Sia takes a job at a roadside ice cream shop called, of all the fucking names in the world, Fun Freeze.

She loves it.

It’s a ramshackle place, tiny as hell, and they don’t serve hard-packed stuff. Nothing quality. It’s all soft-serve junk and nobody here can get enough of it. Or maybe they can’t get enough of Sia. God knows I can’t. She works a five-hour afternoon shift a few days a week while I recover.

It takes longer to recover than I think it should. It gives me too much time to think.

Sia’s happy. That’s what matters. She comes home laughing every night, telling me about all the crazy people who came to buy ice cream, and then she strips off her clothes and goes for a shower.

I can’t say I mind.

But ten days still feels like a year.

I’m finally feeling like I haven’t been run over with a truck. That’s a plus. But god, the vacation life is not for me. For Sia, Fun Freeze seems like a vacation—it must, because she’s never once complained about it.

Sitting around the cottage, on the other hand?

It’s putting all my doubts at the forefront.

What are we doing here? Really, what are we doing here? I sit on the front porch, my ass supported by nice wicker furniture, and look out at the cabins across the road. The couple with their daughter left on the weekend. I don’t know if they’ll be back.

This is supposed to be a honeymoon. And yet...

Sia has a job. I would have followed her into something similar, but I’m still getting over this bullshit sickness. I feel the itch, though. Who the hell wouldn’t? I don’t have classes anymore. I need something.

I shift uncomfortably on the wicker chair.

Screw the wicker chair. It’s not my ass that’s uncomfortable. It’s the rest of me. Because as happy as Sia might be, these places can’t last. Summer ends. Fall comes, and winter, and the town isn’t set up to handle it.

I’m not set up to handle it.

Ten days, and I’m already looking for a new place to live.

I’m looking for a new place I can live. I hate to admit this, hate the weakness that stabs at my chest, but I miss my family. I miss the weekly dinners. I can’t stop entertaining the thought that maybe they’ll forgive me for this. Maybe this was all a terrible misunderstanding.

How long? A year?

I could stay away for a year. I could build another network for a year, and then return. That might be enough.

I’ve moved to another chair in the back garden, where bees buzz around the flowers like we’re in a children’s book, when Sia gets home from Fun Freeze. She comes out into the backyard in a bikini, hair wet from the shower, skin glowing in the melting evening sun. She straddles me in greeting, and kisses me hard on the lips.

I kiss her back, tasting wintergreen on her tongue, and push her back so I can see her eyes. “Are you happy here?”

“Yes.” It’s sincere, but there’s a flicker in her expression that tells me otherwise. There’s something she’s not saying. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

Sia sighs. “Liar.”

“I miss my family,” I admit. It’s been burned into my mind by the sun. “Even though they’re…” I can’t find the words. Evil? No. I can’t bring myself to label them like that. What would that make me, if they’re evil to the core? “It’s too soon to go back, anyway. And we can’t stay here. Eventually, the season will end, and there won’t be work, or—” Or school. Anything.

Sia nods, a faraway look in her eyes. “Where should we go?”

The country is so vast. “Where have you always wanted to live?”

A smile wrinkles her nose. “Chicago. I loved it there.”

He kisses her. Jesus, what a sweetheart. The kiss gets hotter.

“Gio, we’re in public.” That doesn’t stop her from pressing her hips into his, little movements that drive him wild. Her bathing suit is thing, and that’s all there is between them. That, and my shorts. Damn the shorts. Damn them to hell. I take her by the hips and pull her closer. She can’t escape now.

“We’re on our private property.”

Sia giggles, her cheeks going red beneath the summer tan. “People could see—”

She’s right. Of course she’s right. The garden isn’t a fucking jungle. It’s a backyard garden, without hedges, so their backyard looks right into other backyards. People could see.

And do you know what? I don’t care at all. In fact...

I stroke my fingers between her legs, shoving them right beneath the bathing suit.

Sia groans. She’s already wet, wet and soft and willing, and she takes my bottom lip between her teeth while I bury two fingers into that wetness.

“Let them see.”

“God, Gio...”

“God has nothing to do with this.”

She’s open and waiting and hot for me, her kiss more desperate by the second, and I yank that pretty pink swimsuit to the side, exposing her slit. It takes half a second to undo my belt, and another half second to claim her, her swimsuit tight on the side of my cock. The pressure is a constant reminder that we’re outside. We’re in full view of anyone in this little town. I’m fucking my wife, right out here in the open, and I love it.

I push her up and pull her down slow, savoring every inch of her, and she arches back. This—this is what I could do forever and ever. Make her beg for me. And beg she does. I’m controlling the movement, and I can see how it’s agony and angels all at once.

One inch, then two. “Gio, please. Please. Please.” She fists my shirt, her grip tight, and her lashes flutter down to meet her cheeks.

“Anyone could see,” I tell her, as easily as I might comment on the weather.

She answers with a moan and comes, a quaking orgasm on my cock, right there in the garden, the bees humming lazily nearby.

Let them see. Let them all see.