Her Godbrother Her Husband

Stacy

The black lace scratches against my skin in a way that reminds me why I don’t wear it often. The bralette is the expensive kind—sheer panels, delicate scalloped edges that trace along the curve of my breasts, a thin strap that keeps sliding off my left shoulder.

I bought it three weeks ago, tucked the shopping bag in my purse, and forgot about it until yesterday. Now I’m lying on top of the duvet in our bedroom, legs crossed at the ankle, staring at the ceiling fan making its slow rotation.

The house settles around me. The refrigerator hums from the kitchen. A car passes on the street outside, headlights sweeping a brief arc across the curtains before disappearing. I check my phone again—11:47 PM. The text from Chase came in at 9:15: Leaving soon. Two words. No punctuation, no emoji, no explanation for why “soon” meant almost three hours.

I shift onto my side, facing his empty pillow. The fitted sheet has come loose on his side, baring a strip of mattress. I should fix it. I don’t. Instead, I trace the edge of the lace along my hip, feeling the pattern press into my skin like a faint brand.

My hair is down, still holding the loose waves I’d put in it this morning before work. I’d stood in front of the bathroom mirror for twenty minutes, curling sections around a wand that smelled like burnt keratin, thinking about how Chase used to reach across the center console of his old Honda and wrap a strand around his finger while he drove.

The garage door groans open.

I sit up, smoothing the lingerie down over my stomach, suddenly aware of how ridiculous this might look. A woman in black lace sitting upright in bed at midnight like she’s posing for a painting nobody asked for. My palms are damp against the duvet. I wipe them on the sheets.

The door from the garage to the kitchen opens. Keys hit the granite counter with a metallic scatter. Shoes being kicked off—one, then the other—each landing with a soft thud against the hardwood. The refrigerator opens and closes. A glass being filled with water. I track each sound, mapping his path through the house like I’m reading a chart of someone’s vital signs, searching for some indication of life.

The bedroom door opens.

Chase stands in the frame, tie already loosened, the collar of his blue dress shirt creased and wilted. His hair—dark, thick, the kind that used to curl at the nape when it got too long—is pressed flat on one side, like he’s been leaning against a headrest for hours.

His jaw carries a shadow of stubble. The skin beneath his eyes is bruised with exhaustion, a purple-gray that makes the blue of his irises look washed out, like denim left too long in the sun.

He sees me. His gaze drops to the lace, the bare skin of my stomach, my legs.

Something flickers across his face—not desire, not exactly. Recognition, maybe. The way you’d look at a photograph of a place you used to live.

“Hey,” he says. His voice is hoarse, scraped raw.

“Hey, yourself.”

He crosses to his side of the bed, unbuttoning his shirt with mechanical precision. Each button pops free, revealing the chest I’ve memorized—the scatter of dark hair, the scar below his collarbone from when he fell off his bike at fourteen, the way his ribs expand and contract with each breath.

He folds the shirt over the back of the desk chair and drapes his tie over the armrest. His movements are slow, deliberate, the kind of careful that comes from running on fumes.

“You didn’t have to wait up,” he says, and there’s no accusation in it, just a gentle observation that makes my throat tighten.

“I wanted to.”

He sits on the edge of the mattress, and it dips under his weight. I watch the muscles in his back shift as he reaches down to pull off his socks. The lamp on my nightstand casts a warm amber glow across his skin, catching the ridge of his spine, the dip of his waist. He’s still beautiful. That’s part of the problem—how he can still be this beautiful and how that beauty can mean so little.

Chase turns, and his hand comes up to my face. His thumb brushes along my cheekbone, callused from gripping a pen, and then he leans in. His lips press against my temple—soft, dry, brief. The kind of kiss you’d give your grandmother at Christmas.

“Goodnight, Stace,” he murmurs against my hair.

He pulls back the duvet on his side, fixes the loose sheet with a single tug, and slides beneath the covers. Within thirty seconds, his breathing evens out. Deep, slow, rhythmic. The breathing of a man who’s been awake for eighteen hours and whose body has been waiting for this moment since he clocked out.

I don’t move.

The lace itches. My skin feels too tight, stretched over bones that suddenly seem fragile, breakable. I look down at myself—at the lingerie I’d picked out with such careful intention, at the body I’d moisturized and perfumed and arranged on these sheets like an offering—and something cold settles into my chest, heavy and dense.

I lie back, slowly, feeling each vertebra press into the mattress. The ceiling fan continues its rotation. Outside, a dog barks twice, then goes silent. Chase’s breathing fills the room, steady as a metronome.

I think about the boy who used to climb through my bedroom window at two in the morning, who would drive forty-five minutes out of his way just to see me for fifteen minutes between classes, who once got into a fistfight with his classmate over something I’d said and never once told me what it was. That boy had looked at me like I was the only solid thing in a world made of smoke.

This man beside me doesn’t even know I’m still awake.

I turn my head on the pillow, studying his profile in the amber light. His lips are slightly parted. A strand of hair has fallen across his forehead. He looks younger in sleep, the lines around his mouth smoothed away, the tension in his jaw released. I could reach out and touch him. I could press my palm flat against his chest and feel his heartbeat. I could curl into his side and let his warmth seep into me.

I don’t.

Instead, I pull the duvet up to my chin, covering the lace, covering the skin I’d bared for him. The fabric is cool against my collarbone. Chase shifts, murmurs something unintelligible, and settles deeper into the pillow.

I stare at the ceiling fan and count its rotations—one, two, three, four—until the numbers blur together and the darkness at the edges of my vision starts to feel less like night and more like something else. Something deeper. The kind of quiet that settles into a house when the people inside it have stopped trying to make noise.

The lace scratches my skin. I don’t take it off.

I turn onto my back again, staring up into the dark. Down the hall, the baby monitor sits silent on my nightstand, its tiny green light blinking softly. CJ and Robin are sound asleep, oblivious to the quiet distance pulling their parents apart. They have my mother’s nose and Carl’s stubborn jaw—a constant, walking reminder of the people we lost, and the heavy legacy Chase feels he has to carry all by himself.

I close my eyes, listening to the house settle. Beside me, Chase lies completely still, his chest rising and falling in a steady, measured rhythm. But I know him. I know the slight tightness in his shoulders that never fully dissolves, even when he’s running on fumes.

The red numbers on my clock shift to 12:12 AM.

I don’t reach out to him, and he doesn’t reach out to me. We just lie there in the dark, two inches apart, pretending to be asleep so neither of us has to face the silence.