Chapter 5

Ethan's POV

There had been no department meeting.

Maren had called me two hours earlier from the studio. Her client meeting had gone badly, and her voice was shaking so badly I could barely understand her. The darkroom latch was jammed. Her equipment was trapped outside the storage room. She said she could not bear going back to the house while Nora was angry with her.

I drove straight to her.

Nora would call that a lie. I told myself it was not exactly a lie. I had only changed my plans because someone needed me.

Maren was upset. I was not the kind of man who ignored someone in distress simply because my wife had decided kindness was a threat.

When I arrived, Maren was standing outside the darkroom with two camera bags at her feet. Her hands kept twisting together.

"The lock won't open," she said. "I tried everything. I didn't know who else to call."

I took the bags from her and worked the metal latch until it clicked open.

It was a small thing. A stuck door. Ten minutes of my time.

But when Maren looked at me, she looked as if I had saved her.

"Thank you," she whispered. "I truly don't know how I would manage without you."

Nora handled things before I even knew they were wrong. A leaking pipe. A broken fixture.

Something mechanical in her car.

By the time I found out, she had already watched a video, bought the part, and fixed it herself.

At first, I had admired that.

Then I started wondering when she had last needed me for anything at all.

When Maren looked at me, she saw someone who protected her when things went wrong.

When Nora looked at me lately, all I saw was scrutiny. Accusation. As if every time I helped Maren, I was proving something ugly about myself.

"You don't have to keep fighting with her because of me," Maren said softly.

"I'm not fighting with her," I said. "I'm trying to stop her from treating a simple act of help like a betrayal."

Maren looked down. "The tension between you two was already bad before I moved in."

"That isn't true," I said immediately. "Nora and I were fine."

Were we?

For six months before Maren contacted me, Nora and I had shared a house, a bed, and a schedule.

We ate dinner. We went to work. We lived beside each other without asking much of one another.

Then Maren came to the bakery after my classes. She listened when I spoke about my research. She asked questions. She made me feel as if what I said still mattered.

Nora had heard me talk about work for years.

Maren made me feel heard.

I wanted that feeling of being needed.

I wanted to keep both worlds.

I wasn't leaving Nora.

I wasn't touching Maren.

Wanting to help her did not make me unfaithful.

"Maybe I should pack my things and leave," Maren said. "Maybe that's the only way to stop causing problems in your home."

Leave?

The thought hit me harder than it should have.

Then anger rose in me—this was Nora's doing. Nora had made Maren feel unwelcome, then acted as if Maren leaving would prove she had been right all along.

Nora would call it a boundary. She would call it protecting our marriage.

But all I could see was a woman with nowhere to go because my wife had decided kindness was a threat.

"No," I said.

Maren looked up at me.

"You don't need to leave tonight."

"Ethan, she's your wife."

"I know that."

"Then maybe you should go back to her."

I should have.

I should have walked out, driven home, and faced Nora.

I could already see Nora's face when I walked in.

That quiet look she got when she had decided I was guilty before I spoke.

Maren was closer than she had been a moment ago.

"You're not a bad person," she said.

My pulse stumbled. Heat moved through me before I could name it.

I told myself it was concern. The studio was small. She was upset. Anyone would have felt the weight of that moment.

But when her fingers caught in the front of my jacket, I did not move.

I should have stepped back. I knew that.

But stepping back would have made it mean something.

So I stayed where I was.

Somewhere at the far end of the corridor, the heavy steel fire door clicked shut.

I turned toward the sound.