Chapter 3

The next afternoon, I went to the dance studio.

I didn't tell Callum.

He had slept soundly the night before, as though our fight had been nothing more than noise he could shut out by closing a door.

I had lain awake in the guest room until dawn, seeing the same reflection over and over again. Brielle's arms around his waist. Callum smiling as he took the picture.

The receptionist told me Brielle had just finished a lesson.

I found her in the studio at the end of the hall.

She was sitting on the floor sorting through her music. Callum's coat hung casually over the back of a chair.

She didn't look surprised to see me.

"Here for this?" She pointed at the coat, smiling as if nothing had happened between us. "It was freezing last night. Callum insisted I wear it."

I walked over, but I didn't touch it.

"You entered yourself and my husband in a couples competition."

She switched off the sound system. "Callum told you?"

In that moment, I realized that the two of them had created an entirely new order between them.

She could enter him in a competition.

She could use the song I had chosen.

She could walk away wearing the coat I had bought him.

And if I wanted to know anything, I had to wait until my husband decided I deserved to be told.

"He came here to learn an anniversary dance with me."

"I know."

Brielle stood, our reflections appearing side by side in the mirrored wall.

She was a little shorter than I was, but she deliberately stepped closer, as though she were sizing up something she already intended to take.

"When he dances with you, he has to count every step," she said. "With me, he doesn't have to think."

I swallowed the sting of her words. "Drop out of the competition. Pick a different song. And stop arranging private rehearsals with him."

The smile slowly disappeared from her face.

"Are you giving me orders?"

"I'm telling you where the boundaries of my marriage are."

She stared at me for a few seconds.

Then she laughed.

"Your biggest problem isn't me, Tessa." She folded her arms across her chest. "It's that your husband is happier with me than he is with you."

The studio was empty, and there was nothing restrained about her voice.

I no longer had to wonder whether she was crossing lines by accident.

She knew exactly what she was doing.

She also knew exactly how much every step would humiliate me.

"If you really believed he loved you more, you wouldn't have come here to warn me." She picked up Callum's coat and held it out. "Relax. I'm not planning to steal him yet."

I didn't take it.

"Yet?"

She tilted her head. "Who knows what might happen later?"

I left with the coat. It still smelled like her perfume, cloyingly sweet.

As I walked out of the studio, I didn't feel angry.

I felt a chill that had come far too late.

I had believed that if two adults stated their boundaries clearly, the problem would stop.

Brielle saw my restraint as weakness.

She saw my marriage as a competition waiting for her to enter.

Callum came home that evening while I was slicing bread in the kitchen.

The front door slammed behind him.

"You went to see Brielle today?"

Brielle had clearly called him the moment I left.

"She said you stormed into the studio, demanded that she drop out of the competition, and warned her to stay away from me."

A bitter ache spread through my chest as I watched my husband interrogate me.

"Did she also tell you that she said she wasn't planning to steal my husband yet? What exactly do you think she meant by that?"

Hesitation flashed in Callum's eyes.

It was quickly replaced by irritation.

"You pushed her too far. She lashed out."

I stared at him, struck by the sheer absurdity of it.

Brielle was allowed to taunt me about destroying my marriage because I had pushed her too far.

But when I asked her to respect a boundary, I became the aggressor.

"You believe her without even asking me what happened."

"Because she called me crying." His voice rose sharply. "Do you have any idea how scared she was? She's only trying to help me train, and you barged in there to humiliate her."

The bread knife was still in my hand.

My fingers remained perfectly steady as something inside me slowly sank.

"Callum, she wasn't crying."

He looked away.

Maybe Brielle had never fooled him at all.

Maybe he knew she wasn't frightened.

He simply preferred her version because it gave him the chance to protect her and blame me.

Before he went upstairs, he left me with one cold command.

"You owe her an apology."

I stood alone in the kitchen, staring at the loaf I had never finished cutting.

For the first time, I wondered what would happen if Callum ever had to choose between our marriage and Brielle.

Would he even remember that I was his wife?