SUMMER SWAP // Chapter 33

The hideous confession from the woman he loved destroyed him. Yet he was still standing. The story she told him should deliver the kind of nuclear devastation that led to the irrevocable termination of a relationship. A kaleidoscope of terrifying images flickered through his mind in dim, sepia-toned low wattage horror, like a snuff film shot on 8mm. Cheyenne getting pounded. Cody’s slick blond hair. Cody’s cock—he’d seen it in Carla’s bedroom as she got on her knees to worship it—reaming in and out of his wife’s tenderest space. The pleasure displayed on Chey’s face as Cody’s out-sized organ touched her in places her husband couldn’t. Sweat on her skin. A closeup of her erect nipple. And Philippe watching. Philippe jerking off to Cheyenne Bishop getting fucked deep and hard. His big, weird, uncircumcised cock. Cheyenne showing Philippe her beaten pussy while he ejaculated. How much come was there? He bet it impressed Cheyenne. She orgasmed from it. Globs of pearly semen on Philippe’s hairy chest, tendrils of come sagging between the thick black strands.

Chey sat pushed into the opposite corner, no longer close to him, knowing, he supposed, that such a story told to your husband could send him into violent thrashing. She clutched a protective pillow to her midsection, and eyed him with existential dread, her lips pulled thin and wriggling nervously.

Instead of wanting to hurl—which would be the most natural reaction to such a confession from a trusted love one—his stomach was a solid block of lead. Inert, steady, but heavy and awkward and looming with threat. There was no explosion of rage or horror. The urge was there, but it seemed like that was behavioral conditioning. When you didn’t know how to act in a situation, sometimes your brain recalled someone else’s similar reaction and adopted that. In countless movies, the reaction he would have expected from himself was a red-faced, vein-blasting, juggernaut’s rampage. But Chey’s story did the opposite to him. It knocked him out. It devastated him. It deflated the ego and the masculine monster that should lurk within him. All those interior components knew not a thing about how to deal with this confession. Instead, he was left hollow and muffled, unsure of what to think. He could focus on Cody or Philippe and produce some anger, but he didn’t want to think about them at all. All he wanted to think about was Cheyenne.

The urge to flee was strong. It would be the easiest thing to do, and it would also have the added benefit of hurting her in return. He could storm off and pack his bags and, oh golly, it would reduce Chey to a shrieking puddle. Scarlet would have to come and console her, and it would cause a devastating scene. It felt good to consider it. It would be easy and it would feel good. And he could hurt Cheyenne in return.

He sat on the edge of the couch seat, feet firmly planted on the floor, elbows on knees, hunched over, staring at his shoes. He regarded Cheyenne again. She waited with sullen expectation, wanting to know his verdict but afraid to prompt him right now in case the verdict was one she didn’t want to hear. Cheyenne must be anticipating the end of their marriage. It was a possibility.

He sat back and sighed, puffed out his cheeks and let go a slow exhalatory trail from his pouted lips. His hands rubbed up and down his bare thighs and played with the hem of his workout shorts.

“That’s . . . That’s a lot of truth,” he said without looking her way, eyes cast to the gym and the window-sliver of blue sky out there.

Cheyenne didn’t answer. He quarter-faced her and saw a tear stream her cheek and run along the edge of her jaw. She wiped it away and tucked her chin down. Another tear came.

Then a sudden flinch of worry: this was truly existential marital discord. A flash of trouble got him blinking like Cheyenne stood in fierce sunlight, angling a mirror his way and blinding him. A fear shone like a fragment of glass in black sand. Cheyenne rode the line of ending it with him by telling him.

“So what does this mean, Chey?” He gathered his hands between his legs and clasped them together, that leaden feeling in his belly beginning to revolve and bob like a toxic molten ball in a poisoned Chinese river.

She shook her head uncomprehendingly and rolled her wet eyes around the room. Her lips pursed to a plump point.

Yeah, he could hurt her. He could end their marriage—or at least pretend he could. But he didn’t want that. And he was afraid to challenge her with the threat of it. She’d dared to tell him an awful truth—an awful thing she’d done. What if she told him that because she was unafraid of the consequences? What if she was fine with ending the marriage? She’d just been with another man last night and from all accounts, the session had been spectacular. What if Cheyenne had a sudden urge to hit the market, swipe right on her own Cody Weber, one she could claim as her own?

Cheyenne was the ultimate prize here. His marriage to her was the unassailable treasure in this adventure. Preservation was of the utmost importance. He sat staring at her, blinking, breathing, and Chey looked down, fingers playing with the dangling tassel on a pillow corner.

“I’m trying to reconcile something,” he said.

She looked up, head cocked aside, eyes water and weak, cheeks red, face puffy. “What?”

“Before you told me all this, you arranged that we might possibly do it again.”

She nodded, looked down again.

“When you said that, did you know you were going to tell me the truth?”

“Yeah.”

Now it was him looking around the room. Dead inside. That’s how he felt. Just all over empty, arms heavy, knees weak . . .

“Why?”

She said, “Why what?”

“Why do you think we would ever try it again if this is what happened the first time?” A sudden gorge rose in his throat—that fucking image of semen on Philippe’s chest. It made him think of airport cinnamon rolls. He retched a little and put his fist to his mouth.

Cheyenne said, “We don’t have to, Byron. But I have to be honest with you. I couldn’t keep that from you. And, I really, really . . .”

Her voice went thin and broke with a breathy tremble of crying.

“Really what?”

“Want you to be honest with me about . . .” A tear rolled down her cheek. “About you and Carla.”

“What about us?”

“I want you to tell me the truth about her.”

“What truth, Chey?”

“What you did with her. You can tell me. Tell me for real.”

“I told you for real, Chey.”

“Okay,” she said, eyes popping up to the ceiling for a second. She wiped her cheeks and sniffled. “We have to be honest with each other. And I didn’t want to keep that from you.”

“No kidding, Chey. Two guys . . .?”

“I didn’t have sex with two guys. Please don’t say that.”

He studied his wife. She was a bubbling mess. Nose runny, eyes teary, a vein pulsing in her temple. She was barely holding it together. It was a good thing.

He groaned and scrubbed his cheeks, his groan turning to a grumbling low roar. “I don’t know what to do about those two fucking assholes.” His voice had raised.

“Don’t, please?” Chey said pleadingly, voice thick. “Please don’t say anything to them, Byron.”

“What? Why not?”

Chey looked away, mouth open, not knowing how to explain it. Her eyes returned to his. “They don’t know I thought it was you. They think I was into what they did, and—”

“But Chey, you weren’t.”

“But I was, Byron. I hate it, but it’s true. And if you tell them, then it makes me look . . .”

He waited, but she didn’t continue. “Look what?”

Her shoulders sagged, and she looked like she hated having to admit it to him and why couldn’t he just figure out what she meant. “Stupid, Byron. Stupid.”

“What? How do you look stupid?”

“You weren’t there, Byron. It was working out for us. It was hot.”

“Working out for us?” He winced, one eye squinting.

“You and me,” she said. “We did this thing together, and it was hot and it was fun. Yeah, it was hard, but it was . . .”

“No way, Chey,” he said, voice getting loud again. “You know what the problem is, then? You know what the problem is then if you’re totally okay with Cody inviting a surprise guest?”

She blubbered: “What?”

“That nobody fucking asked me, Chey. Nobody fucking said to me ahead of time, hey, Byron, we’re going to pop Philippe in to give Chey a thrill—you okay with that? Oh, but don’t tell her, don’t wreck the fun.”

Chey held a pouting little girl look—he wasn’t sure, but she could be mad at him right now. And that made him madder.

She said, “You’re my boss?”

“I’m not your boss, Chey. Why would you even say that? It’s about goddamn respect. Respect for my position as your husband—maybe you want to act like a husband is some historically power position, and the wife is chattel, but that is not the fucking argument, okay? That’s bullshit, and if you take that path in the argument, I’m telling you, I’ll know it’s one-hundred percent because you know I’m fucking right and you hate to lose and you’re grasping at straws. You know I’ve never once in my life acted like I was your boss. Give me a break.”

Chey put the pillow up to her face and hid behind it. When she put it down, he could see she was sorry. She looked down. “Could we maybe not have so much space between us?”

But he was on a roll. “My position as your husband isn’t about ownership. Not one bit. That’s a fucking cheap shot. My position as your husband is fraught with worry. Fraught with concern that I’m holding up my end of the bargain. That I’m keeping you happy. That I’m fulfilling my role. And you know why?—I want that role, Chey. I fucking auditioned, I put in the work, I hustled to get you into my life. You’re not some flash in the pan, replaceable trophy thing. So yeah, I demand fucking respect.”

Chey blubbered more, then knuckled her eye sockets to scrunch away the tears.

He said, “If you want to close the space between us, you know where I am.”

Chey tossed the pillow to the floor and got on her knees, pausing to sniffle and wipe her cheeks. When he held his arms open and showed her the compassion he felt in his heart, she scrambled to him. Her cheek and chin crashed into the space between shoulder and chest, and his arms went around her. She curled against him. Her skinny arms snaking around him, between his body and the couch.

It felt so incredible to have her lithe body in his arms. He kissed the top of her head and breathed in her shampoo smell. “I love you, Chey,” he whispered. “I fucking love you.”

She squeezed him tight and he could feel her hot breath on his chest. She sat straighter in his arms, her face close to his. “I’m sorry, Byron. I swear I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, Chey.”

“Yeah, there is. Don’t try to be nice.”

“Are you really worried about me and Carla, or is that some kind of supportive act?”

“Don’t do that, Byron. You know how hard it is to tell the truth?”

“I know it’s hard. That’s the reason you’d want to mitigate it.”

“I’m not mitigating anything. I love you, Byron.” Her hands went to his cheeks, then cupped the sides of his head, slotting his ears at the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. She looked right into his eyes. “I love you so much, Byron.”

He smiled. Then she smiled. Both of them sheepish. Both of them embarrassed. Her mouth came nearer to his, and he met it halfway. They kissed slow and soft. It grew with intensity. And with that intensity came that blossoming feeling his body couldn’t fight: he was going to have sex. His cock was already hard—something he was ashamed of—and now it twitched and struggled in his shorts as his heart began to pound. Chey felt the wild arousal, too. She gasped while they kissed and their hands began to sweep over one another’s bodies and tugged at clothing.

An incredible feeling of lust and fake-betrayal and anger and love swirled through him. It got him sneering and smiling; it got his whole body alive and tingling. He got over top of her and Chey was eager to get on her back. Her nipples pushed against the fabric of her cut-off sweatshirt. He pressed his palms against them and ground his hard-on between her legs. Chey shot a hand down and squeezed his cock through his shorts. Then while they kissed passionately, her hands shoved down his shorts and freed his cock. She jerked it and squeezed it and he pulsed lubricant into her hand. Her stroke went slippery, and she gasped with excitement. “Fuck me,” she whispered. “Fuck me, Byron.”