The champagne bottle is sweating in my hand, condensation dripping onto the ridiculously expensive lingerie bag from a boutique downtown where the saleswoman looked at me with pity. Like she knew. Like everyone fucking knows that a woman buying red lace on Valentine's Day at three in the afternoon is making a last-ditch effort to save something already dead.

I should have listened to that instinct.

The one that whispered this morning when Marcus kissed my cheek—too quick, too perfunctory—that something was off. The one that screamed when he said he'd be working late. Again. On Valentine's Day.

But I'm Elena Cross, champion of denial, queen of second chances, patron saint of trying harder.

I push open our bedroom door with my hip, already rehearsing my seduction speech, and—

Oh.

Oh god.

The champagne bottle slips from my fingers. It doesn't shatter—that would be too dramatic, too final. It just thuds against the carpet and rolls, leaving a dark stain spreading like blood.

My husband is in our bed.

With my sister.

Not just in bed. Tangled together, her legs wrapped around him, his hands in her long black hair, both of them so lost in each other they haven't even noticed me standing here like a fucking idiot holding a lingerie bag that cost more than our monthly car payment.

Lily sees me first. Her eyes go wide, innocent, like she's the victim here. Like she didn't know exactly what she was doing when she climbed into my marriage bed.

"Elena—" She gasps, scrambling to cover herself with my sheets. My thousand-thread-count sheets that I picked out, that I washed, that I've been sleeping in while my husband fantasized about my baby sister.

The irony would be hilarious if I could breathe.

Marcus rolls off her, and I notice with detached clarity that he doesn't look panicked. He looks annoyed. Like I've interrupted something important.

"Jesus, Elena." He reaches for his boxers. "You said you'd be at work until six."

That's what he leads with. Not an apology. Not even a denial. An accusation that I came home to my own house at the wrong time.

"I wanted to surprise you." My voice sounds strange. Hollow. "Happy Valentine's Day."

Lily starts crying. Of course she does. She's always been a crier, weaponizing those tears since we were kids. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, we didn't mean for this to happen—"

"How long?" I'm still standing in the doorway, still holding that stupid bag. I can't seem to put it down.

Marcus has the decency to look away. "Does it matter?"

"How. Long."

"Six months." Lily's voice is small. "But Elena, you have to understand, we fell in love—"

Six months.

Six months of family dinners where she sat across from me, smiling. Six months of her living in our guest room because she needed help getting clean, getting her life together. Six months of me defending her to Marcus when he complained about her staying too long.

The laugh that escapes me sounds unhinged. "You fell in love. In my house. In my bed."

"It's my house too," Marcus says, and there it is. The resentment he's been swallowing for years, finally surfacing. "I pay the mortgage."

"With my money." The words are out before I can stop them. "My trust fund that you've been living off for ten years."

His face darkens. "That's not fair—"

"Fair?" I'm backing toward the door now, my body making the decision my mind can't process. "You're fucking my sister and you want to talk about fair?"

"Don't be dramatic." He's standing now, pulling on his pants like this is just another argument about whose turn it is to do dishes. "You've been checked out of this marriage for years. We both know it."

He's not wrong. That's the thing that makes my chest crack open. He's not wrong.

I haven't loved Marcus in... I don't know how long. Maybe I never did. Not the way you're supposed to love someone you marry. Not with that consuming, devastating passion that makes you stupid.

I had that once. Ten years ago. With someone else.

And I walked away from it because I thought Marcus was the safe choice. The mature choice. The one my parents approved of, the one who made sense on paper.

Turns out safe choices can still destroy you.

"Elena, please." Lily is out of bed now, wrapped in my sheet like a toga. "Let's talk about this. We can work through this as a family—"

"Family." I taste the word, bitter and sharp. "You're not my family anymore."

I turn and walk. Down the hallway lined with our wedding photos—my forced smile, his hand possessive on my waist. Through the living room with furniture we picked out together, every piece a compromise I made. Out the front door into the February cold.

I'm still wearing my work clothes. Pencil skirt, silk blouse, heels that are too high for running. I don't have my purse. Don't have my keys. Just my phone, clutched in my hand like a lifeline I don't know how to use.

Don't have a fucking clue where I'm going.

My car is in the driveway but the keys are in my purse, which is on the kitchen counter, which means going back inside, and I'd rather walk barefoot through broken glass than face them again right now.

So I walk.

Three blocks in four-inch heels before I realize I'm still carrying the lingerie bag. I drop it in a trash can and keep moving.

The Meridian Hotel rises ahead of me, all glass and steel and anonymous luxury. I've been to events here. Charity galas where I smiled and made small talk and pretended my marriage wasn't slowly suffocating me.

The doorman opens the door without question. I must look like I belong—expensive clothes, careful composure, the armor of a woman who's learned to hide her bleeding.

The bar is dimly lit, all dark wood and leather, the kind of place where people come to forget. Perfect.

I slide onto a stool at the far end, away from the couples celebrating Valentine's Day with champagne and strawberries and the kind of easy affection I've never had.

"What can I get you?" The bartender is young, pretty, probably working her way through college.

"Whiskey. Neat. The most expensive you have."

If I'm going to fall apart, I might as well do it with top-shelf liquor.

She pours without comment, and I'm grateful. I don't want sympathy. Don't want conversation. Just want to sit here and drink until the image of my husband and my sister stops playing on loop in my head.

The whiskey burns going down. Good. I want to feel something other than this hollow ache in my chest.

"That bad, huh?"

The voice comes from my left. Deep, rough, with an edge that suggests its owner knows exactly how bad things can get.

I don't look over. "Not interested in conversation."

"Neither am I."

That makes me glance up.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

The man sitting two stools down is... devastating is the only word. Tall even sitting down, broad shoulders in a suit that costs more than my car, dark hair silvering at the temples. But it's his eyes that catch me—steel gray, sharp enough to cut, looking at me like he can see straight through the careful mask I'm wearing.

He's not smiling. Somehow that makes him more attractive.

"Then why did you speak to me?" I turn back to my drink.

"Seemed rude not to acknowledge someone drinking alone on Valentine's Day."

"And you're here because...?"

"Same reason you are, I'd guess." He signals the bartender for another pour. "Trying to forget."

There's something about his voice. Something familiar that I can't place. It crawls under my skin, warm and dangerous.

"What are you trying to forget?" I shouldn't ask. Shouldn't engage. But the whiskey is already working and I'm so tired of being careful.

"A mistake I made ten years ago." His eyes meet mine again, and there's something in them—heat, anger, recognition?—that makes my pulse stutter. "You?"

"A mistake I'm making right now."

That earns me the ghost of a smile. "Drinking alone in a hotel bar?"

"Talking to strangers."

"We don't have to be strangers." He stands, moves to the stool directly beside me, and suddenly the air feels thinner. He's close enough that I can smell him—cedar and bourbon and something darker, more primal. "I'm—"

"Don't." I hold up a hand. "No names. If we're doing this, let's keep it anonymous."

His smile widens, and it's predatory. "Doing what, exactly?"

"I haven't decided yet."

Liar. I decided the moment I looked at him. Decided I want to forget Marcus and Lily and ten years of settling for something that was never enough. Decided I want to feel something other than this ache.

Decided I want him to make me forget my own name.

"Let me help you decide." He leans closer, and the heat of him is intoxicating. "I have a suite upstairs. Top floor. You could come up, have another drink, talk or not talk. No expectations."

"That's a line."

"Probably." His hand rests on the bar beside mine, not touching but close enough that I feel the almost-contact like electricity. "But I'm not lying about the no expectations part. You're in control here. You say stop, we stop. You say leave, I'll call you a car. You say yes..."

He trails off, letting the implication hang between us.

I should say no. Should call a friend, call a cab, deal with the wreckage of my life like a responsible adult.

But I've been responsible my whole life. Made the right choices, the safe choices. Married the appropriate man, built the acceptable life.

And where did it get me?

I drain my whiskey and stand. He rises with me, and god, he's tall. I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes, and the power differential should intimidate me.

Instead it makes me feel reckless.

"One drink," I say. "Upstairs."

His smile is slow, dangerous. "One drink."

He places his hand on the small of my back as we walk toward the elevator—barely touching, just enough pressure to guide me. To claim me.

I should pull away.

I lean into it instead.

The elevator is empty, mirrored walls reflecting us back—him dark and controlled, me flushed and disheveled. We look like we're about to devour each other.

We probably are.

He hits the button for the penthouse, and as the doors slide closed, his eyes find mine in the mirror.

"Last chance to change your mind."

I should take it. Should run back to my life, my marriage, my careful composure.

But I'm so fucking tired of should.

"I'm not changing my mind."

The elevator lurches upward, and his hand slides from my back to my hip, pulling me against him. I can feel the hard length of him against my back, the controlled strength in his grip.

"Good," he breathes against my ear, and I shiver. "Because I've been waiting ten years for this."

The words don't register. Can't register. Because his mouth is on my neck and I'm arching into him and nothing exists except this moment, this man, this desperate need to forget everything that came before.

The elevator chimes.

Penthouse floor.

He pulls back just enough to let me breathe, his eyes dark with promise.

"Still want that drink?"

I turn in his arms, press my palm against his chest, feel his heart racing as fast as mine.

"Fuck the drink."

His smile is pure sin.

"Yes, ma'am."