Rosalie Winters had paid six hundred dollars to learn how to touch her own husband.

At 4:24 p.m., standing in the elevator at Halcyon Tower, she was beginning to suspect this had been a terrible idea.

She opened the note she'd saved after booking.

**The Hart Method**

**Private Sex Coaching Session**

**4:30 PM**

**27th Floor, Suite 8**

As she read it for the third time, her phone buzzed.

**Lily:** Did you go in yet? Please tell me you didn't run away.

Rosalie stared at her best friend's name.

Of course Lily was checking. This entire disaster had been her idea.

The night before, after Jasper had pushed her away again, Rosalie had gone straight to Lily's apartment. One bottle of wine had somehow turned *What am I supposed to do about my marriage?* into *Maybe I need professional help.*

They'd searched with full drunk confidence and zero dignity until they landed on **The Hart Method**, a polished website promising *guided one-on-one exercises,* help learning to initiate touch, and, reassuringly, *You set the pace.*

Lily had squinted at the screen.

"So... Magic Mike, but educational."

"How could Magic Mike even be educational?"

"Because it's supposed to 'build confidence with intimacy'?" Lily was already on the booking page. "Whatever. I'm booking this sex coach for you."

Rosalie had objected at first, but Lily convinced her to book it with one simple argument: she could always cancel in the morning.

Turns out, she couldn't.

**Rosalie:** I'm gonna kill you, Lily Lewis!

She jabbed at Send.

The elevator chimed.

Rosalie followed the two men ahead of her into the hallway without looking up from her phone.

When she finally lowered it, there it was. Suite 8, gold numerals on a dark wood door.

Rosalie knocked.

"Come in."

The voice from inside was calm and clipped, not exactly welcoming.

The room behind the door looked less like a wellness studio and more like a corporate office.

The man behind the table was extremely handsome, in the particular way of men who had clearly never had to try. Dark hair. A jaw that looked engineered. A suit that fit like it had opinions.

*Well,* she thought. *That tracks. Sex coaching apparently pays well.*

"Sorry," she said. "Am I late?"

"A few minutes." He didn't look up as he closed his laptop.

"I'm here for the four-thirty," she said, putting her bag down.

"So am I."

Confirmed. Exactly where she was supposed to be.

"Should I just... tell you about myself? I read that the first part is usually just talking."

He looked at her properly for the first time. "Go ahead."

Rosalie took the kind of breath she took before sending a difficult email.

"I'm married. Almost a year."

"You're married," he repeated.

"Yes. My husband and I haven't really..." She searched for language clinical enough to say out loud to a stranger. "Been physically close. At all."

The man said nothing. His face had gone completely still.

*That's professional. No judgment, probably part of the training.*

Rosalie gathered her nerve and rushed through the rest before she could lose it.

"I tried to kiss him once. Not the quick hello kind, you know? I leaned in, and he got up so fast I nearly fell off the couch. I even bought lingerie once, and he told me it made me look fat. There's always a reason. Cleanliness. Stress. Work. Depends on the week.

"I actually went to a doctor because he wouldn't. She called it hysteria, or something like that. I came home with medication. But no, it didn't help. Not the way I wanted it to.

"It's been eleven months, and I've started wondering if maybe I don't know how to do it right. Maybe I'm too nervous, or too... awkward. He's told me I make it awkward."

The silence stretched a beat too long.

"If he wanted you," the man said dryly, clearly having no idea why she was making something this simple so complicated, "you wouldn't have to work this hard."

That landed somewhere it shouldn't have. Rosalie's first instinct, reliable and well-worn, was to defend.

"You don't know my husband."

"No."

"And I'm not here for marriage counseling." She straightened. "Can we just get to what we're supposed to do?"

"Do?"

*Guided one-on-one exercises,* the website had said. *Learn to initiate touch.* She'd read that line last night, tipsy enough to decide it meant: *this is where I practice.*

She stood.

The man looked at her, then stood as well.

Good. *You set the pace,* just as the website had promised.

*Shoulder,* she thought, leaning slightly across the table. *No, arm. That's what I already do. That's not the problem. The problem is...*

She was thinking too much. That was the entire diagnosis in one sentence. So she did the only thing that felt like it might interrupt the loop.

She closed her eyes.

"Okay," she said, mostly to herself. "I'm just going to do it."

She reached out and laid her palm flat against his chest.

He went rigid beneath her hand. Completely rigid. Like this was not one of the scenarios he'd prepared for today.

"Take your hand off me."

Her eyes flew open. She yanked her hand back so fast she nearly stumbled.

"Sorry, I just..."

"What makes you think you can grab a strange man?"

Rosalie stared at him.

"Your website."

His brows drew together. "My what?"

"Your website." Her embarrassment was already turning into annoyance. "You literally wrote about guided exercises and practicing physical touch."

He looked at her for a long second.

"Who exactly do you think I am?"

Rosalie frowned.

"What do you mean, who do I think you are? You're my sex coach."

The man didn't answer this time.

"You don't even know what you put on your own website?" Rosalie grabbed her bag. "You know what? I'm going to complain..."

The door suddenly opened. A man in his forties appeared, slightly breathless, accompanied by a uniformed staff member.

"Ms. Winters? Are you Ms. Winters? Thank God. I've been looking all over for you. This building has two Suite 8s, and it causes mix-ups all the time."

Rosalie froze.

Slowly, she looked past the open door toward the small floor plaque in the hallway.

**37TH FLOOR.**

Her stomach dropped.

She looked at the man she'd just touched.

"You're not my sex coach?"

One of his brows lifted. "No."

Then she looked at the man in the doorway.

"You're my sex coach?"

He gave her an apologetic smile. "Technically, I prefer the term intimacy coach."

Oh.

Oh no.

"I'm so sorry."

She couldn't bring herself to look at the man across the table again.

"I am so, so sorry."

Rosalie snatched up her bag and made it to the door in three steps.

She fled before anyone could say anything.

---

Rosalie pressed the down button three times, as if that might somehow make the elevator come faster.

Lily's message arrived at exactly the right moment.

**Lily:** Well??? How was it?

Rosalie let out a long breath.

**Rosalie:** I touched the wrong man.

Three dots appeared immediately.

**Lily:** Wrong man as in a stranger?

**Lily:** Does that mean I should bring bail money???

Rosalie slipped the phone back into her bag, still hot from her ears down to her throat.

Six hundred dollars. One wrong floor. One stranger's chest.

All because she'd been trying to figure out the right way to make her own husband want her.

The thought was suddenly less funny.

*If he wanted you, you wouldn't have to work this hard.*

The stranger's voice came back to her.

He was wrong.

He didn't know Jasper. He didn't know their marriage.

Still, the words wouldn't leave her alone.

For eleven months, Jasper had given her one excuse after another, and she'd spent all that time trying to work around them.

Maybe it was time to stop guessing.

Tonight, she would ask him the question she'd been too afraid to ask directly.

*Why don't you want me?*