“You don’t know me.”

“No. But I know that much.” Bern leaned forward, a thread of anger running through his nerves now. “You tell me that isn’t true.”

Mike said nothing.

Bern slapped his hands to his knees, wanting this done. “So what’d you come here for, Mike? What do you need to hear from me?”

“Do you love my wife?”

Bern laughed again, shaking his head. Goddamn if he even knew the answer to that question. “Honestly? I don’t know. I feel something for her. If I felt this way for a woman I was regular old dating, I might be thinking that this could be something real. But it’s not that fucking simple, is it? I’m a man. I have fuck-all clue what I feel, okay? But I want and like and respect your wife, and if all that adds up to something you can’t trust, and you want to round that up to love, I can’t stop you.”

Mike’s stone-cold eye contact finally broke, his gaze dropping to the carpet.

“This is fucked, man,” Bern said. “This is exactly what gets you off, but the moment it goes off your little script, the second she’s into it as more than just a favor to you —”

Mike’s head snapped up. “You watch yourself, talking like you know the first thing about it.”

“The first thing? You have any clue all the e-mails she and I wrote, setting this up just right? For you? I know all the logistics she worried about. I know how badly she wanted this to work. For you. I promised you guys I’d be fucking monogamous to you, to keep this going. Because it was a good goddamn thing, a thing you wanted. And I did, too, and Sam wanted to make you happy. Now maybe she wants it for her own reasons – emotional ones, as much as sexual. She wants it, outside of your parameters, and suddenly it’s a goddamn crisis?”

“This was never about inviting you to get designs on my wife.”

Bern cocked his head. “That’s exactly what it was about. That’s what cuckolding fucking is.”

“We didn’t invite you into our marriage to date her. To get emotionally involved with her.”

“You didn’t, huh?”

“No.”

Bern stared him down. “Then exactly which of us is the prostitute to you? Me or your wife?”

He didn’t even get a chance to stand before Mike was on him, fist around his collar and pressing into his throat. Bern went still, gripping the chair arms. He’d asked for this. He’d be the calmer man now, and wait to see where it ended.

“You ever call my wife a whore again and I will fucking break you.”

“I never did.” The words hurt to speak with Mike’s knuckles jammed against his Adam’s apple. “Which of us is denying her right to feel something for the man she’s sleeping with? Which of us is reducing her to —”

“You were playing fucking parts,” Mike spat. “And nowhere in that script did it say you were supposed to get a goddamn crush on my wife.”

“We’re human beings. We were bound to feel something.” A livid, petty bit of Bern wanted to make this ugly. Remind Mike exactly which of them had sucked the other’s cock in the name of his precious kink. But Bern felt too righteous – and too right – to fuck it up with that low a blow. “It was never part of the plan,” he said. “But we’re not robots. We can’t just turn our feelings off.”

Mike’s knuckles stayed at Bern’s neck, though the pressure had waned. They were reaching an impasse, but Bern felt he’d won somehow.

“Hit me, if that’s what you came here for, Mike. Otherwise get the fuck out of my house.”

Mike released Bern’s collar and stood up straight, fists at his sides.

Bern stayed sitting, and with feigned calm he said, “You know I’m right.” He hoped his voice belied the pounding of his heart. “And you know what this is, Mike, your coming here today? This is you losing track of what this has all been about, and taking shit too far. Same as last night was about me and Sam losing track and fucking up, taking shit too far. All three of us have crossed a line now. So you and me, let’s quit with this shit and call it even. How about that?”

“Fuck you.”

Bern stood, forcing Mike back a step, underlining which of them was bigger. “We made this bed precisely how you wanted it, Mike, now we’re all fucking lying in it. This is exactly what you asked for. Don’t treat me like a home wrecker when all I’ve ever done is grant your fucking wishes.”

“You’d take her if you could.”

Maybe that’s true. But can you really blame me? “And isn’t that exactly what gets you hard?”

Bern didn’t see the punch coming. It registered as a flash of light and heat in his jaw – more concept than pain. The floor shifted under his feet, and he blinked to find his own hands splayed on the recliner, holding his reeling body upright. As the room righted itself, the pain arrived. Bern tasted blood and felt the tattered edge of his bitten tongue. He flexed his jaw as he stood up straight, and it throbbed but didn’t scream.

“Go,” he ordered Mike, and nodded to the exit.

Mike turned, strode to the door, and yanked it open. “Stay out of our lives,” he said, and marched to his car without looking back. He pulled away with an angry rev and a squeal of tires, disappearing around the corner.

Bern shut the door and thumped it with his fist. “Fucking psycho.”

Molly’s nails skittered at the kitchen door.

“It’s okay, girl.” He let her into the den, crouching to rub her ears. “It’s okay. He’s gone.”

Her tail wagged, if limply, and he stroked her neck.

“Everything’s cool… Don’t worry about that mean man. Sex makes us humans fucking rabid. Or love does. Or something.”

She didn’t seem to understand it any better than Bern did.

“Lemme put some ice on my mouth and we’ll watch the Pirates game. How about that?”

Molly seemed to concur, following cheerfully when Bern walked to the freezer. He found an ice pack in the door and wrapped it in a handkerchief, holding it to his throbbing jaw as he sat back down and switched on the TV.

He pulled his phone out, checking the screen one last time and finding it blank. No surprise. He ought to just delete Sam’s number now – no way in hell he’d be hearing from her again. He tossed the device aside and shut his eyes, welcoming the cold solace of the ice pack to numb the pain.

Breakups always stung, whether they came out of the blue, or hurt to deliver, or crept in like a slow rot. But Bern had never had one quite like this. This one tasted like blood, and the black-and-blue souvenir he had coming would last a week, easy.

But fuck the injury. Bern knew this particular breakup would keep on hurting long after the bruise faded.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Sam was jogging for the front door the moment she heard Mike’s key in the lock. The hour since he’d left for Bern’s had been the longest of her life.

“And?” she asked, watching him push off his shoes.

He didn’t answer. And that made her wonder what on earth Bern’s answer may have been, regarding what there was between him and Sam.

“Mike?”

He passed her, heading down the hall. She followed him into the kitchen, confused when he opened the freezer. More confused still when he pulled out a bag of corn and walked to the couch.

“Mike, say something.”

He took a seat, and Sam wedged herself between his knees to face him, sitting on the coffee table. “Talk to me. Please. What happened?” She watched him drape the bag over his right hand. “Oh God.”

“I fucked up. A little.”

“You hit him?”

“Just once.”

“And I suppose he was asking for it?”

“In that exact moment, yes.”

“But in general?”

He considered it, frowning. “Hard to say. Probably not.”

“Oh, Mike… I knew I should have gone.”

“It had to be me. Anyway, it’s done now.”

The bag’s frost was melting, dripping onto Mike’s jeans.