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I can't get around it, because he's partly right.

"He will kill you. I'm not being dramatic. That’s just who he is."

"Then he can go ahead."

"Oh, fuck off."

"I've had men try to end my career. I had a guy put his stick through my knee in front of eighteen thousand people and I was back on the ice in March." He comes around the counter. "I don't run from people. I never have."

"This isn't hockey, Charles. This is a man who owns six funeral homes and buries people for a living… in more ways than one. I’m not joking⁠—"

"Stay tonight, then."

I stop.

"You left me three weeks ago," he says. "In your kitchen. When you told me about your father, your brother, and the wedding. You've been gone since then." He isn't angry. I wish he was. "This is just you coming back to tidy up."

And he's right. That's the worst part of the entire evening. There isn't a single word of what he's saying that I can argue with. Also, Laszlo knows I’m here because I told him. The rest is my secret to keep.

I need this for closure. I need this to convince myself I’m not giving up the world.

So I kiss him.

I start this. Me. Not him.

He's careful about it—very predictable. His hand comes up to my jaw, soft, asking.

I take his wrist and put his hand where I want it.

"Manon—"

"Don't talk."

I take the ring off in his bedroom and put it on the nightstand.

This whole act isn't gentle or intimate in any way. I don't want him to be gentle. I don't want to feel anything except release. Every time he slows down to check on me, I grab his buttocks and urge him to fuck me harder. He's confused, of course, because in four years I've never been like this with him in bed. He's used to a different me, a lighter me. After some hesitation, he follows my lead and fucks me harder, probably deciding that this feels good. I let him think that way, because I'm a coward. And a liar … and I want to get this over with.

He twists my hair in his fist because I put his hand there, and I close my eyes. Then I'm no longer in this room and no longer in his bed.

I'm thinking about Laszlo Novak.

Weeks ago, at the engagement party at his home, with his hand on me and his mouth an inch from my ear. Ask me to stop and I stop. Right now, back to the party, hands off, the whole night. All you have to do is ask.

I didn't ask, yet he took his hand away anyway and stepped back, leaving me standing there, wanting.

Wanting more of that touch.

That's what does it. Not Charles or his moves, but thoughts of a man who touched me fleetingly in a place that smelled of dead people.

I turn my face into the pillow when I get there, because I don't trust the right name to come out of my mouth.

Charles finishes deep inside me with his forehead against my neck. He stills, hot and wet and spent, then starts to laugh. Pulling me against his chest, he tells me he loves me.

He means it. He thinks tonight was the answer to all our problems, except it wasn't. I'm still engaged to another man. And I don’t feel anything resembling love.

“This is goodbye,” I say. “Don’t call me again.”

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