The Home-wrecker (The Goode Brothers)
The Home-wrecker: Chapter 28

Oh God, what have I done?

Rising from the chair, I quickly zip up my pants and shoot back what’s left of the bourbon. When Dean senses my panic, he grabs my arm and pulls me toward him.

“Relax,” he whispers.

“Relax?” I bark back quietly. “I made a vow to my wife, and I just broke that vow.”

“You don’t think Briar will understand? She’ll forgive you. Just talk to her.”

With a scoff, I shake my head. “Sure, I’ll tell her about how important it was to come in your mouth at my mother’s house while our family was just downstairs. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

We’re chest to chest, his hand still on my arm. And at the very mention of my cum in his mouth, I find myself slipping again. I want to feel that mouth again. I want to explore everything that this means, how good he feels. How much I want him.

Before I know what’s happening, I wrap a hand around his neck and jerk him toward me, crashing my lips against his. He opens for me, clutching my jacket as I taste every corner of his mouth, finding traces of what we did on his tongue.

“What are you doing to me?” I mumble under my breath as our lips part.

“I could ask you the same,” he replies.

I pull his mouth to mine for one more kiss, keeping it brief and tame. It’s a little unsettling how easily I slipped down this adulterous path to sin. And how badly I want to do it again.

Stepping away from Dean, I let my eyes rake over his face and body. Arousal bolts through my bloodstream like lightning at the thought of what he and I could do together.

He seems to notice because he gives me a sly smirk, holding his head up higher. “Are you going to keep eye-fucking me, or are we going to go downstairs and face your family?”

“Fuck,” I mutter with an eye roll.

As Dean and I leave the office, I pray we were quiet enough. Judging by the laughter coming from the living room that we couldn’t hear on the other side of the house in the office, we’re safe.

When we reach the living room, I do my best to look casual and normal, but suddenly, I don’t know what normal is. I just let a man blow me in my father’s office. How do I pretend everything is normal after that?

“Daddy, can I spend the night? Me and Nana are gonna stay up late and watch a movie.” Abby bounces on the couch next to my mother.

“Of course, peanut,” I reply with a forced smile.

Across the room, I feel Adam’s narrowed eyes on me. I have nothing left to say to my brother, but I hate that he thinks I would ever take our father’s side. A brother’s bond should be stronger than that.

“Well, we’re gonna take off then,” I say, pointing to the door.

“I hope Briar is feeling better,” my mother says. “Send her my love.”

“I will.”

“Thank you so much for dinner,” Dean adds with a polite grin, waving at my mother and then at everyone else.

When Dean and I get to the car, I take another deep breath, trying to calm myself. The nagging reminder of I cheated, I cheated, I cheated plays on repeat in my head.

The closer we get to home, the sicker I feel. How am I going to face Briar now? What do I say?

Dean is silent the entire way there, and I can tell he’s feeling some apprehension, too. After I pull the Volvo in the drive, we sit in silence for a few moments.

“I have to tell her,” I whisper, my eyes focused on nothing as I stare straight ahead.

“Of course,” he replies.

More silence. More tension-filled moments of reliving what we just did.

“Maybe it would be better if I moved out.”

My head snaps in his direction. “What? No. You can’t move out.”

“Come on, Caleb. You have to admit what a mess this is.”

“She’ll understand,” I say, forcing myself to believe it. “We’re not going to kick you out on the streets.”

He chuckles, scrubbing a hand over his head. “It’s sort of funny when you think about it. You thought Briar was going to cheat on you, but you⁠—”

“Don’t say it.”

Shutting his mouth, he slips out of the car, closing the door behind him. As I watch him walk away, disappearing around the back of the garage, I feel everything truly sink in.

This entire time, I thought he was the home-wrecker, the one who would ruin everything I have here. But it turns out that person is me. I’ve denied my feelings for him, pulled away from my wife, and avoided standing up to my father. I’ve even failed at giving Briar the child she wants.

I’ve ruined my own fucking life.

Dean has known he was bisexual since he was a teenager, or maybe before that. And here I am, a thirty-three-year-old man still grappling with the truth of my own sexuality.

I’m not ready to say those words yet. I don’t fully understand what any of this means for me. But I love my wife. That’s all that has ever mattered. Why would I need to come out if I was happily married?

But maybe that’s what got me in this mess in the first place. It’s like I’ve suffocated a part of myself, and now it’s clawing to get out. There’s no excuse for what I’ve done tonight, but it feels like I understand myself a little more for the first time in my life.

Now, it’s time to face the music.

I climb out of the car and walk steadily into the house. I hear the TV on upstairs, so after locking the door and dropping my keys in the bowl, I head up to the second floor to face my wife.

“Hey,” she chirps from the bed. She’s in a pair of light-pink pajamas with her hair pulled into a bun on her head. “How was dinner?”

Standing in the doorway, I stare at her for a moment. She is so beautiful and perfect and mine. How do I possibly deserve her? I don’t. Ten years ago, I must have done something right or I’ve conned her into being my wife for this long. I just know that I love this woman more than anything, and no matter how much I don’t deserve her, I refuse to lose her.

I clear my throat, tugging off my jacket as I reply, “It was fine. Abby is staying with my mom tonight.”

“She already told me,” Briar replies.

I kick off my shoes and unbutton my shirt as I approach the bed. I’m wound tight. At any moment, I could blow. And I just need to hold her before everything explodes.

“Well, hello,” she says with a sweet hum as I climb onto the bed, positioning myself between her legs. Wrapping my hands under her knees, I jerk her toward me until she’s lying on the bed.

“Caleb,” she gasps in surprise.

Ripping off my shirt, I throw it on the floor as I lower myself over her. As my lips meet hers, she hums into the kiss, running her fingers through my hair.

“You should leave Abby at your mother’s more often,” she says with a giggle as I grind myself between her legs.

Then, because I don’t know any other way to approach this, I ask, “Would you let Dean fuck you?”

She stiffens, trying to push my face from her neck. “What?”

“You said he tried to have sex with you that day at the museum. Why didn’t you let him?”

“Caleb, what are you talking about?”

Lifting up, I stare down into her eyes. “I want to understand why you stopped him. How did you resist it if you wanted him so bad?”

Looking perplexed, she tilts her head. “Because I’m married to you. I don’t want to sleep with anyone else.”

“You don’t want to sleep with him?” I ask.

She tries to push me away again, but I don’t budge. “You’re acting weird. What’s going on?”

“What if you could? What if I said you could sleep with him?”

“What?” she stammers. “Why would you…”

When I don’t respond, staring at her as if I’ve seen a ghost, her face falls. “What happened? What’s the matter?” she asks, sounding desperate as she tries to shove me away again.

“Dean and I…”

“What did you do?” she asks, her voice flat and emotionless.

“He gave me a blow job in my dad’s office.”

Briar stares at me for so long. Her lips part and she searches my face as if she’s waiting for me to explain or tell her it was just a joke or something.

“Say something, Briar,” I plead.

“Get off of me,” she snaps, shoving me again.

This time, I climb away, allowing her to get up. She throws her feet off the bed and stomps away.

“Briar, talk to me,” I call.

“I can’t,” she barks back.

Jumping from the bed, I follow her out of our bedroom and down the stairs. “It just happened, Briar. I think what we did Friday night got to my head.”

She spins on me, pointing a finger in my face. “What happened on Friday was different, Caleb, because we were together. Because I was with you. Don’t you dare use that as an excuse now.”

When she tries to spin away again, I grab her arm. “Please, listen to me.”

“I’m too angry to listen,” she argues.

“Then yell at me. Tell me why you’re angry. Just don’t give me the silent treatment.”

“You don’t get to decide how I react to this, Caleb,” she snaps.

I release her arm, and she paces the downstairs floor of our house, fuming and breathing heavily as she lets everything sink in. Then, the moment I was dreading comes.

Briar stops, puts her hands to her face, and starts crying.

“Oh god,” I mutter, going to her. “Please don’t do that.”

My arms engulf her as I pull her to my chest, rubbing her back and wishing I could take it all back. Wishing she never had to feel an ounce of pain.

After a moment, she lets out a frustrated grunt and shoves me away. “I can’t, Caleb. I can’t…let you touch me right now.”

“I never wanted to hurt you, Briar.”

Dropping her hands, she stares at me with tear-soaked eyes. “I don’t know how I feel right now, Caleb. I don’t know if I’m mad that you were intimate with someone else, hurt that you didn’t share this part of yourself with me, or if I’m worried that all of this could lead to me losing you.”

I take an eager step forward, holding her face in my hands. “Nothing could do that, Briar. Nothing.”

“Then what does this even mean? Do you have feelings for him, or were you just curious?”

It’s like she’s just reached into my chest and pulled out something I was trying to hide. My mouth opens, and I try to say the words, but I can’t.

“I don’t know, Briar,” I whisper. She blinks, and a tear falls over her cheek.

“I don’t know either.”

With that, she pulls away and leaves me standing alone in the living room. When I hear the bedroom door shut upstairs, I drop onto the sofa and place my face in my hands.

It feels like the pieces of my life have scattered in disarray, and I’m afraid I don’t know what it will look like when we put them back together.