The room was dark and empty save, for one commanding presence. This was a scenario that Ray was familiar with, one that he had played all the way through so many times that the office of the mayor had started to mean less as a prestigious business to him, more so the forbidden sort of room that his mind would drift to when hers wasn’t the body next to him. These nights with Ackland never had the old creak of routine, the rusty squeak of wheels being forced along which was the feeling he often had when he was at home with his wife, as horrible as that was. It was just that whenever he was at home, he viewed the place as a cage, his pregnant wife, the bars holding him back. Back from what? His freedom? Sanity? It was ridiculously selfish, but at this point in his life, Wolfe was the king of self-deception and he didn’t pause to reflect on himself all that much. As of late, he could hardly even bring himself to look at the woman and so spent as much time going out of his way to avoid her as he possibly could. And as horrible as that was, Ray would have to be pushed in order to be ashamed of what he was doing with the mayor. He was a junkie, in every essence of the word, and Valerie was the addiction he would not quit. Her love had all the appeal he had ever needed, ever wanted and as was traditional to junkie behavior, he would lie his way back to her every time. Quitting was out of the question.
Making her form out of the shadows, the voice, the one that the public knew on a different level, carried over to him in a deadly siren song that rooted Ray to the spot. The metal of the doorknob still held in one hand, his hands began to slip from it as she moved toward him, slinking with a dangerous grace. As she drew nearer, he could feel the desire predictably starting to burn it’s way through his gut, clouding his judgement and turning whatever will-power he had to shit. If there was ever a moment of indecision it had already flitted by long before he had opened the door as now there was no doubt in his mind that he was going to stay until he got his fix. Ray had never been a one-woman man, not before he had met his wife and certainly not now. Of course he had gotten married with the full intention of changing and he had stayed the course up until, well. Up until Valerie had wanted him. Then the whole idea of being faithful had been set on fire, and Ray hadn’t looked back to guilt himself over something that he had no control over. Really, he could have stopped this from getting to this point of no return, of seeing Ackland more frequently than his own wife, the supposed love of his life. But Ray wasn’t exactly one to think with his head. It was what it was. A hand grabbed him by the shirt, and he allowed himself to be reeled in.
