Ex wants reconciliation, but I'm already married

The sheets were soaked through.

Edward had one hand braced beside my hip, the other curled under my knee, and his mouth was somewhere along my collarbone, leaving heat that felt like small bites of summer. My back arched off the mattress without me asking it to.

"Stay with me, Fiona," he murmured, low, near my ear. "Don't go anywhere."

"I'm right here."

His laugh was rough, pleased. He shifted, and the bed shifted with him, and for a second I forgot the name of every street outside this penthouse. That was the thing with Edward. He made the world a smaller, simpler place — just skin, just breath, just the flex of his shoulders under my palms.

I liked that about him. He never asked for more than what was happening right now.

My phone buzzed against the nightstand.

I reached for it before I thought, the way you swat a fly. Edward caught my wrist mid-air, smiling.

"Ignore it."

"One second." I twisted under him, laughing a little, breathless. "Could be the gallery."

"The gallery can wait until I'm done with my wife."

That word — *wife* — still landed in my chest like a small, warm stone, even after a year. I lifted the phone without checking the screen and pressed it to my ear.

"Hello?"

A pause. Static. Then a breath I knew before I knew anything else.

"Fiona."

The room tilted half an inch.

"It's Joe."

I didn't move. Edward's mouth was still on my throat, slow now, unhurried, and somewhere very far away from the voice in my ear. The voice that used to call me from a dorm room in Boston, from a rented car in Chicago, from the side of a road where his bike had broken down. The voice that, three years ago, had told me *I'm not ready for that, Fiona, don't push me.*

"I'm back," Joe said. "I flew in this morning."

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

"Listen to me. I've been thinking — three years, I've been thinking — and I'm done running from it. I want to marry you. Let's do it. Let's get married, Fi."

The ceiling fan turned once. Twice.

I hung up.

I didn't say a single word. I just took the phone away from my ear, tapped the red circle, and dropped it face-down on the nightstand. The screen knocked against the wood with a small, final click.

Edward lifted his head. His hair was damp at the temples. His eyes, dark and a little narrowed, searched my face in that careful way he had — the way that always made me feel like I was being read, page by page.

"Hey." His thumb brushed my cheekbone. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Who was that?"

"Spam." The word came out steady. I was almost surprised. "One of those scam calls. The car warranty thing."

He watched me a beat longer.

I felt my own pulse in my throat, fast and uneven,