Sleeping with a married man. A father. It’s exhausting in ways I never imagined. My body hums with adrenaline every time he’s here, but my chest aches with the weight of it. The thrill and the shame fight each other constantly inside me, and neither ever fully wins.

He slips into my apartment well past three in the morning, the door closing behind him with a careful click. He always hesitates for a second, listening, as if the walls themselves might betray us. His wife? My sister, Sofia. And that’s the worst part—because technically, before she ever had him, before rings and vows and children, he was mine. For fourteen years, he belonged to me in every way someone could belong. Then she took him. Or maybe he gave himself. I still don’t know which thought hurts more.

When he sinks onto my couch, I climb into his lap like it’s muscle memory, like this is still our ritual. My arms circle his shoulders, and the familiar scent of him wraps around me until I feel like I’m seventeen again, sneaking out, believing the world couldn’t possibly touch us. “We might just get away with it,” I whisper against his ear, even though I know we won’t. We can’t.

He doesn’t answer. He never does when I say things like that. Instead, his mouth finds my neck, slow and deliberate, like he’s trying to remind me of every time before—every scar of love we’ve left on each other’s skin. His silence is louder than words.

Not every night is like this, though. Some nights, we don’t touch. We just fall into old patterns: greasy fast food spread across the coffee table, reruns of the shows we used to binge during high school, me wrapped in his hoodie with his socks swallowing my feet. Those nights are the hardest, because they feel too pure, too simple. They make me ache for a version of us that wasn’t wrong, when it was just love and laughter and plans for the future that felt certain.

The guilt presses on me constantly. Every time he leaves, I stare at the door and wonder what kind of person I’ve become. My sister sleeps in their bed while he’s here in mine. My niece and nephew have no idea their father’s hands have been on me hours earlier. Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe under the weight of that betrayal.

But then he looks at me, really looks, and the shame dissolves into something I can’t fight. Because when his eyes find mine, I know he still loves me. Maybe not in the clean, honest way he should, but in a way that feels unshakable, bone-deep. And I love him back just as recklessly, just as destructively.

It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. But when I curl against his chest and feel the steady beat of his heart under my palm, all I can think is that he’s still mine. Not Sofia’s. Not theirs. Mine. Even if only for the hours between midnight and dawn.

And if the price for that is guilt, then I’ll pay it every night. Because the truth is, the love outweighs it. It always has. It always will.