The bathroom lock clicks with satisfying finality, and I press my back against the door like I am holding back a flood.
My eyes fall shut. My chest heaves. The sounds from Kai's bedroom have stopped, but my body refuses to acknowledge the silence. I still hum with unfinished need, the kind that makes my teeth ache and my skin feel two sizes too small.
The bathroom is small, tiled in vintage mint green that my father would have called "institutional."
I avoid the mirror at first, unwilling to see my own face. I know what I will find there: flushed cheeks, dilated pupils, desperate expression.
Instead, I turn on the tap and let the water run loud enough to mask any sounds I might make. The steam will rise from the hot water, a plausible cover if anyone wonders why I lingered.
I do not bother with the actual shower—no time, no patience, and the noise might carry through the pipes. So, I grip the edge of the sink for balance and use my own hand with the efficiency of long practice—though rarely with this particular fuel.
Anger and desire twist together in my chest, indistinguishable. I think of Kai's hands on that girl's hips. The hands I have watched handling books and pens. I think of his mouth at her ear, whispering words that made her scream.
I finish quickly, silently, biting my lip hard enough to leave marks that will remind me tomorrow of my weakness tonight.
After, I stand in the steam of my own making—hot water still running, breath and body heat filling the small space—and finally meet my own eyes in the mirror. What I see there frightens me.
A stranger stares back. A woman who looks capable of anything, who just touched herself thinking about her stepbrother, who is losing the battle she swore she would win.
You're pathetic, I tell my reflection. You're everything you promised yourself you wouldn't become.
I turn off the tap, wave my hand through the dissipating steam to clear it faster, and reach for the door. My pulse has slowed. My face is still flushed, but I can blame that on the heat. I have survived worse humiliations. I can survive this one.
I open the door and walk directly into Kai's chest.
He is shirtless. Fresh scratches mark his shoulder—definitely fingernails, definitely from the girl who was screaming his name minutes ago.
A trail of dark hair disappears into jeans that sit low on his hips, and I feel my recently sated body stir with immediate, humiliating interest.
"What were you doing in here?" He does not sound accusatory. He sounds curious, almost gentle, so why on earth is that worse?
I try for deflection, leaning against the doorframe with manufactured casualness. "What does anyone do in a bathroom, Kai? The possibilities are truly endless."
"Are they?" He steps closer, and I catch the scent of sex still clinging to his skin. "You're flushed," he observes, reaching past me to adjust the faucet I left dripping. His arm brushes my shoulder, deliberate or accidental I cannot tell. "Warm in here."
"Steam," I manage. "From the shower."
"You didn't shower."
"I—" I have no response prepared for this level of observation. My hair is dry. My clothes are unchanged. The shower curtain hangs undisturbed, bone dry and damning.
I watch his eyes—dark, knowing, moving over my face—and feel certain that he is fishing. That he suspects what I was doing without knowing for sure.
The question surfaces suddenly in my mind: Did he bring the girl here on purpose?
The wall between our rooms is thin. The timing of his activities aligned perfectly with the one evening I thought I had to myself. This encounter in the hallway feels staged.
Everything is another move in a game I am only now understanding the rules of.
"You look like you've been doing more than just running water," Kai says, his voice dropping lower. "Want to tell me what you were really doing in my bathroom?"
"It's not your bathroom, it's the hallway bathroom, and I don't owe you explanations for—"
"Kai?"
A female voice cuts through my deflection. We both turn toward the sound.
Petra Wallace stands in the doorway of Kai's bedroom, wrapped in a blanket, clearly naked underneath. I recognize her immediately—the blonde from my tutoring sessions, the one who sighs through every lesson like Shakespeare is a personal insult.
She opens her mouth to say something to Kai and then freezes as she recognizes me.
"Ms. Fraser?" Her voice rises with genuine surprise, the blanket clutched tighter to her chest. "You're—oh. Oh, you live here?"
I feel the professional ground shift beneath my feet. Petra is my student. And now she stands in my hallway, freshly fucked by my stepbrother.
"Petra," I say, aiming for neutral and landing somewhere near strangled. "I didn't realize you were—visiting."
The euphemism sounds absurd the moment it leaves my mouth. Petra realizes it too. A flush spreads across her cheeks, and her eyes dart between Kai and me, processing the scene with rapid calculation.
Kai shirtless and standing too close. Me flushed and cornered against the doorframe. Steam still lingering in the air between us like evidence of guilt neither of us has confessed.
I watch her expression shift—confusion first, then suspicion, then something darker that settles in the corners of her mouth.
"I should go," I say, too quickly, the words tumbling over each other. "I have papers to grade. Student essays waiting, very urgent essays that absolutely cannot wait until morning."
I slide past Kai, careful not to touch him, careful not to look at either of them. My bare feet slap against the hardwood, loud in the sudden silence.
"Petra, I'll see you Thursday," I call over my shoulder. "For our regular session. Nine o'clock. Don't forget to bring your annotated copy of the text."
I do not wait for her response. I do not look back to see what expression crosses Kai's face. I just walk—fast, faster—until I am behind my own door with my back pressed to the wood and my heart pounding loud enough to drown out thought.
The silence from Kai's room stretches, weighted with meaning. I imagine them in there, Petra asking questions, Kai providing answers I cannot hear.
I imagine what conclusions she is drawing from the scene she witnessed—her tutor, flushed and disheveled, emerging from a steaming bathroom to bump into her shirtless lover in the hallway.
I stand there, breathing, counting the seconds until I hear footsteps, until I hear voices, until I hear anything that will tell me how badly I have miscalculated.
The footsteps never come.
The silence remains, oppressive and expectant, and I know with absolute certainty that the following week will be hell.
Kai will not let this slide.
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