My Husband's 19-Year-Old Secret

Him, on Reddit at 3 a.m.: [I fell asleep and woke up ten years in the future. The girl I've been crushing on my whole life is my WIFE now. She keeps asking when I'm coming home. WHAT DO I DO. WHAT DO I DOOOO.]

My husband wrote that.

My husband of almost two years.

Lately he's been off. Stiff when he hugs me. Wooden when he kisses me. Fumbling like a rookie in bed.

I'd started bracing for the word divorce.

Then I found his posting history.

Me: ?

Chapter 1

My husband walked in looking like he'd lost a bar fight, not closed a deal.

Custom jacket hooked on two fingers, collar torn open, tie hanging loose. And his hair, never a strand out of place, sat crooked and wild.

I got to my feet. "Rough trip? What happened to you?"

Sebastian didn't answer.

He just looked at me. Kept looking. Like he'd never seen me before.

I crossed the room, hooked a finger in that loose tie, and reeled him in. "What, a few days apart and you forget who I am?"

He let me pull him a step before he got the words out. "I I know you."

I glanced back at him.

He was still staring. Something raw and wide open in it, almost dopey with want, like a boy who hasn't learned to hide his face yet.

I gave him a look, looped my arms around his neck, and pressed in. "You missed me that much?"

The man went so still he forgot to breathe.

His eyes darted. His mouth went flat. His hands curled into fists at his sides. The picture of a perfect gentleman.

Which was hilarious, honestly.

Because the Sebastian I knew was the one who turned into a wolf the second he cleared the door.

I kissed the jump of his throat and breathed against his ear. "On the phone you said you'd make me pay for missing you."

I held on, felt him go rigid inch by inch, and dropped my voice sweet. "So? How are you going to make me pay?"

We were close enough that I felt it the instant his body answered.

My hand started to drift lower.

He shoved me back.

I stared at him.

His whole face had gone red. His voice came out sandpaper rough, his eyes on the floor. "I I haven't showered yet."

And then he bolted into the nearest room. My study.

I stood there, blank.

Two years he'd griped that I never made the first move. The one time I do, he runs.

Who is this man.

Vowing never to speak to him again, I curled up on the couch to sulk. That was when I heard it.

The study door easing open.

He snuck a look at me, then slipped into our bedroom like a burglar in his own house.

I raised an eyebrow. Still annoyed. I followed anyway.

And a second before I made it through the door, he darted into the bathroom.

Water came on, loud and pointed. He was showering. Sure.

I walked up and tried the handle.

It didn't turn.

He'd locked it.

That settled it. He was hiding from me.

The man never locked a door in his life. This was the same man who used to lean out of a full bath and grin, "You sure you don't want to get in with me, babe?"

I stood in front of that bathroom door and, for once, actually wondered:

Had I pushed it too far?

And by what measure would that even be too far? By anything he'd ever done to me?

He was the one who couldn't keep his hands off. He was the one who wrecked me until I couldn't get out of bed.

And now.

I make one move, and he flinches from me like I'm the plague.

Fine.

He'd just have to answer for it when he came out.

Chapter 2

The wait ran a full hour.

When Sebastian finally came out of the bathroom, the jittery edge was gone. He said my name, steady. "Babe."

I huffed and turned my back on him.

He crossed the room in a breath, fussing, tripping over his own apologies. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it was all me. I just blanked for a second, okay? We haven't seen each other in days. I missed you so much"

He tucked his head into the crook of my neck and nuzzled.

The familiar weight of him settled something in me. I looked up. "Don't think this gets you off the hook."

"Stay mad. That's okay." He looked at me, eyes bright. Like a puppy.

For a second I lost my footing.

The old Sebastian never looked at me like that. It wasn't that the love had been missing before. It was that before, the wanting drowned out everything else. There was still wanting in his eyes now, sure. But under it ran something clear and clean.

My hand found his cheek on its own. "What is going on with you?"

"Nothing."

He looped his arms loosely around me and set his chin on my shoulder. "I just feel lucky."

Half-marveling, half under his breath: "You're actually my wife. I'm so lucky."

I pushed at him. "We've been married almost two years. Little late for that, isn't it?"

"It's not late." He said it like a kid getting away with something. "There's no wrong time to say it."

He talked pretty. I let it go, and I generously pressed my mouth to his.

Ten full seconds. Nothing.

I cracked one eye open.

Sebastian looked stunned. Like he couldn't believe what was happening, his whole face caught between wanting to kiss me and not daring to.

I mumbled against his lips. "You're not going to kiss me?"

"I am. I will."

And somewhere in the middle of saying it, his mouth started moving against mine, tugging, like a switch had flipped, and he kissed me slow and careful.

I sank into it for a second before the wrongness caught up.

Because this man kissed like it was his first time. He didn't even know how to come up for air.

I opened my eyes. Took in the raw excitement on his face. And couldn't make myself stop him.

Fine. There's a certain something to being kissed by someone who just discovered kissing.

I forgave every strange thing about him. And still, he stayed strange.

Strangest of all: he wouldn't touch me.

Which was new. He'd never once gone without in two years of marriage, and now he'd flipped celibate on me overnight. I didn't know what to do with it.

Same bed. I moved closer.

His breathing went ragged, his jaw tight. His hand lifted toward my hip and stopped, curled into the sheet instead. He didn't touch me.

I wrapped myself around him.

I could feel exactly how much he wanted to, the tremor he was holding down, the effort it cost him to keep still. And still. He didn't touch me.

He'd turned into a monk overnight, holding out against something, like he was saving himself for someone.

So I dragged Danika out for drinks.

I talked about everything except him. She caught it anyway.

"Why didn't Sebastian call once tonight?" she teased. "The man usually blows up your phone the second you leave the house. What happened, you two fight?"

I pressed my lips together. "He doesn't want me anymore."

"Don't be dramatic." Danika frowned. "Anyone with eyes can see he's stupid in love with you."

So I told her everything. Every strange thing.

And I made very sure she understood the part that scared me most: my husband had stopped touching me.

Chapter 3

Two years married, and my husband would rather grit his teeth in a separate bed than lay a finger on me.

Danika set down her glass. "Okay. What would even make a man do that?"

I took a long drink. "No idea. That's the whole problem."

My first thought had been that he couldn't. Some equipment failure.

Except that theory died on arrival, because the man very obviously could. He just chose to lie there white-knuckling it instead of touching me.

"He went on that business trip abroad, right?" Danika leaned in. "I heard it's rough over there. What if he got hurt and doesn't want to scare you? Guys do that. And didn't you say he pushed his flight back two days? What if the injury held him up. It'd explain the hiding, too."

She said it like a verdict. "That's it. Has to be."

I let her talk me into it. And somewhere in there, I decided I was going home to strip the man down and see for myself.

I got home past eleven.

The door swung open. Sebastian popped up off the couch and leaned in, all eager. Then his face pinched. "You've been drinking?"

Funny. For a man this worried, he could have picked up a phone.

I pushed his hand away. He kept reaching anyway, stubborn, until he'd steered me down onto the couch and tucked me in like I might break. Then he fetched me a glass of water, fussing the whole time.

I looked at him. "Are you hurt?"

He shook his head, baffled. "No?"

"Then take your clothes off."

Red climbed his face. His fingers caught the hem of his shirt, lifted it an inch, dropped it. Lifted it. Dropped it.

I watched him dither. "You won't even let me see your abs anymore?"

That did it. He pulled the shirt off clean.

Bare, he could've been a magazine cover. Not a scratch on him. So much for the injury.

"Pants too," I said.

"I I"

"Off."

He peeled them off like it cost him something.

I looked at all that flushed, squirming boy in front of me, and something in me just gave. I shoved him back into the couch, planted a hand on each shoulder, and leaned in. "Sebastian. What is wrong with you."

He went wide-eyed and bashful. "N-nothing's wrong with me."

"Then prove it." I dropped my voice and let the suggestion sit there. "Don't make me lose respect for you."

His throat bobbed, hard.

I was already sure he'd fold. Then his hand closed around the back of my head, and he kissed me like something in him had finally snapped.

Turns out you shouldn't poke a man for fun.

The rest of that night, he had a point to prove, and he spent every hour of it proving it. Clumsy and reckless at first. Then, somewhere along the way, smooth enough to leave me staring.

I was too wrung out to think about it then.

It was the next morning, flat on my back and sore in places I'd forgotten I had, that the strange little details started lining up.

Last night, he hadn't touched me like a man two years into a marriage.

He'd touched me like a kid barely old enough to be in the room.

No experience. No technique.

His hands shook. He fumbled, kept losing his place, and the first round was over almost before it started.

Half of me had wanted to kick him clean off the bed. Then I'd catch the sweat on his forehead, the red rimming his eyes, and swallow it. Every time.

He'd found his feet later. Climbed all the way back to the man I knew.

But.

It was strange.

Why would he be like that?

A man who knows exactly what he's doing. Does he lose all of it overnight?

Chapter 4

I turned it over and over and got nowhere.

And then the man I couldn't stop analyzing walked right in.

Loungewear, hair still damp from the shower, the pieces at his forehead falling loose and messy, and somehow that took years off him. Familiar and a stranger, both at once.

He sat on the edge of the bed with a bowl of oatmeal on a tray. "Hungry?" he asked, gentle. "Have a little to tide you over. Real food in a bit."

"Feed me," I said, soft. "My arms are sore."

The tips of his ears went red on the spot. But he picked up the spoon and brought it to my mouth, steady as anything.

The oatmeal was exactly the right temperature.

He'd forgotten the sugar.

I watched him over the spoon. Sebastian did everything by the book. He didn't forget sugar. He didn't forget anything.

The suspicion sank its roots a little deeper.

I ate a few bites of the flavorless oatmeal, staring at his flushed ears, and couldn't stop myself. "What are you blushing about?"

He dropped his eyes. "Your slip's... come loose."

I looked down. The little strappy thing he'd put on me after, straps gone slack, one sliding off my shoulder, baring a stretch of skin and a scatter of red marks.

"So it's loose," I said. "And?"

He reached over and fixed the strap, face perfectly serious, his touch so careful it was like he wasn't allowed to touch me at all.

I laid my hand over his and pressed it flat to my shoulder. "We're an old married couple. What haven't you seen?"

He blinked, thrown.

So I just said it. "What is going on with you. You won't kiss me, you won't touch me. It's like somebody swapped you out. Are you even my husband?"

"I I'm your husband."

"Then why are you stammering?"

He was quiet a beat too long. Then his hand found my shoulder and he leaned in and kissed me. The shortcut. Straight to shutting me up.

Nice try. He hadn't explained a thing.

I pushed him back. "Talk first."

His eyes went down. "Some things came up. I don't know how to deal with them yet." A pause. "Can you give me a little more time? I'll fix it. Soon."

I almost never saw him like this. It dragged up the memory of him walking in off that trip: wrecked, hollow, coming apart at the seams.

"Work?" I asked.

"Y-yeah." He grabbed the excuse with both hands. "It's a mess right now. I'm sorry. I know I've been somewhere else lately."

He looked at me, all apology.

And just like that, the suspicion drained out of me. Sebastian almost never hit a wall he couldn't climb. So of course he'd be acting strange. It was practically reasonable.

"You forgave him. Just like that." Danika stared at me over her tea like I'd grown a second head. "You know you're spoiling that pampered prince rotten."

"What's the alternative?" I stirred my cup, barely looking up. "Pick a fight? Drag it out? Get what for it?"

"Is he still being weird?"

"Couldn't tell you." Because I couldn't. Some moments he felt like a man performing closeness for my benefit. Other moments he didn't, and I'd decide I was reading too much into a tired husband.

"Then let it go." She tapped her glass to mine.

I nodded and sold it to myself. "He's slammed at work. Honestly, all I can really do is"

The door opened.

Sebastian's assistant walked in.

Chapter 5

His assistant. At my afternoon tea. That was worth chewing on.

So when the man came over to say hello, I smiled. "Work keeping you all slammed lately?"

"Not really."

"Nothing tricky come up?"

He considered it. "Everything's been well within reach. Nothing I'm aware of."

I smiled wider and stood. "Good. I'll head to the office with you."

The whole way there, I turned it over. If the work crisis was a lie, then what was the rest of it?

I didn't want to think it. But every strange thing pointed one direction.

He was done with me.

Maybe there was someone new. Maybe that was why he'd gone distant, lukewarm, somewhere else every time he looked at me.

Stiff when he held me. Wooden when he kissed me. Somewhere else even in bed.

A stranger wearing my husband's face.

I took a breath and carried the tea up to his office.

I handed the pastries and coffee around the executive floor. His staff told me warmly that he was in a meeting, so I sat in his office to wait.

His phone. His tablet. His laptop. Right there in front of me.

I never used to check. Sebastian never once looked like a man with a second thought.

But what if, this time, there was someone? I didn't even fight myself on it. I picked up the phone first.

Texts, iMessage, photos, call log. I went through all of it. Not a scratch.

I raised an eyebrow and reached for the tablet.

Password, still my birthday.

It unlocked to something that wasn't the home screen. Like he'd shut the screen off mid-read, and it had simply held his place.

A help post, from some stranger online. The title:

[Woke up ten years in the future and my crush is my WIFE now?? WHAT DO I DO????]

Curious now, I skimmed the body.

[So here's the situation. I'm a college freshman, just wrapped up my first year. Two days ago I lay down for a nap at home, and I woke up in a city I've never seen, and the girl I've been into this whole time is calling me babe and asking when I'm coming home...]

I was still wondering why Sebastian would waste a second on something this dumb when my eye snagged on the username.

u/CamilleIsMyWife.

...I'm Camille.

My heart forgot what it was doing.

Fingers not quite steady, I tapped the little avatar, then tapped through to the profile page. Two words sat at the top of it.

Edit profile.

I went very quiet.

This was Sebastian's account.

Which meant the person who wrote that post was Sebastian. Himself