“I didn’t plan to become the kind of wife who opens her legs for her husband’s best friend. But the night I did, I stopped pretending I was still the good one.”

***

“God… please… just once…” she whispered into the dark of her bedroom, the words cracking on a shaky breath as her fingers worked between her thighs.

The house was too quiet. Too empty. Mark had been gone three days already—another “business trip” that somehow always stretched longer than promised—and the silence pressed against her skin like a second, colder body. She had tried to wait. She always tried. But the ache had grown sharp and insistent, a...