Part 1The Stranger in My Bed

Leo and I had been married for three years. To the outside world, we were the perfect couple, deeply in love.

But only I knew the truth. He’d slept in the guest room for all one thousand and ninety-five nights of our marriage.

He had never touched me.

I placed the divorce papers on his desk, ready to set him free. But as I did, my eyes caught on the journal lying open.

She left her things in the bathroom again after her shower. The scent of her still clinging to them. I held out for as long as I could. Then I took the lace thing. Hid it. God, I hope she doesn’t notice.

I froze.

All this time. All the lingerie I thought I’d lost.

He took it.

* * *

A black and gold fountain pen, not the one I’d given him, lay across the middle of the open journal. But the lingerie he’d written about—that was the set I’d bought just last week.

My mind raced, tumbling back through the last three years. The silk nightgowns, the lace bras… all told, it had to be more than twenty pieces. I’d always found a rational explanation. A strong gust of wind on the clothesline. Left behind in a hotel room during a trip.

Never once did I suspect Leo.

He was too reserved, too stoic for something like this. After we were married, we treated each other with the careful politeness of cordial strangers. When he spoke to me, his gaze was direct, never straying, never lingering.

How could he be capable of something so… furtive?

But just last night, Leo had said the faucet in the guest bathroom wasn’t producing hot water. He asked if he could use my shower. He was in and out in thirty minutes, a quiet “thank you” as he left. I hadn’t thought a thing of it.

But now I knew. He had taken it then.

My own husband. Stealing my underwear. He couldn't wear it, so what on earth was he doing with it?

An unsettling image flashed through my mind, and a hot blush crept up my neck. I couldn't let myself think about it.

A powerful urge washed over me—to flip back through the journal, to read everything. To storm into the guest room and tear through his closet.

But that would be a violation. A betrayal of the very civility we’d built our marriage on.

I took a deep breath, forcing a calm I didn't feel.

I would pretend I saw nothing.

Turning, I quietly closed the study door behind me. And the divorce papers, the neatly folded end of my marriage, found a new home in the back of my dresser drawer.

True or not, I was about to find out.