CHAPTER SEVEN

That night, Leslie lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling.

She heard everything.

Victoria was not trying to be quiet. That much was clear from the moment Leslie closed her bedroom door. The soft deliberate laughter that drifted through the wall first, low and warm, the kind of laugh shared between two people who have spent years learning exactly what makes the other one smile. Then Tony’s voice, muffled but unmistakably relaxed, the way it never sounded at breakfast or at events or in any room where Leslie was present.

Then the silence.

Heavy and loaded and full of everything Leslie did not want to imagine.

Then Victoria’s moan.

Low at first. Slow and unhurried, like she had all the time in the world and wanted everyone within earshot to understand that. Like she was settling into something familiar. Something that belonged to her.

Leslie grabbed her phone off the nightstand and shoved her earphones in. She scrolled to a playlist, any playlist, turned the volume up until the music pressed uncomfortably against her eardrums.

It wasn’t enough.

She could still feel it through the walls. The rhythm of it. The muffled shift of furniture. The way Victoria’s voice kept climbing higher, slow and breathless and completely unashamed, each sound more deliberate than the last.

She yanked the earphones out.

She tried the radio instead. Found a station playing something soft and forgettable and turned it up until the room was full of noise.

Victoria’s voice cut right through it.

Leslie threw the pillow over her face.

Better. Barely.

She stared into the dark of the pillowcase and tried to think about other things. Her mother’s voice on the phone last Sunday, tired but warm. Her brother’s terrible jokes that were never funny but always made her laugh anyway. The smell of their small apartment on weekends, jollof rice and old wood and something that had no name except home.

She tried to hold onto those things.

Through the wall, Victoria moaned again. Louder this time. The sound rising and falling in a way that made the air in Leslie’s room feel thick, like even the silence between sounds was loaded with something she could not escape.

Leslie pulled the pillow tighter.

Something burned behind her eyes.

She was not going to cry.

She told herself that firmly. She repeated it like a rule, like a law, like something carved into stone. She was not going to cry because Tony Blackwell had chosen to spend his evening three doors down with a woman who had made Leslie’s life a misery since the day she arrived. She was not going to cry because she could hear every single second of it and Victoria knew she could and had decided that was perfectly fine.

She was not going to cry.

The first tear came anyway.

Hot and silent, sliding from the corner of her eye into her hair. She didn’t wipe it. If she moved her hands she would have to acknowledge it and she was not ready to do that.

Then another tear.

And another.

She had gotten very good at crying without making a sound. Living in this house had taught her that. Cry quietly or don’t cry at all because no one here would comfort her and showing weakness only gave them more to work with. So she lay perfectly still with the pillow over her face and let the tears come in silence while three doors down Victoria moaned that slow satisfied moan and Tony’s voice answered her and the sounds continued, unhurried and deliberate and absolutely designed to carry.

Leslie was not crying because she loved him.

She needed to be clear about that, even just to herself in the dark of her own room. She did not love Tony Blackwell. She had never loved Tony Blackwell. He was a stranger she had married out of desperation, a signature on a contract, a last name she wore like a costume that never quite fit.

But she was still human.

And there was something uniquely destroying about lying alone in the dark while your husband was with another woman and that other woman was making absolutely certain you could hear every single second of it. Not because she wanted Tony. But because it was one more reminder of exactly what she was in this house.

Temporary. Invisible. Replaceable.

She wasn’t even competition. She was just there, taking up space in a room down the hall, serving a purpose until the purpose expired.

She wondered if Tony even remembered she was in the house.

Not as his wife.

Just… as another person.

Did he ever notice when she skipped breakfast because Victoria had already ruined her appetite? Did he ever notice how quiet she had become over the past  months? Or had she become just another piece of furniture in the mansion, something that was always there but never truly seen?

A bitter laugh almost escaped her.

Why was she even asking herself those questions?

Tony Blackwell had never promised to care.

Their marriage had started with a contract, not love. She had walked into this house knowing exactly what she was signing up for. So why did tonight hurt so much?

Because no matter how prepared a person thought they were, hearing your husband with another woman while you lay alone in the next room was a kind of humiliation nobody could prepare for.

She closed her eyes tighter.

Tomorrow morning she would wake up, walk downstairs, greet everyone politely and pretend none of this had happened.

Just like she always did.

Through the wall, Victoria’s voice climbed again, breathless and unashamed, and Leslie pressed the pillow so hard against her face she could barely breathe.

And then something shifted.

Not emotionally. Not the way grief shifts or anger rises. This was something else entirely. Something physical. Something in her blood, in the space behind her ribs, something that had no name she recognized moving through her like a current, hot and ancient and completely unfamiliar.

Her fingers curled hard into the sheets.

Her nails pressed into the fabric and for one sharp disorienting moment they felt different. Wrong in a way she could not describe. Like they belonged to something that was not quite her hands. Like something underneath her skin was pressing forward, asking to be let out.

She yanked her hands back and stared at them in the moonlight flooding through the curtains.

Nothing. Just her hands. Ordinary and unchanged.

She pressed them flat against the mattress and breathed slowly.

Through the wall Victoria’s voice rose one final time, high and breathless and completely satisfied, and something answered it from deep inside Leslie’s chest. Not pain. Not sadness. Something hotter than both. Something territorial and furious that rolled through her sternum like thunder, like a growl she swallowed before it could reach her throat, like an instinct she had never known she possessed.

She had no name for it.

She had never felt anything like it before in her life.

Outside, the moon was full and relentless, pressing cold silver light through every gap in the curtains like it was looking specifically for her. Like it had been waiting at her window all evening and had finally decided to make itself known. The light pooled across the floor and climbed the foot of her bed and lay across her legs like a hand.

She stared at it.

Her chest was still humming. Low and restless and strange. Her hands were still pressed flat against the mattress.

From Tony’s room, the sounds finally faded.

The silence that replaced them was complete.

Leslie lay in it and stared at the moonlight on her bed and let herself breathe.

She pressed the pillow harder against her ears and squeezed her eyes shut.

Eventually, exhaustion won.

And she fell asleep to the sound of her husband with another woman, the moon burning full and silver outside her window, and something deep inside her that had no name yet curling back into the dark, patient and waiting, certain in the way that wild things are certain, that its time was almost here.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​