Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN WHO TURNED AROUND
Claire Morgan saw her husband kiss another woman at 7:18 on a Thursday evening.
For the rest of her life, she would remember the time because the parking garage clock glowed red above the concrete pillar behind him.
7:18.
She had been carrying Julian’s forgotten laptop.
That was the stupid part.
He had called from the car half an hour earlier and said he left it at home.
“I need it for the investor dinner,” he told her.
Claire had laughed.
“You’d forget your own head if it wasn’t attached.”
“Good thing I married organized.”
She had believed that voice.
Believed the small intimacy of it.
Believed the fourteen years behind it.
So she drove downtown.
The garage beneath the Halston Hotel was nearly empty on level four. Claire saw Julian’s black sedan two rows over.
Then she saw him.
His hands were around a blonde woman’s waist.
Her back was pressed against the passenger door.
Julian kissed her like he had forgotten the rest of the world existed.
Claire stopped walking.
The laptop bag slid halfway down her arm.
For one second, her mind refused the scene.
Julian.
A woman.
His mouth.
Her hands in his hair.
Then sound returned.
“JULIAN?!”
He tore himself away so violently that his shoulder hit the car.
“Claire!”
The blonde woman turned her face toward the vehicle.
Claire started walking.
Fast.
Then faster.
Julian raised both hands.
“Claire, wait.”
She grabbed his jacket.
“GET AWAY FROM HER!”
“Please—”
Claire yanked him aside.
The woman kept her face turned.
Her hair covered one cheek.
Claire could barely breathe.
“HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?!”
Julian looked at her with panic Claire had never seen before.
“Let me explain.”
“Explain what?”
“It isn’t—”
She laughed once.
A sound so broken it scared even her.
“It isn’t what? A kiss?”
Julian glanced at the blonde.
That glance.
Tiny.
Protective.
Familiar.
Claire saw it.
Her chest caved inward.
She pointed.
“WHO IS SHE?”
No answer.
The woman kept her head down.
Claire stepped closer.
“Look at me.”
The blonde backed away.
“Claire…”
Claire froze.
The voice was familiar.
Too familiar.
Her anger stopped.
“What?”
The woman shook her head.
“Please.”
Claire grabbed her arm.
“LOOK AT ME!”
The blonde pulled away.
Claire caught both shoulders and turned her.
Her own hands fell instantly.
No.
Her mind said no first.
Then her mouth.
“No…”
The woman’s eyes filled.
Blonde hair.
Green eyes.
Small scar near the left eyebrow from a bicycle crash when she was nine.
Claire stumbled backward.
Because she knew every inch of that face.
She had braided that hair before school.
Paid for braces.
Sat outside a hospital room when that woman’s appendix ruptured.
Held her when their mother died.
Protected her through every bad boyfriend and every worse decision.
“Chloe…?”
Her younger sister began to cry.
Julian whispered:
“Claire—”
Claire looked from her husband to her sister.
May you like
And suddenly the affair was no longer the worst thing in the parking garage.
The worst thing was that both of them had known exactly whose heart they were standing on.
