Page 4 of Forsaken Vows

My neighbor, walking up to my front door. He glanced over his shoulder, then slipped inside my house like the door had been left unlocked for him.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe for a second.

I just sat there, watching.

I leaned back in my seat, the rage settling in my gut like concrete. Then I smiled.

I watched their shadows through the windows as he was led upstairs by my wife.

“Got you,” I said under my breath. I had been looking for an excuse to end my marriage, and I had just found one.

Chapter 3- Sam

“Oh fuck, right there—don’t stop!”

Her voice cracked through the speakers, breathless and filthy.

Slap. Slap. Slap.

Wet skin, low grunts, the creak of my fucking floors.

“Deeper,” she cried, and he answered her with a rough grunt and another thrust that made her scream. “Yes, daddy, just like that. God, you feel so good—”

I didn’t listen anymore, but I didn’t turn it off either.

A week after catching my neighbor creeping into my house, I sat outside my home, watching him fuck my wife. My heart pounded as the feed from the cameras I’d snuck into the house confirmed my suspicions. They were wrapped around each other on my living room floor. I wondered if it was the way he fucked her—hard and fast—that made her moan louder than she’d ever moaned for me. It was different, rougher. Maybe that was my mistake, trying to treat her gently.

He pounded into her, making her flesh shake, making the parts she always complained about jiggle in a way she supposedly couldn’t stand. But now, she seemed to like it.

She started gaining weight after that last vacation. It was a slow, inevitable spread that comes with age. I noticed it—the way her thighs started to press together, the way her hips grewwider. I liked it, liked the way she felt softer in my hands. But I never got to really experience it. She was too busy hiding it.

But she wasn’t hiding from him. She let him see it, let him touch it. She was into it—the way her back arched, the way her mouth opened in a silent scream. Maybe that’s why she let him in—because he gave her something I hadn’t.

Janet's moans didn’t cut into my heart like they should have. They went straight for my pride. I was angry. The anger came from the fact that I’d told her we should separate, maybe even divorce before it came to this. Neither of us had been happy for a while, but she swore she wanted to stay, promised me kids and fidelity. And like a fucking fool, I let her talk me into wasting more years than I needed to.

I should have never married her. I met her when I was twenty-two and she was thirty-two. I had been fucking for years; I peaked young, had women throwing pussy at me since forever. When I met Janet, I didn’t even want that anymore. I wanted a wife, a family. I thought because she was older it would make her more mature. Now I was thirty-five, and she was forty-five, and that maturity still wasn’t there. The idea of having kids with her put a bad taste in my mouth.

I kept watching, my grip on the steering wheel so tight it felt like my knuckles would split. The video began to blur the longer I stared at it until I couldn’t take it anymore. I shut it off. So much fucking wasted time, and I had nothing to show for it. And I couldn’t even divorce her right now. My lawyer told me to gather enough evidence so she wouldn’t be able to deny anything then send her the papers.

I thought about Zane, Mark’s wife. She was a pretty little thing, with thick curves I couldn’t help but notice. When she and her husband moved in, she brought dinners—enough for a wholefamily—to the neighbor’s pretty picnic baskets. It was the best damn meatloaf I’d ever had. Janet couldn’t stand her on sight. Zane was everything Janet wasn’t, and also everything she didn’t want to be. Zane was a homemaker and took pride in it, but looked like one of those girls in the music videos. Janet was also jealous of her youth.

Would Zane be more broken up over Mark’s betrayal than I was about Janet’s?

Thinking about her being sad pissed me off. She seemed so innocent and sweet.

I stepped out of the car, the cold night air biting against my skin. It was an oddly cool night in Florida.

I started walking in the opposite direction of my house before I even thought about what I was about to do, making my way down the sidewalk to Mark’s house.

Bang, bang. My fist pounded against their heavy wooden door, harder than I intended. When Zane opened it, her light brown eyes widened in surprise at seeing me. She was shorter than I remembered, but I had only been up close with her once, and I hadn’t looked too hard then. I had to drop my head to take her in. She was wearing a black silk housecoat. Her hair was short with curls. She had a cute, round face. She was young—younger than me, her husband, and Janet, maybe by ten to fifteen years. Or maybe she was the exact same age. Black women always seemed to look so young at all ages. She had flawless skin, a brown I’d never seen in nature, and innocent, wide eyes.

"Sam? What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice soft and full of confusion. I was surprised she remembered my name.

She was a fucking pixie come to life. I thought about just walking away. I didn’t want to be the one to break her heart. But she needed to know the truth, no matter how painful. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her outright though.

"I need to show you something," I said, my voice rough to my own ears so I tried to soften it. "It's about your husband. You need to see it to believe it."

She hesitated, her eyes searching mine. I saw the uncertainty, the curiosity, the fear. She opened her mouth to speak. I cut her off.

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