CHAPTER FIVE
THE TORTURE
Julian
It’s been the longest fucking two weeks of my life. Having Kai’s help around the house has been immensely helpful. I don’t say much to him, and he doesn’t push. We move through the same spaces like strangers who know too much—polite and civil, yet distant. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. That’s all this is—nostalgia. And nostalgia is just the mind playing games. But it’s getting harder to ignore how much space he takes up in a room, and how easily Sophie pulls him in with her charm.
Sometimes I catch myself watching him, wondering if he’s really the same person I used to know. It’s strange to be around him again, to remember the small quirks I used to find adorable. Things like how he holds his breath before he laughs, how his eyes crinkle like he’s holding back a secret, and the way his tongue presses against his cheek when he’s concentrating.
I like having him here—more than I want to admit. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? The closer he gets, the easier it is to remember what it felt like to trust him. And I’m not ready to feel that again.
Still, he’s been helpful. Not only is he good at this renovation stuff, but he also seems to make Sophie happy. Neither of them stops talking as we tackle one thing at a time—most of which is stuff we agreed we’d do ourselves. We had the money to hire things out, but since Malakai came into the picture, we’d been keen on him helping with stuff we could do without outsourcing to the contractors since it was quicker that way and would save us weeks of work.
Today’s project is the master bedroom mattress frame, something I promised Sophie I’d make myself. I enjoy using my hands and working around the house when I’m not on the computer or phone for my job, and I took a few woodworking classes at university, so I know enough of the basics to cobble a nice frame together.
And this frame might be the fucking death of me. Sophie had seen a similar one online a few months ago, but it was fifteenthousandquid. Not that we don’t have the money—we do.
It’s just the principle of it all.
I’d volunteered to make a similar one from scratch without thinking of the logistics—something I’m very prone to do.
And I was determined to finish this one today.
My therapist in London liked to call these little projects myfixations,and I couldn’t agree more.
If it didn’t get done today, it wouldn’t get done at all.
Sophie is in the corner of the large room showing Kai the rolls of custom wallpaper she ordered from William Morris while I hammer another fucking nail into the wood. Every minute or so, I look over at them, and Kai is staring down at her in adoration.
Something uncomfortable works through me at the way he’s looking at her.
It’s not jealousy—I’d be a fool to get jealous, considering the kinds of things we were into.
It’s something far more subtle, like the feeling you get when you see an old friend, someone you once cared about deeply, laughing just a little too easily with someone else. Not territorial, not possessive—just… aware.
I should be happy for them. I should want this—should love the way Sophie lights up around him, the ease in her body language when she laughs at his jokes. And I do.
But part of me wonders when I became the observer, not the participant.
It’s silly, really. I should be happy they get along so well—but there’s something quietly unsettling about watching the man I used to be in love with flirt with my wife, like I’m witnessing a moment I should feel part of, but instead, I’m standing just outside its edges, uninvited. Not quite envy or regret, but a sense of beingleft outof something they share, something I used to understand with regards to him.
It’s as though I’m watching two parts of my life thread together in front of me, and somehow, I’m the one fraying at the seams.
I haven’t really been myself since Kai reentered our lives. To be honest, I’ve been more irritable, moodier, and distracted since I started seeing him most days. I know Sophie notices, but because she’s polite, she hasn’t mentioned anything.
And this past weekend, Sophie and I went to one of the kink clubs in town called Inferno.We didn’t advertise our kink, but people could infer it from speaking to us. Couples who swing are immensely popular within these types of clubs, and since what we do is a subset of swinging, we felt like we were right at home. We ended up taking a guy back to a nearby hotel suite, and like always, I settled in to watch my wife undress.
One of the best things about Sophie being a hotwife—where a married couple consensually agrees for the wife to have sexualencounters with other men while I remain monogamous—is the way other men look at her.
The way they drink her in.
I see it.
I am in constant awe of her natural beauty.
I know how fucking gorgeous she is, and that’s exactly what I get off on.
But something happened this past weekend.
