Serafina
I stared at the last message on my phone—the one Matteo had sent just before dawn, a message that held too much longing, too much certainty, too much of the past I had spent years trying to bury.
It pulsed on my screen like a live wound, throbbing with a truth I wasn’t ready to face. My thumb hovered over the delete button, trembling so violently I nearly dropped the device.
I heard his voice in my head, the one he’d used in the dark the night before, thick with emotion he never allowed when sunlight touched him.
“Tell me when I’ll see you again.”
I shut my eyes tightly, pressing the heel of my palm against my forehead as if I could push the memory away. It didn’t work. His touch still lingered. His breath still ghosted across my skin. The way he whispered my unknown name—his version of it, the one he had woven in the dark—still played on a merciless loop in my veins.
“Stop,” I whispered to the empty bedroom. “This has to stop.”
The word stop dissolved the second it left my lips. Because it wasn’t true. Not fully. Not honestly.
I should have stopped it. I should have ended it after the first anonymous message. After the first clandestine meeting. After the first trembling touch that shattered the fragile boundaries I’d spent years crafting.
But I hadn’t. I had answered him.
I had gone to him.
I had let him touch me as though no time had passed and then convinced myself it was anonymity protecting me—when in truth, it was a lie protecting my delusion.
I opened my eyes again and forced my thumb down on the delete button. One message disappeared. Then another. Then every thread of conversation until the screen showed nothing but an empty, quiet space where chaos had lived moments before. One by one, I wiped the evidence—cleared the encrypted app history, deleted call logs, removed the placeholder contact from my hidden folder. Every step felt like tearing skin from bone.
When the last trace of him was gone, I set the phone down on the dresser, my breath coming in shallow, uneven bursts.
“Enough,” I whispered harshly. “You have to choose. You have to cut this off. You have to protect your life.”
But the moment I said it, a sob clawed its way up my throat—not loud, not dramatic, but a soft, broken sound that carried years of unresolved grief. Because the truth was simple and devastating: I had already crossed far beyond a single moment of weakness. I had stepped into a second life—one shaped by confusion, desire, and a magnetic pull toward a man who had once been my greatest downfall.
“When did this happen?” I asked the shadows. “When did I become a woman who lies to her husband? Who hides messages? Who meets a man in the dark like a criminal?”
The silence offered no answer.
My legs weakened, and I sank onto the edge of the bed, gripping the comforter as if it could anchor me. I forced myself to breathe, but each inhale felt like swallowing shards of glass. Matteo’s voice returned again—soft, vulnerable, unguarded.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you. Not for a second.”
I covered my face with both hands. “God, why couldn’t you leave me alone?”
But the truth burned immediately.
“Why couldn’t I leave you alone?”
Because the thought of letting him go again—truly severing the last thread—filled me with a grief I could not justify, a grief that terrified me more than the affair itself. It wasn’t just desire. It wasn’t just nostalgia. It was something deeper, uglier, more honest. It was the part of my heart that had never healed, no matter how fiercely I had rebuilt my life with Adrian.
A soft knock sounded at the bedroom door. My breath caught.
“Fina?” Adrian’s voice drifted through, warm but strained. “Are you awake?”
I jumped slightly, wiping my face quickly and forcing my voice into steadiness. “Yes, I’m up. Come in.”
He pushed the door open slowly, his expression gentle but wary. He had been doing that lately—approaching me as though afraid I might break, or worse, afraid he might break if he touched me. “I didn’t hear you come to bed last night,” he murmured.
“I had… work on my mind,” I said carefully.
He nodded, though something in his eyes flickered—uncertainty, suspicion, or fear, I couldn’t tell. He stepped further inside and reached toward me, brushing a stray curl behind my ear. The gesture was soft, familiar, intimate. But my skin reacted too sharply—every nerve tightening, bracing, remembering the difference. I hated that. I hated that my body betrayed me now, flinching not from him but from the guilt of wanting someone else.
“You look tired,” Adrian said gently. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes,” I lied smoothly, the way I’d learned to lie when survival demanded it. “Just a long few days.”
He studied me quietly, his brow creasing with concern he didn’t voice. “If there’s something you want to talk about—”
“There isn’t,” I interrupted, perhaps too quickly.
His expression faltered—just slightly, a flicker of hurt he tried to mask with a soft smile. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to my temple. I held still, letting him but not leaning into it, unable to silence the war inside me. He pulled back slowly, the hesitation in his movements unmistakable.
“I’ll make breakfast,” he said after a long pause. “Join me when you’re ready.”
When he left and the door clicked softly behind him, I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. I pressed my fingers to my lips, as if trying to remember what warmth felt like without the weight of betrayal clinging to it.
I stood and moved to the mirror, staring at myself—my eyes too bright with unshed tears, my skin flushed with guilt and something darker. “You have to end this,” I whispered to my reflection. “Before it destroys everything.”
But even as I said it, the truth twisted deeper.
I didn’t know how.
Not when Matteo’s touch still lived beneath my skin.
Not when the memory of him made me feel alive in ways that terrified me.
Not when my marriage had begun to feel like a fragile mask I slipped into each morning.
I dressed carefully—choosing a blouse Adrian liked, applying makeup to hide the exhaustion—but none of it wiped away the truth. I was living a double life now. A wife at home. A phantom lover in the shadows. And the line between the two grew thinner every day.
I stepped into the hallway, forcing my posture straight, forcing my breathing calm, praying Adrian would not look too closely at me.
Because if he did…
I feared he would see everything.