Chapter 968: The Luckiest Bastard Alive

I was the

luckiest bastard

alive.

If I have to tattoo that sentence on my own forehead so I never forget it, fine. Consider it done.

I didn’t hunt these women down like some tragic pickup artist with a spreadsheet and a

neckbeard.

No.

The universe literally gift-wrapped them for me at the exact moment their marriages had decayed into beige resentment and mutual hostage situations.

Year five, year twelve, year twenty-three—didn’t matter. The timeline always looked the same:

spark → routine → quiet contempt → guest bedroom resentment → separate vacations → "we’re just growing apart" → me sliding in like the final boss of better orgasms.

Cosmic luck? Or the statistical inevitability that every long-term relationship eventually turns into a shared lease on emotional furniture nobody wants to sit on anymore?

Both. Definitely both.

Every single one of them had a different flavor of husband-failure:

The

"I provide, therefore I’m done trying"

guy

The

"my work is my mistress and also my personality"

guy

The

"I’ll fix it next year"

guy who said that for nine years straight

The

"smooth jazz at dinner, missionary on anniversaries, zero questions asked"

guy

Different names. Different tax brackets. Same obituary for desire.

And the constant through all of it?

Me.

I didn’t even have to try that hard. One look. One sentence. One second of actually seeing them instead of looking through them like they were background scenery in their own lives.

That was enough. My

presence

hit like smelling salts to a coma patient. Years of swallowed wants, deferred orgasms, and "maybe next time" promises just...

evaporated.

If some

sanctimonious Reddit

thread ever called me a

Demon Incubus Prince

who could summon women’s darkest cravings and make them act like they’d never heard the word

"consequences"

before? I wouldn’t even ask for a paternity test of who my

Demon father and Demon mother

are.

I’d just nod, sip my drink, and say:

"Yeah. Checks out."

Because look at the fucking evidence.

Right now:

modified Lamborghini, Los Angeles midnight, another man’s wife riding shotgun wearing nothing but my charcoal jacket and a

post-orgasmic

glow that could power streetlights. Hair whipping behind her like she’d just escaped maximum-security monogamy.

Screaming

—

not in fear, in revival-meeting ecstasy

—into the wind because for the first time in God knows how long she remembered what being alive actually felt like.

I

swung

the Lambo wide through curve. Rear end kicked out clean, controlled, deliberate. Tires shrieked.

Genevieve’s

hand slapped the dash but her mouth was already open in a howl that had zero to do with survival instinct and everything to do with remembering she had a pulse.

I straightened her out. Engine dropped back to that predatory purr. She turned those obsidian eyes on me—pupils blown, chest rising and falling like she’d just sprinted a decade of repression—and rasped one word:

"Again."

So, I

obliged.

But first she leaned forward, no hesitation, no "may I?", and started stabbing at the dash screen like she’d designed the

UI

herself. Flicked past ARIA’s tasteful nighttime playlists—classical, jazz, lo-fi chill beats for

sad boys

with too much money—until she found what she wanted.

Hip-hop.

Filthy. Heavy. Bass so deep it rearranged your internal organs like aggressive IKEA instructions. She hit the volume until the rearview mirrors buzzed and the seats vibrated against our thighs like they were in on the conspiracy.

Then she started moving.

Not full dancing—seatbelt, jacket, confined cockpit physics didn’t allow it—but vibing like she’d been born inside a subwoofer and someone had cruelly evicted her years ago. Head rolling. Shoulders dipping.

Body finding the beat the way water finds every crack in a dam. Eyes closed. Lips mouthing lyrics she shouldn’t know by heart.

One hand braced on the ceiling, the other surfing the night wind out the window.

She looked like a woman who hadn’t been allowed to move like this since college. Maybe longer.

I watched her for exactly three seconds—three seconds of Genevieve bathed in dashboard glow, wearing moonlight and my jacket like reclaimed territory, rolling her hips to a beat that would’ve given her husband

arrhythmia—and

thought:

Yeah. She’s gonna slide right into the collection like she was always meant to be there.

Women aren’t easy. I know that. I’ve seen the evidence. Watched from the outside before I became the cheat code.

Ancient history.

Genevieve had stories stacked behind her teeth like loaded magazines. I could feel them every time her laughter hit a pause that lasted half a second too long.

But she wasn’t unloading them yet. Not tonight.

Tonight, she was still the stranger I’d fucked senseless in a gallery bathroom and was now power-sliding through Los Angeles while she screamed the stress, the worry, the accumulated micro-damage of a decade straight into the wind.

We hit a wide, empty intersection—four lanes, lights cycling for ghosts. I downshifted, felt the engine snarl like it was personally offended at the idea of going straight, whipped the wheel hard left.

Full

three-sixty.

The

Lambo

pirouetted on its axis like it was showing off for God. Tires painted perfect black arcs. Smoke rose in pale gold clouds under the streetlights. Centrifugal force pinned Genevieve back into the seat.

Both hands slammed the dash.

Fingers splayed. Hair whipping across her face, into her mouth, over her eyes. She didn’t brush it away. Didn’t care.

She was laughing through the scream—two sounds braiding into something raw and newborn.

When the car snapped straight again she was panting. Flushed. Jacket completely off one shoulder now, exposing collarbone, the swell of breast, skin still marked from earlier. She didn’t fix it.

That’s when I noticed her hand.

Left hand. Still braced against the dash like it was personally offended by gravity. Fingers splayed wide from the last drift. And on the ring finger—

nothing.

Just a pale, accusing band of skin where a wedding ring had squatted for years like an unwanted tenant. Tan line so crisp it looked Photoshopped. Ghost of gold.

She’d taken it off.

Somewhere between bathroom tiles and hallway shadows. Somewhere between my cock rearranging her priorities and my jacket becoming her new uniform. I hadn’t seen the moment.

Hadn’t heard the tiny clink of platinum hitting porcelain.

But she’d done it in silence—like shedding a bad tattoo she never consented to. Right now that ring was probably sitting on the edge of a sink next to shredded silk, one lonely heel, and the last verifiable proof she’d ever belonged to anyone but herself.

Or maybe she flushed it. Wouldn’t put it past her. Genevieve was rapidly graduating from

"polite

disappointment" to

"fuck it, let’s see how far gravity bends tonight."

"You—" she started, still breathless, pointing at me like I’d personally invented physics. "You are certifiably—"