from years of partnership, of being the one who always offers.
He laughs, a low, dismissive sound that isn’t unkind. “Relax, Petra.
You work too much.” He says it with a casual ease, a simple observation, and the words resonate with a surprising depth. I remember Shephard’s voice, the subtle barbs, the undercurrent of judgment when I don’t work, when I try to rest. “The well’s looking a little dry,” he said, a veiled accusation, making me feel guilty for not churning out content, for not always being productive, for my artistic struggles. Saint, with that simple sentence, offers a liberation I didn’t realize I craved. He sees my exhaustion, not my failure.
The sun is getting hotter, and I can feel the beginnings of distinct tan lines forming where my tank top ends. With a decisive shrug, I pull my top over my head, exposing myself to the wide-open sky. I feel Saint’s eyes on me immediately, a familiar heat, and he lets out a low, appreciative groan, a
raw, visceral sound that hums through the air. But he doesn’t say anything annoying, anything that feels cliché or objectifying, none of the cheap compliments or possessive remarks most men would offer. He just watches, his gaze intense, possessive in its own way, and utterly silent. It’s more powerful than any words.
After a while, the wind whipping his hair, the sun glinting off his shoulders, he finally comes to sit down next to me, the boat swaying gently beneath us. He props an elbow on his knee, his body angled toward me, his presence a warm, magnetic force. The silence stretches between us, comfortable for him, electric for me. I can’t hold back the question that’s been gnawing at me, a persistent ache in my chest.
“Do you regret this?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper, gesturing vaguely between us, meaning this—the affair, the betrayal, the secrets we share.
He considers it for a long moment, his eyes scanning the horizon, his expression unreadable. Then he turns to me, his gaze direct, unflinching, honest to a brutal degree. “I wish it wasn’t an affair, Petra,” he says, his voice low, tinged with a quiet regret that surprises me. “But no. I don’t regret being with you. Not for a second.”
The words hit me with a jolt. He wishes it wasn’t an affair. That implies a desire for something more, something legitimate. And that, in turn, makes me think of his wife, the woman he’s still married to, still talks to daily. It feels like more of a compliment to me, a heady rush of validation, but simultaneously, a profound insult to her, to his marriage. It’s a cruel, delicious irony.
A different kind of question forms on my tongue, one that feels even more intimate, more intrusive than the last. “Do you . . . do you have kids?”
I ask, my voice soft, almost hesitant, crossing a line I’m not sure he wants me to cross.
He doesn’t answer immediately. He just looks at me, his gaze suddenly shuttered, almost cold, like I’ve asked something deeply inappropriate, like it’s crossing a sacred boundary to ask him these things. The sudden shift makes my heart sink.
“You know I have kids,” I press, the quiet desperation in my voice betraying my need to know, to understand him beyond the passion. “I want to know more about you.”
He finally breaks eye contact, looking out at the glittering water again.
His voice is flat, devoid of emotion, almost dismissive. “I didn’t ask about your family. They just showed up. It’s different.” His implication is clear: My life, my family, my circumstances, were simply presented to him. He didn’t seek them out, didn’t intrude. But his, his are off limits.
A knot of frustration tightens in my stomach, but I bite back the retort, sensing a fragile barrier I shouldn’t push. I go back to reading my book, pretending to be absorbed in the plot, but the words feel like staring at a blank page.
Then, just when I’ve given up, when the silence feels like it will stretch forever, he starts to open up, his voice barely audible above the gentle lapping of the water against the hull. “We tried for years,” he says, his gaze still fixed on the horizon, his face a mask of distant pain. “To have kids. Failed IVF cycles, false positives, miscarriages . . . it was hell.” His voice cracks, just slightly, on the last word. “Turns out, after all the testing, it was me. Not her. I couldn’t have kids.”
I sit up straight, startled, my book sliding unheeded from my lap to the boat deck with a soft thud. Shock. The vulnerability in his tone, the depth of that revelation, takes my breath away. “Oh, Saint,” I whisper, my hand instinctively reaching for his arm, a gesture of comfort.
He flinches, just slightly, at my touch, then continues, his voice softer now, tinged with a deep sadness. “She started to resent me. I could feel it.
The quiet anger. The unspoken blame for taking her dreams away. We separated six months ago.”
My mind reels. Six months? So recent. My heart aches for him, for the quiet devastation of that dream. And then, another thought, a more selfish one, emerges.
Why did he let me believe he was in a happy marriage?
“You didn’t tell me any of this,” I say, my voice trembling with the revelation.
He turns to me, his dark eyes meeting mine.
“I still wear my wedding ring. I still feel married. Where, in the space between you needing a muse who is a married man and me explaining my messy break, could I have fit all that in? Besides, you needed the full experience, Petra,” he says. “And I’ve had fun with it. The guilt, the secrecy, the forbidden thrill. You needed to feel it all, to live it, so you could feel better about your writing. To get the fuel you needed for Reya.”
A cold dread washes over me, mixing with a strange, dark understanding.
“Do you want the marriage to work?” I ask, the question tumbling out before I can stop it in a desperate need for clarity. I’m searching for a shred of normal human emotion in this chaotic game.
He looks back at the water, his gaze distant. “Of course,” he says, simply, quietly. “But I don’t want to tie her down. Or prevent her from having other children. From pursuing that dream with someone else.” His voice holds a profound sorrow, a selflessness that’s almost unbearable, given what he’s just admitted to me.
“Do you still live together?” I ask, pressing for more details, trying to piece together the shattered fragments of his life, to understand the man behind the persona.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “We don’t. But we talk almost daily.”
He pauses, then turns back to me, his eyes searching, vulnerable in a way I haven’t seen them before. “She’s having trouble moving on. But so am I.”
He shifts, his knee brushing mine. “Do you . . . do you have any advice?”
The sudden vulnerability, the genuine plea, takes me by surprise. And for a moment, I see him not as Saint, the intriguing, manipulative muse, but as a man in pain. But the answer is automatic. “No,” I say, shaking my head, my voice flat. “I don’t. I don’t know how to move on, either, even though sometimes I want to.” The words are true, agonizingly so. “But you don’t have kids,” I add, almost without thinking, a reflexive defense, a way to diminish his pain in comparison to mine, to make mine somehow more valid. “So maybe it isn’t as hard for you.”
The moment the words leave my lips, I regret them. His face hardens instantly, a subtle but profound shift. His jaw clenches, his eyes darkening, and he pulls away from me, the distance suddenly vast between us. It’s like I took his infertility, his deepest wound, and diminished it, trivialized it with a careless, thoughtless comparison to my own self-inflicted marital woes.
The accusation, though unspoken, hangs heavy in the air.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my voice filled with immediate, genuine contrition. “Saint, I didn’t mean it like that. I just . . .” I trail off, unable to find the words.
He holds up a hand, stopping me, his expression still etched with pain, but softened slightly now. “It’s okay,” he says, his voice strained. “I’m not
going tit for tat about this, but not being able to have kids at all is a hell of a lot harder than divorcing someone you have kids with.”
He’s right. His pain is immense because his dreams were shattered by something beyond his control. Mine . . . mine would be shattered by my own hand, simply because of boredom. It’s difficult to leave any relationship if there’s not a huge betrayal, especially when children are involved. Boredom and annoyance are likely not grounds for a divorce, but I’m worried that’s where it starts. The thoughts of escape. This glimpse of what my life could be like without Shephard.
It used to feel like his presence was air, lifting me up and making me lighter. Now, for whatever reason, he just feels more and more like a weight. Something else I have to carry to keep us all moving forward.
Saint looks out at the water again, his jaw working. Then, his voice lowers, almost to a confession, chilling me to the bone even in the warm sun. “When I was watching you say goodbye to your girls, when Shephard was there . . .” He pauses, and I hold my breath. “I was angry, Petra. So angry.” He turns his eyes to me, and they burn with an unsettling intensity.
“I wanted you to get caught, so you’d leave him, so I could have what he takes for granted. What he barely sees anymore.”
The confession is a dark, dizzying plunge into his psyche, revealing a level of calculated malice that should repel me. But instead, a perverse thrill shoots through me. He wanted to destroy my life, to claim it for himself.
And he almost did.
He leans in, his hand cupping my cheek, his thumb tracing my jaw.
His eyes, burning with a mix of fury and desire, lock onto mine. And then, his lips descend, hard and hungry, claiming me completely. The kiss is fierce, a primal embrace of chaos. And then, right there, on the open water, beneath the broad, indifferent gaze of the afternoon sun, we have open sex, or maybe it’s the beginnings of making love, unashamed, a defiant act of rebellion against everything we’ve just confessed and every boundary we’ve shattered.
We pull into the small cove, the water lapping gently against the hull as Saint expertly maneuvers the boat toward the rickety wooden dock. The sun, lower now, casts long, stretching shadows across the water, painting
the sky in hues of orange and purple. We don’t speak, the quiet after our intense coupling thick and heavy.
As we begin the process of tying up the boat, securing it to the weathered pilings, our movements synchronized and efficient, a familiar anxiety begins to prickle at my skin. The real world, the one I’ve temporarily escaped, is rushing back in, demanding its due. My hands move mechanically, coiling a rope, but my mind is already back in the cabin, drifting further, to my house, to Shephard, to the delicate facade I have to maintain.
“I have to go home this weekend,” I say, the words feeling brittle, almost like a confession, the sudden return to mundane reality jarring.
“What? I thought you had another two weeks booked.”
I avoid his eyes, focusing instead on the knot I’m trying to tighten. “I don’t leave until Friday, and it’s just for two days. It’s my daughter’s birthday. I need to be there.”
Saint pauses, his large hands still on the rope, his movements ceasing.
I feel his gaze on me, steady and intense, but I don’t look up. The silence stretches, taut with unspoken questions, with the reality of our separate lives.
He just nods. A single quiet nod. No questions about Shephard, no protestations, no demands. Just that simple, heavy acknowledgment. It’s both a relief and a subtle disappointment. Part of me, the part that craves his intensity, wanted a fight, a plea, a sign of his possessiveness. But he gives me none. He just accepts it.
When the boat is securely fastened, the ropes taut, he steps onto the dock. Instead of releasing my hand, which had somehow found its way into his during the tying process, he tightens his grip, coming to a pause.
I follow his gaze to the opposite side of the water from where we docked, and when my eyes lock onto what made him freeze, I squeeze his
hand until it slips from mine.
Oh, God.
Saint is in the water before I can even fully process what I’m seeing.
But there she is, just twenty or so feet from the shore, floating in the water.
Mari, with her bright-orange hair, face down, her arms limp, skimming the top of the water.
“Mari!” Saint yells, swimming toward her. I step closer to the edge of the dock, wondering if I should go call the police, or yell for Louie, or jump
in and help him. But I’m just frozen as I watch.
“Mari,” I whisper. “God, no.”
Saint reaches her, both his hands gripping her waist to flip her over. As soon as he does, I hear a piercing scream.
But it isn’t coming from Saint.
It’s coming from Mari, who is wearing goggles and beating Saint over his head with her snorkel. “I. Know. How. To. Swim. You. Dumbass!”
Oh, my God.
My entire body sighs, and I feel all the blood that rushed to my head suddenly drop to my feet. I’m so shocked that I have to lower myself until I’m sitting cross-legged on the dock.
“I’m so sorry,” Saint says. “It looked like you needed help.”
Mari motions to her body—to the bathing suit she’s wearing—and then pulls the goggles off her eyes. Her wet curls are matted over half her face. I’ve never seen her so mad. “I had a snorkel literally sticking up out of the water! I’m in a bathing suit! Aren’t detectives supposed to know what context clues are?” She starts marching toward the shore, water splashing all around her. “Can’t even get a peaceful swim out here anymore,” she
mutters.
I can’t help but laugh at that.
“I hear you laughing, Twinkle Twat,” she calls over her shoulder at me.
I laugh at that too. Then I glance over at Saint and see he’s slowly making his way back to me, sopping wet. But there’s a smile tugging at his lips.
He pushes himself up onto the dock until he’s sitting next to me. “You
gonna put that in your book?” he asks.
“Absolutely.”
“Can you rewrite it so that I actually save her?”
“Absolutely not.”
Saint laughs, pulling off his shirt. Then he grabs my hand and helps me to my feet. His fingers intertwine with mine again, just as they were before he tried to save a perfectly fine woman from drowning. His hand is warm and strong. My anchor.
We walk back to the house in silence, the gentle creak of the old planks beneath our feet the only sound disturbing the quiet afternoon.
Aside from the sound of water dripping from his soaking-wet clothes.
His presence beside me is still powerful, still electric, but the silence between us now feels different. It’s not the comfortable, easy silence of shared pleasure, but a charged, knowing quiet, filled with the unspoken reality of everything we confessed on the boat.
The fact that he’s married, but he’s also available, feels like a big change.
I can’t help but insert images of him into my future, wondering what it would be like to no longer be holding the weight that is Shephard.
