I woke with the fading remains of a dream clinging to me like smoke.
In it, Karina had been introducing me to another man with almost casual affection, as though she were presenting a new friend instead of replacing me. The words echoed through my head even after I opened my eyes.
“I’m going to be sleeping with him from now on.”
The sentence carried the strange emotional logic dreams always possess—absurd and devastating at the same time.
The man himself barely remained in my memory except as an exaggerated presence: impossibly large, almost unreal, more symbol than person. He represented every insecurity I’d tried not to examine too closely since Marshall entered our lives. Power. Confidence. Sexual certainty. Everything I feared I lacked.
I tried desperately to hold onto the dream as it dissolved.
Part of me wanted to know who the man was. Another part wanted to understand why the idea of losing Karina that way filled me with such intense excitement.
That was what unsettled me most.
Not the jealousy.
But the hunger beneath it.
When I finally opened my eyes fully, Karina was inches away from me, watching with quiet amusement. Morning light softened her features, but there was something knowing in her expression that immediately made my pulse jump.
“You were dreaming hard,” she murmured.
There was warmth in her voice, but curiosity too—as though she already suspected the answer and wanted to hear me say it aloud.
“You were introducing me to someone,” I admitted carefully.
Karina smiled slowly.
“Someone important?”
I nodded.
The silence stretched between us, intimate and dangerous.
“What was he like?” she asked.
I hesitated, embarrassed by how vivid the emotional impression still felt even after the details had faded. “Confident,” I said finally. “Like he already knew you belonged with him.”
Karina’s expression changed slightly at that.
Not shock.
Interest.
“You really think that’s possible?” she asked softly.
The question went deeper than the dream.
I looked at her lying beside me—the woman I loved, the woman whose desires increasingly seemed larger and more unpredictable than I’d ever understood. Sometimes it felt as though we were standing together at the edge of something neither of us fully controlled anymore.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Karina studied me for another long moment before leaning back against the headboard, thoughtful now rather than teasing.
“I had a dream too,” she said quietly.
Something in her tone made my stomach tighten.
“What about?”
Her eyes held mine.
“In mine,” she whispered, “you stopped pretending you weren’t curious.”
The room fell silent after that.
Not awkward silence.
The heavy kind filled with realization.
For the first time, it occurred to me that whatever was happening between us wasn’t only about desire anymore. It was becoming about power, confession, and the dangerous thrill of surrendering truths we’d spent years hiding from each other.