She laughed once, not because anything was funny. “A hotel room is not a mistake you trip into.” “It wasn’t—” He stopped. “Wasn’t what?”
He stared at the marble countertop. “It wasn’t the first time.” The room seemed to move around her.
Nicole gripped the back of a chair but did not sit. There are moments when the body begins protecting itself before the mind has decided what the danger is. Her hands went cold. Her hearing sharpened. She could hear the coffee maker clicking off, cartoons starting somewhere down the hall, a lawn mower in a neighbor’s yard, and Adrian breathing too carefully.
“How long?” she asked. He swallowed. “About seven months.” She stared at him.
Seven months meant spring, summer, the family beach week, Isaiah’s kindergarten orientation, Nicole’s birthday, their anniversary dinner in September, and the Sunday afternoon they all went to the botanical garden because Adrian said they needed “family time.” Seven months was not an incident. It was a season. It was a second calendar layered beneath the first. “Seven months,” she repeated.
He nodded once. “Did she know you were married?” “Yes.” “Did she know me?”
“She met you once. At the reception.” Nicole closed her eyes.
It would have been easier, she thought later, if Tessa had been a stranger in another city. A conference mistake. A faceless breach. But Tessa had shaken her hand, looked at pictures of Isaiah on Adrian’s office wall, stood under corporate holiday lights, and praised the man she was already beginning to want.
“Did you sleep with her in our house?” Nicole asked. Adrian looked up fast. “No.”