Read The Affair: Week 1 for Free Online

disturbing, and yet highly compelling image of him.
    She lost track of time and the bizarre reality of her situation. A numbness settled on her.
    Something had happened to her in that armoire, and she didn’t know what it was.
    She still listened to them. How could she not, as close as they were and knowing their movements prevented or allowed her escape?
    After an immeasurable period of time, their more distant, sporadic murmuring quieted. The minutes dragged by without Emma hearing a sound. She finally dared to open the cupboard a half an inch and peer out cautiously. Not only was the bedroom dark, every light in the office had been extinguished. The only exception was the monitor on the desk. It cast a dim, bluish, ghostlike luminescence on the shadowed room. All was quiet.
    Now. Go.
    Just when she’d galvanized herself into action, she saw a tall shadow suddenly appear in the bedroom entrance—there and then gone. She jerked slightly, her breath hissing into her lungs at the sudden shock of seeing him. She’d rustled the garments in her surprise. Her limbs tingled when she heard the subtle metallic sound of the hangers moving on the rack above her. His footsteps slowed just feet from the armoire.
    Oh my God, he heard me.
    She waited, horror settling on her like a mist, tingling and burning her skin, but she didn’t move. She didn’t breathe.
    A second or two later, she heard the muted sound of the lock being released on the door to the suite, and the knob turning.
    No
.
He didn’t hear me.
    It’d been her oversensitive imagination.
    The door closing behind him sounded hushed and mysterious, like a lover’s secret whispered in the darkness.
    * * *
    His insomnia was growing worse. It didn’t matter how much he threw himself into his work, or fiddled around in his workshop, or exercised, he couldn’t quiet his brain anymore. Sex used to help him rest, too. But the sickly residue that seemed to be permeating his life was now ruining even that primal, fundamental aspect of his existence. Oh, he still felt the physical pleasure, but it was like he was enacting a parody of the sexual act these days while part of him seemed to watch his uninspired performance, disgusted and amused by his lameness.
    Cynical and bored . . . tired, and not yet thirty-one years old.
    He’d had high hopes that like his father, full depression wouldn’t settle in until his forties. But in all fairness, his father hadn’t known Cristina when he was eight years old like he had. That was when she’d entered their life like a poison. By most accounts, he was the champion survivor of the Montand family in the post-Cristina apocalyptic world.
    Not that there was much victory in that.
    He walked silently through the living room and passed the bar, recalling he’d left the brandy decanter in the dining room earlier. A moment later he shut out the lights and stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows with brandy snifter in hand, gazing at the wide body of water that he couldn’t really see because of cloaking night.
    The darkness pressed on him. Called to him.
    A strange prescience distracted him. The bare skin of his torso tingled and roughened. In the reflection of the windowpane he saw movement. He went utterly still.
    His morbid thoughts vanished as he watched the girl ascend the stairs in the distance. What was she doing? Where had she
been
? He’d specifically asked that the nursing staff remain on Cristina’s level, he thought irritably.
    Her figure was so light, her feet were so quick, her tread so silent he might have been catching a glimpse of a fey creature making an escape. He watched her fly up the stairs, her red fairy pack flung over her shoulder. Curiosity and amusement replaced his brief flash of anger. Her back and shoulders were held very stiff and erect, as if to say that although she was fleeing, she was doing so proudly. Defiantly? Silently thumbing her nose at the mortal world?
    His stiff mouth softened and flickered