Page 94 of The Humiliated Wife

The least I can do, he thought.After everything I took from you, checking your tire pressure is the least I can fucking do.

Dean nodded and gathered his supplies, acutely aware of her watching him. Acutely aware of the way her presence made every nerve ending in his body light up like a live wire.

He'd lost the right to touch her. Lost the right to take care of her. Lost the right to love her the way his body still insisted he should.

But at least her car would start every morning.

At least she'd be safe on the road.

At least he'd done something useful with the want that was eating him alive.

Dean grippedthe steering wheel tighter, trying to focus on the road instead of the ache between his legs that had started the moment his wife stepped onto that porch.

Ex-wife,he corrected himself savagely.Ex-wife. Get used to it.

The paperwork wasn’t final yet, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t his anymore.

But his body didn't give a shit about legal paperwork. His body remembered the way she'd looked in that cream cardigan, the way her hair caught the morning light, the way she'd said his name—confused, soft, like she wasn't sure if he was real.

He shifted in the driver's seat, trying to find a position that didn't make his jeans feel like torture. Two minutes in her presence and he was hard as a teenager, desperate and wanting and completely fucking pathetic.

The highway stretched ahead of him, empty in the early morning light. He still had at least forty-five minutes back to the city. Forty-five minutes to get himself under control before he had to face the world like a functioning adult instead of a man undone by his wife's—ex-wife's—proximity.

He'd touched her car. Her steering wheel, her door handles. Like some kind of perverted car maintenance foreplay that she hadn't even known she was participating in.

Christ, he was losing his mind.

The memory of her voice—"Thank you"—played on repeat in his head. The way she'd looked at him, those few seconds where her guard had been down and she'd just been... Fiona. His Fiona. Before she remembered she wasn't his anymore.

He wanted her so badly it was making him insane. Wanted to turn the car around, drive back to Emma's, knock on that door and beg her to let him?—

Let him what?Touch her? Kiss her? Pretend for five minutes that he hadn't destroyed everything good between them?

Dean laughed, harsh and bitter. Even his fantasies were pathetic now.

The interstate sign for the city limits came into view, and he forced himself to breathe. To think about something else. Anything else.

His hands clenched tighter on the wheel.

You don’t get to fantasize about your wife while she’s standing in the wreckage you caused.

Still living out of someone else’s guest room. Still piecing her life back together.

Still making that brutal, long commute from Sweetwater every damn day—because of him.

Dean’s throat tightened. She was exhausted. He’d seen it on her face that morning—masked behind professionalism and pride, but clear as day to someone who used to know her better than anyone.

She couldn’t keep doing this.

And she shouldn’t have to.

He pressed harder on the gas, like speed might outrun the guilt, the heat, the helplessness—all of it.

CHAPTER 39

Fiona

The fluorescent lightswere too bright, casting everything in that particular shade of institutional beige that made Fiona feel like she was back in the principal's office. She shifted in the uncomfortable chair, her work bag balanced on her knees, still wearing the cardigan that smelled faintly of classroom markers and hand sanitizer.