Chapter 2

"Maren asked when she could meet the baby." I ended the call. "I told her when Ivy is one hundred days old."

Grant did not question me. He even suggested we schedule family photos for that day.

Then he told me Sloan had injured her wrist and wanted her to stay in our guest room.

"I just gave birth alone because of her."

"Getting hurt wasn't her fault." He frowned. "Don't take your emotions out on her. If she stays with us, she can help you with Ivy."

Sloan moved in on my third day home from the hospital. Grant made her bed, cooked her meals, and had her pain medication ready on schedule. But whenever Ivy cried, he told me, "I have work tomorrow. Can you settle her?"

At night, he began sleeping in the other guest room because he said he needed uninterrupted rest.

On Ivy's seventeenth night, I woke to her crying and found Grant's side of the bed empty again. Sloan claimed she had moved in to help, yet she never once opened her door when the baby cried at night.

My stitches had not fully healed. Every time I sat up, it felt as if the wound were tearing open again. That night, I changed Ivy, fed her, and carried her around the room for half an hour. No one downstairs came up to ask if I needed anything.

After I finished feeding her, I heard laughter below.

Grant was wrapping a brace around Sloan's wrist. Her hand rested in his palm as she smiled and asked, "Do you remember kissing me when we were nine?"

"We were kids."

"I was still your first kiss."

She brushed the hair from his forehead. He did not move away.

They laughed over a childhood that belonged only to them. I had asked Grant about those years before, but he always said there was nothing worth telling. Sloan only had to mention a tree or an old nickname, and he remembered every detail.

"Do you regret getting married and having a baby?" Sloan asked.

Grant was quiet for a long time. "I don't regret Ivy."

He did not say he did not regret marrying me.

"At least when you're with me, you're still the old Grant," Sloan said.

Standing in the shadow of the staircase, I almost wished they would kiss. At least then my pain would have a name. Instead, no matter what I saw, they could dismiss it as a joke between childhood friends.

When I returned to the bedroom, a message from Sloan arrived.

"Cold by the stairs, wasn't it? I thought you'd come down and make another scene over Grant. How disappointing. Being his wife changes nothing. He'll always choose me."

That was when I realized she had seen me. I had not overheard those intimate words by accident. At least half of them had been meant for me.

When Grant came into the bedroom, I held out my phone. "She knew I was listening downstairs. She said those things on purpose."

He pushed the phone back toward me. "I'm not getting involved in whatever competition you two are having."

"You haven't even read her message."

"I know Sloan. She doesn't mean any harm. You've had a problem with her from the beginning."

"So you know her well enough that you don't need to see the proof. But you trust me so little that you won't even look?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not going to decide which one of you wins."

"I'm not asking you to pick a winner. I'm telling you your best friend deliberately humiliated your wife."

"She wouldn't."

He answered too quickly, as if the Sloan he believed in was more real than the words she had typed herself.

"Fine." I took my phone back. "Don't look."

The next day, I saved screenshots of her messages. Using an old account my mother had left me, I paid the deposit on an apartment. Then I mailed my passport, our marriage certificate, and Ivy's birth documents to Maren.

The apartment was ten minutes from Maren's home. It had two bedrooms, and the landlord agreed to hold it until Ivy was one hundred days old. I changed my mailing address, then stored every screenshot in an email account only I could access.

When Grant came home, he asked what I had mailed.

"Ivy's insurance documents."

"Put everything back when you're finished with it."

"I will."

He went upstairs without another thought.

The tracking status on my phone had just changed.

The package had left the city.