Chapter 1

The night shift ended at six. I drove home at dawn, and there, on the neighbor's porch, my husband had his arms around another woman.

Cole. Same scrubs as yesterday.

Renee fit right under his chin, like she belonged there.

Bare feet on the cold boards. A robe that wouldn't stay shut. She had melted right into him.

He wasn't pulling away. He was holding on.

Renee looked past his shoulder and found me through the windshield.

And she smiled. Small. Certain. Like she'd already won.

Cole turned. The color drained out of his face. He came off that porch fast, reaching my car before I could pull away.

He yanked the door open. Her cheap vanilla perfume came in with him.

"Mara. It's not what you think. Renee's daughter spiked a fever last night. A hundred and four. She's got no one in this city.

I went over, I fell asleep on the couch, that's all."

"You're the charge nurse in my trauma bay, Cole." My voice came out flat.

"You know what a hundred-and-four fever does to a seven-year-old. If it were real, you'd have brought her into our ER and intubated her.

You wouldn't have slept on her couch."

That stopped him. For one second, the script ran out.

Then his phone lit up on the dash. Face up.

Renee: You left your jacket on my bed. Lily won't stop crying for her daddy. When are you coming home?

Daddy.

"Give me the phone."

He tucked it behind his back. Instinct. Fast.

"Mara, listen to yourself. She's a lonely single mother. A kid calls me daddy and this is where your head goes?

I'm helping someone who has no one. When did that make me the bad guy?"

He believed it. That was the part that turned my stomach. He thought he was a good man being kind to someone weaker.

I looked at the man I'd slept beside for three years, and the anger was gone. What was left was quieter, and worse.

I put the car in drive. He was still holding the phone behind his back when I pulled away.

It never once crossed his mind that I might be the one who left.