Page 43 of Velvet Betrayal
I didn’t get dressed right away. It felt wrong to pretend nothing had happened, not after a decade of wanting and not having. I let her breathe, then followed, pulling on my shirt but leaving it open. If this was purgatory, I was making myself comfortable.
“If you have to parade around shirtless, at least check if anyone’s looking first,” she muttered, buttoning up.
“I like being looked at.”
She shot me a glare. “You have no idea what you look like, do you?”
Funny, coming from her: the most dangerous, beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and never convinced she was either.
We ended up at the sink. She mumbled something about “not wanting to smell like sex” before the kid woke up, and scrubbed her hands, wrists, even her neck. I watched, until she caught me in the reflection, then shrugged on my shirt. If she wanted me here, I’d stay.
“Are you going to hover, or—?”
“I’m not leaving you alone.” I tried to make it softer. “Not for a second. Also, if you don’t want to smell like sex, you could just have a shower.”
“There’s no guarantee you wouldn’t follow me in.”
“Oh, I would definitely follow you in.”
She laughed, short and sharp, flicking water at my chest. “Maybe later.” She dried her hands, turning to face me, eyes wary even in the half-light.
“If I go now, and you sleep on the couch, what guarantee is there that you’ll be here in the morning?” The question surprised us both—her most of all, I think, because she barely looked to see if I’d caught the plea under the challenge.
“Ruby. I would never leave you. Not again.”
She looked at me, searching for a lie. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”
But I could tell she didn’t quite believe it. Not yet.
Ruby
Ispent half the night staring at my phone, the blue glow fracturing my thoughts into splinters. Kieran had managed to destroy my couch arrangement in under five minutes, then sent me a picture of himself with a mug of cocoa and the remote like it was some kind of victory. I didn’t even answer. What could I say? I was tired, sore, and…
I was happy.
Or some approximation of it, anyway.
I tried reading, but the words blurred, lines melting into static. So I started scrolling through old photos of Rosie—baby-faced, wild-haired, her smile ricocheting off the screen, reminding me of myself and not. Julian was in some of them, too, sometimes holding a sippy cup, sometimes holding her, always with that careful, easy smile.
There was one picture I kept, even though the edges were warped from years of cheap phones. Julian with the sun behind him, arms around Rosie, her curls a mess against his pressed shirt. I tried to remember what it had felt like: the quiet of those early months, the illusion of safety. He’d taught me to want that. I’d never known how to want it before him.
The urge to call him was like a fever, rising and falling in the dark. I thought of the way Kieran watched me sleep when he thought I didn’t notice, the way he said my name like it hurt. I thought of Julian’s steadiness, the way he’d check in, the way he’d taken Rosie’s hand when she first learned to walk—gentle, measured, always exactly enough.
But that was the thing about Julian. I loved him as Rosie’s father. I loved him because he was her father. There was nothing else about him I loved.
The rest was just keeping the peace: custody hand-offs, text threads about lost gloves and snack preferences, declining Parent Portal invites to “coffee nights” he’d always attend even when they felt like they were for show. It was normal, or so I told myself, every time guilt tried to claw its way in: you could be grateful, even love someone in a triangulated way, and still never tell them the one true thing about your life. Not even once.
I flicked through old messages: Rosie at the aquarium, lit up by green jellyfish; Rosie in a Halloween cape, glaring at me for enforcing bedtime. Maybe a dozen pictures of all three of us together. That was it.
My phone buzzed. Kieran, of course. Or, more accurately, Kieran in the next room, too stubborn to just talk and too smart to risk a second fight in the same night.
Kieran
You awake?
I thought about ignoring him. Then:
Yes.
