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Ian’s hand closed over mine, and the mug slipped free. I thought I heard him mumble, “No,” but maybe that was the whisper of my own guilty conscience.

I squinted at my watch. The numbers were fuzzy…

2:07 a.m.

5

She Saw the Friend

Gwen

I drifted through thekitchen on autopilot.

The coffee machine—on.

Blueberries—in the bowl.

After carefully lowering Noah into his highchair and strapping him in, I tickled his chubby belly until he squealed with laughter. A picture-perfect start to a typical day.Almost.

Marnie slumped over the kitchen counter. “It’s against the natural order for anyone to be so happy this early in the morning.” She face-planted into the wood.

“It’s eight, Mar.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?” came her muffled grumble.

“No.” I laughed. “I have a baby, remember?” And a husband who’d never come home…

Reporting the car stolen had achieved nothing. Rocking in the chair beside Noah’s crib, my mind refusing to be quiet, I’d resorted to my own detective work. Kayleigh’s existence wasat my fingertips. It hadn’t taken long to find where she lived. Her friends. Her favorite restaurants. Even the comments she’d posted asking for advice from armchair psychologists were easy to find.

I didn’t choose to fall in love with a married man, but I can’t deny our connection. He’s the first man who understands me.

Pass me the vomit bucket.

I slid a coffee in front of Marnie. “Kayleigh uploaded a new photo—”

She lifted her head off the counter. “What did I say about looking at her social media? I believe it wasdon’t.”

I shoved my phone under Marnie’s nose. “Just look, okay?” I’d already seen the picture of Kayleigh pouting for the camera in skimpy lace underwear too many times.

Marnie’s nose wrinkled. “Geez, babe. Hit me with a trigger warning first next time.” She gagged a little when she glanced down. “It’s definitely too early for thirst traps, right?”

I jabbed a finger at the screen. “Read what she wrote.”

Yawning, Marnie mumbled out the words,“Tips for redness… I love my man’s beard, but my skin is so sensitive after hours of kissing…”She shoved my phone back. “Stop reading that shit.”

“You didn’t even get to the best part. She finished with,‘Don’t even get me started about down there.’Mar—”

Her hand landed on mine to give me a comforting squeeze. “Stop torturing yourself with Kayleigh’s juvenile crap.”

“There’s more to it than that. This is proof—”

“That is proof of nothing except that girl being an attention-seeking wannabe…and that she has gravity-defying tits.” Marniesquinted at my phone again. “Do you reckon that photo is edited? Or is it just the joy of being twenty-something? I’d kill to still have the tits I had in my early twenties.”

“Mar—”

“They were a hell of a lot perkier, let me tell you.”

I rolled my eyes and pretended her comments hadn’t hit a crack in my confidence. I couldn’t deny what I saw with my own eyes. Kayleigh was pretty. She had a youthful body, smooth, bouncy, and untouched by motherhood. Maybe Toby had noticed that too. Maybe he liked that she was too vacuous to keep him up all night worrying about household problems or pestering him about whether he’d had a chance to fix the side gate.

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