THE AFFAIR Read Online Free

authoritatively.
    “What are you talking about?” I turned so that I could look in his eyes. These were my feelings, my thoughts. How was it possible that he was having them?
    “What are you talking about?” I asked again. I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name.” Yet the feel of his skin under my fingers called me a liar. I knew every cell in his body. Intimately.
    “Can’t you feel it?” he responded. “Our meeting was not an accident.”
    The strange thing was that I knew it wasn’t an accident, but to admit to what I thought it really was would mean that my life would now take on a different meaning. I had to do something to pretend that my life hadn’t just changed forever. I wanted to believe that his words gave me reason to worry, that perhaps I had just slept with a stalker, no matter how incredible it was. Maybe I had better think of some way to escape. I had to believe that the words this stranger spoke made him sound like a nut. If I didn’t, it would mean that I was nuts.
    “Are you saying you planned this, that you’ve done this type of thing before?” I was offended and wondered how it was that he happened to have plastic bags.
    He stared at me a moment before answering. “I didn’t plan today. In fact, standing in the rain getting soaked was the last thing I had on my mind.”
    “I sat in my car watching you. I saw you coming out of the store and your bags break. I never intended to get involved, but when you stood there crying, I watched people walking away from you, looking at you strangely. Before I knew it, I was out of the car, running into the store to grab plastic bags.”
    He looked me over, his voice sounding insulted. “No, I don’t remember having done this, if you mean by this, our meeting in the rain.” There was a slight shift in his body. His eyes softened and his lips stretched into a smile.
    “It was fated for us to meet. I’ve been waiting years for you.” His eyes were smiling at me yet his words to any sane person were those of a person that definitely belonged on Prozac. And I was trying to the best of my ability to be a sane person.
    “What’s your name?” It was a little late to think of getting acquainted, but I still needed to know who I’d slept with, so that when I went to confession I could tell on him also.
    “Chance.”
    I looked at him. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    He hopped out of the bed and walked across the room, lean and muscular. I feasted my eyes on his beauty, on his strength, not feeling ashamed, not minding that I was a middle-aged woman with not so firm breasts and an extra twenty pounds on my five-five frame. I didn’t care. I felt beautiful and I knew he found me beautiful as well.
    Chance brought me back his wallet. I examined the picture and the name. Chance Morgan? I held my left hand out for him to examine. “I should have told you this sooner but I’m married.” He merely smiled. Okay, I thought, this joker has more problems than I do .
    “I’ve been married twenty-six years. Yesterday was my anniversary.”
    “And today you wanted to die. You came to the store because you could feel yourself giving in to the sweet invitation of death. You had no idea that you were searching for me until you found me, but then you knew. I saw the recognition in your eyes. I felt it in your touch, in your response to me.”
    Oh God, what was happening to me? “What the heck are you talking about?” I asked.
    “Tell me you don’t believe me.”
    “I do believe you, but you’re scaring me.”
    “What would you like for this to be?”
    “I’d like for you to be just a little bit crazy maybe. It would make all of this easier for me. Listen, are you…are you on any kind of medications?”
    “No medications, anything else you want to know?”
    “I was going to ask if you’re nuts, but thought maybe I shouldn’t, just in case. Perhaps I should be nice to you until I return to my home, my life, and the safety of my