She smiled, and her teeth were just slightly too white, too straight. “I’m what you came for. But you don’t know it yet.”
He tried to remember his wife’s laugh. Nothing. Her face. Static. The way she said his name when she was tired. Gone . He scrambled for any warmth they had shared, but the shelf of his heart was empty. He remembered the arguments, the silences, the day she packed her bags. But the lust—the glue that had made the hard years bearable—had been siphoned away.
“Who are you?” he asked.
He tucked the card into his pocket and walked toward the morning traffic, not knowing yet whether he would use it—or whether the choice had already been made the moment he first walked through the crimson door.
Then the sun rose.
Not lust.
It wasn’t a kiss of flesh. It was a kiss of extraction . He felt the memory detach from his bones like a splinter sliding out. A flicker of heat, a gasp, and then—nothing. The memory was gone. Not faded. Not blurry. Gone , as if it had never happened. lustysouls
In its place, Solace gave him the night.