Excerpt — “The Moment Marcus Should Have Walked Away”
An early moment from the novelette: “The Weight of Our Days – The First Year”. This is the day Marcus realized a boundary had been crossed, and nothing would ever feel quite the same again…
Beth stepped closer than she needed to, close enough that Marcus felt the warmth of her breath before he felt her hand. It landed lightly on his stomach — a touch so casual it almost passed for friendly, except nothing about it felt friendly at all. Her fingers pressed in just a little, testing, as if she were confirming something she’d suspected for a while.
“You’ve changed,” she murmured, her voice low enough that Marcus wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “You’re softer than you used to be.”
He froze. He should have stepped back. He should have said something. But the shock pinned him in place.
Beth’s smile tilted, knowing and far too confident. “If we went into the bedroom,” she said, “you could show me just how much.”
Marcus’s breath caught — not from temptation, but from the sheer audacity of it. The wrongness. The way the room suddenly felt too small, too warm, too dangerous.
He finally found his voice. “Beth… no.”
But she was already stepping back, already pretending nothing had happened, already moving on as if she hadn’t just crossed a line he didn’t even know existed until she was standing on the other side of it.
And Marcus stood there, heart pounding, wondering how he was going to explain any of this to Lyra — or if he ever could.
If you wish to read the entire story, the full book can be found here:
Amazon.com: The Weight of Our Days: The First Year eBook : Freeman, Max: Kindle Store