Chapter 1055: Her Condition and Secret

"I’ve been carrying that guilt for so long it feels like it’s fused into my bones," she continued, her voice trembling with fifteen years of buried

shame.

Every word seemed to pull fresh heat of embarrassment to her skin, her cheeks burning deeper as the confession spilled out like a long-suppressed secret.

"Every time Ashley talks about how her dad abandoned us, it cuts me like a knife twisting in my chest. But I’ve never corrected her. Because telling her the truth would mean watching her entire world fracture. I’m terrified that if she knew it was me... she might stop loving me the way she does now."

She finally lifted her gaze to him. Her gray eyes were glassy with unshed tears and raw, aching vulnerability. A deep rose flush burned across her cheeks and down the delicate column of her throat. The weight of both her devastating confession and his

unrelenting,

hungry gaze left her feeling fully vulnerably exposed, every inch of her alive and aware.

"I’m the

villain

in my own marriage story, Eros,"

she whispered. "And I’ve been too much of a coward to tell my daughter the truth."

Eros remained perfectly still, holding her gaze with steady, gentle strength. There was no fake sympathy, no rush to comfort — only that calm, magnetic presence that made the air between them feel thick, electric, and dangerously

intimate

than she thought it would be.

The forbidden nature of the moment — this raw confession from the mother of the woman he was seeing, or more correctly, his devoted girl — only intensified the slow-burning hunger between them, turning vulnerability into something undeniably warm to ease her tension.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, sincere, and laced with quiet command and the deep timbre vibrated through her body, settling low in her belly like a warm, possessive caress.

"When two people who love someone both

have their own version of what went wrong, the person they love doesn’t usually choose the

truer

one. They choose the one they’ve already decided on. Not because it’s perfect... but because deciding feels safer than questioning the ground they’ve stood on for years.

"Ashley chose her father as the villain a long time ago. Telling her otherwise wouldn’t be giving her the

truth

— it would be asking her to tear down the very foundation she’s built her life upon. Most people can’t do that.

"Not because

they’re weak...

but because admitting you were wrong for that long about someone you love can hurt more than losing them in the first place."

He turned her phone slowly in his hand once more, then set it down on the coffee table with a soft, deliberate click.

"The third party will always take the side they chose," he said gently. "Not because they’re blind. But because choosing is how people survive truths that don’t have happy endings."

She was completely focused on him now.

The wine was forgotten. The couch, the room, the ticking minutes until Ashley returned — all of it had faded away.

He let the silence stretch between them, thick and charged. Then, slowly, openly, with no pretense of accident, he reached across the small space and took her hand in his and this time he did not release it.

Her fingers were cool and delicate against the warmth of his large palm. The contrast sent a shiver racing up her arm and her entire body.

She didn’t pull away.

"But that’s why you told me, isn’t it?" he murmured, his thumb brushing slow, deliberate circles across her knuckles. Each smooth stroke sent tiny sparks of heat dancing under her skin, feeding the growing ache low in her core where her

clit

had begun to

throb

gently against the damp fabric.

"You’re hoping that one day I’ll become something solid enough in Ashley’s life — more than a boyfriend, more than a passing phase — that the foundation she’s built can finally withstand being questioned. And when that day comes, you’ll finally have the

courage

to give her the truth.

Because she’ll have enough love surrounding her to survive it."

She closed her eyes.

A single, shaky breath moved through her chest. After carrying an unbearable weight for years and suddenly hearing it understood by someone who has no right to see her this clearly.

"Yes," she whispered, her voice cracking with raw honesty.

He didn’t let go of her hand.

"What did you do?" he asked, just as quietly. "Did you... cheat on him?"

She shook her head, eyes still closed. A single tear slipped down her flushed cheek.

"No. No, I

never—"

She swallowed hard and opened her eyes. They were bright, searching, and painfully vulnerable.

"I lost myself in my job.

I worked. I worked and I worked because work was the only thing I could still feel. Everything else had gone flat. Everything else had gone quiet."

She looked straight at him, her voice dropping to a painful, intimate whisper.

"Do you know what

anhedonia

is?"

He nodded once, slowly.

"The inability to feel pleasure?"

"That’s the clinical definition," she shock her head, a sad, self-aware smile flickering across her lips. The curve of it was fragile, almost

apologetic,

as if she were confessing a sin she still carried in her bones.

"The reality is...

it’s not that you

feel bad.

You don’t

feel anything

. Food tastes like texture. Music is just noise. The things you used to love feel like faded memories of someone else’s life. You go through the motions of a life that used to belong to you, but you can’t find the part of you that used to live inside it. I had it for years. I still get flashes of it sometimes. I lost my marriage to it. I lost my ability to be a good wife to it. I

stopped—"

her voice broke, raw and trembling,

"I stopped being able to

receive

him. To

want

him. To

feel

him. And he couldn’t understand why, and I couldn’t explain it, and eventually he stopped trying. Then he left... and I let him leave because I couldn’t find anything inside myself worth staying for."

His thumb continued its slow, steady stroke across her knuckles — warm, grounding, hypnotic. The rhythmic pressure was

maddeningly

gentle, each pass sending fresh pulses of heat straight to the aching throb between her legs.

"What kind of anhedonia do you have?" he asked gently.

She held his gaze for a long moment, weighing whether the answer was worth saying out loud to the man whose hand she was still holding in her own living room — the man her daughter wanted.

"Sexual,"

she whispered.

His eyebrow lifted — just slightly, a quiet

calibration rather than shock.

She kept going, because stopping now would hurt worse than finishing.

"I could still... the mechanics worked. I could still be touched. I could still climax. But I couldn’t feel any of it. Not real pleasure. Not desire. Not that deep, melting spark you’re supposed to feel when someone you love puts his hands on you. It was like my body had been

unplugged

from the part of me that knew how to enjoy being in it.

"Intimacy became a chore. My husband was a good man, and I couldn’t give him what he deserved. I started avoiding him. He started believing I didn’t want him anymore... and he was right. I didn’t want anyone. I didn’t want anything."

She let out a small, wet, broken laugh that barely made a sound that trembled in the air between them, fragile and heartbreaking.

"I was thirty-one the last time a man touched me and felt anything. I’m forty-three now. And for two years... I haven’t missed it. Not once."

The silence that followed felt thick, heavy, and alive with forbidden tension.

He held her hand. Looked at her. Let her finish without filling the space.

Then — quietly, without a trace of performance —

"Have you

felt anything

since I walked through your door tonight?"