She scrolled through it slowly.
Restaurant plans. Messages. Photos I did not want to see.
I made myself look at the dates.
Eighteen months back. Further.
“This isn’t Olivia,” I said.
“No,” Tessa said. “That’s me.”
I stared at her.
“You’re—”
“One of them,” she said quietly.
I looked around the table again.
Seven women.
“No,” I said, though I don’t know what I was refusing exactly.
Tessa slid the phone closer. “Keep scrolling.”
I did.
Tessa. Brooke. Olivia. A woman who’d met him at a conference. A woman who worked near his office. The pattern was so clear once you could see the whole shape of it — Thursdays, late meetings, gym sessions that ran long, business trips that somehow always started a day early.
Marcus hadn’t made a reckless mistake.
Marcus had built an entire second life. Multiple second lives, actually. Running parallel to the one we shared, supported by the infrastructure of our shared one.
