I lay beside Sheridan watching the rise and fall of her chest after our love making, trying to figure out how our love had come to this. We’re in their bed, in their house with our child sleeping down the hall. Antonio and Sheridan will be married for nearly a year soon, but our love affair hasn’t grown cold yet. While my brother may act as if the baby sleeping in the next room is his: everyone knows the truth. She’s very much mine and all I want is to tell the world that the beautiful baby girl isn’t my niece; she’s my daughter and I love her very much.

Sheridan moves closer, caressing my chest to let me know she’s ready for more. I know that having an affair with her is wrong, but I can’t say the words to end it. I can’t leave the woman I love and my daughter. For now, at this moment, I can pretend that we’re a family. That the wedding band on her finger is mine and not my brother’s, just like the engagement ring she still wears. I can imagine that this is my house with my family inside, like it should be. But it isn’t and it won’t be until we find the words to tell Antonio.

Her gasps sound like nails scratching a blackboard in my head, echoing against the insides of my mind repeatedly. The sound is a warning alarm going off and I can’t stand to hear it sometimes, just like I can’t deal with looking at her left hand where the wedding band always reminds me who she belongs to. I may have her body and sometimes her heart, but he has her as his bride. Legally, morally, she is his wife and even if she denies him her body and love, I know. We’re marked for dead. Living our love out in secret.

“Luis?”

I shake my head, sitting up and moving towards the window of the house they bought after the fire at the cottage. It was that same night Sheridan and I thought we would be able to start our lives together, especially when we learned about the baby. It was that night I discovered the truth about Beth when I caught her trying to kill Sheridan, but it wasn’t then that we told Antonio about her. Once he found out Sheridan was pregnant, he learned about us. But he didn’t give her up. Assuming that Sheridan and I had only been lovers during his illness before their wedding, Antonio forgave her, telling her that she was his wife and he would stay with her for always. He believed they could find the love they lost. Sheridan couldn’t bring herself to break his heart. From that moment on Sheridan and I started seeing each other in secret, swearing that one day we would finally tell Antonio before it was too late…

But it is too late now. Our souls are already damned.

I know she loves me; I would be an idiot not to believe that her heart still beats for me. Not that it would matter, loved or not I’m damned. I’m the walking dead without her, I’m a soul condemned to suffer for eternity with her. I spend all my energy holding onto a love that may never ever be allowed to see daylight. Only in the nights when Antonio is away at work or when she sneaks away to be with me can we possibly show what we feel at every family function. The tension and the passion are locked inside so often that it makes me dizzy with need and pain. I spend most of my time wishing I could let her go, wishing I was someone else, but it never happens. I’m trapped for eternity in a love affair that won’t get me anything but pain.

I’m damned.

“Luis?” she speaks again. She’s sitting up in the bed looking confused. In the several months that we’ve been sneaking around behind Antonio’s back, I have never denied her, nor have I left her bed while she was awake. We never leave when the other is awake to watch, knowing too well the pain of watching the other walk away. Instead, we wait until slumber has taken our partner over before creeping out.

I shake my head again. “You should get some sleep. The baby will be up soon.”

That’s usually my signal that I should be leaving. It’s the best way to say the words without saying goodbye. Sheridan knows this and her eyes flash for a moment before sadness fills them. I can take anything but those tears.

“You just got here,” she argues.

“He should be home soon. Mama cannot entertain him all night, Sheridan, and he’s not going to believe you weren’t feeling well if he finds you awake when he gets home.”

“I’ll tell him I couldn’t sleep,” she looks down at the sheets that are rumpled from our lovemaking. Part of the reason she is asleep whenever Antonio graces her with his presence is to avoid sleeping with him. Antonio may have “forgiven” her for sleeping with me back before their wedding, but he didn’t know of her unfaithfulness and he never laid a hand on her. Part of her punishment for hurting him was to stay a wife in a loveless marriage. Antonio had given up trying to make her love him and still refuses to divorce her. Instead, he sleeps with anyone he wants and keeps her away from me.

“Don’t you think we already tell enough lies without another one, Sheridan? Has a single word in your entire marriage to Antonio been honest? When are we going to tell him, Sheridan? When will I finally be able to stop living this lie?”

Before she can reply, one of the downstairs doors slams shut. Sheridan flies from the bed, ready to lock the door to the room before Antonio can come in. All it would do is provide me with enough time to go out onto their balcony and try to climb down. I’ve done it once before when Antonio arrived home early from work. It was dangerous, but I made it. We both lived to sneak around another day.

We listen for a moment and I check the driveway from the window, but Antonio’s car is nowhere in sight. After a few more minutes of nervous silence and waiting, we decide it’s just the wind blowing through one of the rooms downstairs. Sheridan left a window open in the kitchen after burning the dinner we were making. We were too absorbed in each other to remember the chicken that ended up charring as we used the table for other, more exhausting purposes. She blushes pink when she realizes she is nude and standing before me. I rake my eyes over her body and immediately start to lose control of myself. Any thoughts of leaving her are gone now as I’m ready to finish what she was about to start.

I’m tired of keeping secrets and Sheridan knows it. Repeatedly over the last few weeks I have asked her to allow me to confront my brother. If one of us doesn’t do it soon, my daughter is going to grow up calling me Uncle Luis. Sheridan, however, is terrified that Antonio won’t grant her a divorce. While Ethan has offered to act as her attorney and seek her one anyway, she is reluctant. Part of me thinks she loves Antonio and hopes to work things out. The other part of me is certain that’s the reason. The nagging voice of logic tells me it’s impossible for her to love him and be with me, but it’s overpowered by the facts before me. Sheridan isn’t ready to let go of him. She obviously wants something else, something more: a guarantee even.

Licking my lips, I’m ready for more of what she has to offer. I start to move towards her, hunger in my eyes, but she puts up her hands. My questions have pained her and she’s not ready to give into my lust. But I’m not stopping. I need her; God knows it and so does she. She makes me need her, makes me crave her and makes me desire her. It’s her fault that I am trapped in the web of lies we have woven together. She’s led me to believe we could finally be free to love, and yet we’re still where we were a year ago. I think about her day and night. At work, all I can think of is the feel of her body. In my dreams, I make love to her everywhere we can’t now. I barely eat and I’m floating through life thanks to my mother.

Damned if I do her…Damned if I don’t.

“Talk to me, Luis,” her hand presses against my chest. “Tell me where all this is coming from. Suddenly you seem to want an awful lot from me tonight, a lot more than a roll in the hay and a few hours with your daughter.”

“I’ve always wanted more,” I argue, moving away from her and pulling on my boxers. “You damn well know I haven’t been happy, Sheridan. I want a life again. I want to walk down the street holding your hand and letting everyone know that we’re happy and in love. I want to go out with you and our daughter and show the world that we’re a family. I want to have a real relationship. Not one tarnished because it’s kept secret in the night.”

“You don’t think I want all that too?” she huffs, offended by my doubt.

“I don’t know,” I return to gazing out the window. “Do you?”

“Damn it, Luis!” she throws something at the wall, but I don’t bother to look at what it is. Whatever it was has shattered into dozens of tiny little pieces. “You don’t talk to me for a week and suddenly you show up wanting to have sex. I let you into my house and give into you without your even saying hello! Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

I don’t move. “I’m afraid to look at you, Sheridan. Every time I do all I see is a woman I’m free to be with, and that’s not true. I’m afraid to breathe too loud in case he should be lurking near and hear that you’re not alone. I can’t stand it anymore!”

“Then talk to me. Tell me what you want from me!” she screams.

I turn on her then, anger flashing in my eyes. “I’ve already taken what I’ve wanted,” I’m furious and saying things I don’t mean. “I’ve taken all I can stand from you, Sheridan! I’ve lied for you, for us! I’ve kept us secret. Do you realized that without you in my life I’m nothing, I’m damned to suffer the flames of desire for a woman that’s married to my brother. But keeping this going damns me to another type of flames: those kept lit by the sins of the world in hell! I lose either way and I can only be saved by your admitting that we need to tell Antonio and by our finally doing it!”

“So are you saying it’s over, Luis?” her tone softens and the blasted tears that are my weakness returns. “Are we going to part now and never see each other again?”

I’m left with one question? Am I telling Sheridan in my own way that this has to end? Am I finally freeing my soul from the flames that consume me? Can I survive without her? I growl in frustration, roughly pulling on my clothing. I can’t turn back now. I’m in too deep.

“No!” I snarl, hating myself for letting this continue.

“Then what?” she asks. “Are we going to tell Antonio?”

“Do you want that?”

“I don’t know.”

And finally, she’s honest. Sheridan has finally confessed what I have believed for so long: she isn’t ready to leave him. Somewhere inside there is this sense of duty that Sheridan has to the man she has taken vows to. Despite our affair, despite the fact that she is breaking her vows with me, she refuses to sever ties completely to him. Pain crosses my features, but I refuse to let her know that, glad that my head is down as I pull on my shoes. “Fine,” I stand, finally dressed. “I won’t call you, I won’t even let you know I’m alive. When we see each other at Mama’s or on the street, just keep walking. Don’t even wave to me.”

“Luis…that’s not what I meant.”

“But maybe it’s what’s best,” I tell her, not completely sure I believe that myself. “This was getting twisted, Sheridan. We were finding it hard to explain where we disappeared to and harder to keep our stories straight whenever we arrived at places together or saw each other. Our reactions weren’t well hidden and people were starting to assume what was going on. As long as you’re married, we can’t keep doing this. Now we’ll be able to keep our story straight. What we had ended a long time ago. We’ll live up to that and make people believe it. It will be easy enough if we stop seeing each other.”

“No, that’s not what I want,” she insists. “Luis, it was fate for us to be together, you and I both know that. It was fate for Antonio to bring me back to Harmony, for me to conceive your first born. This,” she points to the bed, “was fate.”

“No, it was temptation, Sheridan, and we let our lust override our intelligence.” Walking past her to the door, I pause for a moment. “You’ll know where to find me if you change your mind, Sheridan. If you want to finally have a relationship in the day light and leave behind this farce of a marriage, you know who and where to call.”

And then I leave.

I don’t go home right away, knowing that Antonio is still with Mama. For a few minutes, I watch Sheridan in her bedroom window, crying. She has turned the light on and I can see it glistening in the tracks of her tears. It took a lot for me to walk out the way I just did and I start to feel tired. Sheridan’s light goes out again but it isn’t long before her shadow fills the nursery where our daughter sleeps. I watch her lift our angel and kiss her little head before the scene is too much for me to bear and I start walking away. Despite my back being to the house, I can still see her sobbing for what used to be. That image will forever be burned into my mind.

Somehow, I end up at the one place I haven’t been since our daughter’s baptism: the church. The lights are on which can only mean one thing, Father Lonigan is having a late night prayer. I’m tempted to go inside, but the souls of the condemned aren’t welcome there. One day, when I’m ready to seek forgiveness I’ll returned to the church to be delivered from my sins, saved from the flames of hell and returned to the light. I’ll let the priest absolve me of all my errors and take away the marks that damn my soul to hell.

But right now, I’m still dealing with the fact that I am damned and that I have cursed myself by being with the woman I love and now by turning my back on her. All I can hope is that somehow, someway I am saved and that grace pulls my soul back from the flames.

Otherwise, I’m damned for eternity. And it’s never seemed so long before. I can almost see the word that is imprinted on my soul, the letters formed by the times I let the lust and passion I had for Sheridan consume me. They are there in big bold letters, chiseled by acts of what I thought was love. Six letters for twelve months of unfaithfulness…