Free Still Into You by Roni Loren

were enjoying it while it was happening.”
    He tossed the keys on the table by the door and stormed past her. “That’s because for the first time in I don’t know how long, you actually seemed to want me. To need me.”
    “Maybe that’s because it’s the first time you’ve really noticed me in a year,” she challenged, following his retreat into the bedroom. “You don’t even
see
me anymore.”
    He turned around, all the unspoken shit of the last few months welling up inside him and bursting forth like a creek overflowing its banks. “That’s because you won’t let me! You’ve shut me out. I can’t even look at you naked unless the lights are off. And during the day, the lights might as well be turned off, too. All we talk about are the kids and the big house you want but don’t have.”
    “Oh, right, the conversations we have in the half an hour you’re actually at home at night,” she said, her tears officially tracking down her cheeks now. “You have no idea what my life is like. I’m alone, Seth. Alone. All. The. Time.”
    The sight of her crying and the ache in her voice cut his anger off at the knees. He sank onto the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands, the weight of it all pressing down on him. “I have to work, Lei. For us. For the kids.”
    I’ve promised you more than what I’ve given you.
    She didn’t respond, and for a second, he thought she might walk out right now. Walk away from their marriage and not look back. But after a long moment, she knelt down in front of him, and laid her cheek on his lap, surrendering to the crush of pressure along with him.
    With a tired breath, he lifted his head and sifted his fingers through the silky strands of her hair as he stared down at her. She used to fall asleep with her head in his lap when he’d come home from work late and she’d insist they watch a movie together. She never made it through the first thirty minutes. But he agreed every time anyway so he could watch her like this.
    Long minutes passed, only the sound of the ticking clock and their breathing filling the space. He traced the shell of her ear. “I think somewhere along the way, we’ve lost the people we were meant to become.”
    Her eyelids fluttered open, but she stayed quiet. Waiting.
    “I made you a mother way before you should’ve been, and it forced you into this mom role that is a beautiful part of you, but not the whole of you.”
    “The pregnancy was both our faults.”
    He frowned. Yeah, but he’d been the one who had been careless. The one who hadn’t checked the expiration dates on those condoms. “Tonight I got to see a part of you I had no idea was even in there.”
    She lifted her head and sat back on her knees, wary. “Seth, about tonight . . .”
    He lifted his palm. “No. Let me get this out. Tonight you were amazing and confident and so fucking sexy that I could get hot all over again thinking about it.”
    Her eyebrows crept upward.
    “Seeing you so uninhibited was like my own fantasy come true. And knowing how much those other guys wanted you turned me on.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t even know what to do with that. But there it is.”
    “But then why the weirdness afterward?”
    He shrugged. “Because seeing some other guy kiss you was like showing me a glimpse of the future. Made me realize that I’m not ‘it’ for you anymore. That in order to get us that hot and bothered for each other, we needed someone else’s help.”
    She laid a hand on his knee. “Ian wasn’t the one making me that way. I turned him down the first time he offered. It was you I wanted.”
    He gave her the side-eye. “Yeah, so two guys and all that exhibitionism had nothing to do with it. Sure.”
    She smirked. “Okay, so that helped. But it’s not like afterward, I wanted to go back to
his
room. The circumstances only amped up the excitement.”
    He shook his head, having a hard time even recognizing the woman he’d shared a bed