Chapter 1

1

Three months after Garrett and I signed the lease on our place, the showerhead in the master bath started mysteriously sinking.

I’m five-foot-eight. Garrett is barely two inches taller than me. But every three or four days, I’d step onto the subway tile in the morning and find the chrome head lowered to the level of my forehead.

The first time I brought it up, he didn't even look up from his iPad.

"The slide bracket must be loose," he said, turning a digital page. "Are you seriously getting paranoid over bad plumbing?"

So I dropped it. I stopped asking.

Until a rainy Tuesday afternoon three weeks later, when my menstrual cramps got so debilitating that my vision blurred at my desk. I took a half-day and caught a rideshare home, curling into myself the entire ride.

Garrett was there.

He had just stepped out of the shower, a charcoal bath towel knotted around his hips, beads of moisture tracking down the lean contours of his stomach. When the front door clicked shut and he saw me, his forehead pinched into an immediate, sharp crease.

"What are you doing home?"

I pressed a hand against the ache in my lower abdomen, leaning heavily against the console table. "Cramps. It felt like someone took a serrated knife to my uterus."

He didn't ask if I needed heat or water. Instead, his frown deepened as he reached for his phone on the coffee table.

Before he could tap the screen, the front door’s electronic lock chimed. The deadbolt slid back with a smooth mechanical hum.

Hailey, the junior associate his firm had hired two months ago, walked in carrying a stack of beige manila folders.

She froze mid-step the moment our eyes met. Her expression wasn't just surprised; it was the deer-in-headlights panic of someone finding a homeowner inside a house they thought was empty.

Garrett’s voice was completely steady. "She drops off client filings occasionally. I got tired of buzzing the lobby intercom every time, so I scanned her thumbprint into the keypad."

I didn't say a word.

Hailey took three hesitant steps toward the living room, stopping just in front of the shiplap accent wall. Her dark hair barely grazed the horizontal trim line running through the wood.

I stared at her for five long seconds.

A sudden, sickening flash hit the back of my brain: the chrome showerhead, shoved down to eye level every three or four days.

Hailey recovered fast. She pulled her lips into an eager, practiced smile. "Tessa! Hey. I'm so sorry, I had no idea you’d be home today."

The way she said my name was entirely too comfortable. It rolled off her tongue with the casual familiarity of someone who had heard my habits dissected over drinks.

Garrett offered no further explanation. "Just leave the discovery files on the dining table," he told her.

Hailey slipped off her shoes. Without a second’s hesitation, she reached into the very bottom cubby of our entryway shoe bench and pulled out a pair of light gray knit slides.

They had appeared in our entryway only last week. When I had asked about them, Garrett had waved a hand and said the building management was handing out promotional tenant gifts.

Now, Hailey’s feet slid into them. They fit her perfectly.

I clutched my stomach, turning toward the hallway to reach our bedroom, when Hailey let out a sharp little wince. "Ow."

Her new leather loafers had chewed raw, bloody blisters into the backs of her heels.

Garrett was moving before she even finished making the sound. He grabbed the white first-aid kit from the hall linen closet and dropped to one knee on the hardwood, twisting open a bottle of antiseptic.

"I told you not to break in stiff shoes when you're shadowing me on client meetings tomorrow," he murmured, his tone layered with familiar exasperation.

Hailey pulled her foot back an inch, playing modest. "I can do it myself."

"Don't move," he said softly. His fingers wrapped around her slender ankle, gentle and steady, anchoring her in place.

I stood nine feet away, clutching the doorframe, cold sweat breaking out along my hairline from the nausea in my gut.

"Garrett," I choked out. "Where's the ibuprofen?"

He didn't lift his head. "Isn't it on your nightstand?"

The bottle had been empty for four weeks. I had reminded him three separate times to pick up a new bottle from the pharmacy downstairs on his way home from work, and every single time he had smiled, kissed my cheek, and promised he had it covered.

Last spring, when my cramps had been at their absolute worst, Garrett had driven through a midnight downpour to hit three different 24-hour Walgreens just to find the specific heating patches and gel caps I preferred. He had come home soaked to the bone, his jacket dripping puddles onto the hardwood, pressing the warm tea into my hands while gently scolding me for never taking proper care of myself.

People don't just suddenly become absent-minded.

The list of people they choose to remember simply expands.

I didn't call his name again. I unlocked my phone, opened an on-demand delivery app, and placed a rush order for painkillers.

Ten minutes later, the courier buzzed downstairs.

By the time I walked back from the front door with the brown paper bag, Hailey had migrated into our master bedroom. She was standing by Garrett’s side of the bed, her fingers hooking naturally into the brass pull of his nightstand drawer.

She slid it open with the muscle memory of someone who had done it a dozen times.

I watched her hand freeze.

That drawer held Garrett’s spare braided charging cables, his sleep mask, and his personal things. Nobody in the world had any business knowing what was inside that drawer except the two of us.

Hailey must have sensed my shadow in the doorway. Her fingers stiffened against the mahogany drawer face, and she pulled her hand back as if the metal pull had burned her.

"Sorry," she whispered, her voice tightening. "I thought... I thought Garrett kept his extra USB-C cord in here."

I looked directly into her eyes. "Have you spent a lot of time in our bedroom, Hailey?"

Garrett walked in behind me, a fresh polo shirt pulled over his head. "Last Tuesday, when she brought over the contract revisions. I was trapped on a Zoom conference with the partners and asked her to grab my charger."

He delivered the lie with practiced, rhythmic ease, like it was an inconsequential detail not even worth the breath it took to explain.

When I went out to the kitchen island to swallow two gel caps with tap water, two takeout containers had materialized on the counter.

In front of Hailey sat a steaming bowl of ginger chicken broth. She reached toward Garrett’s condensation-slicked glass of iced cold brew, but Garrett’s hand shot out, casually nudging the glass three inches out of her reach.

"Your acid reflux flared up yesterday," he said, not even looking at her. "Don't touch the cold brew."

She tilted her head, her voice dropping into a petulant whine. "Just one sip?"

"Not even one."

Then he caught sight of me standing by the sink. He gestured vaguely toward the stove. "There’s steel-cut oatmeal left in the pot from this morning. You can microwave it."

Half a bowl of cold, congealed oats sat under the glass lid, grey and stiff.

Hailey looked down, an expression of performative guilt washing over her features. "Tessa, please... take my soup. I haven't touched it."

"No," Garrett cut in immediately. "Her stomach is torn up from cramps. The ginger and lemongrass broth will just irritate her lining."

A strange, sour numbness washed down my throat.

He remembered precisely what would make me sick.

And he curated precisely what would keep her comfortable.

By the time Hailey packed up her files, a steady rain was drumming against the high living room windows. Garrett snatched his car keys off the magnetic tray.

"I'm going to drive her back," he said, zipping his windbreaker. "Her heels are bleeding; she shouldn't be walking to the train."

Before stepping out the door, he turned back, reached out, and ruffled my hair with the easy, domestic affection of a loyal partner. "Drink some hot water, Tess. Lie down. Don't overthink things."

I hadn't asked a single question.

Yet he was already preemptively telling me not to let my mind wander.

He returned late that evening. When he slipped beneath the duvet, he molded his chest against my spine, sliding one warm, broad palm over the curve of my lower abdomen.

"Still hurting?" he whispered into the nape of my neck.

"A little better."

"I'm sorry about this afternoon. I was completely swamped with the quarterly prep." He pressed a soft, contrite kiss just below my ear, his voice warm with coaxing charm. "Hailey’s brand new to the corporate side. She’s overwhelmed and makes clumsy mistakes. I have to hold her hand through the workflow right now. Don't hold it against her, okay?"

Before going to sleep, I stood in the bathroom under the recessed halogen lights.

The showerhead rested at its normal height.

Midway through washing my face, the image of Hailey standing against the living room wall flashed violently across my mind again.

She was tiny. Barely five-two in her flats.

The thought flickered like a warning flare in the dark, and I reached out, turning the brass handles until the water stopped dripping completely.

On Saturday, Garrett was supposed to take me to the retrospective photography exhibit downtown.

I had set an alarm two weeks earlier to snag the limited timed-entry tickets the moment they dropped online.

Before we left the apartment, Garrett pulled my tortoise-shell sunglasses from the bowl on the entryway table and handed them to me. "Sun's brutal today. Don't want you getting one of your summer migraines."

I had just taken them from his hand when his phone buzzed on the counter.

It was Hailey.

Her voice came through the speaker, breathless and flustered: the client had moved up their Monday morning pitch to eight o'clock, and she wasn't confident about the pricing margins on slide fourteen. She needed Garrett to look at it.

Garrett checked the silver watch on his wrist. "She's working out of that coffee shop near the gallery anyway. It’ll take ten minutes. We can stop by on the way."

When we pushed open the heavy glass doors of the café, Hailey had already staked out a corner booth by the window.

Three ceramic mugs sat on the table.

She slid a black cold brew across the wood toward Garrett. "Cold brew, no syrup."

Then she pushed a tall, creamy drink toward me. "Tessa, I ordered you a coconut milk latte."

I didn't touch the mug. "I'm allergic to coconut."

Hailey’s smile vanished, her eyes widening in immediate embarrassment.

Garrett let out a light, dismissive laugh. "She didn't know, Tess. Don't look at her like she committed a crime."

I hadn't said a word.

He was already mounting her defense before the accusation even existed.

Hailey scrambled to her feet, offering to buy me another drink, but Garrett caught her forearm, pulling her gently back into her seat. "Don't worry about it. Tessa doesn't really drink coffee anyway."

He said it so offhandedly, with such casual certainty.

Yet every single morning of our five years together, I had brewed a warm oat milk latte at dawn. I had only paused for the past four days because my stomach had been in knots.

The ten-minute proposal review dragged into forty.

Midway through, my phone vibrated with an automated text from the gallery: timed-entry reservations were held for a strict fifteen-minute grace period. Unclaimed slots were automatically released to the standby line.

I angled my phone screen toward Garrett’s face. "If we don't leave right now, we lose our window."

He skimmed the alert, his eyes already flicking back to the laptop screen. "Just one more slide."

On the next slide, Hailey piped up about what would happen if the client pushed back on their retainer tier. Garrett dragged his wooden chair an inch closer to hers, leaning in until their shoulders nearly brushed. "Let’s restructure the whole contingency clause from the top."

I didn't say another word.

By the time Garrett closed his laptop, our entry time had expired twenty minutes ago.

He finally looked across the table at me, offering a placating shrug. "We’ll go next weekend. It’s just some photos on a wall, Tess."

Hailey bowed her head, the picture of contrition. "Tessa, I am so, so sorry. This is entirely my fault."

I opened my mouth to tell her not to worry about it, but Garrett cut across me before the breath left my lungs.

"She’s not going to hold a grudge over something like this," he said.

He forgave her on my behalf faster than I could process my own disappointment.

As we stepped out onto the sidewalk, Hailey took two steps toward the subway entrance, then spun around on her heel. "Oh, wait—Garrett! Is my yellow bear travel mug still at your place?"

My foot caught on the pavement. I stopped.

Garrett stopped too, his shoulders stiffening by a fraction of a millimeter. "Pretty sure it is. I meant to grab it on the way out this morning, but it slipped my mind."

Hailey let out a soft, playful sigh. "Never mind then. Just bring it into the office on Monday."

The exchange was completely fluid. It had the unthinking ease of a conversation that had happened a dozen times before.

A memory struck me like a physical blow: three weeks ago, I had found a yellow, bear-shaped stainless steel thermos drying on our dish rack. When I had asked Garrett whose it was, he had tossed off that it was swag from a company retreat that he had grabbed out of the breakroom.

It wasn't corporate swag.

He hadn't grabbed it on a whim.

Hailey had left it in our apartment.

"When did she leave it?" I asked, keeping my voice level.

Garrett glanced sideways at me. "When she dropped off the files."

"Which time?"

His eyebrows slammed together, genuine irritation cutting through his relaxed veneer. "Tessa, it’s a twenty-dollar travel mug. Do you really need to cross-examine every inanimate object in the apartment?"

On the drive back, Garrett assumed my silence was lingering resentment over the gallery tickets. At a red light, he reached over and squeezed the back of my neck, his thumb rubbing the base of my skull.

"I'll get tickets for next Saturday. I'll make it up to you, okay?"

I tilted my head away, letting his hand fall into the empty space between the bucket seats. "Whatever."

He scoffed, shaking his head with a humorless grin. "You're getting impossible lately."

When we got home, Garrett headed straight into the master bath to shower.

I walked into the kitchen and stood in front of the sink. Tucked deep into the corner of the stainless-steel drying rack, hidden behind a large mixing bowl, sat the yellow bear thermos.

A quiet, hollow question began to hammer against my ribs:

How many times had Hailey walked across our rugs?

And how many times had Garrett quietly, meticulously erased her presence before I unlocked the door?

The next morning before heading out, Garrett casually zipped the yellow bear thermos into the front compartment of his leather laptop bag.

"Taking this so she stops whining about it," he muttered, tossing the excuse over his shoulder like the mug had never spent weeks on our counter.

I didn't answer.

At noon, while wiping down the bathroom counters, I opened the mirrored medicine cabinet to pull out my hydrating serum.

Tucked into the far corner of the middle shelf was a small box of daily disposable contact lenses.

The prescription printed on the side read -5.00.

My prescription was -2.00.

Garrett had perfect twenty-twenty vision.

I lifted the box with cold fingers. The perforation was already torn open; two blister packs were missing. My expensive night cream had been shoved to the left to create a dedicated space for this little green box right at eye level.

A travel mug could be explained away as an absent-minded mistake after dropping off paperwork.

But nobody leaves a box of daily contact lenses inside someone else's private medicine cabinet unless they are entirely certain they will be spending the night again.

That evening, as I stood at the vanity washing off my makeup, Garrett opened the mirrored door to grab his electric shaver.

His hand paused the second his knuckles grazed the box of lenses.

I met his gaze in the mirror. "Whose are those?"

He picked up the box, his expression smoothing into mild curiosity with disturbing speed. "Aren't they yours?"

I stopped rubbing the cleansing balm into my skin. "My prescription is minus-two. Those are minus-five."

Garrett’s fingers visibly locked up.

Two beats passed before he flipped the box over, squinting at the small black text as if reading it for the very first time. "Oh. Must be Hailey’s."

"When did she put them there?"

"When she dropped off the discovery documents, obviously." He tossed the box back onto the glass shelf, shutting the mirrored door with a sharp click.

I watched his reflection. "Borrowing our bathroom to wash her hands is one thing. Why would she unpack an entire box of prescription contacts into our private cabinet?"

Garrett turned to face me, his patience clearly wearing thin. "She had an eyelash caught under her lens one day, it ripped, and she had to put in a fresh one. What is with you lately? Why is every single thing an interrogation?"

I didn't push back. I didn't raise my voice or demand a timeline.

I simply nodded. "Just asking."

My lack of resistance caught him off guard. He hesitated, his posture softening, and he reached out to pinch my chin with affectionate condescension.

"You're just wound too tight lately, Tess. Hailey is notoriously scatterbrained. Stop reading conspiracy theories into dirty dishes and toiletries."

He sounded so reasonable.

He sounded so utterly convinced that as long as I stopped asking questions, the truth would simply dissolve into the air.

That night, he wrapped his arms around me from behind, murmuring half-asleep that he was going to buy the VIP passes for the photography exhibit tomorrow. I didn't say yes, and I didn't pull away. Within five minutes, his breathing deepened into sleep.

I slipped out of bed, padded barefoot into the bathroom, and reached up to the showerhead.

I loosened the bracket, shoved the chrome arm all the way to the top of the rail, and tightened the screw until it bit deep into the metal.

I left the box of contact lenses exactly where it was.

I was done looking for answers in Garrett’s mouth.

At breakfast the next morning, I sliced a piece of sourdough while keeping my tone light and conversational. "I have an all-day professional development workshop in Philadelphia on Friday."

Garrett paused, his coffee mug hovering half an inch from his mouth. "Are you staying over?"

"Just one night."

"What time’s your train?"

"Ten in the morning."

He nodded, setting the mug down. "When are you back on Saturday?"

I looked up, meeting his eyes. "Late evening, probably. The networking mixer runs until five, and the Amtrak schedule is unpredictable."

"Okay," he said, tapping his fingers on the quartz island. "Text me when you check into the hotel."

In the five years we had lived together, Garrett had never once cared about the precise minute of my return train.

I looked down at my plate and chewed my toast in silence.

The corporate seminar was real.

What I didn't tell him was that the firm had booked us on the express commuter train—and the entire thing wrapped up by four in the afternoon.

On Friday morning, I wheeled my small carry-on down the hallway, kissed Garrett goodbye at the door, and took the elevator down.

At five o'clock that evening, the final lecture ended. Two colleagues invited me for drinks at a rooftop bar near the station, but I declined, stepped onto the platform, and caught the 5:45 Amtrak back to the city.

By 8:40 PM, I was standing outside our apartment door.

As the elevator had climbed thirty floors, a pathetic, desperate voice had whispered in the back of my skull: If the apartment is quiet, if it’s empty, I will get on my knees and apologize to him for being crazy.

I pressed my thumb against the scanner.

The lock chimed. The deadbolt slid back.

The first thing that hit my eyes in the entryway was a pair of beige stiletto pumps kicked haphazardly against the baseboard.

Garrett’s tailored linen shirt lay crumpled on the Persian rug in the living room.

Draped over the arm of our velvet sofa was a single, sheer black stocking.

The bathroom door stood half-open. The hexagonal floor tiles were slick with fresh water. My white waffle-weave bath towel had been balled up and discarded by the porcelain sink.

And the showerhead—the chrome fixture I had locked at the very top of the track—had been shoved back down to the height of my forehead.

The box of daily contact lenses sat proudly on the edge of the vanity, wide open.

From our master bedroom down the hall came the muffled, rhythmic sound of heavy breathing.

Then came Hailey’s voice, breathy, soft, and playful.

"Your shower is ridiculously high. My arms ache every time I have to reach up to adjust it."

Garrett’s voice answered, gravelly and thick with exertion. "Didn't I come in and fix it for you?"

"You were too busy messing around with me to fix it properly," she giggled, the sound light and airy. "Just make sure you slide it back up before Tessa gets back tomorrow."

The box spring gave a sharp, familiar creak.

"She’s been looking at me strangely all week," Hailey murmured, her tone dropping into a pout. "What if she actually suspects something?"

Garrett chuckled. It was a lazy, dismissive sound that curdled the blood in my veins.

"What could she possibly suspect? She actually believed me when I told her the bracket screw was stripped."

He paused, his voice utterly careless. "Even if she figured it out, I’d just buy her dinner and talk her down. She has a soft spine. Give her two days to sulk and she gets over it."

I stood rooted to the hallway floor, the cold starting in my fingertips and spreading inward toward my heart.

Every ounce of intuition I had buried, every moment of self-doubt that had kept me awake at 3:00 AM—to him, it was just proof of how easily I could be managed.

Every single time he had reached up to lower that showerhead, he had done it with the full, conscious knowledge that he was lying to my face.

A brief silence fell over the bedroom.

Then Hailey asked, "So who do you actually want? Her or me?"

Garrett went quiet for three seconds. "Why are you asking that?" he said roughly. "I'm not breaking up with her."

Something inside my chest went out. Not a flare, not an explosion—just a light switch flipping into complete, absolute darkness.

I pushed the bedroom door open.

The hinge made no sound.

The two bodies tangled in the center of the bed froze simultaneously.

Hailey gasped, frantically clutching the linen duvet up to her collarbone.

Garrett’s face drained of every drop of color. "Tessa?" His voice cracked. "You... you weren't supposed to be back until tomorrow night."

I looked at him.

That was his first instinct.

Not horror at what he had done. Just shock that I had ruined the schedule.

Garrett scrambled out of bed, violently kicking his legs into a pair of discarded sweatpants, his hands reaching toward me as he crossed the room. "Tess, wait. Don't lose your mind, let’s go into the living room and—"

I took one step back, my body recoiling before he could brush my sleeve. "How long?"

Hailey kept her chin tucked against the sheet, silent as a ghost.

Garrett’s jaw tightened. "It’s complicated, okay? Just let me—"

"How long, Garrett?"

The only sound in the room was the low, steady hum of the air conditioner.

Finally, Hailey’s small voice drifted out from behind the duvet. "Two months."

Garrett whipped his head around, his eyes blazing with fury. "Who told you to open your mouth?"

A sudden, sharp laugh ripped from my throat.

Three months in our new home.

Two months of infidelity.

The life I thought we were building together had been shared with another woman since our fourth week under this roof.

Garrett stepped into the doorway, physically blocking my exit. "Tessa, listen to me. We have five years behind us. You don't throw five years into the trash over a stupid mistake."

"A mistake?" I echoed.

He had no answer for that.

I walked past him into the entryway, slipped my house key off the brass keyring, and set it down on the console table with a sharp, metallic clink.

"We're done, Garrett."

His panic finally broke through, but it was coated in stubborn, wounded pride. "Tessa, you're running on pure adrenaline right now. Don't throw around the word 'breakup' just to terrify me."

"I'm not trying to terrify you."

I looked at his bare chest, then down the hall toward the rumpled sheets where another woman was hiding. "I just realized that looking at you makes me want to throw up."

Garrett’s jaw clamped shut. In all our five years, I had never spoken to him with disgust.

"I know I screwed up," he hissed, his voice dropping into a desperate, defensive register. "I know this is bad. But it’s Hailey. You’re really going to throw away everything we built over someone like Hailey?"

"It’s not about her," I said, meeting his bloodshot eyes. "It’s about you."

I grabbed the handle of my carry-on suitcase.

He reached out to grab my wrist, but caught himself, his pride refusing to let him drop to his knees. "If you walk out that door tonight, Tessa, don't you dare come back crying."

I looked at him one last time.

"Don't worry," I said quietly. "The thing I regret most in this life, I’ve already done."