Chapter 4 Her Husband, My Sin (4)

I took one step back without thinking.

“I hate repeating myself, Snow,” Dave said quietly, his eyes fixed on my face like he was reading every thought I was trying to hide.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” I whispered.

“Don’t you?” He tilted his head slightly. “Or are you pretending that what I said was strange?”

He took a slow step toward me, and I took another back. I couldn’t look at him directly.

Every time I tried, the heat crawled up my neck and spread across my face, heavy and suffocating. It kept going down my chest, into my stomach, and lower.

The overwhelming desire and lust I felt threatened to consume me. It was humiliating how little control I had over my own body when he was in the room. This was the man who sat at the head of our table.

“Should I spell it out for you?” he added, his voice dropping to a gravelly low.

“How—” The word fell out of my mouth before my brain could stop it.

Dave’s laughter echoed through the high ceilings of the mansion. “You’re such a—”

“Snow!”

My mother’s voice sliced through the air sharply.

She appeared in the doorway between us, looking from my face to Dave’s with the sharp, instinctive radar of a woman who sensed something without knowing what.

“When did you get home? Is something wrong? The atmosphere feels...”

“Nothing, Mom.” The lie came out smooth and immediate, which scared me. I forced a small, tight smile. “Dad was just asking how school went.”

The word “Dad” felt like a hot coal in my mouth. It was the shield I used to keep the world from seeing the truth. Saying it out loud while my skin was still humming from his proximity felt like sacrilege.

“Really?” she looked at Dave.

Dave smiled at her, warm, easy, and completely convincing. The same mouth that had just been saying things it had no business saying to me curved into the smile of a devoted husband.

“Of course,” he stated, moving more towards her. His arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her against his side with the casual ownership of a man completely comfortable in his own home. He pressed his lips to her cheek.

And stared directly at me while he did it.

My hand curled into a fist at my side. The heat in my chest curdled into something uglier—sharp, irrational, and deeply unfair.

I had no right to feel this way. She was his wife and my mother. He was the man she had chosen to lead our family, the man I was supposed to respect and obey.

And yet, watching his hands on her made me want to put my fist through the nearest wall.

What is wrong with you, Snow?

Mother blushed, leaning into him with a small smile. “Snow is still here.”

“Don’t mind me.” I was already turning toward the stairs. “I’m going to my room.”

I walked fast. Behind me, I heard her soft moan of affection and the low murmur of his voice responding to her, and I took the stairs two at a time.

I was running from a ghost, running from the word 'Dad' and the way it tasted like betrayal every time I thought of his hands.

I shut my bedroom door and stood with my back against it, eyes closed, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

Just then, my phone rang. I picked it up.

“Hey, sweetheart.” Hunter’s voice was warm and genuinely concerned. “You left so suddenly. I just wanted to check you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired.”

“You sure? You seemed—”

“I have an assignment. I’ll call you later.”

I hung up before he could ask more and dropped the phone on the nightstand. If only he were Dave. The thought arrived uninvited, and I hated myself for it.

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, listening to the silence of the house.

Downstairs, my mother was with her husband. The man who had ruined my life without even trying. He probably wasn’t thinking about me at all. He was probably touching her, his hands—

Just then, my bedroom door swung open.

I sat up fast.

Dave stood in the doorway.

My heart stopped, then restarted badly with a frantic drumming against my ribs.

He leaned against the frame, one hand in his pocket, watching me with that expression I could never fully decode.

I blinked. Then blinked again.

He’s not real, I told myself. This is the fever dream. The shadows in the corner of the room had always been good at playing tricks when I was this desperate.

I had conjured him so many times that my brain was finally snapping.

“Just once,” I whispered to the hallucination. “Just once, look at me without her in the way. Forget you’re her husband. Forget who I’m supposed to be to you.”

I got down from the bed slowly and crossed the room towards him, my breath hitching. In my head, he didn’t move; he let me come to him.

I reached out, my palm finding his chest. He felt impossibly solid—warm, broad, and with the steady rhythm of a heart beneath the fabric of his shirt.

I let my forehead rest against his shoulder, closing my eyes.

“I hate you for it,” I confessed, my voice a jagged thread. “I hate that you’re the only thing I can see. I hate that I call you ‘Dad’ in front of her while I’m dying to touch you like this. Even when Hunter touches me, I’m still reaching for your ghost. You’ve ruined everything. I’m empty, Dave. There’s nothing left of me that isn’t yours.”

I moved my hand up, my fingers trembling as they traced the hard line of his jaw, then moved to the corner of his mouth.

“Please,” I breathed, tilting my head back, my eyes still closed as I sought the heat of his skin. “Just for a second, pretend I’m the one you chose. Tell me I’m not crazy for wanting to die every time you touch her.”

I pressed my lips to the side of his neck, a soft, desperate graze. He smelled of cedar and clean musk—a scent too vivid to be a dream.

“Tell me you see me,” I whispered against his skin. “Tell me you know.”

“Are you finished?”

The voice didn’t come from my imagination. It lacked the velvet warmth of my fantasy. It was flat, heavy, and reminiscent of a gavel hitting a stone floor.

I stumbled backward so fast I nearly fell, my hand flying to my mouth to stifle a sob of pure terror.

Dave hadn’t moved an inch. He remained leaned against the frame, but his eyes... they were colder than I’d ever seen them.

There was no passion there. No hidden desire. Just a profound, clinical contempt, as if he were looking at a stain on an otherwise clean floor.

“Your mother is waiting downstairs,” he announced, his voice terrifyingly steady. “Don’t keep her long.”

He let the silence hang for a heartbeat—long enough for every word I’d just confessed, every pathetic admission of my obsession, to echo back in my ears until I felt sick.

He didn’t even give me the dignity of an argument. He turned and walked away.

I stood in the center of the room, the air suddenly freezing.

He had been real. He had stood there and let me humiliate myself, let me admit I wanted my mother’s husband, and then walked away like I was nothing but a nuisance.

I sank onto the edge of the bed. The worst part wasn’t the shame. It was the way the room still smelled of him—cedar and clean musk—marking the space where he had stood and watched me destroy myself.

The worst part was that even now, even after that look, the wanting hadn’t gone anywhere at all.