Page 137 of Sin

Always.

Three dots appear.

Are you okay?

I close my eyes. No. Not remotely. My marriage is over. My wife knows. My brother suspects. My company may become a battlefield. And the only thing clear in all of it is the one thing I am least entitled to want. Her.

I will be.

I almost add, because of you but don’t. Instead, I send one more message.

I’ll check on you tomorrow.

Night.

I set the phone down.

Then I sit alone in the house I no longer know how to live in and let the truth settle fully into my bones.

I love Laurel. Not because she’s easier. Nothing about her is easy. Not because she’s an escape. She’s become the one place I can no longer hide.

I love her because when I am with her, I want to be honest.

Better.

Braver.

And tomorrow, for the first time in a long time, I am going to start acting like it.

21

Sin

Richard’s office is made of glass, steel, and silence. It’s the kind of silence that costs nine hundred dollars an hour. I sit across from him at eight in the morning with a black coffee going cold in my hand and no wedding ring on my finger.

He notices because Richard Collier notices everything. That’s why I pay him an obscene amount of money to keep my life from burning down. Unfortunately, my life has already found matches.

He sets a legal pad in front of him. “Start at the beginning.”

I laugh once. It sounds awful.

“The beginning was twenty-six years ago when I married someone I never should have.”

“Then start with what matters legally.”

“That narrows it?”

His expression doesn’t change. No sense of humor before nine. Noted.

I set the coffee on the table. “Jenna knows I’m involved with someone.”

“At the company.”

“Yes.”

“Name?”

I hesitate.